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Online Business Coaching Guide

Coaching A Powerful Addition to Your Business Model

Whatever your current business model chances are you have an expertise that can be transferred to a coaching business model. Coaching involves helping your clients solve their problems, plan the steps for the future, and motivate them using techniques you’ve learned or developed to help them reach their goals.

You can accomplish this process via many different business models and technologies. From in-person one-on-one coaching to public speaking and product sales you can add this powerful addition to your business almost seamlessly.

If you are interested in adding coaching to your business model it’s important to understand why being a coach is a good idea for you, the different types coaching business models you can add, how to determine your coaching services, tools, and technologies available to coaches and more. Let’s get started.

Why Be a Coach?

Being a coach is a very rewarding profession. You get to help people realize their goals using your expertise within the niche. Essentially, you’ll guide them through some steps that you have created for them and help them make the right choices for themselves using various techniques you’ve learned as you developed your own business or those you’ve learned via a coaching certification process.

Help People with Your Expertise

Once you’ve experienced some measure of success in your niche doing whatever it is that you do, you’ll have also developed something called “expertise.” This expertise is the skill that you can market to help others succeed too. Keep in mind this doesn’t mean you have to be at the top of your field. You only need to know slightly more than your audience to be a coach.

Add Value to The Lives of Your Customers

You already serve your customers at the top of your ability. However, you know that you always want to add more value to what you do for them. You want everything you do for them to elicit a “wow” and “why didn’t I think of it that way?” which is going to be very valuable to them as they reach for success.

Build Powerful Relationships

As you build the coaching part of your business, you’ll start to become better at life yourself. Part of the reason is that as you see your clients experience success you will realize even more how powerful people really are, including yourself. You’re going to build even closer and more powerful relationships with your clients due to this openness than you ever thought possible.

Work Flexible Hours

As a coach, depending on the model you choose, you can work very flexible hours. You decide when you work, how you work, and how long you work. You don’t have to do everything the way other people do it. If you don’t want to offer calls at 8 am you don’t have to. You can work at night and on weekends and only one or two days a week if that’s what you prefer.

Earn More Money

Adding coaching to your business model is going to boost your income exponentially. You can easily add an additional six figures to whatever it is that you do now if you add coaching to your offerings. The sky is really the limit when it comes to how much you can earn from coaching regardless of the model you choose or how long you can devote to it.

When you decide to add coaching to your business model you may want to determine the type of coaching that is best for your audience and niche. To do that, let’s look at a few potential types of coaching business models from which you can choose.

Different Types of Coaching Business Models

There are many types of coaching that you can choose from. It doesn’t matter if you’re a business coach or a life coach you can use any of these business models to build the coaching branch of your business.

Individual Coaching

The first model that comes to mind when people think of coaching is individual or one-on-one coaching. This type of coaching happens when the coach using whatever method they want to use — meeting in an office, meeting on the phone, meeting online, or even via one-on-one emails – if it’s one-on-one and private is how individual coaching works.

The model usually looks something like this:

  • Lead Magnet
  • Discovery Session
  • One-to-One Signature Coaching Program

You can also use one-to-one coaching as an add-on to another PLR product. For example, if you sell an information product: “How to Set Up Your Marketing Funnel” and that’s your expertise you can add coaching as an option to help guide them to set up their marketing funnel properly.

Group Coaching

Another important model and one might argue, one of the most lucrative is group coaching. This can take place in many ways. You can set up group coaching calls, webinars, and courses to guide your coaching clients through whatever process you’re working on together.

The model usually looks something like this:

  • Lead Magnet
  • Webinar
  • Group Coaching Program

The group coaching program will typically be designed to attack one problem for the entire group that signs up. So, for example, you may want to help motivate writers to get more writing done during a 12-week coaching program or train them on how to effeciently use a plr article and rewrite it to be unique and helpful while saving time and money.

Your “No Writer’s Block” 12-week program helps everyone become more accountable for getting writing done. Depending on how you set it up, you can technically have an unlimited number of participants in a group coaching program run completely online. Like one-on-one coaching can be an add-on to another product so can group coaching.

Workshop Coaching

Some people like a more hands-on approach which needs smaller groups. Workshop coaching is just another type of group coaching except that it’s more hands-on with smaller usually 10 or fewer participants.

The model usually looks something like this:

  • Lead Magnet
  • Public Speaking
  • Webinars
  • Workshops

Often a coach will arrange to have a series of workshops to help their clients accomplish something special. For example, a branding coach may run a day-long workshop to help clients develop your branding. When they leave the workshop, they’ll have branding documents and ideas developed and ready for a graphic designer to take over and complete.

This type of coaching will also work well as an add-on. For example, let’s say you sell an information product about branding. You can do an up-sell to the workshops that you’re having all over the country, or even at a special location, to help people with their branding.

Membership Coaching

Technology has come a long way in recent years. While you can run a membership program only in email using autoresponder software, today, you have so many more options. Software like Amember.com, Jigsawbox.com, and Kartra.com all make it easy to have a membership-based coaching program.

The model usually looks something like this:

  • Lead Magnet
  • Case Studies
  • Testimonials
  • Webinars
  • Membership Coaching

A membership coaching program is a continuity program that offers recurring income but also offers your customers an opportunity to get results without paying as much as a traditional one-to-one coaching model or some of the models that require more work from you. However, membership coaching programs aren’t less effective just more accessible.

Digital Products

For this model, you don’t even need to do anything one on one or in person. Some might argue that this is not coaching. However, it is a way to break into coaching before moving to work with people on a more personal level. Also, this is a great start that enables you to offer one-to-one or other coaching opportunities as an upsell.  However, you can simply offer all-inclusive packages that are self-guided. This is really a form of group coaching.

These can take the form of an Course, Plr Ebook and information products. Really anything you can deliver digitally to teach them how to do something and motivate them how to do something from “How to Brand Yourself” to “How to Change Your Mindset” if it’s something your audience needs to know and learn you can coach this way too.

The model usually looks something like this:

  • Blog
  • Lead Magnet
  • Problem Solving Product
  • Repeat

If you want a truly flexible coaching business, this model is the most hands off. You don’t offer anything one-on-one or need to show up live to do this model. You just create the programs and let your audience self-administer them after they download them. You can make coaching through digital products more personal by setting up autoresponder messages to help guide them or drip membership blogs and plr weight loss articles to make it feel more personalized.

Every one of these coaching business models can be in person, in groups, at a distance or however you want to deliver them. It’s totally up to you how you deliver your coaching. You can do phone coaching, webinar coaching, or something else. It only needs to work for your clients and you to be a good choice. The important factor is choosing the right model that works for your audience and yourself.

Determining Your Coaching Services

Once you decide to add coaching to your offers, you’ll need to determine the coaching services that you’ll offer. Before you do that, you’ll need to make some decisions and choices about other aspects of your business.

Know Who You’ll Serve & The Problems You’ll Help Them Solve

Everything you do goes back to your audience. Since you already have a business, you should know about them. Know their problems. Know what keeps them up at night. Know their pain points and how it relates to your expertise so that you can help them solve their problems. These problems, your expertise, and your audience will determine how to proceed in the best manner for them.

Determine Your Business & Monetary Goals

Before you choose your model, you need to know what your goals are regarding your business and how much you want your coaching business to add to your bottom-line.

For example, if you don’t really have a lot of hours left in your day you probably don’t have time to do one-on-one coaching calls, therefore you’ll want to start a group coaching program so that you can help more people in the same length of time, but you’ll make more money.

Know How Much Time You Want to Devote to Coaching

The other factor that is important to you when choosing which coaching model to pick is how much time you have. The time factor was mentioned while choosing your business and monetary goals, but it plays a big factor in what you can do. If you only have a couple of hours a week to add something new to your business, you’ll want to pick carefully. Even when you do not charge on an hourly basis time is still a factor.

Create Packages

Creating packages is a lot easier than trying to come up with an hourly rate. Plus, it avoids sticker shock. A person sees the program package they want to sign up for and pays for that and then they don’t have to concern themselves with counting time or thinking about time. It’s easier for everyone. It saves time, energy, and money. When you make packages, you create more options and value. Plus, when you name the package, it gives the client something to focus on.

Test Your Market

The awesome thing about doing business today is that the technology enables you to change your mind. When you test out something, and it doesn’t work the way you hoped you can tweak it and try again. No decision is permanent and can always be changed or even just tossed out. You may spend a little time and money, but you can always go back and make it work better, whatever it is.

Repeat

As you create ideas and test them out with your audience, you’ll want to keep that process going. The way you’ll make the most money is by making the most offers that matter to your customers.

You can start with something hands off such as an eCourse or an information product that coaches them through a process in a self-paced way to test out the concept with your audience first if you want to. However, one of the very best things you can do is ask your market what they want. If you take the time to listen to them and what they want and need, you’ll be more successful.

Coaching Tools and Technologies

Running your business requires that you use various tools and technologies. Adding a coaching business may require something new depending on your current business model; however, for most people who do business online already you likely already have what you need to add coaching. Some of the items are nice to have, but you don’t need them to get started. Let’s look at the coaching tools and technologies you may want to add to or check out for your business needs.

Human Resources

You may need to hire a new virtual assistant or expert to deal with new technologies, new content creation, and the new tasks you need to do for your coaching business addition to your business.

You can find people to help you with almost anything to do with your business by asking your colleagues to recommend someone, or you can run a job listing on your site. You can also go to sites like Fiverr.com, Upwork.com, or even a company like 123employee.com to find help in your business.

Understand that if you really want to build a six-figure business, you can’t do everything yourself. However, you may only need a few hours a week of help. The best thing is to find the type of help you need and use it regularly so that you can focus on the things that need your personal touch.

Blog & Website Management

You likely already have a website or blog. Today blogs and websites are almost interchangeable, but you should have a blog on your website to have an easy way to distribute information to your audience. Plus, you need a way to manage all that.

Right now, the best system to use is probably self-hosted WordPress (WordPress.org) along with various apps and software that is an easy plugin or integrates with the platform. You can also hire a VA who can load and edit blog posts and other content that your content writer creates or find plr downloads where you can get free articles and post them to your blog. Don’t lose sight of the ways in which you may need someone to help with your site to ensure that it works the way you want it to.

Client Management System

Depending on the type of coaching you want to do you may need some form of system to manage your coaching clients. There are some that are designed for coaches like CoachesConsole.com and Jigsawbox.com. However, if you’re running a bigger business where you hire associate coaches, you may need a more fully featured client management system such as Zendesk.com, or Freshwork.com, or Satori.com.

Shopping Carts & Payment Processors

You also need a way for your clients to pay you. One thing to think about is not just payment but a system for payment that also helps with marketing. For example, a system like Amember.com lets you use many payment options and creates a shopping cart that acts as a member center so that your clients have their own dashboard with all the products that they’ve purchased listed, plus the option to add affiliates with a click of a button.

Email & Landing Page Software

Marketing is something that every business has to do, including coaches. You already have a business so you must already have landing pages. You can create landing pages on any type of site without specialized software, but the more you can automate the better. Landing page software like leadpages.net and even some offered through email marketing software like Convertkit.com work faster because of the proven template designs already offered. Remember, there is no need to reinvent the wheel.

Project Management Tools

When you start hiring people to help you, even if you don’t provide services that require project management, it’s going to make your business run more smoothly to use it to help you keep track of the things you need to accomplish and who is going to accomplish them. It also makes it easier for the contractors you hire to work with someone who is organized. Some tools you may want to try are, Trello.com, Basecamp.com, and Asana.com.

Financial & Bookkeeping Tools

Keeping track of your finances is key to being successful in business. When you know what is coming in and from where, and what is going out, and why it’s going out — you can tweak and perfect everything — so that you run your business lean and mean not only on the time you spend on it but the money you spend because you’ll become much more efficient the more organized everything is. A good bookkeeping tool you may want to look at is Go Daddy Bookkeeping or Quickbooks.com.

Conference Technology

A very popular way of delivering coaching services today whether they’re one-on-one or group focused is via conferencing technology like Zoom.com. You can use this to run a webinar or to do a one-on-one interview. Zoom offers a whiteboard and other features including the ability to record which can help your clients to relive and get more from breakthroughs.

The technology you choose will be informed by the coaching business model that you choose as well as your current business model. Plus, how much you can add to your budget to get your new coaching business off the ground will also help determine which technology and which tools you choose to use.

Integrating Coaching into Your Business Model

Now that you’ve explored the types of coaching that you may want to add to your business model, it’s time to figure out how to integrate coaching into it. You’ll need to gain clarity about your audience, your brand, the type of content marketing you’ll do, what you’ll delegate to others and the type of automation you will do.

Get Clarity

Take some time to do dive into your audience more. You want to understand all their pain points (within your area of expertise) so that you can choose the right types of coaching programs that will help them. You also need to use this research time to learn how to best market your new programs to your audience and how you’ll build it to start with.

Create a Premium Brand

To make the most money from plr business coaching, you want to develop a premium brand. Exactly what premium means to you depends. It can mean that you have a high quality, but it might also mean that you are expensive. Those don’t have to go together. When someone thinks of your business what do you want them to think? They should at the very least know what you are doing, what you’re doing it, and how they can get in on it.

Invest in Content Marketing

You have to get traffic to your website and your offers. The best way to do that is to create, publish, and market content that is of interests to your audience. You’ll need to create and publish content for your audience throughout their entire buying journey for everyone no matter where they are in your funnels. You’ll have a variety of content that informs, educates, and motivates your audience to act. You can hire a writer, use PLR content, and also curate content for your audience.

Outsource & Delegate

You probably want to do your research about outsourcing so that you can find the right people to help you. Having a content writer, someone to edit, someone to upload and format health PLR content for your blog, and do other things for you will make a big difference. As the founder and owner of your business, you don’t have time to do everything. When you do outsource and delegate, you’re going to be more successful.

Automate What You Can

Like outsourcing, automation can also save you a lot of time and money. You’ll need an autoresponder, a good funnel set up, a help desk, and other automation to help you serve your customers in the best way. You may want to try out different solutions to find what works best for you. Some popular choices are activecampaign.com, leadpages.net, Freshdesk.com, and hootsuite.com.

Make it An Add-On

The fastest way to offer your new coaching option is to make it an add-on to another product. This is a good way to test the waters for your new coaching offers. For example, if you already have an information product about branding yourself, you can create an add-on offer for the group. You can offer the discussion component of group coaching right on Facebook in a private group. It can be part of a resell rights digital products bundle sale.

Integrating coaching into your business model can boost your bottom line, build bigger relationships with your audience, and make you even more attractive to your customers. When you offer your audience what they really want, it makes it easier to make the offer and accept the new income stream.

Start Small or Go Big? Your Coaching Launch.

Adding coaching offers to your current business model is a great way to make more money and build your business to a whole new level. Whether you start small or go big, really depends on your current situation. You’ll need to study your audience, try a few test-offers, and figure out what direction you truly want to go. In the meantime, you can do the following to launch the coaching portion of your business.

Figure Out the Type of Coaching You Want to Offer

When you look at the different types of coaching that you can offer can you identify any current products or services that you offer that you can add a coaching component? That might be the easiest place to start. However, there are times that you may be a service provider who is trying to add coaching. You may need to do it differently. For example, if you’re a prolific self-published author you may want to offer coaching to other authors in which case, you’re really starting a whole new business with a whole new audience, so it’ll be different for you.

Determine Whether You Need Additional Training

Once you determine the type of coaching, you’d like to offer you may also decide that you need additional training. One word of caution about that is to ensure that you really need training and you’re not just acting in fear. Many people have “imposter syndrome,” and that gets in their way. If you are already an expert, you probably don’t need training unless you want training on ways to deliver the coaching or technology training.

Create the Coaching Offer

Once you know what you want to do, write the offer. A great way to proceed is to create your sales page first. As you write the sales page, you can work out what you want to put into your coaching offer and program. After you have the sales page, then you can create all the components that you want in it simultaneously as you market the program.

Put Together All the Tools & Resources to Make it Run Smoothly

After you have written your sales page you can then make a schedule for creating each component of the coaching offer, you’re going to make. It helps to start at the end and work your way backward to today in your calendar so that you only have to go to your calendar and look at what needs to be done each day.

Add the Information to Your Website

You want to have time to market your offers. Adding the information to your site sooner rather than later is best. Then you can start marketing it by sharing the landing page or sales page and making presales before the launch. You’ll also want to start blogging about the problem you’re going to solve to prepare the audience in advance of the launch.

Create Your Marketing Plan

Based on your offer, and your niche, start creating a content marketing plan to get the word out about your new coaching offer. Write down the content you want to create for your audience at every stage of their buying journey based on your goals. Develop, or find someone else to develop all the content you need. You can also search for private label rights (PLR) content to use for some portions of the reseller PLR of your content marketing needs.

Make Offers

The real key to adding an option to your products and services is to actually make the offers. You have to put the offer out there to get people to take it. Most of the time people aren’t going to come to your site and order without being prompted anything unless you have a popular retail store. Because of this, you will need to actively make offers that have been planned and crafted just for your audience where they are in their buying journey.

Do What You Say You Will Do

Once you publish your sales page, you need to do what you say you will do. What’s more, do what your audience thought you meant to say and do. Your audience’s intent has a lot to do with how successful you are at doing what you say you will do. When you say words to your audience and make a promise what does it mean to them?

Evaluate & Repeat

Everything you do can be improved and made better. Use analytics to determine what is working and what is not working. Don’t make assumptions. When you know what works do more of it and do less of what is not working.

Adding coaching to your current business model is an effective way to offer more value to your audience. The coaching component of your business can become your main business, or it can become a highly sought-after specialty service you only offer a few times a year. It’s totally up to you how you proceed.

Coaching is a very lucrative business to get into on its own. The coaching market is worth over 1.8 billion dollars a year according to MarketResearch.com. The typical yearly amount coaches earn on average is about 62K a year. New communication methods and the interest in personal development is the driving force behind this growth which is going to continue for the near future.

While there may seem to be a lot of coaches, they tend to be more saturated in the “life” coaching area over the business coaching area. However, if you want to teach, guide, and motivate individuals in a specialty niche, you won’t need to worry about that. Your offers will stand out the more when you focus very carefully on your audience and your niche. Giving them what they really want, and need based on your expertise is important.

What coaching offers do you plan to make?