I Enrolled 5,000 Clients in 10 Years. Here’s the ONE Skill That Made It Possible.
I Enrolled 5,000 Clients in 10 Years. Here’s the ONE Skill That Made It Possible.
Over the last decade, I’ve enrolled more than 5,000 clients.
Not because I’m the best coach in the world.
Not because I had the biggest audience.
And definitely not because I was born with some magical sales gene.
In fact… I started as a fat firefighter.
And the one skill that eventually allowed me to enroll thousands of clients?
It wasn’t marketing tricks.
It wasn’t funnels.
It wasn’t ads.
It was one fundamental skill that produced what I believe has been the 5% of effort responsible for 95% of my results.
That skill is belief shifting.
But to understand why that matters so much…
I need to tell you the story of how I discovered it.
From Fat Fireman to Fitness Entrepreneur
About 15 years ago, I started my first career as a firefighter.
And at the time… I was overweight.
One day during a house fire, I got electrocuted.
Not a little shock.
I’m talking almost died.
I spent three days in the hospital recovering. And when I got out, something shifted in me.
It felt like I had been given a second chance at life.
And like a lot of people who end up helping others… that moment became my origin story.
So I dove headfirst into learning my first real skill.
Fitness.
I got myself in the best shape of my life.
I studied:
Training
Nutrition
Behavior change
Habit formation
Performance
And eventually I realized something…
I didn’t just want to do this for myself.
I wanted to help other people transform too.
So I left the fire department.
Building a 300-Member Fitness Business
After leaving the fire service, I started working at a big-box gym as a personal trainer.
That’s where I first started learning a little bit about:
Sales
Marketing
Client acquisition
Eventually I decided to start my own bootcamp in a park in South Florida.
I built it up to 40 members.
Then I thought…
“Alright… let’s go bigger.”
So I opened my own fitness center.
Over the next eight years, I built that facility to:
300 active members
Thousands of clients served
A thriving local fitness community
But the real turning point didn’t happen until 2018.
My First Online Product… Was a Disaster
Around 2018, I decided to launch my first online fitness product.
It was a follow-along workout program.
And in my head I was like:
“This is it.
This is the thing that’s going to make me rich.
I’m going to help millions of people.”
Reality check…
It was a complete and total failure.
A tragic failure.
Why?
Because I made the classic entrepreneur mistake:
I built something without validating what the market actually wanted.
I created what I thought people needed.
But the market didn’t want it.
So it flopped.
Hard.
The Pivot That Changed Everything
In 2019, I pivoted.
Instead of selling a product…
I launched my first online coaching program.
And this is where things started to take life.
I started doing everything the internet tells you to do.
I was:
Posting every day
Going live on Facebook and Instagram constantly
Running ads
Creating content
Building an audience
And after about 4–5 months, the engagement started picking up.
People were:
Liking my posts
Commenting
Sending encouragement
I’d get messages like:
“You’re so motivating!”
Which feels great…
…but doesn’t necessarily pay the bills.
Because the truth was…
I wasn’t consistently getting clients.
Some months I could push and grind my way to $10K or $15K.
My best month at the time was around $17K.
But then the next month?
Back down to just a few thousand.
It was inconsistent.
Stressful.
And at the time, I had:
Two kids under three years old
A young family
A lot of pressure to make things work
I remember thinking constantly:
“What gives?”
The Post That Changed My Entire Business
One day, I made a post.
And honestly… it was an accident.
I didn’t sit down and think:
“This is the strategy.”
It just happened.
The post didn’t go viral.
But it got around 180 comments on Facebook.
More importantly…
13–14 people DM’d me asking about my program.
And I remember thinking:
“Hmm… maybe that was a fluke.”
So a week later, I tried again.
Different post.
Similar style.
It didn’t get the same engagement…
but I still had people DM’ing me asking about coaching.
So I tested it again two weeks later.
Same pattern.
By the end of that 30-day period, I had:
Signed 11 new clients
Generated $33,383 in cash
Had the biggest month of my career
And that’s when it hit me.
I finally figured out what had been missing.
Attention Is Cheap
Here’s the realization I had.
Attention is cheap.
You can get attention in a million ways.
I could literally run around my backyard butt naked barking like a dog, film it, post it online…
…and it would probably get attention.
Wrong attention.
But attention nonetheless.
You can get attention by:
Boosting reels
Running ads
Posting controversial content
Doing something outrageous
Attention isn’t the problem.
The real question is:
Are you creating demand?
Because those are two very different things.
The Real Skill Behind Client Enrollment
What I realized during that breakthrough month was this:
The posts that generated clients didn’t just educate.
They shifted beliefs.
That’s the skill.
Your ability to influence someone’s thinking.
Your ability to help someone see their problem in a completely different way.
Your ability to guide someone toward a new belief that leads to action.
That’s influence.
That’s persuasion.
That’s demand creation.
Why Information Alone Doesn’t Sell Anymore
This skill is more important today than ever.
Google recently reported that there are 1.2 billion posts published every day online.
Let that sink in.
1.2 billion pieces of content. Daily.
Information is now a commodity.
Anyone can go into:
Google
ChatGPT
Claude
YouTube
…and instantly ask:
“How do I lose 10 pounds?”
“How do I get clients online?”
“How do I grow my business?”
They’ll get answers immediately.
Information isn’t the problem.
The problem is implementation.
Which means if your marketing focuses purely on teaching information…
You’re missing the real opportunity.
The 8 Core Beliefs That Create Buyers
Over time, I started studying what was happening in those posts that worked.
And eventually I built a framework I now call Magic Messaging.
The core idea is simple:
To turn strangers into buyers, you must shift a specific sequence of beliefs.
In fact, I’ve identified eight core beliefs that need to change before someone becomes a motivated buyer.
(I teach the full breakdown in a 90-minute workshop, but we’ll cover the key concept here.)
Because once you understand this…
Your marketing completely changes.
The Funnel Where Most People Miss the Opportunity
Let’s break this down through a simple funnel:
Top of Funnel
Middle of Funnel
Bottom of Funnel
Most people obsess over the top.
But in my experience…
The money lives in the middle.
Top of Funnel: Shifting the Problem Belief
Top of funnel is where you get attention.
Examples include:
Social media posts
Reels
Ads
Content distribution
But most people only use these platforms to educate.
Instead, your goal should be to shift beliefs about the problem itself.
Example From My Fitness Business
Back when I was coaching weight loss clients, most people believed:
“I just need to diet harder.”
They thought their problem was:
Not enough willpower
Not strict enough nutrition
Not enough cardio
So instead of teaching workouts…
I shifted the belief.
I showed them that the real issue wasn’t just eating healthy.
It was not knowing how to eat right.
That subtle shift created a new problem.
Now they thought:
“Wait… maybe I don’t actually know how to eat right.”
That’s the beginning of demand.
Creating the “Crack” in Someone’s Mind
When you shift beliefs effectively, you create what I call a crack in their thinking.
A moment where someone goes:
“Huh… maybe I’ve been looking at this wrong.”
And once that crack appears…
You can introduce a new perspective.
The easiest way to do this?
Storytelling.
Stories naturally help people question assumptions.
And when their assumptions shift…
Their behavior follows.
Middle of Funnel: Where the Real Money Lives
This is the part most businesses completely ignore.
Middle of funnel includes things like:
Email lists
Followers
Leads in your CRM
People who’ve interacted with your content before
And I’ve consulted inside six, seven, and even eight-figure companies where they completely ignore this stage.
They keep pouring money into ads…
While thousands of warm leads sit untouched.
I call this the “leads buy or die” mindset.
People assume if a lead didn’t buy immediately, they’re dead.
But the truth is…
Most of your future clients are already in your audience.
They just need their beliefs shifted.
The Key Middle-Funnel Belief
One of the most important beliefs to shift here is around your unique mechanism.
Why is your method categorically different from what they’ve tried before?
In my world today, that mechanism is Magic Messaging.
I teach people how to:
Say the right words
In the right way
In the right order
To the right people
So they generate pre-sold buyers from their content.
That’s my vehicle.
And your job is to clearly communicate why your vehicle is different.
Bottom of Funnel: The Decision Stage
Bottom of funnel includes:
Sales calls
Workshops
Challenges
Sales pages
Video sales letters
At this stage, the beliefs you must shift include:
Investment
Timing
Trust
Cost of inaction
People must believe:
Why now is the right time
Why you are the right person
Why not acting is actually more expensive
And one of the most powerful ways to build trust?
Tell your story.
Because the truth is…
People either vibe with you… or they don’t.
And that’s okay.
The Dog Whistle Analogy
Let me leave you with an analogy.
Imagine standing in Times Square.
People are shouting everywhere.
Everyone is fighting for attention.
It’s chaos.
That’s the internet.
But imagine you had a dog whistle.
You blow it.
Only dogs hear it.
That’s what powerful messaging does.
When you shift beliefs correctly…
The right people hear you.
And everyone else tunes it out.
The Skill That Changes Everything
When you develop the skill of belief shifting…
Something incredible happens.
Instead of:
Chasing leads
Fighting for attention
Competing on content volume
You start attracting pre-sold buyers.
People DM you.
They show up ready.
They already believe.
And that’s the skill that allowed me to enroll 5,000+ clients over the last decade.
Not more content.
Not more funnels.
Better belief shifting.
And if you develop that skill…
It can change everything for you too.
Who Is Jason Meland?
I am a value creator, mentor, and entrepreneur. I help online coaches master their messaging, attract dream clients, and build thriving high profit, high impact businesses.
When You’re Ready, Here’s How I Can Help You:
Grab a copy for the 5 posts responsible for 7 figures in online fitness sales: https://www.indemandcoach.com/5-posts-ebook-2505
Join the waitlist to get an invite to join the Client Attraction Accelerator https://www.indemandcoach.com/in-demand-waitlist
Work with me personally 1:1 to build a high profit, high impact online coaching business. DM me "mentorship" here for details
