ep0029: Get Clients With Free Workshops

[0:00] Hello, hello, I’m back after a two-ish year gap. I’ve been around the world, and if you’re a longtime listener or follower, you might know that a little over two years ago, after my second kid had flown the nest, I moved to Mexico. I was there for a year and a half, and then I went to Europe for a good stretch, and now I’m back in the US, back in California, my home, and I’m living in LA, which is not usually my home, but is for now.

You might also know that we did a little rebranding. The podcast is now called The Empowered Practitioner. So welcome back, and if you’re new, welcome.

Today, we’re diving into something I’ve been teaching my clients how to do for years that has really emerged as a super successful strategy for getting leads, and more importantly, for getting great, committed clients. That strategy is using free workshops and webinars.

Now, maybe you’ve tried something like this before. You hosted a class, you did a presentation, you led a workshop, and you gave a lot of value, and people said they loved it, but it didn’t actually lead to clients. And if that’s you, I wanna say you’re not alone. Most practitioners don’t do this right. There really is a right way to do this if you want it to lead to people enrolling in your services.

So today, I’m gonna share the big ideas behind using free events like workshops, both online and in person, as a way to not just share your work, but to truly connect with the right people and enroll great, fit clients. So let’s get into it.

[2:14] I started getting clients from free workshops in my first year of business, and I’ve never stopped using this marketing method because it’s so effective. My clients that use free workshops experience the same results too. New leads and new clients from every single workshop. How amazing is that? A method that predictably brings you new aligned bullseye clients. The thing is that you do have to follow a particular structure to your workshops if you want to get new clients from them.

So before I go further, because I’m going to lay that out, let’s define what I mean when I say workshop or webinar. It could have any number of names. It could be called a masterclass, a presentation, a lunch and learn, a gathering, a bootcamp, a training, a seminar, a class, an intensive, a session, a circle, a clinic, a talk, a showcase, an experience, a webinar, an event, a lecture, a jam, a crash course. Any of these names will work, and the name you choose is part of the positioning, and that is important. Are you positioning yourself as an educator, positioning yourself as a guide, as an expert, as a community leader? The naming does matter.

[3:30] Now, these events can be online or in person. They might be something you yourself host or something where you’re a guest speaker for someone else’s audience. All of those work here, and they’re all super useful. You actually want to do all versions of those.

And in the model I’m talking about today, this is usually a free event. You’re not charging for it because the goal isn’t to make money off of it directly. The goal is to attract new leads and audience, to build authority and trust with participants, and to enroll new clients. This is, in other words, a marketing strategy. This is not a paid offer you have. And that distinction is essential.

One of the reasons we do it for free is because it’s easier for leads to say yes to. You don’t need your marketing to convince someone of its value because they’re not putting money down for this. If the person doesn’t already know you, for example, it’s easier for them to take the risk of signing up when it’s free. I’ve been through this many times myself. I’ve seen what look like pretty cool workshops on offer, but when it’s from somebody I don’t know, I’m not going to pay for it and commit that time and money when I’m not sure it’s going to be good. I don’t know enough about them.

Now, that’s not to say that you can never charge for your workshops, but what I’m sharing today, which is the free workshop model, is totally proven. I have now a fairly large sample size of data that shows that it works.

[5:05] So where do most people go wrong with free workshops? Like if you’ve tried workshops before and they didn’t get you clients, why is that?

The most common error I see practitioners make in their workshops, and I did this too before I learned better, is that they’re basically trying to teach the audience techniques and methods and practices that are going to help them reach their goals. Basically trying to give participants a scaled down version of their services or a slice of what they offer in their services. And that actually doesn’t work. It doesn’t get you clients for one. And just as important, perhaps more important, is it doesn’t even help them because they walk away loaded with a to-do list of things that they’re likely never going to be able to execute on their own. Or if they try, they’re not going to have the experience and know-how to do it effectively the way you would help them do.

So we call this the fire hose effect. Instead of giving someone a nice glass of water to quench their thirst, we blast them with a fire hose of information, tools, and techniques. And your audience may even express to you how grateful they are that you gave them so much information. Ask me how I know. I’ve gotten that feedback. Yet those participants are not actually any more empowered to make change for themselves than they were before the workshop because it was just too much to implement without guidance or they simply can’t do it on their own without guidance or they don’t know the order they should go in. It’s just a big, big giant to-do list. And so you know that’s happening if you get feedback when they’re like, I’d love to work with you, but first let me start with everything I learned in the workshop. I took lots of notes.

[6:40] So let me be clear that I’m not saying a workshop is one where you withhold a bunch of information they need. No. An effective workshop that gets you clients is one where you’re teaching your framework. You’re teaching your audience exactly what they need to do to achieve their goals or experience what they want, but you’re not doing the work. You teach what, but not how to do it because the how is what they need guidance and support with to do it right or do it effectively.

So for example, you could consider every episode of this podcast like a free workshop. I’m teaching you what, but I’m not usually breaking it down into the step-by-step how. And that’s not because I want to withhold information. It’s because I’ve seen what happens when people try to do it on their own. They don’t do it successfully. And in fact, when I teach this in my programs, there’s already been so many foundations laid, like you’ve built your framework, that we can actually do the work of creating the workshop. But when you don’t have those prerequisite tools, you don’t have the tools and the guidance that you need to do this right.

So same for your clients. What they need to do, or your prospective clients, what they need to do it successfully requires more depth of learning and direct feedback, which is impossible to provide, in this case in a podcast episode, or in your case, in a workshop. That’s why we build programs that provide the depth and the guidance and the feedback. And if you’re someone that’s new to me and don’t know about programmatizing your services or haven’t heard me talk about that, I recommend going back and listening to episode four that’s called Stop Selling Sessions and Start Creating Programs.

[8:30] So your program is where the real work is done. And your free workshop provides an overview of what that work is. And perhaps most importantly, it provides the shifts in understanding and beliefs that a prospective client needs to make in order to meet their goals.

Your workshop isn’t about information. It’s about transformation. Instead of giving a bunch of content and teaching a bunch of how-to steps that you hope impresses the audience, what you present needs to inspire. It needs to empower. It needs to create belief shifts. Information doesn’t lead to clients. Information is everywhere. Just since the last time I recorded a podcast episode, we now have all these AI tools and people are using those for your health. They’re getting information from them. But what that information can’t do is empower them. And that’s what you want to be doing in your workshops.

Your job in the workshop isn’t to overload people with a to-do list. It’s to create aha moments, to help them see their problems in a new light, to show them what’s possible when they take the right approach. You teach them the big ideas, the key shifts, the deeper principles that help them say, oh, that’s what’s been going on with me. And that’s why I haven’t been getting the results I want. And now I see the pathway that can help me reach my goals. And when you can help someone reframe their challenges and see a new path forward, they are very often going to want to walk that path with you.

[10:20] The way my clients do this in their free workshops is very simply by teaching their framework. You can hear more about the framework, which I call the magic tool, in episode eight. And in the Profitable Practitioner Academy or PPA, I teach you how to birth your framework. It’s a visual graphic that reveals to your prospective clients how they can reach their goals. It’s where you as the practitioner put together all of your tools, your knowledge, your experience about what your bullseye clients need for real transformation. It can incorporate any and all of your modalities. It can incorporate what you believe about your client’s transformation that might be different from what they’ve heard before, or it might be similar, but reframed in a different way so it really lands with them. It’s a map for them, a big picture of the pathway.

And I have seen over and over how simply teaching your framework in a free workshop gets clients. Even with an audience of five people, even with an audience of two people, you can still get clients directly from a workshop with just a few people there. And the people who don’t decide to become clients are also new leads.

[11:28] Of course, there are some simple but key things you need to do when teaching your framework that make this so accessible. You need to plant seeds is what I call it. When you teach your framework, you need to plant seeds to show participants that you can be their guide on this journey and that you’ve gotten results for clients. And you need to skillfully offer invitations for them to take the next step with you. Not a pitch, not a sales pitch, an invitation.

Those are the essentials to the free workshop method that I teach. And they’re pieces that you do have to be taught and learn. They’re not something that we intuitively do. You all know, or maybe you know, that my background is in teaching. And I know so many clients I work with are really natural teachers. And we really do naturally give that fire hose effect. We’re trying to give information and tools and techniques and tips and really trying to help people, you know, get it all. And that is just not actually empowering in this context and doesn’t lead to clients.

So I will say once you learn how to do this, it becomes totally second nature. And the awesome thing is just how incredibly valuable it is for the people who are there. Whether they become clients or not, it’s a very, very valuable approach. And they’re walking away with new ahas, with a feeling of empowerment, and it was free.

[12:50] Okay, let me just summarize what I’ve talked about today.

Number one, most workshops that practitioners do don’t lead to clients because the practitioner treats the workshop like a paid product instead of as a lead generation strategy. Free workshops are a lead generation strategy.

Number two, they try to load the audience with information and tools and tips to impress them rather than helping them understand their pains and problems and setbacks and show them the big picture path to reach their goals.

Number three, a free workshop done right can lead to new clients regardless of audience size, or real, like great new clients, aligned new clients, committed new clients. I’ve seen it happen over and over.

And number four, doing a free workshop the right way includes teaching your framework, planting seeds, and offering an invitation.

[13:40] So is this strategy right for you? It may not be because it’s not for everyone. If you hate public speaking, if standing in front of a group makes you break out in hives, this might not be the best lead generation strategy for you. But if you’re a natural teacher or facilitator, which so many of you that listen are, this could be a perfect way for you to grow your audience, grow your practice.

And even if you’ve been teaching for years, or especially if you’ve been teaching for years, you will need to relearn how to teach in a way that nurtures leads and provides belief shifts, not just delivers a bunch of techniques. But once you do have that structure, once you’ve built a workshop that speaks powerfully to your people and effectively invites them into your sales pipeline, it becomes an asset that you can do over and over and over again. You can deliver it live. You can automate it. You can pitch it to partners. You can host it yourself. Ideally, you do all of those things. It becomes part of your client attraction ecosystem. It becomes one of your top three sustainable lead generation strategies, which is what I want you to have. It’s one of the goals in one of my programs.

[14:50] Imagine spending one enjoyable hour with a handful of prospects and walking away with consultations scheduled with aligned people that will be great committed clients. That’s what I help my clients do in the Profitable Practitioner Academy and in our graduate program, the Leadership Cadre.

So if you’ve been listening to this and thinking, ooh, I’d love to do that, but I don’t know where to start or how to make it actually get clients, then I invite you to schedule a discovery call with me. In a discovery call with me, I take a look at your business, what’s working, what’s not, and identify what you need to do to attract and enroll more great fit, committed clients consistently to build monthly recurring income. If it turns out that the Profitable Practitioner Academy is the right fit for you, we can talk about what it would look like to work with me in there. If it’s not, I still offer whatever support or referrals I can to help you move forward. So you can schedule that call at joannasapir.com/discovery-call. That’s also on my website at joannasapir.com. You should be able to find links below in the show notes wherever you’re listening to this.

[15:50] So thanks for being here. Welcome back. If you’re an old time listener that’s aware of this two-ish year gap in episodes, thanks for listening. If you’re new, you have a treasure trove of old episodes to enjoy and learn from. I still have people coming to me saying, I’ve been listening to your podcast. People kind of binge on them. So I recommend starting at the beginning with episode one. They were recorded in a specific sequence and that’s the best way to listen to them.

And if today’s episode sparked something for you, I’d love to hear about it. You can email me at hijoanna@joannasapir.com. And if you know someone else who needs to hear this, please send it their way. All right. Until next time. Bye.

[16:45] If you want higher income in your practice without overworking or burning out, I invite you to check out the Profitable Practitioner Academy. This is my 12-month coaching and training program for innovative wellness practitioners. If you’re busy in your business yet still not making enough income for savings or future investments, if the back end of your business feels disorganized and messy and you want cleaned up organized systems to run it, or if you’re stuck in the day-to-day of working with clients and don’t have the time or energy or structures for really leading your business to the level you know you can be at, the Profitable Practitioner Academy is for you.

Inside the Academy, you’ll learn how to bank $5,000 days instead of $500 days. You’ll work exclusively with committed clients you love and help them get better results by enrolling them in programs or treatment plans. You’ll use the profitable pricing calculator to charge the right prices. You’ll eliminate your resistance to selling with the predictable sales system. You’ll no longer have cancellations and no-shows and your business will be streamlined and organized so that it’s finally running smoothly and sustainably with less time and effort. You’ll finally have a business that actually provides for you and make that big vision you have for your business and life a reality. Go to joannasapir.com/PPA for more info or click on the link in show notes.