Oh hey, badass! You're ready to start working with people. How exciting! It is time for you to start working with people, helping them to get results, helping them to transform in an area of their life that they want to see results in, and you have some expertise in that, or some knowledge in that, or some proven methodology or track record on that, And you are going to help people go from point A to point B.
Getting beta clients is such a joy because it is such a win-win scenario for them and you. And. It is the groundwork that makes you an incredible coach course creator group program, coaching creator, or whatever you want to become because you start to understand how things work.
When you start having multiple human beings experience what you have to teach, what you have to show them and see them win and see them get results see their eyes light up and see them have those mindset shifts and see them, Become a different version of themselves. And this is what it's all about.
[00:01:07] The Importance of Beta Clients
So let's talk about four proven ways that you can land your first beta clients and start getting yourself out there and becoming the entrepreneur, the coach, and the business owner that you want to be building that empire of yours.
So I know that it can be really scary. The idea of showing up for the very first time, booking the call, and having someone say, yes, receiving money for your work, right?
This concept of how do I get to be paid for doing something that I enjoy this much. And then that imposter syndrome of, can it work? Can I get the results? Can I fulfill the promise that I've made and just sit there and they join the call and you take that deep breath and you say, okay, let's go?
Time again, it always goes so well. And the person who you're holding space for and coaching and just giving them the luxury and privilege of time to work on themselves and accountability of working on themselves, they love it and they have such a good time and it's just such a vibe.
But before you've done it and before you've tasted how good it can feel and how competent you are, it can indeed be really scary. So let's make it easier for you in terms of figuring out how to get started, how to make it happen, how to just get into action mode and move through this fear by just doing the damn thing.
Because working with real people one-on-one is A non-negotiable step. It's mission-critical to ensure that you can deliver the results you are promising to make in your offer. I don't care what your offer is. If you're saying that you are going to teach people how to twerk. If you're going to teach people how to clear up their adult acne.
If you're going to teach people how to go through a proven methodology for designing the perfect name for their baby. It doesn't matter what your niche is. We need human beings to experience the work. And the product and the service that you want to develop. So you can sell that in integrity and I would not be here today.
If it weren't for my original beta clients and Badass Careers, shout out to you if you're listening, because some of you may be listening because these are the early adopters. These are the people who stick by you as well. They are so badass. They are so loyal. They are so determined. They are so onto it and they become these incredible community members and they will make you in a way that you didn't realise was possible through your growth and confidence and development and critical thinking and coaching skills.
So they are such a gift to you as well.
[00:04:08] Defining Beta Clients and Their Value
So beta client, what is it? What am I talking about? A beta client is an early adopter who experiences your offer, your service, and your coaching package at a discounted rate. Or even for free, a couple of them, right? In exchange for providing feedback and testimonials.
That's the energetic exchange of it all. Before launching Badass Careers, I did 15 free calls with people, which is probably a little bit over the top, but I had a big confidence blocker, a massive imposter syndrome. And then via those calls and those relationships, I It was actually within that initial community that I was able to start upselling them into my very first test offers before I had officially launched my website and I started to get some cash coming in and realise, wow, I had impressed them so much on that call that they want to pay me a couple of hundred dollars now to, for example, write their resume for them.
Okay. I got started on that journey. It's not necessarily the way or the only way I'd recommend, but it's a way that I started with. Essse tactic number two, which I'll explain later in this episode. Okay. So that's the energy. It's someone who comes in early. They know that they're going to get a reduced or scrappy or a, shorter version of what you will eventually provide at a much higher price point.
But they know that it will also result in some kind of action taking and cool results for them and creating some wins for them in the space that they want to create wins in some area of life. And they know that in exchange for that and being able to do that with you. You will be expecting some feedback and testimonials from them that you can start using as social proof on your website and your socials.
The benefits for you, it's about gaining valuable feedback. It's about refining your offerings and your methodology. It's about building your credibility and social proof publicly generating those valuable testimonials. And of course, feeling more confident in yourself and your offer, which affects the entire community.
Value chain your entire funnel because your sales mindset Will be completely off if you don't believe wholeheartedly in what you're selling if you don't believe or know for sure that you can get results, you're going to not show up properly It's essentially make or break for your business, right?
And then for the beta clients, massive benefits because they get to access these high-value services, one high-touch coaching at a reduced rate. They have an opportunity to shape the offer. On a call, they can say to you, Hey, I know that we said in lesson two, we were going to cover this.
Can we cover this and a bit of this, or can we do this instead? And they have an opportunity to ask that and have that conversation and have you co-create the experience with them. And they get very personalised attention from the coach or the creator. And this attention is really valuable because. Over time, as coaches or creators get bigger and bigger, you typically get less and less access to them.
And this is what happened for Sure and Badass Careers, where I started off doing private coaching, then I had to cut that completely, it was group coaching only, and I was showing up on group coaching calls once per week, and then that dropped down to twice per month, and then eventually once per month, as that coach becomes more and more successful and the demand becomes relentless, I had to start hiring other coaches to support me.
So It's also this beautiful opportunity for them to have that high-touch personalised support. From the person directly as well, which is cool.
[00:07:55] Structuring Your Beta Program
So let's then cover when to start working with beta clients, at what point on the timeline, how to structure your beta offer, and what's included or not included.
We'll cover four key ways you can land those first beta clients of yours. And let's chat about when to transition. To paying clients or fully paying clients. When to go all in and own your program at its real price point, its final price point, that you want to get paid, you want to land on.
In terms of when to work with them, Let's think about the timeline to launch your business to the world. By the time you've worked with beta clients, you've ideally already decided on your niche. You've got a really strong hypothesis for your niche direction, where you want to go. Therefore, you understand who you're speaking to, who's your person, who's your ideal client.
And again, learn. strong hypothesis. We need to test it out fully when it comes to the beta program, but you're 90 percent there and you've designed your offer, how you want to take this person from point A to point B. So for example, they want to go from having no dance background and feeling awkward and stiff and unsexy when they dance.
to being able to twerk and do booty work and, dance in the club and feel hot and feel sexy. That might be a transformation that you offer as part of your program. So to achieve that, you've identified, for example, a 10-week program and You have critical steps and moves and things that they need to learn and apply and practice every single week for the 10 weeks to achieve that result.
That would be your main offer. And you might want to offer that eventually for, 10 10-week private coaching program for a thousand dollars, let's say to get started with. So that's what you're going to sell. That's your end game. So at this point, it's almost You've got your niche, you've got your brain, you've got your messaging, you've got your ideal client in mind, and you've designed your offer.
It's almost like you park that in terms of the sales side of things, the promotional side of things. And you get focused on two things, building your audience and beta clients. Building your audience, creating content, giving away value, giving away tutorials, becoming an authority, becoming a personality, becoming an educator in the space.
Thanks. Giving value without asking for anything in return in terms of sales. And then on the low-key behind-the-scenes, we're doing the beta coaching. So this would be a perfect moment in time because you're able to stress test that methodology of yours, and start getting that social proof rolling in.
Thank you for our call. Amazing. I feel so much more confident. I mastered that move. I looked good in the mirror. All these kinds of messages start coming through from the beta clients. You can use them on social media. You can use them on the website. You can use them on the sales page. And it's this low-key seeding of Hey, I know what I'm doing.
This is a vibe. You're having fun here. You're enjoying this community. And eventually, you get to a point where these two things come to a head and you've built your audience for a while. This could be a matter of weeks or months, depending on your goals. We'll talk about that. And you've got some beta clients, coming in.
that have proven your methodology, they've got results, you've got the testimonials to prove it, and these come together to make you feel ready enough to be like, you know what, I'm owning it, I'm going to launch my official program at full price. For example, the beta program may have been three calls with you for 200.
And it's almost like a taster of different parts of your program. Maybe the first three lessons with some beta clients, and the final three lessons for other beta clients. There are many ways to do it. We can talk about that in more detail, but that's the kind of phase of business that you're in, ideally when it comes to the beta clients. Another time that people do jump on the beta client thing is earlier on when they are deciding on their niche and maybe they take on beta clients across two different niches to see what feels best what works best and where they feel most confident.
That's also another great thing to do. But if we're talking about the typical pathway that I'm working on with my clients, that's where the beta clients sit in the behind-the-scenes build-up before officially launching that full-price program. full marketing campaign and owning this is the offer.
This is the promise. I know I can get your results. Let's fucking go. Okay. So it's building that energy while you're building your audience and creating content. So what's included inside a beta program? Basically whatever you want to be included and it will depend on what your final offer is, right?
If you have a six-month-long 10,000 coaching program, it's going to look. different, the beta program compared to a 500 course that you want to launch with just a Q and a community and not much private coaching support from you. So it's going to be very different depending on what your final offer looks like.
But there are several ways that you can do this. You can either offer, for example, that small chunk of your program, like I just mentioned. So one to three sessions of the program and. That's delivered alongside an accountability plan or an action plan or some other deliverable that someone can take away with them and it feels really good and it's nice and cheap or even free.
So when I was doing the Badass Careers calls, for example, We might do an hour-deep dive on their brand and how to market themselves better and that kind of thing. And then I might have given them a resume audit. So they sent me their resume where they implemented what we spoke about. And I give them a 15-minute feedback video or something like that, allowing them to take it even further.
And then I get messages back saying, wow, my resume looks so amazing. I just applied online using my new resume and I've already got an interview and so on. So that would be a taster of a program where, for example, the full program might be full out strategy on personal branding.
We do resumes, we do cover letters, we do LinkedIn, we do networking strategy, right? We do a whole job search program. And in the beta program, I've just done a deep dive on that resume side of things. It could be a bigger chunk of your program. So for example, half of the program for about a third of what the full price would be around about, that's the kind of, ish level that you could aim for, or it could be your full program for about two-thirds of the price, the final price will be.
So that's just a ballpark of some ideas of how to get started. So you can do taster sessions for free or very cheap. you could offer The full program and see it through a few times for still a reasonable price, not for free, because, this is just proven by experience science research, but people don't show up long term when they're given something for free.
Very often, sadly, the accountability, the skin in the game, that hunger to make it work Isn't there as much psychologically for them and you. And so they're less likely to get results. So I'd always recommend charging for the full program, all this to say, you've got options. You do though want to make sure that the options will result in something concrete for them, some kind of mindset shift or some kind of level up in their life or some kind of result or way of seeing the world differently.
If we could go back to our twerk dance teacher example if they just have. Two sessions with you out of what would be a 10-session program. What could you teach them? And maybe you'll do a whole session on the basics and confidence building and how to. Technically do some moves and another session on the energy you bring to it.
And then, working with maybe alter egos or working with something to get into the energy of it to exude that confidence and have the face and have the that, I'm having the time of my life energy resonating off you. So you can own what you're doing with your body as well. So you could have a couple of sessions like that.
You want though for them to be able to walk away and feel like something's changed, something shifted. It has to be enough for a shift to have occurred, even if it's relatively small compared to how they would feel by the end of your entire program.
[00:17:03] Finding Your First Beta Clients
So how are you going to find these people? How are you going to get beta clients?
Test out this methodology of yours and test out your ability to coach, lead, mentor, and get people results. Firstly, Don't underestimate the power of your existing network. Now this is probably best for the people who are willing to give away a few sessions here and there for free.
There is no shame in doing some beta client coaching for free, especially if you have never coached before. Now, this looks like reaching out to friends, family, ex-colleagues, acquaintances, and anyone who very importantly fits your target audience. They represent your ideal client. So one of my clients, for example, her ideal client is a Muslim woman in her twenties who wants to get that clarity about what they want in life and discover their purpose.
And. understand how they want life to look in terms of like career finances and relationships and start taking ownership of that so they're not following the path that was carved out for them by their parents for example but more so taking full ownership of their life understanding what they truly want and getting on track to making that happen and so being a Muslim woman herself She was able to reach out to the little sisters of friends and her community and associations and things that she's naturally part of to find these people.
And this is what is helpful when often you are helping that person who used to be you or is, several steps behind you. This client was able to think to herself, where was I five years ago? Who was I hanging out with? Where could you find me and was able to start activating her network to access these beta clients.
You could also just simply post on your personal Instagram account. Like one of my clients who wants to help. young woman with their confidence, with a big focus on confidence at work, but also that exudes obviously into other areas of life and essentially showed up on stories saying, by day I know that you know me as someone who does this, I work in a very different profession, however for the last five or so years I've been very much focused on improving my confidence as a woman in corporate, as a professional woman who needed to stop imposter syndrome, who needed to stop that people pleasing, and needed to get rid of these tendencies that were holding me back from reaching my potential.
And I've become obsessed with these sorts of brain-based confidence tips and strategies. And I want to use them to help 20-something professional women crush, imposter syndrome, beat perfectionism, to stop people pleasing. And if you know of anyone who feels like they want to progress on this and they wanna see a change in this area, it could be you.
It could be your cousin, it could be your little sister, it could be whoever, 20 20-something professional woman who wants to make moves in this area, please connect us even having one, two, or three people from this way of getting things. So even accessing one to three people from this methodology is already going to be a fantastic place to start.
[00:20:28] Market Research Funnel Strategy
Now the second tactic to get beta clients is one that I used for Badass Careers and it's called the market research funnel. Essentially it is a win-win scenario because the primary goal of it is genuinely to do market research on your ideal client. The secondary goal is to get beta coaching clients to sign up.
But if they don't, it doesn't matter, because we are getting gold from the market research. To get into the head, understand their pains, understand their challenges, their pain points, what's keeping them up at night, what's on their mind right now, what they're talking to their friends about.
We need to know who this person is intimately and market research is a great way to do this. So this might look like, for example, designing a survey. Let's take the confidence example. Designing a survey around confidence for 20-something professional women. And you might be asking them things around, how confident they feel on a scale of 1 to 10 in their work, their friendships, and their relationships, and ask them for context on that.
You might ask them things like, if no fears or limitations existed, what would your dream life look like? And then what's holding you back from playing big living up to your potential and creating that dream life for yourself today, making those bold moves today? And asking them about their experience and their struggle with things like self-sabotage, imposter syndrome, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and procrastination.
Asking how it's impacting their day-to-day life. Asking what their negative self-talk is like, what that self-deprecation is like, what that criticism is how that's affecting them, and how they show up in the world. And asking them questions about, What kind of things I'd love to learn in terms of dismantling their inner critic and living life more confidently, and where would they like to make progress.
How would they like that to be delivered? And what would be the top outcomes that they would like to see in their life? If they could heal and work on their confidence and their self-sabotage around self-confidence and mindset. So you could pull together. A market research survey that hopefully wouldn't take more than 5 to 10 minutes to fill out.
Then you could get responses to that survey by posting on your social media, posting on LinkedIn, and Messaging people your first-degree connections on your LinkedIn network. Why not message and send DMs to people on your personal Instagram and say, Hey, I know that your cousin was struggling with this?
Where is she now? Do you think she could be interested in this? I'd love to learn more about it because I'm developing something for people just like her. And what you could do is offer an incentive. So for example, for Badass Careers, Every single week. From the people who filled out my market research survey, it was just on my link and bought on my Instagram.
And I started creating content and I said, please fill out the survey about your career and your career goals and everything. And I'll pick someone every single week to do the free survey. One-hour coaching call, so that's what I did, but I ended up essentially offering that free call to almost everyone who filled out the form.
And because they had taken so much time and put so much heart into it. And that's how I ended up with 15 calls. But anyway, it's about getting out there and incentivizing people to hopefully fill out this research. And you are going to refer back to this time and time again. Their words, their insights, the way that they describe things, the metaphors that they use.
They are so powerful. It's already in and of itself, it is a badass, bold business move that you can be making. You could post the survey link to groups on Facebook, Reddit, Clubhouse, or whatever it is. It's already an amazing thing to do. Then, from the people who win that 30-minute call or one-hour call with you that you've offered as that incentive, you will use that to talk through their responses, get more context, get more language,
Understand where they're at. And then it's at the end of these calls that you can upsell them to your beta program. So for example, you could show them, this is what I did. At the time it was an eight-week program, The Career Glow Up, what the eight-week program would involve. The first three sessions were on clarity and career purpose.
And then we had the two sessions on personal.
And then we had three sessions on personal branding. So resume, cover letter, LinkedIn, networking, that kind of thing, selling yourself. And then we had. Two sessions on sealing the deal. So interviews and salary negotiation. I would ask them which elements of the outline would they most like to work on.
If they could pick just three sessions, would they do three sessions completely on clarity? Would they do three sessions completely on personal branding? Would they do one from each sort of category, clarity, branding, or landing? And we would talk about what would be most exciting to them if they could just pick three and then I would essentially say to them What if we worked on those three things together for a super reduced rate and it's going to be scrappy And I don't have any beautiful workbooks or course materials for you.
We'll be using Google Docs and we'll be showing up to a few calls together, but I want to get your results in this area and test a few of the methods that I'm using and tools and strategies and workbooks that I'm developing in exchange for some feedback and a testimonial. And so many people were like, hell yes, I would love to do that.
And that's how I started upselling them for a few hundred dollars to have three sessions with me. Plus some deliverables when The Career Glow Up at full price was going to be 1, 500. So that's a really solid strategy.
[00:26:38] Backdoor Entry and Email List Strategy
The third way to acquire beta clients is the backdoor entry. So this is essentially where you start posting content, you're building your community, you're building out your website, and offer design in the background, you're getting ready to launch like everything is on track.
But the focus is creating content that resonates educates and inspires within your niche. And so you may not know the explicit minute details of your offer, the general direction, the general promise, the general transformation, and you're able to start creating content under those umbrellas.
Okay. And so you're creating content. People are starting to follow along. People are starting to find you. Things are optimised. Things are flowing. And this is a good principle, and these are good principles to live by anyway, but you treat every follower like gold.
Every new follower, you strike up a conversation with them, you send them a voice note, you answer every single comment on every piece of content you create, and you love them, essentially. And out of your first just 50 followers, there is no reason why, if you're treating people like this, if you're getting to know them, If you are understanding why they're following you, if you're making content that is bringing in that ideal person, there's no reason why five of them couldn't transform into being your first ever beta clients, just naturally through conversations.
And imagine if you sell five spots at just 500, your beta rate, That's 2, 500. You could use that to pay for your very first website eventually. You could use it to invest in your paid tech tools, like fancy tech tools that are nice to have, not must-haves, for the entire year. You could do so much with that money.
That's amazing. So think about it that way as well. Like how exciting is that to get that first cash injection too? Now the fourth way to get beta clients is via your email list. And explicitly promoting it publicly. What I was speaking about in the last point in terms of that backdoor entry, those are conversations happening in the background.
They're happening in the DMs. No one knows that you have a beta program. This is all happening organically as people get to know you and It becomes very natural to offer it with the right kind of people based on the conversations you're having. This is a little bit more explicit and you are casting a wider net.
So if you can imagine in your audience build phase, you're creating the content. What we never do at Badass Empires is do this. Having a juicy, strategic freebie lead magnet that is there to build your email list. I have a whole episode on how to design a lead magnet that converts followers and audience members into actual clients.
So go and check that out for more details. But thanks to this freebie, you're building your email list. So you're not just posting content, but the email list is growing. After a certain milestone that you get to decide for yourself, it could be, I've got 100 people on my email list, or I've been creating content and giving value, so generous for three months straight, whatever it is, you will decide there's going to be a moment in time where you're going to send the series of emails, just straight up promoting the beta experience.
You're going to talk about the benefits, the juicy price point, and any bonuses they get with you, for example, not only will you be my beta client for a very reduced investment, but I'll give you access to the full course when it launches as well as a thank you for being like an early adopter and believer in me or whatever it is.
So it's just straight-up explaining. This is the opportunity, to win, and in exchange for a testimonial, we can get you some amazing results. Make sure the benefit is, of course, focused on them and not on you, but very much explain the benefit, and benefit for them. And then you can also follow up on social.
You can post a few times saying that, P. S. in the caption, or even just straight up explicitly make a carousel over it or whatever, but essentially the message is, I'm looking for five people who are in this exact situation, and want to achieve this result, who are keen to test some of my new coaching tools and techniques with me, and the result or benefit will be this, and this, and, send me a DM if you're interested.
So it's a very explicit ask, essentially. And again, you don't need 15 beta clients. We're talking about three people, five people. That might be enough. One person might be enough. It depends.
[00:31:16] Transitioning to Full-Paying Clients
This is a beautiful opportunity to talk about how you know then when to transition to full-paying clients.
Like when is the time when you close the doors to the beta and it's time to launch the full price? Of course, it depends on where you're at and how many people you've worked with on this kind of topic before. You might've been doing this kind of work in your day job. You might have a significant amount of life experience or technical qualifications or something that means that you are already quite confident in the results that you would achieve.
For me, when I launched Badass Empires, I considered, do I even needed to do beta clients. Why? Because I had proven myself as a coach via Badass Careers for the past five years. I had built my platform. had that tried and true experience, and had done enough self-awareness and coaching and inner work to understand how those results happened, I had also coached several of my career clients into starting their own businesses and side hustle already, but I hadn't developed my empire's methodology, and so I did end up working with a Big bunch of beta clients behind the scenes.
Most of them came from Badass Careers who just loved the coaching experience with me within the career glow and they signed up to Badass Empires just organically through me talking about it and explaining what I was going to do next. So that was cool. And it was a choice, but technically did I have to?
Whereas someone who had never achieved results in terms of being a coach or didn't have that business background, for example, they were interested in entrepreneurship and maybe had launched their own low-key Etsy store before or something like that, would probably want to do a lot more beta client coaching than I would need to, for example, so it will depend.
But typically, you know that you've worked with enough beta clients when you've received positive feedback and testimonials from the beta clients. You feel like you've had a degree of refinement and improvement of your offering based on that beta client feedback.
And you've measurably increased your confidence in your ability to deliver results, to deliver value. so you can set your criteria for transitioning to fully paid clients, such as reaching a certain number of beta clients or achieving specific milestones like that.
But broadly, for a coach with zero experience wanting to launch at about a 1, 500 price point coaching program, I would say to them, generally, they could beta coach five people at a price point of about 500 each, and then five people at a price point of 800 or 900 each, and then they'd probably be ready to launch at the full 1500.
That would be a way to do it with real integrity and just rock solid knowing that you're the real deal. Some people don't even do beta client coaching and that's a choice, but this is the way that I would do it to feel so good about myself and what I was offering the world.
[00:34:35] Conclusion: Building with Integrity
so hopefully this episode has illustrated how significant beta clients are refining your offerings building that credibility and becoming the best beta client.
Coach, leader, educator, content creator, and course creator that you can be. We've covered some strategies for acquiring your first beta clients, when to do it, how to do it, leveraging your network, leveraging market research, leveraging social media, and leveraging your list.
And we've talked about some indicators. Of how to know when it's time to transition to fully paid clients. Remember as hungry as you are to be getting out there and following your purpose and making great cash and doing the thing.
These steps, as much as they can feel like a slow burn sometimes, make you a better entrepreneur. They make you do this thing, this business, in integrity. And you will sell more and make a lot more money by slowing down to then speed up because your sales mindset will be tight, you'll be confident in yourself, people will build trust with you because you are backing yourself, you know you've done the work, that this is a thing, that this works.
And, What's left to say other than get out there, go for it, start taking action, start doing what it takes to build that community and get those first beta clients, start ideating your game plan, how you're going to land your first beta clients when you're ready to. And until next week, keep building that empire of yours.
keep building that empire of yours, grab that crown, and reign on badass.
