How to Build a Sustainable Coaching Business (And Double Your Rates in the Process)

Step 1: Have a well-defined target audience for your services

“You can be best in the world at whatever you want as long as you define world the right way.” – Seth Godin

To be the best in the world, you have to choose your definition of world, which starts with creating a crystal clear picture of your target audience.

Successfully defining your audience should provide answers to four key questions:

1. Do you care deeply about your audience?
2. Is your audience able to pay your rate?
3. Can you produce 5-10x your coaching rate in value?
4. Do you still care deeply about helping?

DO YOU CARE DEEPLY ABOUT YOUR AUDIENCE?

I believe picking an audience you care about is the most important step you can take in building a successful business. Start by thinking back to your “best” clients (this is subjective), or brainstorm a list of the people in your life you would love to work with. Why were these people your best clients or why do you want to work with them? What do these people have in common? Or, in other words, why do you care?

For example, my best clients in the past have been young professionals who are business owners or co-founders, executives, or salespeople. I can relate to their challenges, their work ethic motivates me, and the right ones are willing to pay me what I’m worth. This group also allows me to see a variety of business challenges and opportunities, which satisfies my desire to work on multiple projects.

Pick an audience that you care about.

IS YOUR AUDIENCE ABLE TO PAY YOUR RATE?

How much money does this audience make per year? Would the financial advisor of your ideal clients say they have the ability to pay you double your current rate (regardless of value provided)?

I initially coached college students and young professional employees. This was a bad decision because neither of these groups has the ability to pay my current rate for coaching services.

This realization led me to redefine my audience and focus on Under 30 CEOs, executives, and salespeople in Atlanta — they have the ability to pay my rates, I care about them, and I can reach them face to face (which is how I prefer to sell + coach).

Work with an audience that is able to pay your rates. If your audience doesn’t have this ability, start over, or reconsider individual coaching as a service.

CAN YOU PRODUCE 5-10X YOUR COACHING RATE IN VALUE?

The key to producing 5-10x returns from your coaching services is to understand your audience’s goals and challenges. People are willing to pay to reach goals and overcome challenges, but only if you get them right.

Most people make assumptions about their audience rather than do the hard work of actually sitting down with members of their audience, asking great questions, and listening for their true needs.

Take the time to have individual conversations with 10 – 25 of your target audience members. Ask great questions questions to pull out the thoughts they rarely share out loud. If you need a more specific framework for your questions, think in terms of the seven areas of life (ranked by ease of proving return on investment):

1. Financial (think investment advice)
2. Career (think job change or executive coaching)
3. Travel & Adventure (think travel hacking)
4. Physical (think Paleo or Crossfit)
5. Learning (think reading or skill acquisition)
6. Relationships (think family, friends and romance)
7. Spiritual (think meditation or religion)

You should see patterns of similar goals or challenges emerge as you conduct interviews. You can consider diving deep in your area of expertise, but remember that your expertise may not match a real need.

People pay to reach their goals and solve challenges in their lives. Help them reach a goal or solve a challenge that produces 5-10x your coaching rate in value.

DO YOU STILL CARE DEEPLY ABOUT HELPING?

Now, here’s the part where you have to be brutally honest with yourself. Given the audience you care about, their ability to pay, and the challenges or goals they have expressed to you, can you create a sustainable business? If so, do you still care enough to put in the work?

I’m not talking about, “Yeah, I could do that,” but, “F*%^ yeah, let’s do this.”

It will be hard to help your audience solve their challenges or reach their goals. You’ll spend countless hours researching, pounding your head on the table, reading books, pacing your office, and suffering entrepreneurial insomnia as you think through ways to help.

Select an audience goal or challenge you care about enough to become an expert and they care enough about to pay you for. If you don’t care, or they don’t care, start over.

Step 2: Create a Unique Selling Proposition to Appeal to Your Target Audience

“Achieve more.” “Reach your potential.” “Make your dreams reality.”

These are phrases that appeal to no one by trying to appeal to everyone. And yet, the majority of coaches brand themselves this way.

You know your audience better than anyone else because you’ve done your homework and you’ve identified patterns, and your unique selling proposition, or USP, should reflect that.

You can think of your USP as filling in these blanks: “I help “audience” in “location/industry/area of focus” do/become/solve/overcome/achieve “challenge or aspiration.”

But, but, but, I’m on the INTERNET! The Four Hour Work Week said I could be a lifestyle designer and location independent!

Great. Maybe you’re right. But remember, you can be best in the world at whatever you want as long as you create a feasible definition of world to start with. If you can’t be best in the world of [insert hometown here], how can you be best in the entire world? I’m not saying you shouldn’t leverage the internet, but I am saying you should focus on a geographic area or area of expertise that allows you to build a sustainable business.

In my business, I have had to do the same thing. My USP for my coaching services is, “I help under-35 entrepreneurs, executives, and salespeople in Atlanta create systems to exceed your goals while holding you accountable to the projects that will most directly help you profitably achieve your vision.” The last four words can change based on sub-segments of my audience.

Create a USP that specifically identifies your audience and the goals or challenges you are solving for. +1 if you can do it in their own words. If you can’t, then it’s time to do more interviews.

Step 3: Build Social Proof for Your Services

Social proof convinces to skeptical audience members that you can do what you say you can do in your USP. Your job is to build enough social proof that it makes it easier for your audience to say yes to your services.

I use a list of experiences and a growing book of client testimonials to back my USP up. The experiences include working for Seth Godin, advising Coke’s Chief People Officer, and being a top performer at a well-known global consulting firm. I have past/existing clients write a “letter to a potential client” to build my book of proof.

I understand that you may not have the same background, but you can build social proof for your services even if you’ve never had a single client. Here’s how…

Pick 10 people you know and care about in your target audience. You may be able to look back at your interviews from your target audience research for good candidates. Offer each person a free 30 – 90 minute coaching session in exchange for being able to film/record the sessions and post them publicly. (This is exactly what Derek Halpern did with website conversion reviews when he was getting started at Social Triggers).

Side note: This post is not about how to become a great coach, but I hope it goes without saying that you have to actually be able to deliver value in order for this method to work for you. (If you have no coaching experience or training, start here, here, here, and here.)

Once you’ve recorded the 10 coaching sessions, hire a video editor to create a highlight reel of the most powerful moments from the sessions. Put your highlight reel on a landing page where you make the full video recordings available to your audience in exchange for an email.

Use the recordings to design an email funnel that slowly but surely builds trust, confidence, and expertise with your audience. At the end of your email series, offer a free 30 minute session for anyone that is interested in hiring you as a coach. This will allow your audience to transition from seeing others being coached to experiencing it for themselves.

The end of your 30 minute session is your chance to convert a prospective client into a paying client. Conversion methods are for another post, but the most important thing to do is to directly ask for the person’s business in a non-threatening way.

Something like, “Now that you’ve experienced my coaching, are you interested in becoming a coaching client? I have a 3-month starter package that would be perfect for you if you believe I can help you reach your goals.”

Some people will want to wait or think on the decision. That’s fine. Ask them how often they would be comfortable with you following up to see if there is anything you can do to help. Assure them you’ll never pressure for a sale. Make a calendar reminder to follow up accordingly.

Other people will want to hire you right then. You should have options available in case they want to sign up for more than 3 months. I suggest you create 3 month, 6 month, and 12 month contracts that will allow for flexibility. I don’t recommend starting with less than 3 months, because it is hard to achieve any kind of results in that amount of time in my experience.

Tell these people exactly how the process works and exactly what they need to do to get started. Your process should include: 1) An intake form that gathers information about them, their goals, and why they hired you. (Here’s an in-depth option we encourage Fizzlers to use.) 2) An initial session that revolves around building the relationship, establishing ground rules, and setting goals for your work together. 3) Any assessments you want to use. And 4) your process for when and how you get paid.

And then the part on doubling your rates.

At some point during your process, people will ask you about your rates. Your impulse reaction will be to tell them your old rates or, if you’re just getting started, a rate that doesn’t feel scary.

Your job is to resist the urge to sell yourself short and tell them your rate is double what it used to be, or twice what you think it should be if you’re just starting out. For a benchmark, look up the average coaching rate in your city or location.

In Atlanta, the average executive coaching rate at the time of this writing is about $300/hr. When I first started coaching, I felt that $75/hr was more than I was worth even though people would have easily paid $150/hr.

I eventually realized I was providing way more value than I was getting paid and that less than $300/hr is not sustainable for building a full-time coaching business. With every other new client I brought on, I simply doubled my rates when I was asked, all the way up to the average Atlanta coaching rate. Because I had a growing client base, it gave me more confidence in the value I was providing and put less pressure on me to bring in new clients, allowing me to increase my rates 444% in just one year.

The Key is Confidence + Results

It turns out that the single most important factor in raising your coaching rates is your own confidence in the value you provide. If you have done the work, the real work, as I have described it throughout this post, then you will be better than 80% of “coaches” in the world. You are committed to becoming an expert on helping your target audience achieve their goals and overcome their challenges. Your number one job after landing new clients at your new rate is to follow through on that commitment.

As your client base grows, so will your confidence in your coaching abilities. As your coaching abilities and client base grow, your schedule will begin to fill up. As your schedule fills up, you should continue to raise your rates for new clients. The more successful you are with a targeted group of clients, the more you will be able to expand to new groups of clients as your referrals and reputation allow.

What are you waiting on? Get going. Your coaching business is waiting.

how to start coaching business online

Getting a new client is always good. You’ve done well to promote yourself. You’ve made a connection with someone. They’ve decided they’d like to find out more about how you can help them.

So far, so good.

Now, in my experience, this is where things can get a bit messy.

You have certain questions you need answered before you can help a potential client so you can get clearer about where he or she is at the moment.

You send an email with your questions. You wait for that email to come back – given your schedules don’t always create the time to answer questions.

If you don’t go the email route, you engage in a back and forth exchange to see what time will work best to answer these initial questions. When you do finally agree on a date for the conversation, you’re unprepared for the call because you still don’t know what the potential client needs your help with specifically.

Once the questions are answered, you then need to prepare a solution, agree on the terms of that offer, agree on payment and agree on a time that suits you best to deliver the service.

Phew!

That’s a lot of process that could end with you both losing momentum. It’s enough to get anyone in a state, especially if admin is not your favourite part of being in business.

Doing this for each and every client is a nightmare. Even if you have an assistant doing this, there’s a lot more headache for them doing it this way than there needs to be.

The secret is to cut through the stress and know that there is an easier way to get this done, more so if your business is online. Be prepared to get organised and set your online business in a way that serves you, your assistant and your client.

Here’s how you can do it.

Step 1: Prepare what you want to ask

To get initial questions answered, have a predesigned form on your site that clients can complete. Simply direct potential clients to that page every time you take on someone new.

They complete the form and give you everything you need. If you want to make sure that the form is completed in a given time, give a clear deadline. This sets up clear boundaries about how you do business and is more respectful of everyone’s time.

Step 2: Determine a time to talk and deliver

Instead of being available whenever, set times in your day when you are available to have initial calls. This is usually a complimentary session of some kind. The point is to make time in your schedule when you can commit to having these conversations. Also, set dates aside for when you can deliver your work should he or she become a client.

Add these dates to an online calendar in advance. That way, when the time comes for you the have the call, you can send the client to your calendar to book a convenient time to talk.

Step 3: Choose best delivery format  

Think about how you want to deliver the session. Check out the range of online conferencing, video and audio tools. You can use the tool you choose for both the consultation and delivery of your coaching.

Make sure that the tool you use is suitable. Can you have as clear a conversation with little to no technical problems that interrupt the flow? Also, see if it comes with any recording facility that you can use for a later step. Test at least three options before you decide which to use. Some are free and some are paid.

Step 4: Prepare for the conversation

At this point you can get a feel for how you might help that client based on what they’ve shared. You also know what further questions you might have.

You will use this information to compare what you offer and see how that fits in with the clients expected results. This part will be useful if you already have a signature process you use to get your clients from their problem to a solution. This is particularly handy for the next step.

Step 5: Know what to offer

Your signature process will have already been used for clients – even if you haven’t called it that yet. No problem. Here is where you get clear about what problems you understand your client is having and how you go about solving them. Create a page on your site that explains this, also known as a sales page.

Copywriting and sales page creation is a skill and craft that can be confusing and overwhelming. If this is not your area of expertise, keep it simple by creating a mini sales page that outlines at least your understanding of the problem, your solution, your terms, your fee and what happens next.

Step 6: Get verbal and written agreement

On the day of the call, take your time and listen to the potential client. Take notes of where the key issues lie. These issues will help you mould your offer at the end of the conversation. There is a science to this conversation as well. Don’t rush into your solution until you’ve heard exactly what the problems are.

When the time comes to offer your help, go through the mini sales page together. This is why the page only needs core information on it. You then can clarify the specific problems you’ll help each client with. Get an online service with your terms and conditions that creates the option for both of you to sign. This keeps everything accountable and clean.

Step 7: Accept payment for service

Going through your mini sales page allows you to fill in the blanks and create your solution to the problems your potential client has just shared. By now they will be clearer and if they are happy with hiring you, now is a time to talk about fees and payment for your service. Money is often the tricky part, but it doesn’t have to be. Adding your fee to your page beforehand helps.

Because you’ll have set up your payment method on the sales page, you can go ahead and get your client to select the option they want and take payment at the agreed time. Again you have the choice, take the full payment or at least a non-refundable deposit to honour their commitment. Make sure the final balance is paid before you deliver the service.

Step 8: Schedule time to deliver the work

Because you already have a calendar with dates you are available to deliver your service, you can use it to help you and the client book the best time for the coaching session. You’ve saved yourself time, energy and potential stress because you thought ahead and created your time in advance. Go you!

In the meantime, keep in touch with the client periodically and make sure all is okay in preparation for when the work starts. They will appreciate you more for caring enough to follow up beyond the sale.

Step 9: Offer additional support or follow up to service

When the day comes, enjoy every single moment of it. It’s the best part of doing what we do and you can finally relish in why you got into this profession in the first place. Be careful not to overwhelm your client with everything you know, just what they need. You’ll want to make sure your client feels fully supported before, during and after they’ve worked with you.

Remember when I told you to make sure your delivery tool could record? Well now is the time to use it. To round up the time and positive experience, send your client the recording of the time you’ve spent together. They can go back to it at any time and won’t stress about forgetting key pieces. If they want to continue working with you even better!

And that’s it.

Follow these steps to help you set up and run your online business as smoothly as possible. It will make life so much easier for you, anyone helping you behind the scenes and just as importantly, the clients you are in the business to serve.