How To Become An Online Coach: 5 Steps To Take Now → The Coach School

Coaching businesses are booming, especially after the pandemic. Some people needed a career transition. Other people decided to finally take the leap and start their own businesses. At the same time, more people are willing to invest in a coach to guide and help them improve their business or personal lives.

If you’ve been thinking about starting an online coaching business, there has never been a better time to get in on this booming industry.

The Coach’s Responsibility

When people seek help from a coach, they are looking for transformation. A coach’s responsibility is to guide clients to close the gap between where they are now and where they want to be. As a coach, it’s important to equip yourself with coaching and business skills.

Benefits of Being an Online Coach

Ever since the pandemic, many coaches have started online businesses. There are many benefits of being an online coach, including:

1. No limitations of geography or time zone. You can serve clients all over the world.

2. Saved time and cost of commuting, office rental, etc.

3. Starting the business on your own. You don’t have to hire a team of staff in the beginning.

Now is the best time to start your online coaching business. Join the free masterclass – 3 Secrets to Become a Successful Coach and discover the ultimate coaching business roadmap to learn how to launch a profitable coaching business and avoid the mistakes many budding entrepreneurs make.

Here are 5 Steps to Take Now

1. Get Clarity By Identifying Your Perfect Person and Your Niche

If you try to attract everyone to your business, you will attract no one. It’s important to identify your perfect person and niche by answering the questions below:

Perfect Person Profile

What problem are you solving, and who are you solving it for?
What is his/her age?
What is his/her career?
What is important to him/her?
What is the biggest problem he/she is facing?
How can your coaching help deliver results to him/her?

Keep your perfect person in mind, and stand in their shoes when you share your knowledge and expertise via online platforms or marketing materials.

Niching Down

How do you decide on the niche topic that you will be coaching/teaching? For example, if you are a career coach, that would be your major niche. Then narrow down the sub-niche: Would you like to focus on graduating college students who need help preparing for job interviews and identifying their career paths or would you like to focus on people who just got laid off and need guidance and encouragement on finding new jobs? That would be your sub-niche.

What if you have other niches that you like to offer? Don’t worry. You could add different niches and services when your business is already established.

2. Set Up Your Business

When building anything great, you need to start with a strong foundation. Create a strong foundation for your business by setting up the following online business essentials:

Name your business. When it comes to coaching business it’s recommended to name your business after yourself. When your niche or offer changes in the future, the name still grows with you.
Decide on your tagline. Your tagline should clearly describe your niche and the value you bring to your client.
Determine how your business will be structured legally. Laws vary in different places, so it’s best to hire an accountant or attorney to set everything up for you. It’s a small investment that can save you headaches and money in the long run.
Set up your finances. Open a bank account for your business and research software you will use to balance your books.
Set up your website and business email.

Once you’ve got the business essentials above squared away it’s time to work on the really fun stuff, pricing and packaging your coaching services!

3. Decide How to Conduct Your Sessions

Your business is getting more legit by the minute! Your next step is to decide how you would like to conduct your coaching sessions or courses. Choose a method that makes you feel comfortable and works for you. Here’s what to consider when decided how to conduct your sessions:

How do you want to meet your client? Would you like to meet via Zoom, Google Meet, Phone Call, etc.?
How much time would you like to spend on one coaching session? For example, Do you offer 30-minute or hour sessions? How often will you coach your clients? Weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly?

Now that you know how you will conduct your coaching sessions, it’s time to create your offer.

4. Price And Package Your Coaching Services

Deciding how much to charge for your services is a crucial step. Start this process by considering what you’ll include in your coaching packages. Below are a few things to focus on when creating your coaching package(s).

Focus on delivering the results that your clients want.
Add value to your package by going above and beyond one-on-one sessions
Create tiered offers. Your baseline package will include one-on-one coaching sessions. A premium offer will include one-one-one sessions as well as exclusive products, access to resources and groups or additional connection with you. Your highest offer will contain everything included in your first two offers and more (be generous here)!

You’ve got an idea of what you’ll include in your coaching packages. Now it’s time to determine what you’ll charge.

What to Charge for your Services

Here’s how you set your pricing when starting out as an online coach:

Do your research by finding three different coaches in your niche and see how they price their products. Take the following notes:

What package(s) do they offer?
How much are they charging for each package?
How do they present/market their packages?
How many years of experience do they have coaching?

After you’ve done your research, ask yourself the following questions:

What is an hour of my time worth?
What is the true value of my expertise?
Where do I fit in the marketplace?
Consider the elements of your package – what are you including? What is the value of each element?

You know what your competitors are charging, you’ve reflected on your worth as a coach, take a moment to consider what you will charge for your coaches packages.

Want to learn more about how to set prices for your coaching package? Take The Coach School’s “What’s the Perfect Rate to Charge For Your Coaching Business?” quiz here.

5. Get Clients

To keep your business running, you’ll need paying clients. Discovery calls are the best way to sign new clients. A discovery call is a free (usually 30 minute) call that you offer to potential clients.

Offer Free Discovery Calls

When you are just starting out as an online coaching, you will spend a lot of time on free discovery calls. Free discovery calls are a great way to get experience and gain confidence presenting your offer to potential clients.

Your free discovery call has two main goals. The first goal is to allow you and your client to find out if both of you are the right fit for each other. It also allows your potential client to experience what things look like if they want to commit to coaching sessions with you. The second goal is to close the sale.

Impress potential clients by doing the following in your discovery call:

Diagnose your potential client’s problems and gain clarity on his/her goal.
Help them solve an immediate problem they have during the call if possible.
Explain how your coaching can help them achieve their goals.
Clearly communicate what’s at stake if they don’t take action.
Make your offer. You need to close sales to get clients. Don’t shy away from making your offer.

Step 6. Build Your Personal Brand

As a coach, how you present yourself to your ideal clients is crucial, including who you are, what you stand for, and who you serve. Branding is communicating who you are repetitively and consistently to your ideal clients. Personal branding allows you to build trust with the audience, help position yourself as an expert, and attract new clients. Below are the steps that help you to develop and fine-tune your own personal brand:

Find Your USP (Unique Service Position)

Your unique service position (USP) should help give your ideal clients an apparent reason for why they should work with you and what’s at stake if they don’t hire you. Your USP should define how you are different from other coaches or competitors. When determining your USP, focus on addressing your perfect client’s pain points and they ways you can address them. Here are the questions you may ask yourself when defining your USP:

Give your ideal clients a clear reason – Why should they work with you? And what’s at stake if they don’t hire you?
Write down five quirky or unique things about yourself.
Write down three unique life experiences you’ve had.
Focus and consistency when sharing your expertise in your niche.

Connecting Through Story

Using story is a powerful way to promote your personal brand. Stories are a powerful way to build rapport and establish trust and likeability. A good story may captures a potential client’s interest and encourages them to take action on your offer. A powerful story contains the following:

The Hook: A great hooks grab people’s attention. It could be a headline, a great photo, or a social media post. It should relate to your audience in a personal and emotional way. For example: How a single mom who was in a huge debt cleared off her debt and built a million-dollar business.

The Story: The story should be broken down into three parts:

What was life like before?
What was the turning point?
What was the result?

The Close: Show your clients what is possible for them as a result of working with you. And be sure to include a call to action in your close. Give your reader a next step!

Start brainstorming a list of stories you can use to build your personal brand.

Step 7. Market Your Coaching Business

Wondering where you’ll share your great stories? One way is through your marketing. Marketing means finding your ideal clients and telling them how you can solve their problems. You should spend 80% of your time doing marketing while 20% of your time managing your existing clients. When marketing your services, remember: You are not for everyone, and that’s okay. Focus on your perfect person.

Here are a few ways to market your coaching business:

Referrals and testimonials – If your customers are happy with your service and the result they get, they will be more than happy to share your services with other people. Provide satisfied clients with a template when asking for referrals and testimonials.
Social media exposure – Create valuable content for your social media followers by sharing your niche knowledge and expertise on Social Media.
Email list – Start and grow an email list by offering a valuable downloadable in exchange for an email address. Email marketing is a powerful way to build your know, like, and trust factor with potential clients.

Last But Not Least, Get Started

If anything is worth doing, it will be worth doing badly at first. You don’t have to do everything perfectly at the start. There will be trials and errors. Learn from mistakes and move on.

Here is the good news, you don’t have to do it alone. As they say, iron sharpens iron.
Join The Coach School founder, Alli Worthington, for a free masterclass – 3 Secrets to Become a Successful Coach and discover the ultimate coaching business roadmap.