If you coach for a living, your email list is your most valuable asset, and a great checklist is the fastest way to grow it. The trouble is that most coaches either share their best tips for free on social with no way to capture the lead, or they stall for weeks trying to design something that looks professional.
This checklist freebie for coaches prompt fixes both problems at once. You hand the AI your topic and raw notes, and it returns a tightened, action-first checklist plus a ready-to-paste image-generation prompt for the graphic itself. By the end of this page you’ll also understand why the prompt is built the way it is, so your next freebie is even better.
When to use this
- You want a lead magnet to put behind an email opt-in but don’t have a designer.
- You keep giving away great advice on Instagram or in calls and want to package it once.
- You’re launching a workshop, course, or challenge and need a quick-win freebie to warm people up.
- You have a messy list of tips in your head and need it turned into something clean and downloadable.
The prompt
Copy this whole block into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini:
You are an expert graphic designer and visual content strategist for coaches. Your job is to design a single, downloadable checklist or cheat sheet graphic that a coach can offer as a free lead magnet to grow their email list.
Before you design anything, ask me up to 3 clarifying questions if any detail below is missing or unclear. Otherwise, proceed.
CONTEXT
- My coaching niche: {{NICHE}}
- The person who will download this: {{IDEAL_READER}}
- The checklist topic and promise: {{CHECKLIST_TOPIC}}
- The checklist items (or the source content to pull them from): {{CHECKLIST_ITEMS}}
- My brand colors and feel: {{BRAND_STYLE}}
- Where I'll deliver it: {{DELIVERY_FORMAT}}
TASK
Produce two things in order:
1. A FINAL CHECKLIST. Turn my topic and raw items into 5-9 clear, action-first checklist points. Each point starts with a verb, is one line, and is specific enough to act on. Add a short headline and a one-line subhead that names the result the reader gets.
2. AN IMAGE-GENERATION PROMPT I can paste into an AI image tool (Midjourney, DALL-E, or similar) to create the graphic. The prompt must specify: a clean single-page layout sized for {{DELIVERY_FORMAT}}, a title area, a tidy checklist with checkbox marks, generous white space, my brand colors ({{BRAND_STYLE}}), legible sans-serif type, and a small footer area for my name and website. Tell the tool to leave the actual text as editable-looking placeholder blocks if it cannot render text reliably.
CONSTRAINTS
- Keep checklist language plain and free of jargon. No buzzwords.
- Do not invent statistics, fake client results, or false claims.
- Keep it to ONE page or ONE graphic. No multi-page designs.
- Match my brand feel; do not default to generic stock-photo style.
After both deliverables, give me 2 alternative title options I could A/B test and one tip for boosting opt-ins with this freebie.
How to customize it
Replace the six {{VARIABLES}} before you send it:
| Variable | What to put | Example |
|---|---|---|
{{NICHE}} |
Your specific coaching niche | sleep coaching for parents of babies and toddlers |
{{IDEAL_READER}} |
The person who downloads it | exhausted parents of an 8-month-old who still wakes at night |
{{CHECKLIST_TOPIC}} |
The topic and its promise | a 7-step bedtime routine for sleeping through the night |
{{CHECKLIST_ITEMS}} |
Your raw tips or source notes | dim lights, warm bath, white noise, drowsy but awake… |
{{BRAND_STYLE}} |
Your colors and feel | soft sage green and cream, calm and reassuring |
{{DELIVERY_FORMAT}} |
Where it lives | a printable A4 PDF behind an email opt-in |
See it in action (full example)
Here is the exact prompt, filled in for a baby sleep coach. This is the whole input, nothing hidden:
You are an expert graphic designer and visual content strategist for coaches. Your job is to design a single, downloadable checklist or cheat sheet graphic that a coach can offer as a free lead magnet to grow their email list.
Before you design anything, ask me up to 3 clarifying questions if any detail below is missing or unclear. Otherwise, proceed.
CONTEXT
- My coaching niche: sleep coaching for parents of babies and toddlers
- The person who will download this: exhausted new parents whose 8-month-old still wakes 4 times a night
- The checklist topic and promise: "The 7-Step Bedtime Routine That Helps Babies Sleep Through the Night"
- The checklist items (or the source content to pull them from): dim lights an hour before bed, warm bath, same order every night, feed before not during the routine, white noise on, put baby down drowsy but awake, keep night wakings boring and dark
- My brand colors and feel: soft sage green and warm cream, calm, gentle, reassuring, rounded shapes
- Where I'll deliver it: a printable A4 PDF people get after joining my email list
TASK
Produce two things in order... [rest of the prompt unchanged]
And here is the complete output the model returns:
A quick check first: I have everything I need to build this, so here’s your checklist and the image prompt. (If you’d rather the headline lead with the number of nights to results, just say the word.)
DELIVERABLE 1 — Final checklist
Headline: The 7-Step Bedtime Routine for Sleeping Through the Night Subhead: A calm, repeatable wind-down that helps your baby settle and stay asleep.
- Dim the lights about an hour before bedtime to cue your baby’s body for sleep.
- Start with a warm bath to mark the shift from “day” to “night.”
- Run the same steps in the same order every single night.
- Feed before the routine begins, not as the last thing before sleep.
- Turn on steady white noise and leave it on all night.
- Put your baby down drowsy but still awake so they learn to settle themselves.
- Keep night wakings boring: low light, quiet voice, minimal fuss.
DELIVERABLE 2 — Image-generation prompt (paste into Midjourney, DALL-E, etc.)
“A clean, single-page printable checklist graphic in A4 portrait orientation. Soft sage green and warm cream color palette, calm and reassuring mood, gentle rounded shapes and corners. Top third: a centered title area with a large headline and a thin one-line subhead. Middle: a tidy vertical checklist of seven rows, each with a soft rounded checkbox on the left and a single line of placeholder text. Generous white space between rows, no clutter. A small decorative line illustration of a sleeping crescent moon in a top corner. Bottom: a slim footer band in sage green for a coach’s name and website. Legible modern sans-serif typography, high contrast for print, flat minimalist design, no photographs, no people. If text cannot be rendered cleanly, leave each line as a neat editable-looking placeholder block. –ar 3:4”
2 alternative titles to A/B test: 1. “Bedtime in 7 Steps: The Routine That Ends 2 a.m. Wake-Ups” 2. “The Calm Bedtime Checklist for Babies Who Fight Sleep”
One tip to boost opt-ins: Name the result, not the format. “Get my 7-step bedtime routine” converts better than “Download my checklist.” Put that promise on the button itself.
Drop the image prompt into your image tool, type your seven lines over the placeholders in Canva or your PDF editor, add your logo to the footer, and the freebie is done.
Why this works
Three LLM principles are doing the heavy lifting. Learn them and every prompt you write gets sharper:
- Role priming. The opening line (“You are an expert graphic designer and visual content strategist for coaches”) tells the model which slice of its knowledge to use. “Make me a checklist” pulls the bland internet average; assigning a specific expert role pulls layout sense, opt-in psychology, and design vocabulary. Always assign a role.
- Specificity in, specificity out. The model can only be as concrete as your input. Vague items (“good sleep habits”) produce vague checklist lines. Specific raw notes (“put baby down drowsy but awake”) produce specific, action-first points. The quality of the output is capped by the quality of your
{{CHECKLIST_ITEMS}}. - Constraints are quality control. The numbered rules (“5-9 points,” “start with a verb,” “one page,” “no jargon,” “don’t invent stats”) each remove a common failure mode. Telling the model what NOT to do matters as much as telling it what to do. And the “ask up to 3 clarifying questions first” line lets it fill gaps by asking instead of guessing, which is the single biggest fix for generic AI output.
Do this now
- Copy the prompt above into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini.
- Replace the six variables with your real niche, reader, topic, raw tips, brand style, and format.
- Send it. If it asks clarifying questions, answer them honestly.
- Paste the image prompt into your image tool, set your text over the placeholders, add your logo, and put it behind an email opt-in today.
Pro tips
- Lead with the result, not the topic. “Sleep through the night” beats “bedtime tips.” Ask the model to rewrite your headline around the outcome.
- Keep the list short. Five to seven items feel achievable; twelve feel like homework and hurt opt-ins. If the model gives you nine, cut to the strongest seven.
- Run it twice with two brand feels. Generate one calm version and one bold version, then keep the layout that matches your brand better.
- Reuse the checklist text everywhere. The same seven lines become a carousel, an email series, and talking points for a reel. One prompt, many assets.
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