Dear ninja friend, not long ago I was coaching business owners and doing a few remaining freelance projects for a full-time income. While I was coaching, I unintentionally (at first) then intentionally diversified my income and added teaching products into the mix. I was part coach, part infopreneur, part freelancer–which really helped me find the place I could be most effective.
But as I was learning and going and making many mistakes, I did definitely see and experience the benefits of monetizing my coaching brand in multiple ways. If you are looking to get into coaching, or if you want to expand your coaching business through workshops, courses, books, and other passive income, this post is for you. Also, this intense, action-packed, 2-day workshop on creating courses might be for you too, but let’s get into the main course of the day: how to monetize your brand as a coach without putting all your eggs in one basket.
Let’s look at this in terms of services that you can monetize as well as digital and physical products you can monetize. And don’t worry, there is definitely a handy checklist to go with this post, that you obvi get for free, because we’re ninja friends and all.
16 Ways to Monetize Your Coaching Brand
a.k.a. 9 Services and 7 Products that are Super Epic for Coaches
When you are first getting started in coaching, this will likely be one of the services that is simplest to offer. Now, don’t get me wrong. I think you need to plan what it entails along with what you will and won’t do, and I do still think it needs a signed client agreement. But, it’s a great place to begin because you can figure out what people really want and need, what really troubles people, and where you truly fit as a coach and teacher.
With your custom 1-on-1 calls (Skype sessions, telephone calls, or even in-person meetings), you’ll typically:
- send your client a questionnaire and/or meet with them to discover their specific needs and where you fit in
- decide on a timeframe that y’all will work together or set up a rate per meeting or per month
- send out an agenda before each call (if you have some general talking points for the meeting–and hopefully you do)
- send out client notes sheets or a link to a shared doc where you client can take notes digitally (optional, but cool)
- conduct your session (usually 30 – 90 minutes depending on the type of call–this should be clear and communicated ahead of time)
- (with permission) record your session
- recap your session via email (or send the recording/replay to your client)
2. 1-on-1 Coaching Program w/ Calls, Check-ins, and Homework
Once you’ve done custom 1-on-1 coaching for a while, or once you have an understanding of the general steps your audience needs to go through to reach the goals you help them with, you can develop your custom coaching into a program. A coaching program is a setup in which you have the same general steps + processes that you’re taking multiple people through individually.
You still check in with your clients, have calls, and provide customized recaps and help to them, but it’s all based off of one system.
- give your potential client an overview doc/email that outlines the programs, timeline, and steps, to help them decide whether or not it’s a good fit
- have a call/questionnaire that helps you determine if the client is a good fit
- send a welcome kit (optional, but wonderful) with your client’s first homework assignment and an invitation to schedule their first call after the homework is completed
- conduct your first call
- send the next pre-developed homework assignment (w/ a recap of your call)
- repeat this process for as long as your program lasts
Note: To fully protect yourself and your client, your signed agreement with them should outline your refund policy, and the point at which the client is forfeiting the rest of their package (ex: you haven’t heard from them in 45 days and you’ve emailed them at their provided email address at least three times).
I once had a web project that lasted over a year because my client would never get back to me but I didn’t have a helpful “forfeiture clause” in my agreement–and P.S. I had spent every dime they’d paid me, so I wasn’t to keen on refunding them. Side note: The project ended up being super attractive and the client loved their site.
Imagine this: either one of the options above (1 or 2), but instead of doing calls, you do emails. You can tailor the process to each client (and just agree on a certain timeframe or a certain number of email “meetings”), or you can take your email coaching clients through a specific program (with homework and pre-set steps) and provide customized responses and email support. Bam. Magic. Great for introverts.
Remember that one time, long ago, when we were talking about 1-on-1 coaching programs (#2 above)? Okay, now imagine that, but with more than one person. The client homework would go out to a group of people to complete individually or with accountability partners, and you would also:
- conduct group calls or video conferencing
- provide recordings to clients who missed (optional, but super kind
- choose to focus on one or two people per call after the meat of the call has been presented, or choose to address everyone’s needs in each call
- provide a community or means for people to connect outside of your group calls (optional, but epic)
- provide recaps, updates, and more homework via email or in the group coaching platform/community
5. Masterminds
Imagine everything we said above, but instead imagine that each week/month has a specific focus (growth, strategy, etc.) or that you are more of a facilitator and cheerleader than you are a direct coach.
You can provide a mastermind group that allows people to benefit mainly from others’ ideas and knowledge, but also from the regular accountability, and your presence.
P.S. Don’t forget you can be checking this stuff off and planning for world domination on the cool, free worksheet that goes with this post. It comes from my newly redesigned and restructured Zero to Coaching Business course that goes live next month.
6. In-Person Trainings or Workshops
Think of all the things you coach online 1-on-1 or in groups/masterminds—can it be applied or shared in real life as well?
You can create small workshops, pop-up events, and live trainings to help people with the goals you coach on.
This ones pretty self-explanatory, eh? You can definitely decide to speak on the topics you coach on at different events, organizations, and conferences. It’s a great way to start to be seen as more of a teacher or “thought leader” (as they say), and it’s a great way to meet new people—some of them might even become your coaching clients
Perhaps people aren’t ready to commit to a coaching program, or perhaps someone really needs some targeted help with this one particular thing that you happen to be epic at, or maybe one of your audience members really wants the opportunity to “pick your brain.” Well, that’s where office hours come in. You can offer your time and expertise at a rate that’s comfortable to you, per hour or per day.
Office hours allow you to help people, make income, address audience pain points directly and swiftly, and keep your ear to the ground about people’s current needs and frustrations—which helps you know what packages and products you should offer.
Often times, your potential clients will be in such a state of overwhelm/confusion, or in such a new place that they feel lost as to how to begin to get out of where they are to move to where they want to be. Also, you may have clients who just feel a slight bit off or frustrated with the current state of things and in need of some direction.
Doing a custom life audit, brand audit, situation report, or other type of organized document/delivery that outlines current areas that need improvement as well as current areas that are doing well, can be a rewarding, simple, and fun type of coaching.
Custom audits and reports are also often a way for you to provide services to people who can’t afford your 1-on-1 rates yet.
An online (or real life) community can be an add-on to any of your other products or services, but a community can also easily be its own standalone product. Providing partners, support, a venue, structure, and built-in friends for people who are all at a similar place in life/business is a seriously valuable thing that many people would be happy to pay for.
What is something you’ve had to struggle through on your own? Learn on your own? Do without support? Would you have enjoyed a community of people in the same position? Would you have paid for it?
Think of a community structure and virtual/physical meeting place you can provide for people. Is it something you’d be willing to add to your offerings?
Psssst. There’s a free workshop for you on getting started in information products in general (with a huge focus on developing workshops). Did I mention it’s 2.5 hours, comes with a 15-page workbook, and is FREE?
12. Pre-Recorded Workshops, Bootcamps, or Conferences
I won’t bother you about that free workshop on workshops again, but just know it’s there for you.
Packaging previously-recorded workshops or bootcamps together as paid products is genius and will help to fill out your standing course library if you plan to build one.
Psssst. There’s this whole 2-day workshop for you on creating courses (and communities) that matter. It’s available at a special price right now and is the cumulation of my knowledge gained from the trial, error, and experience of creating over a dozen email courses, online courses, and IRL (in real life) courses.
Seriously. Online courses are some of my favorite things in the world. Learning that can happen from your couch, or your cubicle on your lunch break, or during your commute, etc. #Epic.
And think about it. You’ll be able to package your knowledge, coaching skills, and experience together in a neat way that allows you to help more people at once.
You can also structure many of your courses to be forms of almost entirely passive (little to no maintenance) income once you create them.
14. Email Coaching Program (w/out Custom Support)
So, instead of framing your materials as a course and delivering it on some epic, 3rd-party system such as Teachable, you could also frame them as email coaching (sans the custom replies).
“A new coaching session in your inbox each Monday for 8 weeks!” sounds pretty epic. And, it’s scalable, because those same sessions can be sent out to 10 people at a time or 10,000 people. #SuperEpic.
Pssssssssst. If you want a free training on creating email courses, you can still sign up for Email Course Bootcamp—I’ll be sending out another replay of the 3-day event soon.
A digital file that can be automatically delivered to your customers as soon as they purchase it? Yes, my friend, that’s about as close to passive income as it gets in this coaching world—and it’s an epic way to make additional income while helping your ideal audience who needs items at different price points than your coaching programs and courses.
Here’s a post on how to self-publish your own books as a business model, btw, if you want more information on that.
Yessssss. You can use printed books or workbooks with your clients as you take them through your coaching program, you can sell them separately on your site, or you can sell them through Amazon.com and get them fulfilled for you, so that you don’t have to ship off each order or accept + process returns. That’s brilliant, my friend.
Just for you, I have a post, and a workshop with quite a few hours of training (and worksheets) on how to self-publish your own print books. Yay.
So, if I’m not being too nosy, may I inquire how you currently monetize your coaching business? And how you plan to monetize in the future? I hope this post helped, and I’d love to hear what you’ve got poppin’ in the comments below. Photo (c): Branislav Jovanović via Stocksy.com
Original article and pictures take byregina.com site
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