The results
- 5,000+ coaches reached across the system in six months - strength & conditioning coaches, personal trainers and sports coaches
- A 1,000-coach experiment - three question-led openers tested head-to-head to find the message coaches actually answer
- Signal-led loops, no cold spray - profile viewers, inbound connection requests and post engagers each get their own Day 1 / 3 / 7 opener sequence
- Instagram, comment-first - the same coach audience engaged post by post: genuine comments on target coaches’ content, comment-backs opened into DMs and invited to the free Facebook community - 40+ coaches joined
- A lead-magnet desk - five free frameworks offered in-chat, with every request tracked and followed up
- The Chat Loop - replies diagnosed through a four-question flow into buckets, matched to the right case story, then moved toward a clarity call - 50+ appointments booked with the founder
- Detailed daily KPIs - a 200-line operations log: fit triage, sends, replies, withdrawals and Chat Loop leads, reported day by day
We focus on warm leads, intent leads and repeat engagers. We avoid random cold outreach.
- the system’s first rule
About Athletic Skills
Athletic Skills (Selby, Yorkshire) is a UK movement-education brand for sports coaches, founded by youth athletic development coach Isaac Leung. It teaches sports coaches, PTs and PE teachers how to actually develop young athletes - long-term athletic development, the fundamentals of jumping and landing, sprinting and crawling - and how to build a real coaching business with athletes through the Athlete Clients programme. Around that sits a content engine: daily video lessons, a weekly newsletter, five free frameworks, a Facebook community and live expert Q&As.
The content earns attention every day. What it needed was a system that notices who’s paying attention - and turns them into conversations without ever feeling like a pitch.
Two loops, one engine
The Opener Loop starts conversations with people already showing interest. The Chat Loop turns those conversations into diagnosed, call-ready leads.
🧲 The Opener Loop
- Profile viewers - everyone who checks the company’s profile gets a friendly Day-1 opener, a resource offer on Day 3, a no-pressure close on Day 7
- Inbound connections - new requests welcomed with one smart question: technical coaching or building the business?
- Content engagers - likes and comments harvested post by post, each one opened with context from the post they touched
- Instagram comment loop - daily comments on target coaches’ posts; comment-backs nurtured into DMs and a community invite
- Lead magnets - five frameworks offered in-chat, from the Warm-Up Framework to No Clients, No Problem
🔄 The Chat Loop
- Four questions deep - goal, payoff, blockers, timeline - a diagnostic, not a pitch
- Buckets A-D - undercharging PT, misaligned coach, confidence gap, strong-but-no-structure
- The right story - each bucket gets the case study that matches its situation
- The handoff - qualified conversations move to a clarity call with the founder, warm ones get scheduled follow-ups
How we ran it
- 1. The 1,000-coach question test - three different question-led openers, each sent to a third of the list, to find what coaches actually answer
- 2. Daily signal harvesting - profile viewers, inbound requests, post engagers and Instagram comment-backs pulled into the trackers every morning, good fits triaged from bad
- 3. Opener sequences - Day 1, Day 3, Day 7 - personal, curious and short, never a pitch
- 4. The community funnel - interested Instagram coaches invited into the free Facebook community of coaches, where the brand’s content and Q&As convert members into leads
- 5. Resource-led warm-ups - the five frameworks offered as genuine help, with every send logged and followed
- 6. Chat Loop diagnostics - four questions, a bucket, the matching case story, then the clarity-call ask
- 7. Daily KPI reporting - every session logged across 12 streams: profile checks, fit triage, post engagement, comments, outbound sends, withdrawals, Chat Loop leads and hours - a 200-entry operations diary
The engine, end to end
Content earns the attention. The loops notice it, qualify it and walk it - politely - all the way to a booked call.
What made it work
Coach-to-coach audiences smell a pitch instantly - so this system never pitches. It asks one good question, listens, and gives away genuinely useful frameworks. Because every conversation starts from a real signal - a profile view, a like, an inbound request - reply rates behave like warm intros, not cold outreach. Instagram engagers were never pitched at all - they were invited into a free community where the brand’s own content does the converting. And because every reply is diagnosed into a bucket with its own case story, the founder only ever spends his time on conversations that are already qualified.
The content does the talking, the loops do the walking - by the time the founder joins the chat, the coach already trusts the brand.
- Saeed Ali, Campaign Manager, AISH