Perhaps you have a specific skill set or expertise that you can teach to others. While it might take some time to discover your shareable mastery, almost everyone has something they’re passionate about that they can teach. Once you understand what that is for you, you have the potential to launch an incredibly successful coaching business.
In brief, a coaching business is a two-way flow type of business where you use your competence and know-how to help your prospective clients transform their lives for the better in a particular field. Many of us are familiar with the terms “life coaching” and “business coaching,” but they are by no means the only available forms of coaching businesses out there. As a matter of fact, you can develop your own coaching business model around almost anything!
However, just like starting any other business, developing and sustaining a successful coaching business can be a concept loaded with enthusiasm and big ambitions but can prove to be a demanding endeavor in practical terms. It should go without saying that it’s absolutely doable. Still, it takes knowledge, planning, persistence, tenacity, patience, and a real sense of purpose to help you crush the difficulties that you’ll face along the way.
In this blog post, we’ve summarized some of the most important aspects and practices that you should know before setting up your own successful coaching business in 2021. Without further ado, here’s how to get your coaching services off the ground and working in no time.
What Is A Coaching Business?
As Aristotle once said—well begun is half done. For that reason, we’ll start this post from the very top by explaining what coaching actually means.
Coaching is a cooperative, solution-focused, result-oriented, systematic process in which the coach expedites the enhancement of work performance, operating efficiency, life experience, self-directed learning, and the coachee’s personal growth.
In a business context, coaching means professionally improving people’s performance in various aspects of life by turning things people do into learning situations in a planned way, under expert guidance.
Why Start A Coaching Business?
Each individual has their reasons for wanting to start a prosperous coaching business. Some people want to quit their 9 to 5 and test the entrepreneurial waters, while others start one as a side gig.
Nevertheless, the top three reasons why people choose to turn their coaching business ideas into actionable business plans and pursue the career of a professional coach include:
- Flexibility. Sure, having your coaching business can be challenging at times, but it offers unmatched flexibility that no traditional job can compete with. If you opt to become a professional coach, you will be in complete control over your working hours, clients, and the days you’ll work.
- Money. Let’s say it out loud: all privately-owned businesses are in it for the profits. Coaching businesses come with endless upside potential. Of course, it will take time to get the company going, but if you put in the work to make it grow—the sky’s the limit. In fact, many coaches earn six and even seven figures a year, so why can’t you do the same?
- You want to make a positive impact on the lives of others. Last but definitely not least, many people thrive when helping others overcome specific issues. If you’re a person who wants to make a positive impact in someone else’s life, the coaching business might be right for you. Helping others solve their problems through sharing your expertise and knowledge can be extremely rewarding.
Types Of Coaching Businesses
As we mentioned earlier in this article, there are numerous types of coaching businesses and niches. To make it easier for you to acknowledge the best fit for you, here are some of the most frequent types of coaching businesses nowadays.
Business Coaching
This type of coaching helps entrepreneurs establish and build up their businesses, services, platforms, offerings, and more. Business coaches work closely with owners and top executives to help them make informed decisions, scale up their operations, track down clients, and adjust their product offerings, among other things.
Life Coaching
Life coaching is probably the most famous coaching business because it can encompass various sub-topics. Life coaches work closely with clients to support their personal growth journeys, including changing habits, reducing stress, and making positive changes.
Financial Coaching
Financial or money coaches help their clients better manage their money. These coaches teach skills like creating a budget, saving, planning for retirement, and making intelligent financial decisions.
Career Coaching
Career mentors assist their clients switch careers, find new jobs, deal with workplace problems, how to ask for raises, and more. Some career coaches focus on particular industries and jobs, while others work with clients throughout a wide range of industries.
Ways You Can Coach
In addition to deciding the type of coaching business you’d like to offer prospective clients, you’ll also have to determine how you’ll mentor your clients. The coaching industry is constantly evolving, and new ways to reach people are cropping up all of the time.
Nowadays, the best coaching businesses in the world work exclusively online. Gone are the days of meeting your clients in person and marketing yourself locally. Instead, all of your mentorship and marketing is done mostly through online coaching tools and can impact the lives of thousands of people instead of only one at a time. But we’ll get to that part later in this article. For now, here are the two most popular ways you can coach your clients:
- Private one-on-one sessions. One-on-one sessions are the most commonly used way of coaching that offer clients the mentor’s undivided attention. You can meet your clients over video business coaching software or via a telephone and focus on their particular needs and issues. This is the most time-intensive type of coaching, as you can only work so many one-on-one clients at a time.
- Group sessions. If you’re willing to reach more than one person at a time, you can consider the second way you can coach your clients—group coaching. With group meetings, coaches educate clients with similar concerns or problems at the same time. This coaching method allows coaches to guide more people and will enable clients to interact with others going through similar scenarios.
Things You Need To Kickstart Your Coaching Adventure
In order to start your online coaching business, there are some practical things you need to get sorted beforehand. Once you have these in place, you’re ready to test your coaching business model and pursue your first client!
Coaching Tools
First things first, the main piece of the puzzle when building your coaching business is having a professional website and a blog where you’ll share a tiny bit of your expertise for free. Apart from a website, you’ll also need a couple of technical, online coaching tools.
For instance, you’ll surely need a scheduling tool so that you can keep track of your appointments. Furthermore, you’ll need to subscribe to a video meeting software, a note-taking app where you’ll capture and arrange your ideas for each meeting, a video recording and sharing software, payment provider, email service, etc.
Fortunately, online coaching platforms like Upcoach can help you streamline your whole working process from booking of clients and managing records to CRM, organizing, systemizing, and scaling the impact of your coaching program to deliver remarkable results and keep your clients longer.
Upcoach can help you scale your coaching by simplifying and delivering structure to your client experience, keeping your client content with the accountability of habit tracking and to-do lists, and bring a “wow” experience to your group coaching methods.
Coaching Materials
Before you start working with your first client, it’s best to have a plan for precisely what you’ll be coaching them on. The majority of clients expect digitally shareable guides and hand-outs to accompany coaching sessions, so before you start working with a client, make sure that you prepare your coaching materials.
Well-Thought Marketing Plan
Have you considered how you will find your prospective clients? Well, it all boils down to preparing and executing a well-thought marketing plan. And since your coaching business will take place in the online world, make sure to come up with a sound digital marketing strategy so that you get your name and business in front of potential clients.
Coaching Packages And Programs
Your offer is basically how you work with your clients, and there’s a world of choice online. Packages or programs, online coaching businesses can be delivered in numerous different ways. The most crucial element to consider here is how you can create coaching packages and programs that can make a tangible difference in your clients’ lives.
For that reason, when you’re developing your first coaching package, think about designing a package that’s enjoyable and gets your clients’ real-world results. See, coaching is a crowded industry, and many coaches offer unique coaching packages and programs out there. Feel free to inspire yourself from the best coaches in the business and create incredibly transformational packages that will encourage clients to sign up.
Ways To Grow Your Coaching Business Further
The coaching journey is one that never ends, meaning you’ll constantly grow, evolve, and change. At the same time, as you build your experience and skill set—your coaching business will grow with you as well.
Instead of worrying about how to scale fast and overnight, concentrate on building a value coaching business rather than a vanity one. Remember, slow and organic growth is the need of the hour. Below, you’ll find a couple of actionable ways that might help you scale up your coaching business in a flash.
Group Coaching Is The Future
Even though one-on-one coaching can prove to be profoundly fulfilling work, many coaches get stuck in the everlasting money-for-hours loop where they work for countless hours each day just to pay the rent.
If you are interested in growing your coaching empire and working nonstop doesn’t sound like your idea of having a good time, you’ll want to leverage your knowledge and create a group coaching program to offer your program to multiple clients at the same time.
Group coaching sessions are the secret behind a highly effective growth plan. You can scale your online coaching business both quickly and efficiently, so invest in a group coaching dedicated platform and start building your business from the ground up.
Create Referral Relationships
One of the simplest ways to get more clients and expand your business operations is through referrals from others who already have the audience you would like to coach.
Your referral relationship, or program, could be commissions-based or not. However, the most crucial thing in referral programs is that you have a firm offer on the table and hopefully a solution that the referring partners’ audience seeks.
Through a referral program, you would be doing a favor to your referring partner, helping out their audience, and getting new potential clients for you to grow your business further.
In Conclusion
The bottom line is, every new business starts one step at a time. And even if it might sound like starting a brand new coaching business in 2021 requires many steps, with the skills you already have, you’re no doubt in the proper position to create a coaching business today. In a little while, you’ll be on your way to ditching your regular 9 to 5 job, making some money for the future, all while helping your clients achieve their dreams and goals.
