The coaching industry is growing fast.
With new coaches gaining their certifications and countless others making a switch from professional life to coaching, is proof that you’re building a coaching business at the right time.
That said, not every new business is successful, so you do have to work harder to gain an edge over the competition.
Is there a set formula for building and scaling a successful coaching business? Not really.
However, there are a few basics you can get right to set a sturdy foundation.
If you’ve already established your coaching business and hope to steer it in the right direction, it’s not too late.
Running a coaching business involves expertise in so much more than coaching itself. You must be adept at administrative processes, take on marketing and sales, and be a great leader to associate coaches who will work with you and represent your brand.
As a coach, you’ve probably already identified your niche. As the head of a coaching business, you need to think of how that translates on a larger scale:
A value proposition is a statement that clearly communicates what sets you apart from your competitors. It tells you what your coaching business brings to the table for clients that are unique to you. It is also the main reason why a prospective client will resonate with your business and choose you over others in the same niche.
Of course, having a value proposition has not been a priority for every coaching business so far, but never has the competition in the field been this high. With online coaching expanding horizons and leveling the playing field, so to speak, you must ensure your business stands apart.
Let’s look at some of the key benefits of having a clear value proposition:
Now, and as you grow, your unique value proposition acts as your north star for business decisions — the deciding factor that helps you stay true and consistent over the years.
Once you have a clear value proposition, you have a straightforward statement that all coaches can take back to their drawing board; it also becomes the north star for their coaching.
This ensures clients have a consistent coaching experience with your company, no matter which coach they sign up with.
Your value proposition tells your clients what you have to offer and what they can expect in terms of outcomes. This, in turn, helps you find the right clients and improve your client outcomes, resulting in higher levels of successful coaching engagements.
Your unique value proposition forms the basis of your brand, helping you determine everything from color to logo and tone of voice.
For example, a performance coaching company would use colors like black and blue, whereas a well-being coaching business would use more soothing colors like green.
Follow our four-step formula to identify your unique value proposition:
Most coaches don’t love the business side of coaching — crafting a business strategy, marketing, and selling. But like any other enterprise, a coaching business needs a strategy to ensure sustainable success over the long term.
Having a business strategy ensures your company is built on a solid foundation and gives you a roadmap for achieving your goals.
You’re also likely to face a number of hurdles along the way, such as these seven challenges of running a coaching business. A business strategy helps you plan for and address those as they come. Of course, your strategy may change along the way; that’s par for the course.
Let’s get into the process of crafting your business strategy.
Think about why you’ve established your business; what is the long-term impact you aspire to achieve with your coaching business? This forms your vision statement. Keep it broad enough to guide your strategic decisions yet specific enough to resonate with your audience.
Clearly define the purpose of your coaching business and the specific client needs you aim to address. Your mission statement must be concise and action-oriented.
Create a document that outlines your values. What do you stand for as a company? What values guide the way you execute your coaching services? What is the lasting impression you want to leave on clients? These values will act as an internal guide, keeping everyone on the same page and delivering consistency.
Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-bound (SMART) goals are a standard that you’ve probably often used with your coaching clients.
A great growth tool is to do the same with yourself and your coaches and set SMART goals that align with your vision and mission.
Now that you have completed all the groundwork for your coaching business, you need to think about execution. How will your company deliver coaching services?
Most coaches are marketing-averse — it goes against the grain to be in a selfless line of work and then need to sell your services. As a coaching business leader, however, there are no two ways about it. Here’s what you need to think about:
If you’re starting your business journey, you could simply hire a marketing associate to set up and run your social media pages and create content for your website and email campaigns. As you grow, you can outsource it all to an agency.
However, there are a few aspects at the beginning that you’ll need to outsource to an expert:
As a coach, LinkedIn is the most important platform to be present on, no matter what your niche is. Every prospective client will check you out on LinkedIn for your credentials and professional history. To that effect, familiarize yourself with these LinkedIn marketing strategies for coaching businesses.
Depending on your niche, you must also consider Instagram, X, and Pinterest to promote your brand among your target audience’s community and create engagement.
There are different kinds of emails to consider.
First, you have the transactional emails, like session confirmations you send out when someone books a session. Then, you have periodic newsletters you can send out. Consider whether you will write and set these up or perhaps an executive.
Both paid advertising and networking require an above-and-beyond effort that is not necessarily a must for a newly established business.
Once you have your website and social channels set up, a few coaches and clients on board, and are ready to scale, consider attending conferences (they help in community building) and running online advertisements for a noticeable jump on the growth scale.
Because you’re running a coaching business, you have the added responsibility of hiring and leading coaches — giving them the freedom to coach without feeling micromanaged.
Let’s look at what that entails.
Hiring the right coaches is the first step to a successful collaboration. Here's how to go about it:
It’s important to deliver standardized coaching experiences to clients; even though rapports will differ from coach to coach, the experience is ultimately branded under your company and must be standardized. There are a couple of ways to do this:
Your onboarding and training process for coaches is a big part of how successfully your company runs. The more thorough your onboarding, the better they assimilate into your company, and the more seamlessly you work together. As part of your process, you should:
Leading any company comes with the need to supervise and maintain a level of oversight, but the ethical norms of the coaching industry limit how much you can oversee.
Think of oversight like this: You need to know how smoothly your coaches are working with your company, how happy your clients are, and how seamlessly everything is running.
If you’re not already familiar with coaching software, allow us to introduce you to the concept of running a streamlined, successful coaching business using technology — specifically, a digital coaching platform.
A digital coaching platform is software that digitizes and automates several business and coaching processes. The number and types of features offered vary from platform to platform. Some may simply help you schedule sessions and accept payments, while others help you do everything from scheduling and payments to creating programs and running the actual sessions.
A digital coaching platform offers a host of benefits, as mentioned below:
With a digital platform, you’re no longer restricted geographically; you can work with clients worldwide. Giving prospective clients the option of virtual (or at least hybrid) sessions also reduces their barrier to entry for signing up for your services.
Digital coaching platforms are designed to help keep your clients engaged throughout and even in between sessions (the trickiest part). Think video conferencing integration, goal setting and progress tracking, digital exercises or forms, automated reminders, resource libraries, and so on.
You can easily run one-on-one and large group engagements with a digital coaching platform. You can run large coaching programs with handy tools like coach matching and client self-sign-up. You can also onboard coaches from all over the world as you grow your coaching business.
Each client gets their profile on a digital coaching platform, which means that you can store all client information in one place, from the initial documents to every feedback form and exercise through the engagement.
Some digital platforms also offer client portals, which means you can get each client an account, and they can collaborate with their coach on setting goals, completing exercises, and accessing your shared resources, which not only improves outcomes but ensures long-term impact.
Digital platforms save a sizable chunk of time you and your coaches otherwise spend planning and executing your engagements. Consistency and automation are what help you do more with less.
Digital platforms give you one place to create, maintain, and share resources — both your proprietary content and that which you curate to share with clients.
One of the biggest benefits of using a digital coaching platform is the insights you get to run a more streamlined business and improve client outcomes. Depending on the platform, you can expect a variety of automated reports that you don’t have to spend time creating for clients’ sponsors.
It must be reiterated that different platforms offer different varieties of features. Let’s look at a few must-have features of any digital coaching platform:
It is convenient when scheduling is possible within the platform, creating a centralized experience for you and your coaches. Look for calendar integrations, client self-scheduling, the ability to slot in buffer times, create different types of session slots, restrict rescheduling, and more.
Every coaching engagement gets kickstarted once the goals are in place. A digital coaching platform should allow you to collaboratively set goals with clients, work on goal management with the clients, track progress against goals, create action lists, and so on.
You may want to include feedback or check-ins from your clients’ superiors and direct reports. Stakeholder integration ensures that all that execution and insight stays within the platform where you can use it.
What’s a digital coaching platform if you can’t use it to run large-scale programs? The platform must include client self-sign-up, coaching matching, and automation for you to be able to run large engagements.
Getting the right insights is essential for running a streamlined business and making the right business decisions. Insights also work at a client level — your coaches should be able to get the reports they need to prove the ROI of their coaching (and thus your company) without having to spend significant time creating them.
You probably already use a few tools to run your business — a calendar software, conferencing software, perhaps even a payment portal. A good digital platform will include integrations to the most popular tools and allow you to add more via partners.
Having business functions on the coaching platform helps you manage a client's entire cycle — from inquiry to engagement completion and payment — within one platform.
The best way to end up with a platform you’ll love and use is to know what you need.
Knowing what you need from a platform is the first step to choosing one. If you start researching without an idea of what you need, you will get overwhelmed with the features available. Remember that you’ll need to plan for your requirements today and as your business grows in the future.
Once you have a list of your must-have features, it’s time to explore the market and shortlist a few platforms that offer them.
Just because a platform offers the features you need doesn’t mean it’s the right fit for you — it could be out of your budget. Remember that most platforms offer tiered pricing, and while you may slot into the inexpensive plan now, their higher plans may be too expensive. Now’s the time to eliminate.
Once you have shortlisted two or three platforms (which now fit your feature requirements and budget), check their reviews on software marketplaces, especially those that mention features or functionalities and customer support.
Do you have everything you need to get started (or steer it in the right direction) with your coaching business?
If you’ve already established your coaching business and have a few clients in place, don’t feel like you can’t still set things in place — you may just need to make some tough decisions regarding your business plan, the team, and the technology (taking existing processes and people online), and you can achieve all your business dreams.
It's crucial to remember that you’re likely to face hurdles and that building a successful business does not, after all, come down to a list. Still, we hope this guide will help you better face those challenges and set you up for success.
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