How To Become An Online Coach in 2020
How to Become A Successful Online Coach from 2020
Whether you want to become an online mindset, health, spiritual, or life coach. Read on.
Most people ask me the question, “How do I become an online coach?”.
There’s a problem with this question. It’s not the correct question to ask when starting up as an online coach or educator.
The reason I this… Well, I was there when I started up not too long ago.
I kept searching for answers to that very question, but one day I realised something… I was asking myself COMPLETELY the wrong question.
The most commons reasons why people fail as online coaches are that they:
- Start out asking the wrong question.
- Don’t put their money into the right areas.
- Don’t think about the long term or the big picture early enough.
- Spend time doing things that won’t help their business.
The preliminary question that you should ask yourself when you’re thinking about starting an online coaching business is, “What do I have to offer as an online coach?”.
If you can sit and think to yourself that you can offer value to people’s lives in some way, however small that may be, then you’ve got a great starting point.
There are an overwhelming number of questions that people ask when it comes to online coaching and educating.
So, read on until the end for answers to some of the most important questions and to find out the bar-bone basics of how to become a successful online coach from 2020.
How do you become an online coach?
#1. Figure out your coaching focus
The first thing you’ll need to do before launching your coaching business is decide what your focus will be.
It’s all well and good wanting to help people to improve their lives, but what exactly about their lives do you want to help people to improve?
Will you help them to improve their mindset? If so, how?
What about their mindset do you want to help people to change?
Maybe you’d like to help them improve the way that they think about themselves, or the way that they look at their own potential?
Will you be a productivity coach to help people to become more dynamic and effective in their working day?
Perhaps you have a flare for healthy eating or fitness, therefore you may want to specialise in coaching people to lead healthier and more active lifestyles?
To find your focus, you need to look internally at yourself and ask the questions, “What is it that I am truly good at? And what do people often ask me for advice about?”.
No one else can tell you what your vocation is and what you are truly good at, only…
- Past experiences
- Advice others have asked you for
- Your qualifications (though this isn’t compulsory)
- Your internal strengths…
…can tell you what your focus can and will be.
To finish this focus section, here are a few questions to ask yourself:
- What is your personal story?
- What can you help others with that you yourself have experienced?
- How can you help others to overcome similar blocks and hurdles through your coaching service?
- What do you love helping other people with?
- How can you best help people who need it?
When I started Twenties Thrive, I didn’t imagine that I would eventually start leading 1:1 mentoring sessions with clients.
I knew what coaching was, but it wasn’t something I thought I could do.
I was quite lucky when I came to start my online coaching business. For my age, I have quite a lot of previous experience in the education sector with coaching, mentoring and teaching people from different age groups and backgrounds.
My experience: I’m a trained researcher in leadership development and education technology, I’ve coached leadership development for more than two years, and I have three years of online ESL teaching, and 1:1 academic tutoring experience.
Having had the time to explore what I enjoy doing, what I’m good at and who I enjoy helping, I was able to narrow my focus a bit faster, but that doesn’t mean that it was easy.
Developing a business idea, creating and developing coaching packages, building online courses and writing eBooks are daunting, especially at first. I found it terrifying.
I’m quite a good content writer, but even for me, I found that the pressure I was putting on myself was causing writer’s block.
What I realised when looking back at the start of my personal journey is, fear is the biggest roadblock to starting your online coaching or education business.
Here’s what I say about fear:
- It is the biggest block to your success.
- It is the biggest burden to your mindset.
- It is primary reason why people fail in business.
The thing about fear is that it is a reflex. It’s natural. Don’t beat yourself up for taking a step outside of your comfort zone and being fearful of the unknown, it’s totally normal.
In this blog post, I want to give you the basics of how to be a successful online coach from 2020. Hopefully, it’ll settle those nerves a bit.
#2. Identify your niche
There are so many types of coaching that you can focus on, which means choosing a niche can be difficult.
To name a few examples of coaching niches, you can choose to be a:
- Performance coach
- Executive coach
- Careers coach
- Life coach
- Personal coach
- Business coach
- Skills coach
- Work coach
There are, of course, a number of others, though these are the most prominent ones you will find.
There is no limit to the type of coach that you can be, you could even create a new niche if there is a desire for that service.
#3. Do your research: Who will you coach? And how?
The one thing that I ABSOLUTELY recommend to people who want to become an online coach is RESEARCH the need first.
We’ve all had what we at first thought were AMAZING and completely original ideas, but unfortunately, there isn’t always a need for it.
If there is no one who is willing to pay for your service, then you won’t make any money.
And we all know that, unfortunately, if there’s no money, then there is no business and it’s back to the drawing board.
So, how do we research the area that we want to go into?
There are a number of ways that we can research whether the niche we want to set our business in is a viable coaching business idea.
A few places to begin researching include:
- Google (of course!)
- Pinterest (the image search engine)
- Social media (I have found that Instagram is a great place to start searching for other people who have set up their coaching businesses in your area)
- Keyword searches (Google chrome has a great keyword extension that shows you search traffic for particular keywords)
TOP TIP: Don’t overload yourself with information. As an experienced researcher and success coach, too much information when it comes to searching the internet can hinder your progress.
Why do I say that? Personal experience, unfortunately.
When I first wanted to set up a business, I found that I spent so much time researching the information that I kept putting off actually starting it.
Don’t get me wrong, having the right information and a good source of it is essential for any business start-up, but when you have TOO MUCH information, it can be really detrimental.
That’s why I say, do some soul searching and find what you’re really good at and passionate about. Then RESEARCH it, but not TOO MUCH.
As a stock trader, I can say the same thing as well, research is good until it is BAD.
So, try and keep that in mind when you are doing your research on your coaching business idea.
Once you’ve done some research and you’ve found your area of focus, you can move onto the stage which is… creating your signature package.
#4. Create your signature package
I won’t delve ridiculously deep into this subtopic right now because there is A LOT to this part. I could probably write a book on it actually! (Not that you’d want that!)
Instead, I’m going to put forward a few tips and a little bit of information for you.
I’ll actually be writing another blog post that specifically focuses on this topic over the coming weeks.
The first question then, what is a signature package?
Your signature package is the product or service that you will sell that will be what you become known for as an online coach.
A signature package is something that allows you to offer something big, something valuable and something that really helps you to establish yourself in your area of expertise.
This may sound daunting, but after you’ve soul searched a bit and researched a few of your ideas, you can start brainstorming and then BOOM, you can start piecing it together.
Some people ask, “I’m stuck! How can I find some ideas?”
My answer: “Easy! Do some research and a little audit of other coaches in your area of expertise and what they offer”.
If you’re seriously stuck as to what to offer, there are 3 things that you need to do:
- Find someone who can be a personal mentor if you have the money (usually a paid service), but if you’re on a limited budget, search the net and make a mentor out of someone’s content.
- Find 3 coaches in the same niche and look at their websites, their offerings and their signature packages — Note down what you like and dislike about their content/offerings.
- Get inspired by their content and apply it to your own skill set, passions and area of expertise.
When I say research other people’s offerings and websites, that doesn’t mean copy what they do.
That’s a really bad idea and could get you into some serious problems down the line!
The reason that you should look at other’s people work is so that you can be inspired by it and them. You can then apply that energy and confidence to your own coaching offerings.
If they’re successful ask yourself these questions:
- Why?
- How?
- What do they offer?
- How much do they charge?
- Put yourself in a customer’s shoes and ask, “Why would I as a person invest in this offering?”
- What experiences have they used to real in customers and how could you do the same?
I have found from my research on this topic that most people struggle to come up with offerings as a coach when they haven’t set themselves down and really thought about their own story.
Remember, think about how they could make a difference in the world and what your coaching will help other people to do or achieve.
Your signature coaching package should have the 3 secret sauce ingredients:
- Value
- Intent (good intent, obviously!)
- Purpose
With these main ingredients, your signature package will soon be booked out with a bit of marketing and fine-tuning!
#5. Improve your content 👉🏻 Increase your value 👉🏻 Increase your prices
Being an online coach isn’t easy, nor does it ever stop being busy. That’s what I love about it!
Personally, I always felt that the fault in my stars was that I can get bored relatively easily.
I like moving onto new and challenging projects and having a diverse number of things that I can sink my teeth into.
What I thought was a curse in my 9–5 job has become the BEST part of my personality now that I work for myself. Can you guess why?
I realised it’s because my mindset allows me to do a number of things that a lot of others can’t:
- I can adapt quickly to change
- I can learn new things fast
- I’m able to constantly develop myself and what I can do
- I can be creative and not get bogged down by things that have not worked out
- I can use my failures to move forward and achieve successes
Just as we need to continuously develop ourselves as online coaches by learning new things, we need to improve our content and coaching offerings every so often too.
That doesn’t mean offer LOADS for a crazy cheap price and then price yourself out of the market though.
By consistently developing and improving your content, you’ll…
- Continue to build trust with your followers and clients
- Stay up to date so that you are always providing the most valuable information
This equation is key to continuous growth and increasing revenue:
- Improve your content 👉🏻 Increase your value 👉🏻 Increase your prices
[Improve your content to increase your value thus, you can then increase your prices]
With the Internet of Things (IoT) just around the corner, there are a number of ways that you can continue to improve your content and offerings.
It will take work, time and confidence in yourself, but you can do it by improving yourself and your content.
This leads nicely to the next section.
To invest in your business when you are your own boss means that you also need to invest in you! #InvestInYou
#6. Invest in You!
Investing in yourself is such an import part of life and it’s my number #1 tip for anyone who wants to become their own boss.
It can be as simple as taking courses (free or paid), reading books that you can recommend to your clients.
It could even be taking the time to improve your productivity during the workday.
All of these things are time or money that you are investing in yourself. If you’re the boss, it will, therefore, have a knock-on effect on your business.
Spending money on ‘us’ seems to be a taboo to some people.
But our own development is just as important to our well-being as it is our wealth.
If we stop learning and stop improving ourselves, then we stagnate.
The same happens if we don’t invest in ourselves for the sakes of our business. If we don’t improve and develop, then the business stagnates.
So, remember to invest in YOU.
#7. Find Your Unique Voice & Build an Online Presence
You’ve probably heard the term ‘imposter syndrome’ before and you’ve probably felt it.
If you are unsure of what I mean by ‘imposter syndrome’, it’s something that makes you…
- Feel insecure and that you don’t belong here/there (in your role)
- Embarrassed that you’ve shown up when there are a lot of bigger fish than you
- Scared that you won’t succeed, that people with a laugh at you and won’t take you seriously
- Worried that people will think that you’re a fraud and that you have nothing to offer
- Nervous that you won’t make sales and that ‘selling’ your products, or your expertise is asking for too much
- Confused as you question yourself and ask yourself “Why am I here?”, “Why would people come to or listen to me?”
- Inadequate because you may not have the qualifications or accreditations that someone else has
Imposter syndrome can seriously impact your mental health and your business if you let it rule you.
You might remember me saying earlier about fear and how potent it can be. Imposter syndrome and fear are the best of buddies! They LOVE each other and like all child best friends, they love to play together and make trouble where they can.
So, try and nip their friendship in the bud as soon as possible!
When you’re finding your unique voice and trying to build an online presence, people will want to see who you are.
You want for people to see what you do and from that, they will come to trust you.
That’s why content online, whether it is Instagram, Facebook groups, YouTube (I could go on for a very long time here), is so important.
When you’ve found your unique voice and know your message, you can start getting your message out on socials and online and start growing your business and client base.
What happens when you’ve found your unique voice?
- Your content provides value, therefore, your followership increase.
- People trust you due to you posting authentic content, therefore, they want to buy your eBooks, courses, or coaching products.
- It affirms to you that you can achieve your goals and it inspires you too.
#8. Have Faith in What You’re Selling
If you don’t believe in what you’re selling, then who will?
Selling your service is a service in itself. I know, getting very deep here.
There’s a huge problem with selling is that it is easy to become disheartened. That’s because if you don’t achieve a sale, it can really get you down.
The fact is, there will be hundreds, even thousands of people in the world who want to buy your product. The problem is, they may not know that you exist yet.
I talked earlier about creating your signature package. When you believe that your signature package, then you’ll be able to sell it faithfully.
When you show up knowing that you have something of value to offer people, then it’s a game-changer.
Faith doesn’t need to be spiritual, not everyone is that way inclined. To me, faith is believing in myself, knowing that I have something to offer, and knowing that I can help people.
Most people don’t want to part with their money, and coaching is not a way to expunge money from people who are worried about losing it.
This is where your signature package comes in. It’s where people who are scared and who are in need of support will realise that the money is worth it, as long as you sell.
When you sell, only then will they know you exist. Then you are in it to win it in the coaching game!
