5 Key Action Steps To Take When Launching Your Coaching Business
When I launched my coaching business in 2014 I had zero experience as a coach. What I did bring to the table was 11 years of online business building experience, 15 years of working in corporate America and 4 years of being a full time work from home business owner. While all of that experience was definitely helpful in launching a coaching business I still had much to learn.
Like most areas in my life, I jumped in with both feet hair on fire flying by the seat of pants knowing that I would stumble my way through it and eventually figure it out.
If you are working to launch your own coaching business whether that be as a yoga instructor, health or business coach I hope to share some points with you that can help you stumble a little less in your own journey.
Grab a journal or notebook and let's dive into the 5 key action steps to take when launching your own coaching business:
Action Step #1 - Define Your Personal Brand
The online marketplace is saturated with millions of people every day launching their own Be Your Own Boss game plans. In order for you to stand out among the masses you need a strong personal fiercely authentic brand. Its important that you clearly define who you are and what you stand for. Birds of a feather flock together. In order to attract like minded people you must convey your core values and a personal mission statement.
With so many options and so much to research, people can literally spend hours stalking you before ever deciding to have a real life conversation with you. You can't look like every other business owner, you have to be THE coach your target market is looking for.
Having a pretty website and great photos while important won't bring you clients. The quality of the content you share to solve the problems of others and how well you share your story is what will build your influence to attract others to follow you. A community who will see the value of hiring YOU over anyone else.
Need to dive deeper into defining your personal brand? ↴
Action Step #2 - Define THE WHO
As a coach, you will not be equipped to help everyone on the planet. Your story will not speak to everyone. Your experiences will not resonate with everyone. Your talents will not benefit everyone. Your content will not solve everyone's problem. But the good news is, it doesn't have to.
When you drill down to define who you are meant to serve you will not only have clarity and a consistent message but you will have a content marketing message that is unique, creating problem solving content that attracts the right audience.
You have a few critical seconds to grab a person's attention whether that is in person when someone casually asks what you do or they land on your website so its important to be intentional and crystal clear about what fulfills you and why it drives your passion.
You should be able to create a one sentence tag line that describes what you do and how you serve others. Fill in the blanks to help you get started.
"I help _________ to ________ so they can _________"
Here is mine: "I work with small business owners to help them define and convey their brand message and story through social media"
Dive deeper into target market here ↴
10 Minutes To Knowing Your Ideal Client
Acton Step #3 - Launch A Blog/Website
There are many reasons to have a website and blog for your business:
1. You look professional and legitimate and when you look legit people will take you more seriously.
2. Its a central location, a hub, for your business and personal brand. All of your creative content, story, services and products can be found in one place and being indexed by Google.
3. People are sitting at their computers all day long asking Google to solve their problems and every second Google is crawling the internet looking for content to solve those problems. Creating content and pushing it out into cyber space means people who are looking for solutions can find YOU.
4. Build a tribe of followers by funneling them into an email list, Facebook group, Twitter feed, etc.
5. Multiple streams of income on one platform.
Launching a website and blog is not hard or rocket science and NO, you don't need to spend thousands of dollars to hire a designer. If you have a web design budget or if being a techie is your jam that is great you can consider a Wordpress platform. You can search YouTube for free DIY tutorials or if you are looking to work with a website designer I highly recommend Aymee Buckhannon .
If you don't have the monetary resources for that right now and technology makes you want to hyperventilate and vomit (like me) you can use a platform like Squarespace. I did not have a large budget to work with when I got started and I was not going into debt for a website. I have used Squarespace the last 3 years and it has served me very well and I found it is easy to learn. Be sure to check out Elle and Company. Lauren is a great resource for all things Squarespace.
Action Step #4 - Free Opt-In for list building
Building an email list is important for the longevity of your business. When visitors land on your website the worst thing you can do is allow them to bounce off without offering something of value and capturing their information so you can keep building a relationship with them long term.
It takes multiple touch points for a person to decide to work with you. Not capturing the info of your visitors is a critical error and with people being more guarded than ever with their information it will require more than "subscribe to my newsletter" to woo them over.
Spend some time strategizing about this and invest the work needed to put together a useful quality resource in exchange for an email address. Meet these guidelines when creating a resource:
1. Give something of value - don't be stingy. Pack it with useful content.
2. Give something that directly relates to the content you will be offering. Stay on message.
3. Give something that solves an URGENT problem. As in, simple easy steps someone can take NOW so they want to come back for more of your content.
Here are some examples of great killer opt-ins that are definitely subscriber worthy:
via The Mogul Mom
Again, list building doesn't have to be complicated, just taking the time to put together a well thought out strategy and resource to offer your web visitors.
For example: If you are a health coach and your target market is:
• the busy mom
• who homeschools
• and needs healthy lunch and snack ideas for her kids
...put together a resource to solve that problem. A kid friendly meal plan with healthy recipes and shopping list that also includes gluten-free options. Be her She-ro and she will come back for more content including your paid offers.
You can use Canva, Microsoft Word or Apple Pages to create a documents and worksheets.
You aren't trying to give away all of your secrets for free in one resource but spending the time to solve some simple problems will show your audience that you are the clever savvy chick who knows her stuff leading them back for more of where that came from.
Once you have your document created you need an email service to capture your potential leads. When I first got started I used Mailchimp and it was okay for my first year of coaching. It was free but my biggest annoyance is that my emails were going into the Promotions folder of Gmail and not directly to the inbox which was hurting my open rate (you know what they say, you get what you pay for). I switched over to ConvertKit and have been much happier. My emails go directly to the primary folder of inboxes which have drastically increased my open and click through rates.
Whatever email service you choose, they will provide instructions on how to create a form that will generate an opt-in box for your website and how to upload your free resource that your subscribers can access once they have opted in and verified their email address. Need help with this step? YouTube will be your BFF.
Bonus Tips >> Ensure when you creating your free opt-in you include:
1. An author page at the end of the document with your information, social media links, website etc. Keep your information in front of people. If they print out your document and 2 months later they come across it again on their desk they won't remember who created it or how to find you if you don't have an author page at the end.
2. A footer at the bottom with a copyright notice. You can google copyright notice examples. Protect your creative work.
Action Step #5 - Create Your Services And Products
One of the regrets I have when I started my coaching business was following the advice of someone who told me to only focus on creating my "signature product".
If this is a new term for you, a signature product or program is your high dollar offer. While its important to create these programs its also important to have resources that you can direct potential clients who are not yet ready to make a larger investment into.
I literally killed myself my first year of coaching doing discover calls trying to funnel clients into ONE paid service. If I would have had other programs, courses, or eBooks I could have helped more people while generating more income for myself. Huge learn-the-hard-way lesson.
Your signature program will usually be $1,000+ where you bring tons and tons of value, knowledge and expertise like an in depth course or 1 on 1 coaching experience.
Break this signature program down into smaller pieces to write a $27 eBook or put a couple of pieces and strategies together and create a course that is $47-$97. Offer these on your website as digital downloads creating passive income for yourself.
Potential clients are willing to invest a small amount to test drive your services. Those that take action and get results can easily be up -sold into becoming higher paying clients.
Were these tips helpful in where to put your focus on launching your own coaching business? Leave me a comment would love to hear from you xo
April Williams is a Creative Momista and Soulpreneur of 2 boys + whimsical wavemaker + creative expressive + Texas country girl + branding junkie who loves green mint tea + horses + fuzzy socks + surrounding herself with high achieving amazing women + peppermint anything + the color red + cozy coffee shops. She is a branding strategist for creative women entrepreneurs and founder of Creative Brandista™ .
Feeling bogged down with social media marketing as a small business owner? We are here to help ↴
