by
Daniel Groves, guest writer
I’ll walk you through 10 essential things that I believe every coach needs to consider when you’re trying to figure out how to start your online coaching business.
Every business starts with an idea. Perhaps it’s a service no one else offers or a product no one else has thought of. Whatever it is, you will need more than mere enthusiasm to get your online coaching business off the ground.
In this article, I’ll walk you through 10 essential things that I believe every coach needs to consider when you’re trying to figure out how to start your online coaching business.
1. Keep Your Concept Simple
This may be an obvious point, but it’s important to keep your online coaching business concept simple. It doesn’t take much for a simple idea to start turning into something overly complicated. Complicated is hard to market and even harder to implement. So, keep it simple.
“When I hear about a product idea and think, ‘I can’t believe that doesn’t already exist. Why didn’t I think of that?’ I know the inventor is on to something good. Simple ideas are like that. They smack you over the head with their ingeniousness.”
Consider your Unique Selling Point (USP). What makes you different from the competition? What are you offering that no one else is? Simplifying your service can help your online business stand out for all the right reasons.
2. Start Making Money as Soon as Possible
As you are starting an online coaching business, we do not doubt this is your goal as well. However, for a brand new online coaching business, it is extra important to start making money as soon as possible. Income is the driving force behind your business.
To start making money quickly, it is essential you offer a payment system that is as simple and convenient as possible. The easier it is for people to pay you – the sooner you will be paid!
There are a number of ways to effectively collect payments for coaching, and quality online small business card payment solutions that let you get paid anytime, anywhere so that you have the funds you need to push your online coaching business forwards.
3. Conduct Market Research
Market research is essential for running a successful online business. Often business coaches make the mistake of targeting as many customers as possible. So, it’s important to understand; Who is your target audience? What do they want? How will your service or product help them?
Market research needs to happen early in the business plan process. Before you start marketing your online coaching programs, you need to know who to target so that you can get the best results.
The results of your market research will shape your coaching business significantly, informing decisions such as product design, service offerings, prices, unique selling points, and marketing methods.
To be as thorough as possible, your market research will need to answer the following questions:
Demand: do your customers want your product or service?
Economic indicators: do they have the money required to make a purchase?
Pricing: how much are they willing to pay?
Location: Where do they live and where are they likely to make their purchase?
Saturation: how many of your competitors are already offering something similar?
These questions will help you put your best foot forward and really set your online business up for long-term success.
4. Always Overestimate Costs
We cannot tell you how many times start-ups have crumbled under the pressure of mounting costs. That’s why it’s so important to give yourself plenty of leeway.
Chances are, you are going to overspend more often than you will underspend (at least in the beginning). So, it’s important to prepare for the worst and organize your business finances around that.
This will give you plenty of room to work without breaking the bank. It also means you are prepared for any unforeseen costs or emergencies.
“When it comes to creating something totally new, assume it takes at twice as long and costs at twice as much as your initial plan.”
5. Establish a Reliable Support Team
Starting an online coaching business is an extremely time-consuming process. Sure, it’s extremely exciting but it can also be very isolating. No matter how hard you try, you cannot run a business on your own. Whether you hire staff or not, it is important to establish a team that can support you from the very start and encourage you along the way.
These people don’t need to be business partners or employees. They can be peers, other freelancers, virtual assistants, part-time admin support or even finding a mentor to help you through the early stages of setting up your business online. Whoever you turn to, it’s just important to have people you can lean on and celebrate with.
6. Understand the Commitment
Plenty of people quit their 9-5 job to start their own business because they want to make their own hours and have control over their schedule. And while this can certainly happen, it won’t always be the case straight away.
In fact, you might find that (at least to begin with) you are working even harder than you were before.
You must understand the commitment it takes to launch an online coaching business before you start, otherwise, you might be in for a surprise! However, it is important to remember that doing the groundwork, in the beginning, will help set you up for future success, flexible schedules, and so much more.
7. Timing is Everything
We know how it feels to come up with a fantastic business idea – you want to shout about it from the rooftops. But timing is everything.
Picking the best moment to officially launch your company can mean the difference between failing at the first hurdle or succeeding in the long term.
When to launch your business will depend on the ebbs and flows of your industry, the success of your competitors, the availability of funds, your personal circumstances, your business plan, and pretty much all the points we’ve listed above.
It’s important to be aware of your competitors’ activity when deciding a launch date. Be mindful of whether competitors have recently launched a new product/service that will potentially rival your new venture.
Launching your business early doors as a disruptor to your sector will often benefit from attracting initial interest from your target market. However, don’t feel time-pressured to launch too prematurely, there are many benefits of waiting, observing what your competitors are offering and then using the feedback from customers to help inform and improve your product (pre-launch).
Timing, when considering your competitors’ activity, can be the difference between a successful, thriving business or a startup flop for your coaching business.
8. Be Flexible to New Ideas
Flexibility is key to running a successful coaching business. All the planning in the world cannot prepare you for every eventuality and despite your best efforts, you may find that your business model needs to be modified or even rebuilt to work effectively. If this is the case, be flexible and open to new ideas.
Developing a concept into an actual business often involves a lot of trial and error. However, being flexible and open to new ideas will help your online coaching business be the best it can be.
9. Creating A Coaching Program
Creating a framework for your online coaching programs will improve efficiencies and deliver better results for you and (most importantly) your clients.
Having a unique framework for your online programs, you’ll spend less time on repetitive inefficient tasks and more time spent strategizing and being present in your coaching sessions.
Before even sitting down and thinking about designing and creating a coaching program ask yourself the following questions:
What is the focus of your coaching program?
What challenge is your target client looking to solve? Where are they struggling?
What will your client be able to achieve through your program?
Just getting started designing a new online coaching program, or digitizing an existing in-person program is often the hardest part.
To help you get started faster, check out Nudge Coach co-founder Phil Beene’s simple playbook for how to create a new coaching program from scratch.
The benefits of having a considered coaching program will help define your coaching scope or niche area of expertise and deliver a better service to your customers.
10. Delivering A Coaching Program
There are many formats, mediums, platforms available to deliver an online business coaching program. We recommend incorporating a mix of content types to keep clients engaged with your offering and brand.
Engaging online coaching programs can take many different forms, but they are always a balance of 3 things:
Digestible educational content
Simple progress tracking for accountability
And personal coaching touchpoints
Nudge Coach gives you the option to deliver your programs at scale while engaging with your clients remotely. There’s also the option to work with them to build White Label apps, custom-branded coaching apps that will help scale your online business.
Create a free Nudge Coach account here if you just want to try it out.
Final Words
You can read thousands (literally thousands) of stories from entrepreneurs who have started successful businesses. And the most common piece of advice we have found is to keep challenging yourself, keep learning and never give up.
All the hard work you are putting in now will pay off in the long-run. In the meantime, we hope the advice we have provided in this article will help you get off to a great start! Don’t forget; work hard, be flexible, and keep it simple.
