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45 Things You Need To Know On How To Start A Coaching Business

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This article is more of an FAQ for all coaches who are looking to start a coaching business online.

If you are a coach and you feel you disagree with me, I am happy to see your

comments in the comment section. Please let me know there.

There are too many types of coaches who may not FIT with your type of coaching. But these are general principles that apply to everyone.

So here we go…

In Brief : 45 Things You Need To Know On How To Start A Coaching Business

1. How long does it take to get your first coaching client?

Ideally, if your website and your marketing are in place you should be able to get your first coaching client within 2-4 weeks of setting up your website & your marketing campaigns.

You should be able to do manual work and find your first client through your immediate connections. If you find it difficult to do that, then coaching is not the right career path for you. And you should consider a career change. Something you might be more passionate about.

2. Should I start a blog?

Yes, of course, you must blog. Blogging is the best way to get your word out there with your target audience. Write interesting blogs and tweak them for SEO. Once they are on your blog post, you can get them to convert for your coaching services.

You can learn more about SEO and blogging by buying the Ahrefs blogging course by clicking here.

3. Should I start my coaching practice full time or part time? Or should I quit my job right now?

I recommend people to start their coaching as a part-time activity. Once they have figured out their basics, and when your current coaching income starts to match your full-time job, that’s when you should ideally quit your full- time job and go all out with practising your coaching.

I don’t recommend the idea of quitting your job and pursuing your passion in a risky manner.

Instead, to our coaches who work with us at the Elite Coaches Mastermind, we recommend them to slowly de-risk their income and then grow it once they feel secure about it.

4. When should I give up my coaching practice?

If you have defined your niche properly and have the marketing processes in place, you wouldn’t reach the point of giving up your coaching practice.

But if you have built something and you haven’t been able to get even a single coaching client in about 3 months then you should seriously reconsider your coaching before it burns a hole in your pocket. Or you could even sit down with an expert and redefine your coaching area of expertise because usually, that’s where the problem lies if you are not getting clients.

5. Should I quit my full-time job?

No, you shouldn’t. You can start building your coaching practice as a part-time gig and then slowly scale it up as it starts getting you more money in the bank.

6. How do I get new clients consistently?

One of the best ways to get new clients is by driving lots and lots of relevant traffic to your website and driving them through a funnel.  You can do that either by writing relevant blogs or by driving traffic through paid advertising from Google Adwords and Facebook ads.

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7. Should I ever focus on running webinars? Or workshops?

If you notice, running a coaching business these days has become 10x easy.

You can sit in any part of the world, and get clients from all across the world.

Webinars allow you to have a bigger target market and gives you the ability to sell your services all across the globe. Whereas, events usually mean that you have to do a lot of ground level local marketing to get your word out there.

When you are starting out with your coaching practice, tapping into a global target market is relatively easy than doing live workshops.

Workshops are good for making high-end money, but webinars are also a good place to start from. The operational costs of setting up webinars are very low as compared to running a live event.

You can start by hosting events and coaching workshops but first, you should get started by doing webinars and make some money.  When you feel confident, you can start doing some live workshops as testers and then decide from that point onwards.

This way you’ll be able to de-risk your coaching business and start your coaching practice with lesser upfront cost.

Imagine how cool it would be to have access to a global audience, through webinars.

Sound amazing, right?

8. Should I do social media marketing?

NO. Focus on things that get you revenue. The only thing you should do on social media is running ads and drive lots of targeted traffic. Do that through paid and organic means to your website or coaching place.

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9. What are the habits of a world class coach?

All world class coaches are top performers in their coaching practice. But I have noticed the biggest thing that all world-class coaches have in common is that they have the right habits and focus which enables them to choose the right coaching space

10. I made a grave mistake. Should I tell my client?

Yes. Tell them everything that happened. They are the people whom you should inform first if anything goes wrong. Be open and honest about it.

11. I feel I am undercharging as compared to my competition in the market. How do I increase it?

Don’t worry about it. Charge less and get comfortable with the idea of charging low prices, and in the meantime, learn how to deliver solid value. When the time is right, you can take the support of a mentor and build a high-end mastermind or high-end consulting course for which your customers would love to pay.
The tricky part here is to balance the value equation, so if you take help from someone who has already done it, then it will be easy for you to raise prices.

I have raised my prices by almost 10x in the past 5 years, but I didn’t do this alone. I learn this from other people who have been charging a similar amount from the customers in the market.

So you got to learn about your own business model from someone who has been there, seen it and done that.

45 Things You Need To Know On How To Start A Coaching Business Start a coaching business
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12. How do I promote my coaching practice?

Firstly, ensure you do your research on it by finding a mentor, reading books and experimenting more with your business, and surely you will break through your current price point with sheer persistence.

If you have been coaching for quite some time now but you haven’t been able to grow beyond [x] dollars an hour rate, promoting your business is a good idea.

There are a ton of ways to promote your coaching business, you could start with writing blogs posts on LinkedIn, Medium, Quora, guest posts, and your own blog post to promote your coaching practice.

13. When should I hire full-time employees for my coaching business?

When you feel you can afford to pay them salaries every month.

14. Should I register my company or should I work as a freelancer?

When you are starting out with building your coaching business, you should keep your costs as low as possible. So my advice would be to work as a freelancer because for the first 3-5 months you won’t know what you are doing and you will be testing a lot of things.

But as revenue gets predictable and things become stable you can register your company.

Remember, once you register a company the processes and due diligence start and you need to comply with them. So be very careful about these things.

15. Should I patent or trademark my coaching style?

NO, It’s not required unless your trademark or coaching style is used by a lot of people. There is no need to get it patented or trademarked. Focus on things that get money in the bank. These things don’t.

16. Should I get a business partner for my coaching or not?

Well, it depends. If you feel that you have grown it beyond a point where you need technical expertise or someone who can take care of operational know-how of your business then I think you must do it.

Also, make sure that you have the finances to back those decisions because you don’t want your business partner to be dissatisfied in terms of payout once they join you for full time.

Ensure that you and your partner have the same mindset and vision for the company’s growth. Connecting over how to run the company and business styles is very important in choosing your business partner.

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17. Should I build an information product? Or should I do one on one or group coaching first?

This is a great question. If I were to start out today, I would do one-on-one coaching and group coaching to gather more experience and insight about my coaching clients, and their needs and wants.

Once I am in attunement with my target market and have a fair share of experience, I can slowly build a high-end product to appeal to them. The idea will not be to do a lot of sales but to sell less unit and eventually get higher revenue.

Both have their advantages and disadvantages. I have seen people starting off with coaching and then productizing their services later on since you have more experience by that time and it helps you create a better product for your clients.

18. What should you do if no one seems to be interested in buying my coaching practice?

Ideally, those are symptoms of a bigger problem. You really need to sit down with someone who is an expert or a mentor and ask them for help in breaking down your business structure and leaving your problems behind.

You need to reconsider if you are asking the right coaching questions from your clients as well. It could be anything from marketing to positioning to pricing to sales.

So it is best to talk to an experienced mentor who can put the problem and solution objectively for you.

19. What if my client asks me to do something that’s not in my coaching package?

You should politely explain to them that the services that they are asking for don’t come in the package which they have subscribed for. But, since they are already a customer, you can make the product/services available to them at a lesser price, thereby gaining their loyalty.

20. I have a lot of ideas. How do I pick the right one?

By taking it ONE at a time and testing each of them robustly and dispassionately with your target audience.

21. How do I find my niche? Should I do market research for it?

Figuring out your coaching niche is one of the most critically important things you can do for yourself. If you get this right, then you will be able to make crazy revenue from your coaching services, but if you get this wrong, you won’t be able to get any money in your bank and you will continue to struggle because you will be attacking a target market which will not be receptive to your message.

This is a deep topic and it needs in-depth explanation and thankfully I have written this blog over here which will explain to you how to find your niche and get feedback around it.

Yes. Researching and understanding your niche is the essence of every world class coach. All top coaches do a lot of market research before launching any product so that they know (for certain) what they are creating, there is a need for it in the market.

And their efforts will not go in vain.

22. When should I fire a client?

When they are costing you more time, peace and money than what you will make by serving them.

23. When should I increase my prices?

When you feel you are comfortable and understand your target market well enough to charge high-end prices to your coaching clients. I honestly feel that a lot of people don’t understand what goes into the making of increasing prices when it comes to self-development coaching.

Increasing your prices is a factor of increasing your value and output in the coaching industry. So if you increase the value of your coaching package, you can increase your prices.

For example, in a one-on-one coaching, you might be able to charge $500 an hour but if you go for a results-based coaching plan where you guarantee a certain amount of actionable outcome for your client and ask him to pay a higher amount they would happily pay for it.

Similarly, you can charge more of high-end intensives and masterminds.

Also the more popular the coach the more you can command prices, so if you are someone who is starting out you won’t be able to charge high-end amounts that experts in your field charge their clients, but you can get higher amount in a step by step manner, and we teach the same on our webinar.

24. Should I get a mentor or not?

Yes. you must. As a coach getting a mentor is the fastest way to progress to your

Desired goal. It wouldn’t have been possible for me to build my coaching business had I not had a mentor which would help me build my business.

25. What’s the best way to sell my coaching plans?

Personally, I have found that webinars are the best way to sell coaching business/packages.

26. Should I do per hour? Or per package or results-oriented basis?

Per hour coaching is great to start with but if you want to hit the numbers and become a 6 figure coach then you will eventually have to shift to high-end results based coaching programs.

27. What’s the most effective form of marketing for a coach?

As a coach, you can do 2-3 things and they work really well in the coaching industry.

You can run ads, write blogs, Do PR, get a lot of media mentions, guest post on other people’s blog, do a lot of podcasts and that should help you in increasing your value in terms of you being a coach.

28. Should I give stuff away for free? Should I provide a discount for my coaching service?

Yes, you must give away all your best content for free so that people come and get attracted and buy your services because they know if your free content is this good, your paid content will be 10x good.

Make sure your freebies and discounts turn into a Black Friday sale. This will, in turn, affect your brand and your revenue

For other businesses, it might work really well. But for coaching businesses, you should never run any sale, that really demeans the value of your product.

Like think about it, luxury brands never have any discount or sales.

Similarly, you want to play the game of value not on pricing, which means you shouldn’t be lowering your price to appeal a certain section of your audience.

I honestly feel that unless you are running huge volumes, you shouldn’t be discounting your services. When you are in the early stages of coaching you need to be getting high ticket clients to take care of your operational costs.

But yes, do make sure you have allotted a portion of your budget for free giveaways such as interesting mailers, books or a free one-month membership to your program. Things that won’t cost your company a lot of resources.

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29. Should I go to industry meetups and events?

You should avoid going to meetups until you hit a decent amount of revenue for your coaching practice.

30. When should I say NO to a coaching client?

When they aren’t matching your coaching requirements. But even for that, you need to define your ideal coaching client and what all things will you bear from them.

31. When should I say YES to a coaching client?

When there is a great mutual fit between you and your coaching client.

32. Should I even start a coaching business?

That’s a great question. If you really want to explore more about your gifts and share it with everyone in this world then you must start a coaching business.

33. My client is getting into my personal space. Should I ask them to respect boundaries?

Yes, you may ask your coaching client to provide you with some space and give them a heads up for it. A lot of times what happens is since we are a coach, and we care for others, we often go to extra lengths to help them.

But this very behaviour of ours can sometimes setup wrong expectations with our clients. And they can intrude our personal space and cause us problems for it.

As a coach, you need to be assertive about it.

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34. What do I do when I have doubts?

Reach out to your mentors and your support business groups and ask them for help with your issues.

35. My Wife/Husband doesn’t support me in my coaching practice. What should I do?

I know, I see so many cases on an everyday basis where the person truly believes in their ability to become a coach and start an online coaching business.

A great way which I would recommend is to have your partner to believe in you and ask them to give you 6 months to make it work and make a deal around it. If you can’t make this work in 6 months then you reconsider it and list other options.

36. Should I sell my coaching to people all across the globe?

Of course, that’s the best way to go about it. If you are selling it to a local geography then you will be limiting yourself to a certain area only when you sell to a global audience, you have access to a larger pool of customers.

This way you can have a wider share of revenue from people all across the globe who are interested in your coaching services.

37. Should I get a website or app? What should I do first?

Stick with the website and make it work first. Don’t buy into the seductive charm of getting an app. That can wait. Focus on revenue first.

38. I have no traffic. How do I get traffic?

Learn all about getting traffic over here.

39. How to name your Coaching packages?

Naming your coaching packages is an important part of becoming a world-class coach. And that is such an intensive task that I have this post which I would like to share with you.

If you go through it, it will be clear for you how you can name your coaching package.

40. How do I convert Facebook page likes into customers?

Don’t worry too much about converting your Facebook likes to customers, if they really want to buy from you they will approach you. But technically if you want to make that happen, then you need to show Facebook ads that target towards your Facebook likes and that’s how you will be able to convert them as your customers.

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41. How do I build a high converting website?

A high converting website for coaches means that you have to have a landing page that displays a call to action and offer that compels people to sign up for your service.

If you are looking to understand on how to create a high converting website then you must have a look at our website, because we have spent years in trying to test and perfect it so that it converts really well within our target audience.

42. What should be my starting pricing?

Well, that really depends what market are you in and which demography are you selling to and what exact services you are selling for.

Ideally, for people who graduate our course, we suggest getting them to start at least $300 on average on a per hour basis. But we strongly discourage to move by the hourly format, and that’s why I would recommend hourly high-end results based coaching which is much more rewarding than the hourly coaching style of practice.

43. How long does it take for a coach to go from low ticket sales to high-end coaching?

If you have a mentor then going to that route wouldn’t take you much time. But if you are doing it all alone then it will take you a good amount of time. It all depends on Coaching Skills to build your business.

That’s why at elite coaches mastermind we start the high-end coaching packages where people can earn USD 10,000 per month right away after graduating from our course.

44. Should I hire a PR agent?

No, you shouldn’t hire a PR agent. There are a lot of online resources which will teach you how to get PR for free, you can read them and implement them, and get started for free.

Once you have some decent revenue coming in from your coaching services, then you can get someone to do PR for you. But until then you should HUSTLE hard on your own.

45. What if my competition offers the same coaching services for lower pricing?

Don’t worry about the price part, if you get your coaching niche right, you won’t have to worry about competition. Also, you should start focusing on results-based coaching which really removes the competition out of the picture.

But on the other hand, if you have competition in your niche, that means that there are customers who want to pay for something like this, that means there is legit demand for the services that you are planning to offer.

In fact, that’s a great validation for you to start your own coaching practice in the same area.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is business coaching?

Business coaching is one of the best ways to achieve success. It is a mentorship wherein a mentor gives advice to the mentee. Some mentees may have a mentor in the form of a business coach who is a professional and someone who is successful in the same field as the mentee. It is like guidance that an individual gets in his business. The mentor will help the mentee in solving problems, growth, and development and work through different situations in business.

How do I start a coaching business?

There are more than 200 million people in the world who feel they have a story to tell and have the skills to help others. These people are the ones that can open a coaching business. If you find yourself, among them, then you can start a coaching business. It might be hard to get customers at first, but you will soon learn who your target audience is. I would recommend starting out by building a website and learning how to market your business. It’s hard work but the rewards will come. Just ask yourself honestly if you want to be the type of person that helps people. If you do, then this career path is for you.

How to launch a coaching business?

There are several things that you need to consider before starting a coaching business. You need a passion for mentoring people and must have some knowledge in your area of expertise. Then you need to check the demand for the services you are offering. After that, you need to check the supply for this kind of service in your region. If the demand is more than the supply, then you can go ahead with the business plan.

How do I promote my coaching practice?

There are many ways to promote your coaching practice. One of the best ways is to offer your clients and potential clients testimonials. Use these testimonials on your website and in your ads. Make sure that your clients and potential clients know that they can trust you and that you can help them. You may also try to give your clients an incentive to let others know about their experience with you. You may offer a discount or other special offers to clients who refer others.

How to get coaching clients though social media?

If you are good at what you are delivering, people will notice and then know you as a good resource. The best way to establish connection is to share your helpful content on social media, your blog or your newsletter. Provide helpful information to your readers and people will come to you looking for more. Social media is good in connecting you to the people who need your services. Though it may be difficult to find a coach, it surely is easier than starting from scratch. You can check out social media platforms where most of your potential clients will hang out. Facebook is a good place to start.

How to start an online coaching business?

You can start a coaching business online by building your own website and promoting your services on social media. You have to have sound knowledge of your subject, and good writing and communication skills. Some of the coaching areas that you can specialize in are : 1. Accountancy/finance 2. Business 3. I.T. 4. Travel & Tourism 5. Education 6. Health & Fitness 7. Professional development 8. Sales and marketing 9. Childcare 10. Language

How do I advertise my coaching?

A great way to advertise coaching is to set up a landing page. If you find that your traffic is getting a bit stale, look for ways to remind people about your product. These include posting to Facebook or Twitter, or sending out a newsletter or email.  Whatever way you choose, try to include a link that will take people to your landing page.  You’ll be surprised at how many extra visitors you get just by reminding folks that you’re still around!

 

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