Building a coaching program can give you the freedom of running your own business and creating a signature coaching system.
How do I start my own coaching company?
To start your own coaching company, determine the following:
- What kind of coach do you want to be?
- What kind of clients do you want to work with?
- What problems and challenges do you want to help your clients with?
In other words, decide on your coaching niche.
Decide if you’ll need to keep your day job until your coaching company can sustain you if you want to create and run your business while maintaining another income source long term. Many coaches run their coaching business two days a week, for example, and while keeping another job.
Invest your time and effort into learning how to sell. Master how to get potential coaching clients to say ‘yes’ to you and how to enroll. That’s the one skill that most coaches lack that prevents them from really building a coaching company.
What makes a good coaching program?
A good coaching program must have three components:
Content: some type of structured content process system that client work through
Coaching: offer one-on-one coaching, group coaching, or a blend of both.
Community: this is particularly for group coaching programs and is the opportunity for clients to interact with one another
Coaching Genie is an excellent avenue for providing all 3 of these coaching program characteristics.
Additionally, a good coaching program is a doable coaching program. People can achieve results by working through it. Many times, I see coaching programs that are so overwhelming because they try to fit in too much content with so many different milestones that clients can’t get results.
To avoid this, I recommend delivering less content and focus on fewer steps or teaching points. Target really helping clients implement to the point where they get results.
Do I have to include online coaching when creating a coaching program?
Most coaching is done online. In-person coaching is still available, but it often has an online coaching component for follow-up.
How do you create a signature coaching program step by step?
A signature coaching program means the program has your name or brand and you become known for it. The steps to creating your signature coaching product are straightforward.
Decide which outcome you want to focus on that’s important to your ideal clients. What problem do you want to help them solve?
Next, identify the steps required to achieve this outcome. These steps might be beliefs, some type of keys or building blocks, teaching points you want cover, or skill sets that people need to gain.
Following this, create an instructional video or audio to teach each step. Design and add a coaching exercise, such as a worksheet or other type of activity. This provides an opportunity for clients to apply and implement the step described in your lesson.
Add a coaching assessment to the program so progress can easily be measured. I suggest having assessments before, at the midpoint and at the conclusion of your program.
What are the best ways for a life coach to use Facebook groups to recruit ideal clients when building a coaching business?
Facebook groups are popular for attracting ideal clients. I recommend 3 ways of using them.
Online Challenges
Online challenges have become very popular in the last few years. They can be anywhere between five daily. Then you upsell them into a coaching program or a coaching relationship with you.
Online challenges work because they give you the space and opportunity to build rapport and emotional connection with your clients. They get to know, like, and trust you. I prefer running five-day challenges because I don’t have to dedicate an entire month of my life running a free challenge. At the end of the challenge, I can also issue an invitation to my coaching program.
Live Streams
Consider recruiting ideal clients through live streams which allow you to connect with people and share your information. Live streams are really easy to do in a Facebook group. You don’t need to heavily prepare. You might have an index card with a few points you want to make. People do not expect perfection. You can mess up or accidentally drop something and your audience is okay with it because they understand it’s live.
Lead Magnet
Offering a lead magnet is a tried-and-true method for attracting ideal clients. This moves people from your Facebook group into your mailing list and helps you grow your coaching business.
When building a health coaching business online, when should I consider offering free coaching to recruit potential clients?
With so many health coaches occupying the online space, you must strive to build trust and connection with clients.
Clients want to be heard and understood before they’ll hire a health coach. Design your free coaching session to allow potential clients to feel heard and understood. Take time to build trust by really listening to their struggles and motivations.
Include a health assessment to help you understand client needs and problems. Be sure to read their responses.
Free coaching should be offered for no more than 4 sessions in order to feel the connection and impact.
What are some tips for how to best use social media when building a coaching program?
I prefer using social media in 2 ways when building a coaching program.
The first strategy is to poll or survey people in the groups where your target audience are members to find out some information about what people want to know. The goal is to find out what your target audience is asking about your topic.
Be sure polls/surveys are allowed in the group. Then ask things like “What’s your biggest challenge around X?” with X being your topic. Browse social media spaces like Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, or threads to see what people are discussing or want to know more about.
Another way is to do a pilot program. Invite people from your social media following to take part. Do personal outreach where it’s allowed. Post a message inviting people to request information. Spend time building relationships with people on social media. This way, you connect with them and let them know about your pilot program.
What should I keep in mind when developing the program steps of my coaching system?
Always start with the end outcome in mind. It’s impossible to develop a coaching program without knowing what promise you’re making to people. We’re filled with information, knowledge, expertise, and we need to narrow it down. What helps us do that is knowing exactly what we want our clients to achieve by the time the program is over.
[bctt tweet=”Any coaching system needs to provide a proven, tested process of steps”]
Make sure the outcome for your coaching system is something your ideal clients want to achieve or a problem they’re looking to solve. That is part of market research you need to do beforehand.
Consider that each step of the process represents a very specific milestone. Your program should feature steps small enough that people can implement them and understand what the clear win for every single step.
Include an assessment in your coaching system so you can measure and show client progress through the use of your coaching system. In the assessment, ask questions that allow people to illustrate both a starting and endpoint to show contrast.
Will it take a long time to build my coaching program?
I strongly believe in selling and then building your coaching system or coaching program. You can develop the outline so that you can actually sell it, and then you can start getting clients.
Once your program begins, you can develop each modular step as you go every single week. You want to get paid before you create the complete program so you can make there is demand. Once you have the outline and you know what you’re going to be developing, sell it and get clients.
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Milana Leshinsky is the author of “Coaching Millions” and “Simplicity Entrepreneurship” and the originator of telesummit. She is also the creator of Coaching Genie, a coaching platform that allows you to deliver coaching programs and scale your business with simplicity. She’s passionate about helping coaches, authors, and speakers leverage their expertise through creating programs and overcoming fear of technology. Milana came to the US as a music teacher from Ukraine almost 30 years ago. When she’s not working on her business, Milana writes music and enjoys Latin ballroom dancing. To learn more, visit Milana’s website at https://CoachingGenie.com