Think of your Profile as your “storefront”. As you build out your profile, ask yourself: would I be excited to work with me after seeing this profile?

This article will walk you through the key things you need to know to make sure your profile grabs the attention of as many clients as possible.

After you've gone through these top tips, use our "Coach Profile Score Card" to grade yourself and make sure you're Leland-ready!

The background section gives clients overall information about you as a person. The goal here is to help clients get to know what makes you special.

Picking the right profile picture is key to drawing potential clients into your profile. Pick a strong headshot. This sounds obvious, but people eat with their eyes first. Go with good lighting and high resolution. If you have a professional photo, use that一it’ll be much stronger than that selfie you took at your cousin’s wedding.

In this section, you have the opportunity to tell potential clients about you, your story, and why coaching matters to you. Make this section as specific as possible. Tell your story!

Here are a few tips for writing an effective personal bio:

Creating a compelling introduction video is an important part of setting up your profile and generating interest in your coaching services.

There are a few important factors to consider before beginning to record your video.

Your video should be between 30 seconds and two minutes long. Here are a few things we recommend you include.

1. Introduce Yourself: Tell the client about you. Focus primarily on your professional and educational background, but you can also include hobbies, fun facts, etc. With this, your goal is to make it easier for clients to feel like you “fit” their background. Were you a first-generation college student? Did your work focus on a niche industry? Let them know!

2. Highlight Your Coaching Style: Provide a brief glimpse into what it would be like to work with you. For example, do you prefer highly structured sessions or more go-with-the-flow? Do you tailor packages toward a specific outcome or personalize them to the client’s background? If you have specific strengths as a coach, you can talk about those here as well.

Here are a few examples of what “coaching style” could look like in written form:

3. Share Client Success Stories: Providing some kind of “social proof” increases the client’s trust in your services and thus, makes it easier for them to purchase coaching. This can be either a specific story or broader statistics. For example, “I’ve worked with over 50 students and on average, I increased their ACT scores by five points after two sessions” or, “This year, I worked with a client who had a 3.2 GPA and fairly average GMAT score but with a lot of work on their essays, letters of recommendation, and resume, we were able to get them admitted into HBS, GSB, and Wharton.”

4. Include a Call to Action: What do you want them to do after watching your video? Is it to message you? Book an intro call? Whatever it is, include it along with some kind of encouragement—”If you’re just starting on your applications, I’d love to help you figure out your narrative. Message me and we’ll talk through your background and how to best turn it into a compelling theme for your applications.”

You can record your video on whatever software you’d like, but make sure it’s in a landscape orientation (the example below was recorded in Photobooth). Then, head to YouTube where you’ll upload it.

In the top right corner, you’ll see a camera with a plus sign on it. Click that and then “Upload video.”

You’ll then see the following screen. Fill out the title and description as you see below.

Then, you’ll need to make sure the video is marked as unlisted. This will be under the “Visibility” step in the video upload.

Once you’ve completed this last step, the video is good to go! You’ll copy and paste the video link (that you can see in the thumbnail on the right side of the above image) into the designated spot on your Leland coach profile.

Now that you’ve got your basic info filled out, it’s time to showcase your expertise. Head to the “Categories” section in the “My Coaching Profile” dashboard.

We allow coaches to add up to 6 categories. You should only select categories for which you have deep experience and for which you can provide a world-class coaching experience. Once you choose which categories you’ll coach for, you will need to rank them in order of expertise and experience. Your profile will receive a small boost in the search rankings for your first and second categories.

You can edit a specific section by clicking the three dots on the right hand side and clicking “Edit Category”. From there, the platform will walk you through all of the details you need to add.

Write something that captures what you’re offering in a single sentence. We know, that can be hard! Don’t underestimate the power of a strong headline. It can make a huge difference when customers are scrolling through the coach search result pages. What you say in your headline will lead them to click to view the rest of your profile.

Here are some of the best ones we've seen:

When writing your headline, think, “How would I sell my coaching services in one line to someone?”, “What am I the best at compared to others?”, and “What kind of clients am I looking to attract?”

Here are a few other tips for writing an effective headline:

Pro Tip: Once you’ve set up your profile, send it to a friend and get their thoughts on it. A good profile can help you attract and convert clients at a much higher rate than a mediocre one.