Why Do Coaches Think Some Clients Don’t Count?

I’ve had a few conversations with Coaching Revolution mentees recently that left me bemused. These conversations have left me wondering about why some clients ‘count’ and others do not.

Real Clients

The mentees I was talking with are about halfway through their one-year programme with us. This means that they know who their target audience is, they have a wonderful marketing message that speaks directly to that kind of person and demonstrates knowledge of and empathy for the audience’s challenges – the ones that coaching can resolve. These coaches are actively marketing using that message.

Coaches – intelligent, thoughtful, qualified professionals telling me they haven’t had any real clients yet. I assumed they would say to me that the clients in question were pro bono or reciprocal, but that’s not the case. The clients that don’t count are the ones who knew them before they became coaches.

The Stranger Myth

There’s a deeply flawed but surprisingly common belief among coaches that real clients must be strangers. That someone only ‘counts’ if they came from nowhere, knew nothing about us, and somehow found their way to our booking link through the sheer magnetic force of our brilliance. According to this logic, clients are disqualified from counting if we already know them.

What this ignores completely is the purpose of marketing.

What Marketing Actually Does

Marketing isn’t about manipulating strangers. It’s about clarifying your commercial identity to everyone, including friends, peers and colleagues (and strangers too).

If someone you’ve known for years suddenly sees you differently and now recognises you as someone who can solve a specific problem they have, that’s exactly what good marketing achieves. It reframes you in their mind.

That’s not cheating. That’s marketing doing its thing.

These clients didn’t just wake up one day and spontaneously decide you were the solution to their problem. They were influenced by your visibility, your messaging, and your clarity. They saw you showing up in a new way and connected the dots.

The Cost of Not Counting

We do two damaging things when we dismiss these clients as not real.

1. We undermine our progress. We tell ourselves it’s not working, even when it is. We rob ourselves of evidence that our marketing is achieving its objective.
2. We distort our commercial reality. We disregard actual income. We pretend it doesn’t count. Which is nonsense because it’s money in the bank, and it proves what you’re doing is working.

The idea that they don’t count is inaccurate and dangerous because it prevents us from building momentum.

Monetisable Credibility Is a Gift. Use It.

Here’s the thing – the fastest-growing coaching businesses are almost always built first on monetisable credibility.

A warm network (if we have one) is a wonderful thing because it’s made up of people who already know, like, and trust us, but who need help understanding what we do now and why it matters. The people in this network aren’t a shortcut, they’re our first audience.

If They Paid, They Count

A client is a client. If someone hires you, pays you, and benefits from your coaching, they’re not a fluke – they’re a fabulous result.

The litmus test of whether they’re real could be if the bank is happy to accept the money they paid you – because the bank doesn’t care if the money you pay your mortgage came from people who didn’t know you.

Would you like to talk? Why not schedule a call to see how The Coaching Revolution can support you and your coaching business.