Blog » Coaching Trends » 27 Tips for Online Life Coaching
27 Tips for Online Life Coaching
Looking to take your life coaching business to new heights? Then you need to be online! If you are wondering how to manage your life coaching venture online, then these handy tips are for you.
These not-so-little tricks have helped me expand my business quickly, and I hope these pointers will set you up for success too.
So if you want to:
- Get strategies that are guaranteed to work without spending a bunch of money
- Have a reliable source of income from a steady stream of online clients
- Make a positive impact on clients’ lives even when you’re not meeting them in person
- Be your own boss and have the freedom to decide when and how to work
Then you’ll love this list of useful tips!
Let’s dive right in!
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- 1. Don’t Market yourself on Social Media
- 2. Don’t Market your Process. Market your Results
- 3. Create a Simple yet Effective Website
- 4. Find Digital Tools that Help you Run your Business Smoothly
- 5. Get a High-quality Audio-video System
- 6. Create a Membership Website
- 7. Offer Amazing Value for Free
- 8. Create Webinars or Introductory Videos for Prospective Clients
- 9. Figure out your Coaching Model
- 10. Choose the Right Platform to Market yourself
- 11. Packaging is Important
- 12. Target the Right Clients
- 13. Get Certified
- 14. Build Credibility
- 15. Set up a Funnel that Works for You
- 16. Use the 2-Call Method
- 17. Have a SMART Plan
- 19. Get to Know your Clients
- 20. Seek out Testimonials from Previous Clients
- 21. Offer Personalized Sessions
- 22. Have a Business-Oriented Mindset
- 23. Create a Budget
- 24. Sort out the Legal Risks and Requirements
- 25. Establish an Effective Work Routine
- 26. Get Help and Feedback from an Expert
- 27. Keep Upgrading your Skills
- Conclusion
1. Don’t Market yourself on Social Media
Why should you avoid social media?
While social media offers the advantage of reaching many people at once, actually being visible on social media takes a lot of time, effort, and money. The results you get, despite being visible on these platforms, are not always proportionate to the investment you put in.
Social media marketing is not an ideal way to grow your business. Here’s why:
1. No more organic reach
In the past couple of years, Facebook and Instagram have scrapped organic reach so as to make more money. Even if you have a good amount of followers, they do not get to see your content unless you pay to promote it.
Between 2012 and 2016, organic reach on Facebook has dropped from 16% to a mere 2%.
That means, if you have 1000 followers, only 20 of them get to see your content organically.
It is not just Facebook either; other platforms have followed suit in killing organic reach.
2. Platform policies
Every platform has its policies about the content that can be shared on the platform. A lot of times, these policies can change and you can be shut down without any kind of prior notice.
Recently, health groups on Facebook were affected due to a change in their policies.
3. Expensive ads
Now that organic reach is no longer an option, the only way to reach more people on social media is through ADs. And ADs are expensive.
I have spent a little over $135,000 on ads in the past twelve months, and I can assure you that it is not worth the money.
It can take anywhere from 3 to 9 months or more, a dedicated marketing team, and a large budget to make your ads reach a number of people on the platforms. And even if your reach does increase, it seldom results in new clients.
4. High Competition
Facebook has more than 9 million active advertisers, but their engagement rate is less than 1%.
So not only is there a lot of noise and competition on these platforms, but the success rate is awfully low.
I have come across many coaches who tried to push their business via social media but only ended up spreading themselves too thin and without converting many clients.
Take the example of one of my clients and friends – Julia Sanders.
Julia spent more than a year on Instagram promoting her health coaching business. She invested a lot of her time, effort, and money in creating good quality posts, stories, paid ads, and collaborations with influencers. During this time, she got very few enquiries from interested clients and was able to convert only one client.
Finally, Julia decided to change tactics. She scrapped the social media marketing strategy and instead, chose to use JVs (Joint Ventures) to market her business. In less than 6 months, she already had more than 10 new clients with just a fraction of the effort and money she had used for her social media marketing.
Other clients of mine have also profited from JVs. Nadine recently closed a JV who has a group of over 120,000 members!
Another client Vijaya has a pipeline of JVs and on average has 10 JVs promoting for her every month.
Despite everything, if you decide to market your life coaching business over social media, choose just one platform that you feel is appropriate for your life coaching niche and stick to it. Take the help of available market research to help you make a decision and come up with a research-backed marketing strategy.
2. Don’t Market your Process. Market your Results
What does it mean to market your results and why is it important?
A lot of times, I’ve seen coaches focus on marketing their technique or framework.
That kind of focus is not going to help your business grow.
You engage and convince clients to sign up for your coaching programs by promising them a certain outcome. Clients refer you to other people in their network because you helped them achieve the desired results. Your process might be spot on, but that is only evident in the results you get.
An outcome is what people are hoping to buy when they pay for your coaching services.
Instead of telling clients about the step-by-step process you employ to help them, focus on telling them the outcome of their journey with you. What are the results they should expect at the end of their coaching program?
For example, imagine if you market yourself as a relationship coach OR as a relationship coach who helps you land your date.
Which one, out of the 2, will your prospective clients relate more strongly with?
As just a relationship coach you will get lost in the crowd, but as soon as you pair it up with the outcome, you stand out.
Let’s move onto the next chapter.
3. Create a Simple yet Effective Website
Why create a website?
Once you have figured out your niche and your ideal client, it is time to start setting up an online presence. And to have an online presence, you absolutely need to have a website.
According to a survey, 81% of people do some research online before making a purchase. A website adds another layer of credibility to your life coaching business and makes you seem more legitimate. A clean, effective website with a well-designed landing page seems professional and makes potential clients realize that they are in good hands.
What should your website look like?
A website should be effective, not perfect.
Don’t spend a lot of time, effort, and money trying to create the perfect website. Instead, focus on having a clutter-free, effective website that has a professional, legit look.
If you are creating a website for promotion purposes, make sure to keep it simple. An effective website with a few pages can be a great fit for you to go digital. Coach Anila Bashllari had a complex website that did not work and she struggled to get clients online. She then changed her website to a simple but effective one.
Having a website is vital and immediately puts you a cut above the league. A well-designed website establishes you as a reputable and reliable coach, while also providing a touchpoint for your clients to contact you, keep a track of your updates and also easily refer you to their network.
Read this article to get an idea about how to create a user-friendly website.
Here are the most important features of a life coaching website:
1. Technical aspects:
1. Speed:
Since 2010, Google has been using the speed at which a website loads as a ranking factor when it comes to search results. Besides, the slower your website loads, the more clients navigate away from the page – you lose 7% of users for every second longer that your website takes to load.
2. HTTPS:
If you don’t have an HTTPS connection, users see a warning sign that makes most of them leave the website. HTTPS is the small lock sign next to the website address in the address bar. This indicates that your connection is secure and your information remains private when you navigate to the website. HTTPS ensures that hackers and third-party apps cannot access your information.
3. User experience:
User experience is one of the key aspects of a great website. Broken pages, broken links, unnecessary distractions, landing in random parts of the website are some major problems that frustrate the users. The user experience should be smooth and unhindered by such problems.
4. Mobile optimization:
Nowadays, mobile phones are the primary way users access the internet. Mobile optimization ensures that your website functions and looks on the mobile phone exactly as it does on a desktop. This feature is so important that Google’s algorithm uses mobile-first indexing – which uses the mobile version of your website – to rank websites on Google Search.
2. Clarity
Research shows that 55% of page views get less than 15 seconds of attention. Your website should be simple and succinct, and should clearly state the core benefits your clients stand to gain from signing up with your business within 15 seconds of landing on the page.
Pay attention to the amount of text on the website. A tsunami of text makes people navigate away from the page. Keep it simple so that your audience does not have to make a lot of effort to understand what you are trying to convey.
Section the website nicely with the help of crisp headers and succinct content that is free of fillers.
Make sure there are no distractions on the website that take the users’ attention away from YOU – no third-party ads!
3. Call to Action
A Call to Action or CTA is a cue for the person visiting your website to take the next step. The CTA should be clear and eye-catching. It should inform the user about what to expect once they click on it.
About 90% of people who read your headline also read the call to action.
People skimming through websites have short attention spans and tend to leave the page quickly. So you need to grab their attention and give them a clear indication of what to do next.
Leave no doubt about what they need to do once they land on your page.
4. Core Message
Your core message is the solutions you can offer your clients to ease their problems.
This section should explain in a clear, measurable manner what you have to offer to your clients. Make sure you highlight their problems and point out what you can do for them.
A great example of a core message is found on Desi Tahiraj’s website.
5. About section
When people look for someone who can relieve their pain, an instinct is to meet the person behind the business.
Write a short and succinct introduction. Keep this section short and to the point. It should effectively convey how your journey has been, and what you have achieved. This makes the readers connect with your story.
Visual aid like a picture where your face is clearly visible will make them connect better. This also helps you build trust with your clients.
6. Testimonials
Testimonials are an important part of a good website.
Testimonials and good feedback from previous clients help cement your credibility like nothing else does personalized. It is also easier to convert new clients when you have a few testimonials to vouch for your ability as a life coach.
I’ve covered this point in greater detail in Chapter .
7. Legal notices
Since the past couple of years, especially after the European GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) came into force, privacy and data protection has become one of the most important topics to get right for every online business.
Most countries have established strong data protection and information security laws which include stringent guidelines for privacy. Many other countries are in the process of formulating similar laws.
Not adhering to the guidelines given in these laws results in heavy fines and penalties.
Therefore, the following points are important from a legal standpoint:
- Privacy policy
- Cookie Policy and cookie consent
- Terms and Conditions
- Refund policy
- Copyright notice
Make sure that these are properly in place and are up to date.
Note: The opinions expressed here should not be taken as legal advice. The laws and policies for different places and companies are unique and often complex. Ensure you get qualified legal counsel to address all the above points for your jurisdiction.
How do you create your website?
The reason a lot of coaches get stuck on creating a website is that they keep trying to make their website perfect instead of focusing on its functionality.
Don’t fall into that trap. You just need an effective website that potential clients can access and that lets them get in touch with you.
If you decide to create your website, check out some of these websites before you start for inspiration:
Lissa Pohl’s leadership coaching website
Desi Tahiraj’s executive coaching website
Jacqui Carrel’s health coaching website
If you are not sure if you will be able to create a website for your life coaching business, hire an expert web developer to do it for you. Get it done from a professional who knows how a coaching website looks and the features it needs to have. This way, you can save time and effort and focus instead on your coaching business.
4. Find Digital Tools that Help you Run your Business Smoothly
How can digital tools help your online coaching business?
In today’s digital world, you can have a competitive and successful online business if you have the right digital tools to help you.
Websites, programs, software, online platforms, and resources are the digital tools that can make running and growing your business smooth, and tackling your tasks easy.
A recent study found that nearly 71% of coaches around the world said that they will need to invest more in technology in the future.
So let’s take a look at the essential tools you need.
Which tools do I recommend?
1. Zoom
Zoom is a cloud-based communication platform that provides video and audio conferencing. It’s one of the most popular video messaging platforms in this space. Zoom is quite user-friendly and you don’t need any technical expertise to get the hang of it.
Zoom has two versions: free and paid. The paid version of the service has three different plans to choose from according to your needs.
Zoom offers some great benefits like:
- Unlimited one-on-one meetings
- 40-minute team meetings
- Up to 100 people can be added to a single meeting
- Amazing audio and video services
- Calls that can be scheduled for a certain date/time
- Calls can be recorded on your device (and shared with your coaching clients for their reference)
These are the basic features that Zoom provides in the free version. For more advanced features, you can opt for the paid plan.
Sign up for Zoom here.
2. Calendly
Calendly is an online appointment scheduling software. It gives you the option of scheduling meetings and events. You can send your appointment availability with a Calendly link to your clients even if they don’t use Calendly. Calendly also supports all major calendars like Google and iCal.
It takes away the hassle of back and forth communication to find a suitable time slot that works for you as well as your client.
Calendly can be easily embedded into your website and can be integrated with your calendar. This makes your appointment booking process seamless on your website and helps you better manage your bookings and availability.
It has the best set of features in the free version compared to any of its competitors. Its paid plans are also priced very competitively.
So, If you think you want more features and don’t mind shelling out some money, you can always get the paid version.
Sign up for Calendly here.
3. Mailchimp
Mailchimp is an all-in-one customer relationship management (CRM) platform.
It provides a powerful platform to manage relationships with your existing, past, and potential customers.
Your email list is stored in Mailchimp and it helps you to communicate with, track, target, and manage your leads better.
Mailchimp has a free version as well that comes with a host of features and affordable paid plans in case you need more advanced features.
Sign up for Mailchimp here.
4. Jotform
JotForm is a powerful online application that allows anyone to quickly create custom forms online.
It has a drag-and-drop user interface which is very intuitive and makes it easy to use. It doesn’t require any coding knowledge, which is a big plus.
I use JotForm mainly for all kinds of contracts I need to get signed from clients, vendors, contractors, and employees.
JotForm has multiple subscription options, including a free plan. Free users have access to all of the same features as paid users, but with lower limits on form counts, form submissions, form views, upload space, and submission storage.
Sign up for JotForm here.
5. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free web tool offered by Google that helps you track and understand your website traffic. It helps you to understand customer behaviors by observing how they interact with your website.
It is used by more than half of all the websites.
Analyzing the data in Google Analytics can tell you about which marketing avenues are working the best for you.
It also helps you find the areas where your users lose interest or drop off and do not convert. You can address these issues in your funnel and tweak them to perform better.
Google Analytics helps you make data-backed decisions about where to concentrate and what to optimize to grow your business.
6. Zapier
Zapier is a handy online automation tool that lets you create workflows to connect all your favorite digital apps such as Mailchimp, Slack, Gmail, and more in one place.
It helps you automate repetitive tasks by recognizing triggers and carrying out the predetermined actions.
You can connect two or more apps with Zapier without having any knowledge of coding or without relying on developers for integration.
Zapier is an irreplaceable tool when you want to grow and automate parts of your business.
You can sign up for Zapier here.
7. EverWebinar
EverWebinar is an automated platform for webinars.
Webinars are an integral part of the perfect high-ticket coaching funnel I described earlier.
You can install EverWebinar software, upload and host your webinars hassle-free.
You can create pre-recorded webinars for your clients that can be completely automated.
Sign up for EverWebinar here.
8. WordPress
WordPress is hands down the most popular free content management system. It powers 40% of all the websites online and is great to create a website or to build blogs with.
WordPress offers hundreds of mobile-friendly designs and themes which can be customized as per your preference. It is an incredibly flexible and versatile system with a large community of developers and a robust ecosystem of plugins that can provide you with (almost) any functionality you can think of.
All the tools I just mentioned have been tried and tested for my website as well as for my clients, and I can honestly say that these digital tools make a world of difference.
5. Get a High-quality Audio-video System
How important is a good audio-video system for your online coaching venture?
For an online life coaching business, a high-quality audio and video system is a must-have.
This is especially the case in today’s post-pandemic world where connecting to another human being has become difficult due to restrictions on in-person meetings. Your online coaching venture will flourish only when your clients can see and hear you clearly when they can connect with you virtually without any technological problems.
Your audio-video system is the main channel through which you will get in touch with your clients, be it one-on-one or group sessions, or even webinars that you record for your marketing funnel. Using superior-quality audio-video systems ensures that you have no problems getting through to your clients and retaining them.
You can check out these cloud-based video conferencing systems and see what works best for you:
6. Create a Membership Website
Why create a membership site for your coaching business?
A membership website makes efficient use of your time and efforts without your direct, constant involvement and ensures a steady, recurring income from the clients signed up on your website.
There are clear pros to a membership site. Let me quickly point out 3 of the most important advantages:
- Recurring income through subscriptions
- Emphasis on creating a brand instead of just offering a one-time purchase
- Client retention through an enduring relationship
Because 80% of the work you put in is the same for every client, you can create a website for your clients consisting of training materials, research, and tools that they are given access to on signing up with a periodical fee.
As the training materials and resources are not a one-time offering but are regularly updated, it works to create your identity as a brand, with new content being added to the repository.
Clients also get access to a community of peers who are there to offer support and help. Such a model ensures that you reach many clients using only a small fraction of your time. This, in turn, leaves you with more time which you can use for individual sessions with high-ticket clients or group coaching sessions.
A membership site has the added advantage of information that is available online and can be accessed by clients any time and from anywhere, thus letting them set their own pace of learning.
This creates a feeling of being in control, which is a powerful tool when working to overcome challenges in life. Consequently, the clients in turn are happy and satisfied with your coaching. This helps in building an enduring relationship with each client.
What does a membership website entail?
A membership site is an online platform that features exclusive content that users need to pay or sign up to access. Once signed in, members are given free access to training resources, research, tools, and a community for a fee paid periodically. Membership sites are only accessible to paid members and are protected by a login.
There is one 80-20 rule you need to keep in mind when it comes to membership sites:
80% of the work you do is the same across all clients. Only 20% or less is customized or unique to a client.
You can create a membership website with paid access to 80% of the material and coaching insights that are common for most clients. For the remaining 20%, you can offer regular question-answer sessions to address any queries they might have.
For a premium, you can also offer your clients the option to book private, one-on-one sessions with you, where they can learn from highly personalized coaching.
From the feedback I have gotten over the years, clients love this method of coaching where they can learn at their own pace through the resources available on the website and also get personalized attention from their life coach via the Q+A or private sessions.
How do you create a membership website?
Now that you know what a membership site is and why it is important, here is a roadmap to help you create it:
1. Validate your idea for a membership site
First and foremost, don’t make a membership website right off the bat when starting a life coaching business. Take the time to land your first few clients and work with them in one-on-one sessions. Build your base and prove your niche before moving on to group sessions.
Gradually, once you are confident and have a better idea of how to handle clients, progress to group sessions.
When you have figured out which parts are the 80% of coaching advice and training that is common for all or most clients, start creating content that encompasses these common pain points and their solutions.
Only when you have solid content that is tried and tested in group sessions should you proceed to a membership site.
Don’t create a membership site in a hurry and without being clear about what is the 80% that is repetitive for all clients.
2. Deciding on a price for membership
Figuring out how to price the subscription your clients need to pay is a tricky business. You don’t want to charge a high price that will make you lose business, but nor do you want to charge so low that potential clients don’t realize the value of what you are offering.
Charging too little will also hinder your plans for growing your business, as you won’t generate enough income to re-invest in your business.
While deciding on a price, keep in mind these few factors:
- Your clients are ready to pay for the solutions you offer as an expert.
- The perceived return on investment is important in getting clients to pay a premium price
- The more well-defined your coaching niche is, the more you can charge without the fear of competition.
3. Choose a platform to host your site
An important factor is deciding on a platform to host your membership website.
Find a platform that satisfies some basic requirements without needing technical skills or having to pay an exorbitant price for hosting.
Find a platform that:
- Offers value for money and has no hidden costs
- Has custom domains
- Is compatible with multiple payment gateways
- Allows unlimited members to sign up
- Has seamless integration with email providers
- Features a community discussion forum
- Is mobile-optimized
- Has an SSL certificate to ensure the security of member data
4. Design your membership website well
As I pointed out in a previous section your website should be effective in guiding your clients to the place you want them to go to.
- The website should have clarity. The core message or your core offering should be clear to the clients right away.
- The design and the layout of the website should be uniform. The style of the website should stay the same across all pages and be aligned with your overall branding.
- It should include a call to action – that is, it should lead clients to sign up for exclusive member content.
- Testimonials are social proof of your credibility. They should be visible on the main page of the website.
- Navigation around the website should be hassle-free, with the main menu and a menu for navigating between lessons and resources displayed prominently.
5. Create content for your membership site
The main selling point of a membership site is the content you offer your clients. It is for this promise to provide training and resources to help clients overcome their challenges and grow that people subscribe to your website.
The content you put on the website needs to be organized properly, in a way that seems logical. It also needs to be relevant to your clients.
Here are a few types of content that you can put on your website:
- Videos and Recordings
- Courses
- Action plans, worksheets, and templates
- Links to research articles with a short summary accompanying it
- Video tutorials
- Interviews with guest speakers
- Polls and quizzes to gauge what the members need
Along with deciding the type of content you want to put up for the members to access, you also need to decide how frequently you want to post new content on the website.
You can decide to post every day, or weekly or twice a month; it depends on what you are comfortable with as well as what your clients need.
Make sure you give your clients just enough training to help them progress towards their goals. They shouldn’t be overwhelmed by the amount of content you give them.
And there you have it, this wraps up everything you need to know to create your membership website.
7. Offer Amazing Value for Free
Why do free offerings matter?
Giving away things for free is a powerful business technique aimed at converting your traffic to solid leads at a very low cost.
Freebies are the best way to introduce prospective clients to the skills, training, and resources you have at your disposal. It showcases the insights you have to offer as a coach, gives people a taste of how valuable your coaching is, and works to build trust and credibility about you.
But this technique is only effective when the service or product you are giving away has a clear, high value for the client.
The freebies should be something that would result in high customer satisfaction as well as something that is compelling enough for the client to spread the word about you and your services.
Most life coaches tend to give away stuff that either has no clear value for their prospective clients or is a basic version of something they offer to their well-paying clients. This is a problem as it tends to make the free product or service lose its value, and makes it uninteresting for the clients.
The trick is to offer a free service or product that is irresistible to your potential clients and which they get access to as soon as they share their contact details.
This helps you in growing your contact base of prospective clients who you can connect with via email newsletters, and possibly convert into clients.
Through my research and the feedback I get from my clients, I have found that the most effective offerings to give away for free are:
- A free consultation
- Free learning materials like a workbook or guide
- Free templates
- A free webinar or a short, pre-recorded webinar series
- Free access to your membership site for a fixed period
8. Create Webinars or Introductory Videos for Prospective Clients
Why does creating webinars or short videos matter to your clients?
When a potential client lands on your website, you as a life coach are an unknown entity to them. Creating short, introductory videos helps them understand what you are offering as a coach. It showcases your skills as a coach and creates an atmosphere of trust for the client.
Introductory videos or webinars where you appear on the screen also give a face to the brand and this human angle helps potential clients connect better to you.
Videos for prospective clients generally include a brief introduction of you as a coach, the skills and techniques you have to offer, and the resources clients can get access to when they train with you.
You can also address the main pain points and challenges that pose a problem for people in your selected niche, and briefly describe how you help your clients tackle these challenges and attain their goals.
Keep the introductory video under 10 minutes. Anything longer than 10 minutes will result in the viewer losing interest and navigating away. Make sure the video is short and to the point with a clear, valuable message.
Webinars can be of a longer duration, generally between 30 to 90 minutes. Create a webinar that takes the client through a short journey in which you describe or show your clients’ fears, desires, and challenges. The aim of the webinar should be to allay their fears, encourage their dreams and aims, and offer the assurance of a solution to their challenges.
The most important part of the webinar is to pitch the call at the end of it.
If a person sits through the entire webinar, it usually means that they are paying attention to what you are telling them. It shows a strong intention and dedication on their part. The chances of such people booking a call with you and converting into paying clients are very high.
9. Figure out your Coaching Model
Why do you need a coaching model?
The coaching model you choose determines the amount of time you have to spend in growing your business, the returns you get on your investment, the number of clients you can help, and so on.
The coaching model you use will also make a lot of difference in your outreach and client conversion rates as well as the growth of your coaching business.
At its very basic level, a coaching model refers to how a coach makes money by offering their coaching services to the people who need them.
But not all coaching models are made equal.
How do you choose your coaching model?
Let’s first take a look at the different coaching models there are and understand their pros and cons:
1. One-on-one coaching
One-on-one coaching is also called personal coaching or individual coaching. It is one of the most common models of coaching.
It is also popular among the clients as the coach focuses on just one client at a time and works with them on an individual basis to find personalized solutions to their problems.
One-on-one coaching translates well to the online mode of coaching too. Coaching individual clients via live video or audio calls has become extremely popular in the post-pandemic scenario owing to restrictions on meeting in person.
But one-on-one coaching has its drawbacks too. This model of coaching is extremely time- and effort-intensive. This means that you can only take on a few clients at a time because the time you dedicate to your life coaching practice is finite.
The only way you can earn more is to hike up your prices. But naturally, an increase in price means a decrease in demand. Unless you have high-ticket clients who are ready to pay a premium price, increasing prices can lead to losing your clients.
2. Group coaching
Many coaches turn to group coaching after gaining some experience with one-on-one coaching. In group coaching, a fixed number of clients sign up for coaching together.
You can coach one or multiple members of the group together while the others listen to your conversation and learn from it at the same time.
It is up to you to decide the size of the group you want to work with. You get to decide the number of clients you want to coach in a group depending on your coaching program and what you are comfortable with.
This way, you can effectively use less amount of time to help more people.
Group coaching has the added advantage of learning from each other’s experiences and learning with people who share similar challenges and goals.
It also gives clients a sense of confidence when they see their peers supporting them and facing similar problems and overcoming them.
At the same time, group coaching also has its limitations. Clients might sometimes feel like the coach is not paying enough attention to them. They can also feel like they are unable to speak up in a group setting.
Group coaching might not always translate well to an online setting owing to internet and audio-video problems.
In my experience, though, group coaching works better considering the time, effort, and money you have to put into it and the returns you get from it.
You can serve more clients while investing just a fraction of the time and effort you would have to invest in individual coaching sessions.
3. Membership sites
A membership site is where members are given free access to training resources, research, tools, and a community for a fee paid periodically. Membership sites are only accessible to paid members and can only be accessed by logging in to the website.
A common pattern in the coaching industry is this: 80% of the work you do is the same across all clients. Only 20% or less is customized or unique to a client.
This creates a great opportunity for you to cut down on your time and efforts spent in individual or group coaching by creating a membership website.
You can create a membership website with paid access to 80% of the material and coaching insights that are common for most clients. For the remaining 20%, you can offer regular (weekly or fortnightly) question-answer sessions to address any queries.
A membership website is such an important tip when starting an online coaching business that it had to have its own section in this article.
For more, detailed information on membership websites, Chapter 4 of this guide.
So how do you decide which model you should use for your online life coaching business?
My advice would be to build an initial client base through one-on-one coaching sessions. Then, once you have proven your niche, evaluate the parts of your coaching that are common between all or most of your clients.
Once you have figured that out, create a group coaching plan. Now that your plan is ready, you can start group coaching in small manageable batches that you feel comfortable with.
Gradually make the move to create a membership website where you can cater to a larger base of clients with a fraction of the time and effort you need in group coaching.
10. Choose the Right Platform to Market yourself
Why is the right platform important?
The platform you choose for marketing your life coaching business is crucial.
To get the right clients, you first need a steady stream of leads that you can convert into paying clients. The right platform ensures that you get ample traffic without you having to do a ton of marketing work.
A lot of new coaches try to boost their visibility on social media sites like Twitter and Instagram. Two main things go wrong here:
- They spread themselves too thin trying to be visible on every social media site all the time and end up with very little time, energy and money to focus on the rest of the business matters.
- Even if social media gets them a lot of traffic, only a couple of visitors or followers can be converted into paying clients.
Instead of focusing your attention on these sites, make sure you choose a better platform to market yourself.
What platforms can you choose from?
There are 12 main channels for marketing your business.
The book “Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers” talks about 19 channels that drive traffic. I’ve merged some of them to make them more concise and relevant for you:
- PR: This just means getting your name out in the press or getting media coverage.
- Blogging, SEO, and Content Marketing: This is creating original content and publishing it on your blog, on other blogs as guest posts, your YouTube channel, LinkedIn, etc.
- Online ADs: This is posting ADs online. That could be on search engines like Google and Bing, on platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn, or display ads on other websites.
- Joint Ventures and Email Marketing: This is partnering with someone who has a mailing list or a traffic asset that is relevant to your niche.
- Educational Platforms: This is traffic from platforms like Udemy and Coursera.
- Speaking Gigs: This is getting on a stage and speaking to a relevant audience.
- Community Building: This is building groups on Facebook, Linked In, etc., and getting traffic from there.
- Referrals and Your Network: These are people who you already know or people your existing clients know.
- Offline ADs: This is traditional media such as billboards and hoardings, print media like newspapers, magazines, and flyers, television advertisements, and radio ads.
- Trade Shows and Offline Events: These are events that have members of a particular industry display, demonstrate, and discuss their products and services.
- Viral Marketing and Unconventional PR: This includes conducting unique and unusual publicity stunts and creating content that goes “viral”.
- Engineering as Marketing: This means creating tools and resources which people find useful and will use.
Although there are so many different ways to market your life coaching business, not all of them work for coaches.
PR, Offline Ads, and Trade Shows are three platforms that definitely don’t work. They are either too expensive and/or not relevant for your coaching business.
Blogging and SEO, Online ADs, Community Building, Unconventional marketing or Viral marketing, Speaking gigs, and Educational platforms are some of the channels that might work for you, but they are not recommended.
All these platforms take very long to show results. A blog can take anywhere from 4 to 6 months to show good results while online ADs take even longer. Don’t expect to see overnight results with them.
Also, these channels are very expensive; you need to spend a lot of money to hire experts who know how SEO works or to pay for ADs.
In the end, these platforms take up a lot of your time and money without getting proportionate results to show for it.
Which platforms are the best for coaches?
From my experience, two types of platforms work the best:
1. Referrals and your Network
This is the best way to start getting more clients when you are just starting in the life coaching industry.
Tap into your social network for your first few clients. They will be the ideal clients as they already trust you and know how credible you are.
Referrals, as well as word-of-mouth publicity from your network, play a big role in getting leads and converting them into new clients. The people you know can be one of your biggest strengths and can give you your first few quick wins – all you have to do is ask.
I cannot stress this next point enough – don’t hesitate to ask your clients for testimonials. Testimonials from previous clients help with creating goodwill, improving your brand image, and increasing your customer base. They act as proof for the potential clients about the credibility of your business and vouch for you as a good coach.
The biggest pitfall in this method is that it is limited to your network, and you will run out of people to contact after a point.
2. Joint Ventures
A joint venture (JV) is defined as a commercial enterprise in which two or more businesses combine their resources to gain a tactical and strategic edge in the market.
I regularly recommend coaches to go down this route to increase their audience base as the potential is huge. Make sure you do your background research on the influencer and their audience. Check if they are a good fit before initiating a JV.
In a joint venture, you team up with another business that is well-known in the industry. That business acts as an influencer that endorses your work and your coaching venture to their mailing list.
For example, imagine if someone like Brian Tracy were to endorse your business to his network of followers or his mailing list. Imagine his million+ mailing list getting to know about you and your work through an email Brian sent them.
The people on his list already know and trust him, and Brian endorsing you lends you some of that credibility and trust. That is a huge factor in getting paying clients.
Joint ventures work as referrals but on a larger scale.
11. Packaging is Important
Why does packaging work?
The top coaches of the world – Tony Robbins, Les Brown, Robert Kiyosaki, Marie Forleo, and more – all have something in common: They do not charge by the hour.
And it makes sense.
Charging by the hour makes people put coaching in the same box as other commodities. People don’t really know how to value coaching in terms of hours. But they do value outcomes.
And outcomes are what packages focus on and enable you to demand a competitive price for your coaching.
Choosing the right kind of package
Now that you have an idea about why packaging your coaching is important, let’s talk about how to choose your package.
But before that, it’s important to quickly note what packaging is NOT.
“Get 3 sessions for $X”. – This is not packaging. That is bulk discounting.
“Buy 5 sessions and get 2 free” – Again, this is discounting and not packaging.
“Buy my 7-week coaching program” – That’s just putting a timestamp on your coaching program. That doesn’t make it a package.
Packaging makes the outcome the crux of the offer.
It promises the clients of an outcome.
For example, if you are a spirituality coach and you coach men between the ages of 40 and 55 to get in touch with their higher selves, that’s your niche.
A coaching package for you could be an intensive 3-day program where your clients learn about spirituality and how to apply it in their lives and have group meditation sessions.
Now, the next question to tackle is how to decide on a package for your life coaching business.
One package won’t fit everyone among your clients. Not all of your clients will be able to pay for your premium package.
So, you create different packages for different types of clients.
Package 1: The Taster Package
A taster package is lower priced and gives your clients an idea of what to expect from your coaching. It offers A+B to your clients.
Package 2: Mid-Range Package
The mid-range package offers your clients A+B+C+D. It’s double the value of your taster package and is often priced accordingly too.
Package 3: Premium Package
The premium package offers the best you have to offer A+B+C+D+…….Z.
If you compare the taster or mid-range to the premium, it gives exponentially more value and better outcomes for your clients.
When you create your packages, keep in mind that your focus should be on the premium package.
The taster and mid-range packages just give the clients an illusion of choice.
Yes, a few people may choose the taster and the mid-range packages, but most of your clients will choose the premium package because it adds more value.
A premium package offers them more than what they expected and makes them willing to pay you more.
This strategy is a very well-known business strategy called ‘Good-Better-Best (G-B-B)’ pricing and in the case of life coaching, it works very well.
12. Target the Right Clients
Why are the right clients important for your coaching business?
As per ICF’s global coaching study 2020, the average annual income from life coaching is $47,100.
According to the same study, there are about 71000 certified life coaches in the world, and many more if you count the coaches who do not have certifications but run a business and have clients.
So how do you make sure you stand out in this sea of life coaches?
How do you get entry into the crème de la crème of the life coaching industry?
How do you earn an annual income that is close to or higher than the industry average?
The answer to all these questions lies in finding the right clients. Targeting the right clients can give a huge boost to building your online life coaching business.
What do I mean by the right kind of clients?
Before you can target the right clients, you need to understand the different types of clients there are.
A high-ticket client pays $1000 or above for your coaching program.
A low-ticket client is the one paying less than $1000 for your coaching.
Here are a few major factors that will help you decide which kind of clients to target:
1. Profit
Let me give you an example.
As a career coach who has just recently set foot into the coaching industry, Anthony has high ambitions. His target is to earn $100,000 from his coaching business.
He has two options: go for the low-ticket clients and earn $200 per client or target the high-ticket clients and charge them $8000 per client.
If he chooses to target low-ticket clients, Anthony will need 500 clients to earn $100,000. But if he chooses to go for the high-paying clients, he can earn the same amount with just 13 clients!
While 500 clients can seem like an achievable number, keep in mind that $100,000 is just the revenue from the coaching, not the profit. Anthony needs to subtract the actual cost of acquiring and coaching the clients from the total revenue to find his profit margin.
Profit = Total revenue – actual costs for running the business.
Profit, not revenue, is the amount in the bank, and that is what matters.
To earn a profit of $100,000, here is his calculation for such a scenario:
Target Profit = $100,000
| Low-ticket | High-ticket | |
| Price per client | $200 | $8000 |
| Cost of acquisition + coaching (per client) | $100 | $1000 |
| Profit per client | $100 | $7000 |
| No. of clients required to reach target | 1000 | 15 |
According to these new calculations, Anthony will need to get 15 high-ticket clients – just 2 more than in the previous scenario.
But if he chooses to target low-paying clients, he will need to acquire 1000 clients – double the number he previously calculated!
Isn’t that a huge difference?
From this example, we can see that targeting a high-ticket client gives you a better profit margin than several low-ticket clients put together.
2. Upselling
Upselling simply means to promote and sell a premium package to your existing client base. As you are selling another, better package to your old clients, there are no acquisition costs involved.
High-ticket clients are more likely to have the monetary potential to invest in new programs that can give them better results.
Low-ticket clients have a lower investment capacity and may not be ready or able to buy a new program easily.
According to research, existing clients are 50% more likely to try new products/services and pay 31% more than new clients. At the same time, acquiring a new client costs 5 times that of retaining an existing one.
In my own experience, 60% of clients go on to invest in a new program once they have already invested in one of my courses.
3. Retention
Low-ticket clients are always on the lookout for a better deal or a better price. Even when they sign up with you, they keep looking for another coach who offers them a better price.
The only way to keep these clients is to compete with other coaching professionals through price.
But once you start lowering your price and competing with other coaches on those grounds, you start losing.
In such a scenario, while you keep working hard, you keep earning less. Despite serving several clients, the returns you get are much below par.
On the other hand, high-ticket clients are ready to pay a higher price and stick with you till they get results. They are invested in improving themselves and continue investing in you due to the results you have already given them.
High-ticket clients don’t base their decisions on the cost of the coaching program, but the effectiveness of your coaching techniques, skills, and know-how all put together.
This is evident even when it is their first time buying; they focus more on the quality of the service you are offering rather than the price.
This means that you don’t have to worry about losing your clients to another coaching professional, and can even increase the prices if need be.
4. Testimonials and Referrals
In a successful coaching business, understanding the psychology and mindset that drives the clients is crucial to the business. In this case, there is a distinct difference between the mindset of the high-ticket clients and the low-ticket clients.
Most people choose expensive products and services because of the perception that if something is expensive, then it must be good. The perceived value of the product or service is high.
A higher price makes the client take your coaching more seriously.
In my experience, high-ticket clients are not only ready to pay more, but they are also ready to take responsibility for their results because the cost of the investment is high. They put in efforts to make improvements in their life.
That, along with your guidance, means that they get great results!
This culminates in your clients being satisfied with your coaching services and appreciating their achievements. Compared to low-ticket clients, these clients are more vocal about the difference your coaching has made in their lives.
This results in glowing reviews from them and referrals to the people in their networks.
This is hardly ever the case with low-ticket clients, who only focus solely on getting the biggest bang for their buck instead of putting in efforts to improve.
How should your offers be priced for targeting your ideal clients?
Now that you know the difference that targeting the right kind of client makes, let me tell you briefly about how to price your offer. Pricing it right – along with targeting the right clients and packaging your offering effectively – leads to converting a large percentage of your potential clients into high-paying, regular clients.
In my experience in this field, I can confidently say that charging by the hour does not work. It is truly one of the worst strategies for a life coaching business.
Charging by the hour makes potential clients compare the cost of a session with what they can get for that price. If you are charging $100 for an hour-long session, your clients will compare it to other things they can get for $100 – like a nice dinner with the family in a fancy restaurant.
They compare your coaching session which has an intangible value to something that has tangible worth. Quite often, they conclude that your coaching services are not worth it.
So charging by the hour clearly doesn’t work. Then what is it that you should consider when pricing your offer?
As we saw above, high-ticket clients don’t equate quality with price. They look for outcomes or results.
And that is what a coaching package focuses on.
A coaching package is built around a dedicated outcome. Your clients pay you for the results you promise them, not for the time you spend with them or the methods you use.
A perfect example of this is Brian Peters. Brian helps financial advisors get more clients by leveraging referrals.
Earlier, he used to charge his clients on a per-session basis. It worked to an extent and he used to get some clients. But a lot of them would drop out after just a few sessions. Retaining clients and getting them to stay with him until they got results was a struggle.
Then he shifted from charging per session to creating outcome-based packages. It worked like and how! Today, Brain is a popular life coach and is completely booked out!
Check out the next tip to figure out how packages work.
13. Get Certified
Why do you need a certification?
While life coaching is a largely non-regulated field, a certification from a reputed institute immediately lends credibility to your business. Getting certified makes you stand out in the sea of life coaches in the industry.
Having a knack for working with people is great, but you need a skill set that is specific to working as a life coach.
When you sign up for a certification course, you get to learn essential skills like effective, professional communication, active listening, problem-solving, etc. The training also involves several hours of actual coaching experience under the guidance of a mentor.
These precious hours spent learning the ins and outs of life coaching count as work experience, and come in handy when you start out on your own.
Along with all the skills and coaching experience you get, you also get to know other coaches in the industry. This is a great opportunity to build your network. A training program at a good organization will allow you to meet life coaches from all over the world.
An added advantage of being a part of a network of coaches is that you get to know the latest industry trends, resources, research, and best practices in the life coaching industry.
How to choose a certification program?
There are various factors that you should consider when choosing your certification program:
1. Accreditation
Even though there is no single legal authority that oversees the coaching industry, a few organizations serve to hold coaches to a high standard. They also create a strong foundation of ethics for coaches to build their practices on. The International Coaching Federation (ICF) is the best example of such an organization.
When searching for programs, look for the ones that are accredited by the ICF. Even though there are some non-credentialed but high-quality training programs, ICF-accredited programs offer a high quality of training and are generally regarded as the market standard in the life coaching industry. ICF is also recognized by most potential clients, and an ICF-approved certification amplifies your credibility and trustworthiness.
The ICF offers a training program search service (TPSS) that can help you find an ICF-accredited training program that fits your requirements.
2. Duration of the program
Life coaching training programs can range from a 2-day or weekend crash-course to one that lasts for more than a year. After a lot of research, I’ve realized that the most popular life coaching certification programs fall in the 6 to 12 months category.
Any program that is less than 3 months is too short to be effective. Such a program will be hard-pressed to cover enough material to be of any use to the students’ future careers. A program like this is like trying to train for a marathon in a week.
A program longer that takes more than 12 months to complete lies on the other end of the spectrum.
If you prefer having a slower, more relaxed pace and think that you will benefit from having some time between your lessons, you can opt for such long-duration courses. But you should be careful that you do not get comfortable with a classroom setting.
Real-world business experience is the key to succeeding as a life coach.
3. Cost of the program
The cost of a life coaching certification program generally ranges from $3000 to $8000 on average, with some courses even being priced for more than $10,000.
Before you sign up for any course, know the worth of the certificate you will get at the end of the course. That is the real difference between a $25 course on some online learning platform like Coursera and a $2000 training program at an institute like Coach Training Academy.
You will be declared a Certified Life Coach after completing either of these programs, but what will this ‘certified’ tag really be worth? Will that certification set you up for a successful career as a life coach? Will your clients feel reassured that you are equipped to handle their problems?
A good way is to figure out how much of your business budget you can afford to spend on a certification, find a reputed, well-known program, and get certified.
4. Teaching methods
One more factor to consider is the mode of delivery: how will the training be conducted?
Some courses are conducted completely online, others are conducted in-person, and yet other courses combine both of these methods. Some training programs are flexible and have a self-paced model – the student gets to choose how many hours a day they want to spend on the training.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, though, most of the training programs have stopped in-person sessions and have switched to virtual lessons or have entirely stopped their programs for the time being.
Consequently, students are now faced with a choice: continue with virtual or remote lessons and complete their certification, or wait to get certified until face-to-face sessions are resumed.
Other than the factors I’ve mentioned above, let me briefly mention some other factors you should consider before selecting a certification program:
- Total number of students in a class
- Group sessions and/or personal sessions
- Additional support for students in the form of an online community or forum
- Extra resources for students – like free marketing courses
- Payment plans if the student prefers paying the course fees in installments
- Area of focus – programs that deal with only a specific niche
There’s still a lot to cover about relevant certifications which can help you become a top notch coach. Check out my blog post on Life Coaching Certifications to gain concrete information to kickstart your journey to reach a six figure income.
14. Build Credibility
Why does credibility matter?
As I have pointed out multiple times in this article, building your reputation as a credible life coach is essential to your business. Credibility is the key factor that decides how potential clients view you and if they are ready to trust you with their fears, desires, and challenges.
Every business relationship has trust at its core. Establishing trust at an early stage helps you grow your business faster and gain a strong, enduring customer base.
I’ve mentioned multiple times throughout this article how what you do can build your credibility as a life coach. Let me add to that by telling you how to build credibility via third-party platforms.
The right way to build credibility
Building 3rd party credibility goes a long way in gaining your clients’ trust. Overtime, the credibility you build for yourself will lead to your sustainability in the business.
Partnering up with other established life coaches to write guest posts on their blogs, creating a regular podcast about topics relevant to your coaching niche, getting quoted or mentioned in the media, or writing a book helps you gain a lot of visibility.
You get to position yourself as an expert in the niche of your choosing, thus building an atmosphere of trust and credibility.
1. Guest blogging
Guest blogging works much the same way that JVs work. Approach someone in the life coaching industry who has a good following and whose blog gets a lot of attention.
When you write guest posts for people who are well-established in the life coaching industry and have a blog that has a big following, your blog gets noticed by a wide range of people who follow their blogs. Their name gets associated with yours, and that lends you some of their credibility too.
Before you decide to start writing guest posts, ensure that the influencer’s blog is active and is updated regularly. Make sure the topics you choose to write about are relevant to the coaching niche you have chosen to focus on. Your blog posts should be well-researched, succinct, and helpful to potential clients.
I found this article on Guest Blogging really useful. It will teach you all the tips and tricks you need to get started.
2. Podcasts
Podcasts are a popular medium these days with the advent of services like Spotify. A lot of people prefer listening to podcasts; they can listen to a podcast while also doing some other task at the same time – unlike watching a video that demands your entire focus.
Creating podcasts is relatively easier than the other options mentioned here. All you need is a computer and a mic to record with. Before you begin recording, write down the points you are going to cover in each session and create a script for each episode of your podcast.
By now, you must have researched your ideal clients. You must have a good idea of the kind of questions your potential clients ask, and the challenges they face. Create scripts for each podcast that include these points. This will help your listeners connect with you and build trust in your coaching skills and know-how.
Here you can find a detailed guide on life coaching podcasts. The article also mentions some excellent podcasts that you can study and learn from before you get crafting your own.
3. Writing a book
Writing a book is a big undertaking, but the returns it gives are endless. For one, it is a surefire way to get recognized as an expert in your chosen field.
Before you begin writing a book, do extensive research. Find out if there is a market for your book. Take a look at the books in your niche already available in the market – online as well as in print.
Then jot down a few ideas that give a different angle to the ones already in the market or come up with a fresh idea that hasn’t been done before. When you brainstorm for ideas, keep your target audience firmly in mind.
Writing a book about your chosen coaching niche is an effective marketing tool and a powerful way to boost your credibility.
As a published author, you get quoted about your topic of choice in the media – newspaper articles, blogs, video interviews, etc, which gives an instant boost to your credibility.
Read this article to gain your stamp of approval in the coaching world.
4. Host Workshops
Hosting Workshops As A Coach Can Help You Pull In The Interest Of New Clients. This Will Help To Showcase Your Skills As A Coach.
Clients need to be constantly reminded that you can solve their problems. You need to timely showcase your expertise. As the word spreads about your coaching workshops, you will organically see that people will show up for your events.
The more people talk about your skills and how you have changed their lives, the better credibility you will build over a period of time.
Keep in mind though, that most of these methods take time. You need to dedicate some of your time, efforts, and money to get your name out there. But building credibility for your business is a necessary exercise for any life coach starting out in the industry. Putting in efforts at the beginning ensures a strong foundation for your coaching practice, and you get to enjoy the ROI of this investment throughout your career.
15. Set up a Funnel that Works for You
Why is a funnel important for your coaching business?
The most important thing for your online coaching business is to convert the traffic you get into solid clients. A marketing funnel helps you do just that.
A funnel is a step-by-step process that helps you build trust with your clients, prove your credibility, and get them to realize that they can depend on you to help them solve their problems.
Trust is the first step towards building lasting relationships with your clients. It makes clients believe that you have valuable knowledge and insights that will help them overcome their challenges and fears. It is also a promise that you will lead the clients to their goals and get them the promised results without running away with their money or scamming them.
Credibility means that your clients know that you are an expert in your field. It lends authenticity to your coaching business and reassures clients about your dependency.
Need means getting your clients to understand that you are providing a solution for a critical problem that absolutely needs to be solved. It makes your leads realize that they are in good hands with you coaching them instead of them trying to overcome their challenges by themselves.
Structure of a funnel
There are 4 main parts to a funnel.
1. Traffic:
As explained in the previous chapters, traffic means getting interested and relevant audiences to look at your content.
2. Call to Action and Conversion:
Once the right clients are interested, the next step is to let them know what actions to take and how to take them. For example, when you ask potential clients to book a call with you, that is a call to action.
When a call to action leads your traffic to further engage with you by getting them to give you their contact details for a call, it is called a conversion.
3. Closing the sale:
The third step is the sale, in which you convince the lead through further interaction, to pay and sign up with you for your coaching service or program.
4. Encouraging the client to return:
The final step in the funnel is to get customers to return to your website and buy other products or services or to convince them to keep interacting with you.
Marketing funnels are different from one business to another. Knowing which kind of funnel to use can be the difference between a successful coaching business and a struggling one.
What kind of funnel should you have?
The perfect coaching funnel
In my career, I have tried and tested out many configurations of funnels and spent around $50,000 trying them out, and after a lot of research I have come up with the perfect funnel for an online coaching business. A funnel that can convert traffic into steady, high-ticket clients.
I tried out various avenues for getting traffic – ADs, SEO, Youtube, content marketing, etc. – every method I described earlier. I have also tested several ways of conversion like courses, ebooks, webinars, quizzes, etc.
I have even written a book about everything I learned from these experiments – The 12 Steps To Get A Consistent Stream OF High-Paying Clients.
There is one funnel that stands up to scrutiny every time and performs better than any other funnel I’ve tried.
I have tried this funnel with different coaches in various niches, and it has worked every time.
1. Joint Venture Referral Traffic
If you are new to the coaching industry and are just starting out, you have yet to build a reputation for yourself and lack the credibility to draw new clients on just the basis of your name. The traffic you need to generate has to have an element of trust. Traffic from Joint Ventures fits the bill perfectly, as we have seen in the earlier chapters.
2. Webinars
Next, webinars are the best when you need to nudge your traffic towards a call. It is also great when it comes to establishing your authenticity and expertise in your chosen niche.
When potential clients go for a webinar, they have to sign up, put it in their calendar, show up at the right time, and sit through the entire webinar. Compared to other methods, there is a very strong intention behind these actions, which in turn makes them pay close attention to you and most of them stay till the end.
So when you pitch the call at the end, the people who have watched your webinar till the end are very likely to book the call and convert into paying clients.
3. Pre-Qualification Questionnaire
A pre-qualification questionnaire (PQQ) is a list of questions that helps you to understand your potential client better.
It helps you determine if the lead is a good fit for your business, if they have a problem you can solve, and also if they have the capability and intention to pay you a high-ticket price.
This ensures that you are getting onto calls with the right kind of leads and not wasting your time with freebie seekers or leads you cannot help.
Pre-qualifying leads helps you save your time and effort, which can then be put to use in a better manner.
Here you can find a pre-qualification questionnaire I regularly use for my clients.
4. The 2-Call Method
The 2-Call process is where you engage with your interested clients over the course of two calls.
- In the first call, you build up and stress the need for your coaching services.
- If you find the client to be a good fit for your business, you establish the relevance of your coaching services and pitch your coaching package to the client in the second call. This is the call where you clinch the deal and close the client.
In my experience, the 2-call process works much better than 1-call closes or more than 2-call closes.
I will explain how to implement this tip in depth in the next chapter.
5. Deliver Results
Once you have converted a lead into a client, the next step is to help them achieve their goals as previously decided.
A key thing to remember here is to under-promise and over-deliver.
When you deliver on your promise and help them achieve the outcomes and results you promised, your clients are delighted and are ready for the next step.
6. Referral and Renewal
Once you’ve proven your value and helped your clients achieve the desired results, you can ask them to write a testimonial and referrals.
As I mentioned earlier, referrals are one of the best and easiest ways, not to mention the cheapest, to attract new clients.
Your client likely knows someone else who can benefit from your coaching services. They can share your information and their experience with you, and refer you to their network. Don’t forget to leverage this!
Client retention is powerful too.
If you have a business model where you can continue engaging with your clients, definitely focus on that. When clients renew their engagement and invest in you, you end up saving on marketing costs, which, over time, becomes a considerable amount.
Clients that stick with you tend to have a higher spending capacity and also are a valuable source of feedback. By emerging out as the ‘go to person’ for your clients, you ensure that they return to you for solving their problems.
16. Use the 2-Call Method
What is the 2-Call Method and why is it a great idea?
Triage calls are a great way of engaging with potential clients while optimizing the time you spend engaging with them. Triage calls help you identify leads who are a good fit for your business – quickly and efficiently. This is useful because people are harder to convert online than face-to-face and a lot of them do not have buying intent.
As I mentioned in the previous chapter, the 2-Call method is where you engage with your interested clients over the course of two triage calls.
Although it seems like the longer route to take to schedule two triage calls to close one client, it actually saves you time as you don’t end up spending time on people who you have identified as not being a good fit.
I have personally used this strategy for more than 30,000 clients and had it work every time. I still use this method and recommend it to all of my clients.
Earlier, when we were using the single-call method – as most other coaches do – and trying to close clients on the same call, we found that for every 5 people we spoke to, 3-4 of them were not a good fit for us. But we would spend a long time – 90 minutes – on each lead.
When we implemented the 2-Call Method, we realized that we were signing on the same number of new clients but spending a lot less time talking to unqualified leads.
First Call: Build The Need For Your Coaching Services
Most people want to talk with somebody when they look to buy high-quality coaching services. That is where the first call comes into place.
The first call is a short, 20-minute preliminary call with the potential client. In this call, you connect with your client, understand their problems, establish whether they are a good fit, and build the need for your coaching services.
The only aim of this short call is to engage with the client, assess if they can pay you, and whether you should move ahead and schedule a longer call with them.
You do not try to sell your services or close a sale on such calls.
Second Call: Closing The Deal
After establishing they are indeed a good fit and building the need in the first call, the second call is where you establish relevance and pitch your coaching package the right way to the potential client.
This is the call where you close the deal and turn the prospect into a paying client.
17. Have a SMART Plan
Why set SMART goals?
Goal-setting is an important and necessary exercise for business as well as in life. It provides direction, motivation, and guidance as you grow your business.
While long-term goals help you correct your course and steer you in the right direction, short-term goals are great for keeping you motivated through small, quick wins.
Goal-setting also helps you align your focus and maintain your momentum in the business.
And the best way to set goals is to get SMART!
Let me tell you about one of my clients – Tom Finster.
As a health and fitness coach, Tom faced a lot of difficulties in attracting and retaining clients. After following the SMART action plan that I had set up for him, his business picked up.
Now, Tom always had good ideas for his business but he fell short on implementing them. By applying SMART goals, he was able to align his goals in a systematic manner making them more attainable.
Like Tom, you can profit from this technique.
What is a SMART plan?
SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
This acronym was first used by George T. Doran in November 1981 in his paper published in the issue of the Management Review. In his paper, he discussed the importance of setting goals and objectives that were:
Specific – goals that targeted a certain area for improvement
Measurable – goals that could be quantified or give an idea of progress
Achievable – goals that were attainable by a certain individual or team
Realistic – goals that could realistically be achieved with the available resources
Time-bound – goals that had a deadline for expecting results
Dividing goals into these five categories makes it easier for the goal-setter to understand the goals, prioritize certain goals over others, and know when a goal has been accomplished.
How do you set a SMART plan?
1. S – Specific
Set goals that are clear and specific. Clearly defined goals help you focus better and help you achieve whichever goal you aim for.
Ask yourself these five “W” questions when defining your goals:
- WHAT – What do I want to achieve?
- WHY – Why do I want to achieve it?
- WHO – Who is involved in this?
- WHERE – Where is it located?
- WHICH – Which resources are required for it?
2. M – Measurable
Setting measurable goals gives you an indication of success. They give you confidence and keep you motivated.
Measurable goals should answer questions like:
- How much/ many do I need to achieve?
- How much have I already achieved?
- How will I know that I have achieved my goal?
3. A – Achievable
Goals that are realistic and practical are the achievable ones. Set goals that challenge you professionally, but remember to keep them practical and attainable.
Focus on these questions to set an achievable goal:
- How realistic and practical is this goal?
- Is it attainable?
- How can I accomplish this goal, keeping in mind my current situation (financial constraints, time, etc.)?
4. R – Relevant
Make sure your goals are relevant to your needs and wants, and are aligned with your other related goals. Asking for support in achieving your goals is acceptable, but don’t set your goals according to others’ opinions.
Ask yourself these questions to see if your goals are relevant:
- Is this goal aligned with my other aims?
- Is it worth the time and efforts I am investing in it?
- Is it applicable in my current situation?
5. T – Time-bound
All your goals should have deadlines. It is easier to divide time efficiently between goals when you know how much time you have to get it done. Such goals help you focus your efforts on the right tasks and manage your priorities.
Answer these questions to check if your goals are time-bound:
- When do I need to achieve this goal?
- What can I do six months from now?
- What should be done six weeks from now?
- What can I do today?
And there you have it. You now know how to set your goals the SMART way. Start implementing the method and work on it till you have satisfactory answers to all the SMART questions.
And there you have it – the perfect high-ticket coaching funnel !
18. Select your Niche
Why select a niche?
Landing clients is the most important thing when starting a new business. But simply having a great website or an amazing marketing strategy is not enough to convert prospects into high-ticket clients.
So, how do you stand out in an industry with already established competitors? I firmly believe in narrowing down your focus and specializing in a particular niche.
This way, you end up with a more focused audience that is looking for a solution that only you can provide. Establish yourself as the go-to expert in your particular field with tailored content and client testimonials.
So, what you need is a strong base, and having a well-formulated niche gives you that base.
About 90% of new coaches fail because they didn’t select a niche before starting out.
Many coaches enter into the life coaching market without deciding what their niche will be. A lot of them don’t even know what a niche is! They pick a broad demographic they want to target without further narrowing their focus.
But a demographic is not a niche.
What, then, is a niche?
An effective, well-selected niche is a simple statement that answers these two main points:
1. WHO – Who do you want to target?
This is your target demographic. It’s important to understand the market and find out which group you want to focus on.
2. WHAT – What solution are you offering?
After deciding on your target group, you need to figure out what you can do for them. What major obstacles do they face that you can solve for them?
Therefore, your Coaching niche = Who + What
Let me explain this with an example:
Suppose you are a recovery coach. You decide to target adults in the 35-55 age group. This becomes your demographic.
Now you need to find out which addictions people in your selected age group want to get rid of.
You decide to focus on adults who want to get help for alcohol addiction.
So now, your
WHO = Adults between the ages of 35-55.
WHAT = Get help for alcohol addiction.
Just combine your WHO and WHAT and your coaching niche is ready!
Simple, isn’t it?
But how do you decide the WHO and WHAT parts for yourself?
Well, the next section is going to help you do just that.
How can you find your niche?
Let me introduce you to the Niche Diamond.
The Niche Diamond addresses the 4 vital questions required to define a niche:
1. Are you passionate about your niche?
The perseverance, motivation, and empathy necessary for running a successful venture, come from a passion for helping and serving your clients.
Like any other business, you will be faced with difficult times as you grow. In times like these, your passion to serve your clients will help you stay motivated and face the ups and downs with determination.
Being passionate about your niche will also help you understand your clients’ desires, hopes, problems, needs, and fears in depth. In doing so, you will develop the understanding and empathy necessary to serve them better.
This, in turn, will lead you to come up with insightful solutions to their problems as well as develop better marketing strategies that appeal to your target audience.
2. Is your niche easy to reach and abundant?
As a coach, you need to be able to easily reach your potential clients. This is where online businesses have a clear advantage. You can tap into some form of online communities and forums, on websites like Facebook and LinkedIn, or even via email lists.
Also, your target niche should be abundant for you to be able to build a sustainable business. Stats show that coaches can convert less than 10% of their audience. You’ll never be able to convert 100% of your niche, so if your target audience has fewer than 100-200 members, you will find it difficult to sustain your coaching business with that small of a niche.
Consider the example of Kelly. She initially picked the niche of helping people overcome grief due to the passing away of their partner.
It was a decent niche but the problem was that she needed to get in front of people who had just lost their loved ones at the right time and that was really hard to achieve.
So, these people were not in a place where they would be easy to reach.
She realised that and she decided to change her niche. The new niche she chose was helping people diagnosed with auto-immune disease with symptom management and become pain-free.
That has resulted in her getting a huge flux of high-ticket clients because her potential clients come together in various communities online and that opened up a lot of doors to be able to reach her clients.
The key learning here is that you must be careful about choosing a niche that has very few people or is not easily accessible.
3. Can your clients pay you?
This one is simple: Always choose a niche where your clients have the financial ability to pay you for your services.
Know your value as a coach and the value of the services you provide your clients. While it is great to help people, remember that you can continue to do this only if you get paid fairly for your services. Before starting out, you need to figure out if the people in your niche will be able to pay you.
4. Are you solving a problem worth paying for?
The last question you need to ask yourself is: Is the problem I’m solving crucial enough for my clients to pay me $1000?
It is absolutely essential that the answer to this question be ‘Yes!’’. If the answer is no, you need to redefine your niche.
The more painful and urgent a problem is, the more people will be willing to pay well for a solution. Make sure the problem you are addressing is crucial enough that clients will be compelled to pay you a high-ticket price for helping them solve it.
For example, which of these do you think is a more painful problem?
- Helping a business owner who is unorganized to organize their desk
- Helping a business owner who is struggling to get leads double their revenue by coaching them on how to get more leads
Which problem do you think your client would pay you high-ticket to solve?
Make sure clients’ problems are painful enough for them that they are compelled to pay you a high ticket for helping them to solve it.
If not then you need to rework your niche as you will not be able to charge your worth for it.
Make sure you put in enough time and effort for each question in the Niche Diamond as they are all very important. If you follow all the steps listed above, and if your answer to all four questions is a confident ‘Yes!’, you will have formulated a great niche for yourself.
19. Get to Know your Clients
Why is this important?
Once you have worked out your life coaching niche, you need to get to know the clients you want to target. The more you get to know your clients, the better you will be able to tailor your services to match their needs.
Before you start your coaching business, you must figure out the answers to questions like:
- What are my clients’ deepest fears and doubts?
- What do they struggle with?
- What are the challenges they might face?
- How do they usually deal with difficulties in life?
- Where do they go for advice?
- What are my clients’ goals in life or professionally?
- What income bracket do my ideal clients fall in?
You will start forming an image of your ideal client from the answers you get to these questions. This is the person you will guide through problems, and encourage them to achieve their goals.
Once you know the kind of clients you want to work with, you can create a marketing strategy with a message that addresses the needs of such clients and offers a solution they are searching for, and importantly, are willing to pay for.
How should you go about it?
There are several ways to learn more about your clients.
1. A ready questionnaire
There are many ready question sheets and other exercises to find your ideal client. These resources are available on the internet, mostly for free.
Such exercises are designed to help you find your ideal clients through a series of detailed questions and evaluation exercises. Once you find a questionnaire or worksheet that fits your needs, give yourself enough time to go through and answer all the questions on the list; this can be quite time-intensive.
Don’t have the time to make your own questionnaire? Well, I’ve made things easy for you. Check out my go to guide on 44 Coaching Questions Every Coach Must Ask. I have compiled a few one on one coaching questions that will surely help you to step into your client’s shoes.
2. Talk to your ideal clients
Even though this method takes longer, the resulting insights you get are more useful.
Get talking to actual people who seem to fall into your selected demographic.
Find people around you who are ready to sit down and have a chat with you about their life and the challenges they want to overcome.
If meeting in person is not possible, chat with people online. Get in touch with your social media followers and LinkedIn connections.
Another way to get feedback is to create a survey online and ask people to fill it out. Anonymous surveys get people to open up about their fears, desires, needs, and wants without the fear of being judged.
You can check out these coaching assessment tools for creating informative surveys.
Make sure the questions you ask are open-ended so that the person feels compelled to give you detailed answers.
3. Online research
Online research offers you the advantages of being able to access the information anytime and from anywhere, and without spending a lot of time on the research.
Start with some basic research about your niche. Pay attention to the kind of questions and solutions that pop up in the search results – these are the top questions that your ideal client is looking for.
Check out this Conducting Online Market Research: Tips and Tools which will inform you the tips and tricks to crack this.
Read through blogs, online forums, communities, and review sites that are relevant to your demographic and note the questions being asked there.
Once you get your answers, write down the Q+A and create an idea board. An idea board will help you figure out the most popular questions your clients have, and you can get started with crafting your solutions to these questions.
If you are wondering about how you can create an effective idea board then read this article, How to Create Virtual Idea Boards for Work to get a clearer idea.
In the next chapter, I will walk you through the importance of enlisting client testimonials.
20. Seek out Testimonials from Previous Clients
Why are testimonials so advantageous?
Testimonials are important for your online coaching business because they immediately cement the credibility of your services and you in the minds of potential and new clients. Testimonials from previous clients are a sure-fire way of building trust and credibility.
From my personal experience, I can vouch for the efficiency of testimonials. I found it infinitely easier to convert new clients after I started getting good testimonials from my previous clients.
Secondly, testimonials are an excellent way of finding out what is working, what needs to be changed, and what needs to be scrapped, pertaining to your coaching methods and offerings. It is a great way to get feedback from clients.
After you deliver exceptional value to your clients and help them to achieve their goals and desired outcomes, remember to ask them for testimonials. These testimonials will go a long way in creating goodwill for your coaching business and in increasing your customer base.
Testimonials, therefore, are so important, that they deserve a place on the main page of your website. Along with a call to action and a core offering, testimonials are what make potential clients stay and engage with you.
What kind of testimonials should you look for?
These 4 kinds of testimonials should usually be on your website:
- A celebrity testimonial
- A testimonial from an ordinary man
- A testimonial from an ordinary woman
- An ‘against all odds’ success story
Each of these testimonials has its own benefits and are a good variety to have.
Testimonials that are specific and communicate how you helped them overcome their problems and achieve their goals, are the kind of testimonials you want to display.
Going a step further, you can even have short video testimonials of your previous clients.
According to a study, 2 out of 3 people say they’d be more likely to make a purchase after watching a testimonial video demonstrating how a business, product, or service had helped another person like them.
Chris Howard’s video testimonial is a perfect example of a powerful video testimonial.
21. Offer Personalized Sessions
Why are personalized sessions a solid idea?
In the initial days of starting your online life coaching business, offering personalized sessions to fit each client is a great way to build your base.
Each client is different, and offering personalized plans for each client shows that you understand their needs and tailor your sessions around these considerations. It shows that you are serious about helping your clients, and are investing time and effort in creating a plan that evolves with each session you have together.
During these sessions, make sure you are attentive towards the client’s needs and the obstacles they face. Work with them to devise a plan that helps them overcome these challenges. Don’t let these sessions drag on for hours; keep them short and conclusive.
This strategy also works well if you have a group coaching model and want to offer customized one-on-one sessions for a premium to clients who feel they need extra attention.
22. Have a Business-Oriented Mindset
What is a business-oriented mindset and how do you develop it?
A lot of talented life coaches fail because of the mindset they enter the business with.
They can be successful employees, but when they start their own business venture, they bring with them the same mindset of an employee.
The right mindset – the entrepreneurial mindset – is the key to handling your coaching business with finesse.
Having a business-oriented mindset means to:
1. Have a beginner’s mindset
When you start your coaching business, you are like an intern.
There are a lot of things that you have to learn and do before you become proficient in coaching – and that’s okay!
As an entrepreneur, you will have to wear many hats. Everything from creating ideas to marketing, from selling to delivering, and many more in between. There will not be just one designated role that you have to take care of.
Keep reading about your industry and keep learning from it. Learn about various people and how they work in their respective industries.
Make it a point to brainstorm about how you can practically apply what you’ve learned to your business.
2. Get comfortable with selling
Most new coaches are averse to the idea of selling. They think that selling is bad, and actively try to stay away from the term.
But selling is not about pushing a client to sign up for your coaching services or programs.
Selling is just an exchange of value for money.
Selling is about convincing the client about the potential your offering has and getting them to understand that you deserve the money they are paying for it.
You need to know the value you bring to the table, and not shy away from putting it in monetary terms. Money is just a tool; be at peace with asking for it.
3. Embrace your mistakes and failures
When you’ve been working at your previous job, you become used to being an expert in your field.
The downside of that is you become used to not failing and forget how to overcome failure. It’s easy to carry on with the same mindset when you are starting your new coaching business.
But when you start a new venture, you are very new to everything it entails, and as a result, prone to making mistakes. Similarly, when you face rejections, understand that the “No” is directed at your offering and not at you as a person.
Don’t let failure discourage you. Don’t be demotivated by the rejections you face. They are all part of the game.
Make sure you have a mindset that allows you to learn from the failures and rejections you face
4. Value your time
Your time is your most valuable asset.
Manage your time well and don’t keep giving out coaching sessions for free. If you give out free sessions to anyone who books in, that will end up turning into a massive waste of your time.
Have firm rules about free sessions like limiting the number of free sessions you give out and pre-qualifying the people you give them to.
This is how we do it. Anyone who books in a session with us is sent a pre-qualification questionnaire.
By analyzing their answers, we can gauge right away if they are the right fit, if they will be able to pay us and if they will be ready to put in the work we require them to.
You can download the exact questionnaire we use here.
Don’t give out free sessions to people who are not a good fit for your business and/or who don’t have the capacity for turning into paying clients.
5. Seek objective and expert feedback
When we put our heart and soul into making something work, we often don’t see what we are missing or what is not working.
That is why feedback is important.
But not just any kind of feedback. You need to get feedback from someone who is an expert in your field.
Unqualified people often give opinions that don’t work because they don’t have the domain knowledge or expertise to give you relevant feedback.
23. Create a Budget
Why is a budget important for business?
A lot of newbie coaches start their coaching businesses without planning a budget in advance. They spend money on expensive websites, certifications, marketing, etc. without pausing to budget for these expenses. Some even opt for loans to set everything up “properly”.
Unfortunately, this is a mistake that causes a lot of coaches big losses and makes them quit due to a lack of capital.
On the other end of the spectrum, some coaches are afraid to invest any money at all. They are determined to get everything done at the lowest possible amount of money they can spare.
What should you keep in mind while creating a budget?
If you want to set up your online coaching business for success, you need to make sure you don’t run out of money before your business gets off the ground.
Don’t spend on expensive training programs or websites when you are only just earning a tiny percentage of it. Spend only on the things that are critically important to keep your business up and running such as website hosting and a secure online payment platform, and invest in other ‘good-to-have’ things slowly over time.
If you don’t have a budget yet, create one as soon as possible (like, today!). Start with a simple spreadsheet to keep track of the income and expenses in your business.
If you already have a budget, make sure you regularly check it and keep a track of how much you’re spending and what you’re spending on.
24. Sort out the Legal Risks and Requirements
Why is it necessary to take care of the legalities?
A lot of new coaches, while taking care of all other aspects of setting up a life coaching business forget to pay attention to the legal requirements.
This can get you in trouble with the law or even leave you open to get sued by disgruntled clients.
You need to safeguard yourself against legal problems by making sure you cover all bases when it comes to taxes, legal structures to register your business under, legal frameworks, etc.
How do you go about it?
1. Choose an appropriate structure for your business.
There are many business structures like Sole Proprietorships, Partnerships, LLCs, etc. which you can choose from for your coaching business.
For example, LLC stands for a Limited Liability Corporation which ensures that you are not personally liable for your coaching business’ debts or liabilities and thus safeguard yourself, your family, and your assets.
2. The income that you make from your coaching activities is not exempt from tax.
Ensure that you are declaring it and paying taxes as required and on time, so as not to end up on the wrong side of the tax authorities and get implicated with tax evasion or tax fraud.
3. Ensure you have the appropriate contracts in place.
Make sure you get the appropriate paperwork signed by your clients, partners, vendors, and employees – on time. Getting into legal trouble is the last thing you want as it can effectively mean the death of your coaching business. So make sure you always stay on the right path. It’s a lesson best not learned the hard way.
4. Always employ the services of a legal consultant when it comes to these matters.
There is always the risk that you would miss out on something if you decide to take care of the legalities yourself, and as a result, have to pay a fine or be sued or worse. Instead, choose a legal expert who has at least a basic knowledge of your coaching niche.
As the laws and policies for different places and companies are unique and often complex, ensure you get qualified legal counsel to address all the above points.
25. Establish an Effective Work Routine
Why is your routine crucial to your business?
Working online doesn’t mean working 24×7.
Having a clear, effective routine is important for you as well as your business, especially when it is an online business. A well-organized schedule helps you maintain a good work-life balance.
Having a good work-life balance is especially necessary in the post-Covid world where most of your work will be done from the comfort of your home. If you continue to work without deciding on the number of hours dedicated to work, you run the risk of burning yourself out with the stress of managing your new business as well as a home.
This isn’t an ideal situation for the growth of your business. It also can affect how you interact with your clients and the effectiveness of your coaching.
So how do you establish a good work environment and routine?
How do you ensure a good environment and routine?
1. Establish a set routine
Look at your calendar and block out all the time you need for your household chores, meals, sleep, and anything else that is essential.
Second, optimize things that you can do in this. Are you going out to get groceries every couple of days? Will it make sense to get them done once a week or get groceries delivered home instead? These things will free up more time in your schedule. This means more time for you to dedicate to working on your business.
Next, create dedicated slots for working on your business. These slots should at least be the length of a normal working day, (8-9 hours). Mark this on your calendar and let other people in your house know about your timings.
You shouldn’t have to wonder about when you will be working on your business, nor should anyone disturb you when you are working.
Studies show it takes 66 days on average for a new thing to become a habit. So create a schedule and stick to it.
Remain consistent and you will end up building powerful habits.
2. Create a dedicated workspace
Don’t just sit at the kitchen table or on the sofa during your work hours. Create a space, no matter how small or big, that is dedicated to working.
Make sure there are no distractions around the workspace. For example, don’t sit in a room that has a TV set up, and turn your phone on silent during work hours. Make or find a space in the house that is quiet, where noise from outside cannot penetrate.
At the same time, make sure the workspace is conducive to work. The space should be bright, with good ventilation – something that makes you look forward to work rather than being daunted by it. It should have enough electric outlets and a steady power supply for your devices – computer, audio, and video system, etc.
3. Set your priorities
Now that you know WHEN you will be working on your coaching business, the next step is to figure out WHAT you will work on.
Have clearly defined priorities beforehand. You don’t want to get down to work and then wonder what you are going to work on. Plan in advance about what you are going to do.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of being busy. Work smart while working hard.
Time, energy, and focus are the biggest challenges when you are starting a new business venture.
For example, don’t devote a lot of time to designing and redesigning a logo or a website to get it perfect. It doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Instead, talk to people in your niche to identify the nuances of their pain points. This will help you create your coaching program.
Setting priorities as early as possible, also helps you to focus. This way you don’t have to switch between tasks.
A simple but effective way to prioritize is the priority matrix.
4. Don’t forget to have fun
Having fun is also important; don’t spend all your waking hours working!
Remember to allot time for leisure and to have some fun. Consciously make time for your family, and yourself too. Taking breaks and rejuvenating yourself will help you be more effective overall.
Read about the concept of burnout and ensure you don’t end up there.
26. Get Help and Feedback from an Expert
Why is an expert’s feedback so valuable for business?
When you start a new business, a lot of things can go wrong simply because you lack experience in handling a business. But because you are so invested in the business venture, emotionally and otherwise, you fail to recognize, understand or foresee the places where things are likely to go wrong.
An expert can help you recognize the problem areas in the business.
Getting timely feedback from an expert who has a lot of experience in your industry or niche helps you keep your coaching business on track. Such expert advice is valuable not only when starting a new online coaching business but throughout your career.
However, be sure to get feedback from someone who knows the industry. Never ask for feedback from an unqualified person. Such advice will leave you implementing a ton of tweaks and keep you running around in circles.
Get feedback from an expert accountant about your business’s financial records and decisions.
Ask an expert in your target niche to check if your content is appealing and whether that is something they would pay for.
I do the same for my clients. The experts on my team build their online coaching business end-to-end and then these same experts also guide and advise my clients on every aspect of their business on an ongoing basis.
This helps my clients leverage industry expertise, and avoid costly and time-consuming mistakes.
27. Keep Upgrading your Skills
Why is this important?
As a life coach, you can’t help others improve without improving yourself. Constantly.
Life coaches greatly value personal growth and professional development, in themselves as well as in their clients. Investing in upgrading your skills is also a form of investing in your business.
Coaching is a field where new changes take place every few months. New research, better technology, and a constantly changing world make it necessary for coaches to learn and adapt to these new changes and accordingly change their approach to coaching.
Another reason to constantly be on the ball and improve your skills is the competition in the coaching industry.
According to a study, there are an estimated 4,380,000 coaches worldwide.
Can you imagine how fierce the competition is to stand out in this sea of life coaches?
Upgrading your skills and/or acquiring new skills gives you a great advantage over your peers by helping you stay relevant to your target audience.
How do you keep upgrading your skills?
- Make sure your certifications from organizations like the ICF are renewed periodically. Enrolling in new, different courses and getting certified is a great way of keeping in touch with the new changes taking place in the industry, as well as growing your network.
- Attend events like ICF Converge, the Art of Coaching Conference, or smaller, local coaching workshops that help keep you visible in the public eye and are a great networking opportunity.
- Speaking at webinars about your experiences as well as learning from other speakers and audience members.
- Reading the latest books, articles, and research in your chosen niche.
- Feedback from your clients as well as a mentor is a great way to find out the areas of coaching you need to work on.
Conclusion
Congratulations on reading through this article!
You now have a ready list of actionable points that will help you run a successful online coaching business.
But don’t just read; start implementing! Start now, remain consistent, and maintain good momentum to build a thriving online venture.
Were the tips helpful for you? Which tip are you starting with? Do you have any other questions that I might have missed out on?
Let me know in the comments and I’ll make sure I address all your queries.
Download a FREE PDF version of this guide…
PDF version contains all of the content and resources found in the above guide.
ABOUT SAI BLACKBYRN
I’m Sai Blackbyrn, better known as “The Coach’s Mentor.” I help Coaches like you establish their business online. My system is simple: close more clients at higher fees. You can take advantage of technology, and use it as a catalyst to grow your coaching business in a matter of weeks; not months, not years. It’s easier than you think.
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