One Chapter Ahead
Coach the person you were a year ago and you're the expert
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 72%
Online, nobody hands you the borrowed trust that a gym brand gives an offline PT, so you must manufacture authority yourself. The mechanism is to pick the client who is you a short while ago, before your own transformation. Because you intimately understand their situation, having just lived it, you're read as an expert far more readily than a coach ten years removed. You don't need to be the world-record holder on the topic; you only need to be one chapter ahead of the person you're serving, just as a driving instructor need only drive better than the learner. Matching demographic (men coaching men, women coaching women) usually strengthens the fit. Authority, trust and likeability, the know-like-trust triangle, then follow naturally from genuine relatability rather than from certifications.
Origin
Propane Fitness started coaching students because they had just finished being students themselves and understood that market intimately, which made them credible before they had any elite credentials.
Core principles
- 01You don't need world-record authority, just to be one chapter ahead
- 02Serve who you recently were; you understand them intimately
- 03Trust online must be manufactured, not inherited from an institution
- 04Know, like and trust beats credentials
- 05A shared recent journey reads as expertise
How to run it
- 1
Pick the result you recently achieved
Identify a transformation or outcome you've genuinely reached yourself, however modest. This is the thing you're a chapter ahead on.
Pro tip How did I get the result I'm now professing to get for others? If you can't answer, pick a different niche.
- 2
Target your former self
Choose the person you were before that transformation as your ideal client. You understand their struggle because you lived it.
Pro tip Serve 'you a year ago', the post-transformation version speaking to the pre-transformation one.
Watch out Don't chase a demographic whose reality you've never experienced, e.g. a 25-year-old man building postnatal programs for middle-aged women.
- 3
Stay one chapter ahead
Accept that you only need to be slightly further along than your client, not the ultimate authority. A driving instructor doesn't need to be a racing champion.
Pro tip Deep certifications are for your own pride; they're rarely the bottleneck to getting clients results.
- 4
Manufacture the trust the gym used to give
Online you have no institutional badge, so your website, persona and content must make you visibly trusted, expert and likeable. Build know, like and trust.
Pro tip Watch for organic signals: if a specific demographic keeps messaging you, that may be your real audience.
In the wild
Fresh out of being students themselves, Propane Fitness chose to coach students. Because they intimately understood what that audience was going through and had gotten results in that exact environment, they were seen as experts far more readily than an older coach would be. As they aged, their market aged with them, moving to finance and corporate clients who mirrored where they now were.
→ Rapid credibility with a niche despite no elite credentials, and a market that grew with them.
Common mistakes
Serving a demographic you've never lived
A young man marketing to middle-aged women he can't relate to has to imagine their struggles, which reads as inauthentic and makes the first program far harder to build.
Chasing certifications as the trust lever
Stacking level-3 and celiac and pregnancy certifications feels productive but rarely moves client results or trust; compliance and relatability do.
Is it for you?
Best for
First-time online coaches with real but non-elite expertise choosing who to serve.
Not ideal for
Coaches wanting to serve a demographic whose lived struggles they've never experienced.
From the transcript
“you just need to be a chapter ahead of whatever you're offering”
“we started working with students because we just finished being students”
“you are that person post transformation”
From the episode
How To Become An Online Coach - #125