A Four-Step Guide To Kick Start Your Coaching Business
A guide to help you manage the tsunami of emotions associated with starting anything new
Starting as an entrepreneur can easily overwhelm anyone.
Tons of questions, insecurities, and imposter syndrome whammy our brain and sometimes makes it impossible to think clearly. It’s natural. Moreover, our society still does not support entrepreneurs who are just starting. We get bombarded with expectations, finances, and whatnot from our parents, family, and friends.
It becomes crucial to sit down in a calm place at such junctures, take deep breaths, and map out a path of what you genuinely want to do without caring about others’ judgments. Or that’s what I did with my 1:1 coaching business on “Building human connections online to grow your business organically.”
Long one-liner? Probably. But I had no clue how to shorten it further while also giving the client the exact outcome.
While I kick-started a coaching business, I assume that the below steps should approximately fit into any of your business ideas. I hope the guide below helps you manage the tsunami of emotions associated with starting anything new.
**These steps are only based on my experience and interactions with other coaches and clients. While you can consider it a guide, take what resonates with you and leave what doesn’t.
Some crucial mindset shifts you can apply
- Think of your coaching idea as an experiment. And give yourself three months to do the basic testing. If it works, great. If it doesn’t work, pick up all your skills learned from this one and move to the next one.
- You don’t need to be perfect or master something to coach. You need to be better than others.
- You can never be well-prepared. Plan to learn and implement on the go. Trying to finish that certificate, website, and marketing funnels (and thousands of other points) before starting your coaching? You don’t need to. Remember, everything can happen in parallel.
- Keep iterating your process and redefining your service. Implement what you learn and the feedback you receive on the go. Don’t stop. That’s what matters.
- You might not be the most qualified coach on earth. What you can do is make sure you give your 100%. Small things matter. Keep your phone miles away. Pay rapt attention to the client. Keep thinking about how to make their lives better. Be empathetic. These characteristics will take you miles ahead of anyone in the business. And you don’t need a certificate for them.
- Last but most important, nothing is about you. Everything is about your client and the service you provide. Don’t take things personally.
Step 1: How do you want to help others?
That’s how most business ideas start, isn’t it?
You see one person struggling or needing help with a particular pain point, and your brain goes, “Ta-Da! Hey, I think I can help them!”. Or sometimes, your multiple skillsets fit into a bigger puzzle to give you the answers you were always looking for.
Most of the time, your ideas are inspired by one person. It can be you or others. And you want to help that one person first.
Please write it down.
How can you help this one person? And why do you think you can help them? What makes you different and stand out from others? What can you offer that no one else can? If someone finds you on the internet today, what will attract them towards you? What characteristics do you want to exhibit when you’re in a session?
Define your skills. Not your experience.
As and when you answer these questions, a structure will immediately start appearing in your head. Trust me, this structure will change after a couple of sessions, but it will be beneficial when you begin.
Step 2: Do others even need your help?
This is the part where most of us miss.
You don’t need to be extremely specific with the idea or the exact tangible outcomes you will provide the client from the get-go. Because, of course, each of us is different, our results may also be different.
But, you need to explain what you do in a couple of sentences.
Then go around in your first circle of online and real-world contacts, and ask them whether it would help them or make sense.
Use your network. Please.
You don’t need to approach 100s of people to do a market survey. Even 15 folks would do. Send them your pitch, ask for feedback, ask whether it’ll be helpful to them or their friends.
Below are some ways you can get the initial feedback:
- Reach out to your first circle of friends/acquaintances. And ask them whether they know anyone else who can benefit from your coaching.
- If you have social media accounts or email subscribers, put up a google form to get feedback.
- Request your friends to share it on their social media channels.
Remember, 15 to 20 positive responses are enough to get going. And it would be best if you were okay with requesting help. Depending on your received feedback, iterate or tweak your structure.
Step 3: Get going! Practice, practice, and practice more!
Now utilize this initial set of 15 to 20 folks to practice. Be okay with giving free sessions or having a “pay what you want” model because you’re still in the initial phase.
But don’t go overboard with the free sessions too. You need to pay bills. Try to give two sessions for free initially, and then inform them that now you will start charging a basic fee for your services.
You can ask them for more detailed feedback, testimonials to your website/LinkedIn profile, sharing your initial post to increase the reach. Hey, when they’re receiving free great sessions from you, they can do this. And trust me, most of them agree.
Don’t get too much into equipment. A basic computer and wifi would do. Try not to invest any money in the beginning.
If possible, check out other coaches in the market and notice what they do, how they approach clients, structure their services, and market themselves.
I might sound like a broken record now, but the mantra, “Take feedback, iterate, implement,” should keep on going in your head.
Step 4: Learn, Learn, and Learn more. But do it parallelly
As you’re reaching out to people, coaching them, and getting their feedback, you also need to improve yourself.
Divide your skills into four parts:
- Skills you have to run your coaching business
- Skills you don’t have to run your coaching business
- Skills you have that will benefit you as a coach or in the coaching process
- Skills you don’t have as a coach
Sit down, and keep adding your skills to these buckets every day. It will take a couple of days, but you’ll get there. As you gain new skills through books, courses, certifications, etc., you can edit the buckets again and add them to your repoirtre.
The main point is don’t stop implementing. Both should go forward like train tracks, pushing you forward.
Step 4: Define the number of initial paid clients you want to get
This is the most crucial step that will exponentially increase your confidence. Many coaches talk about getting that one paid client to begin with. But I realized it didn’t work for me.
I needed a minimum of 7 clients to believe that this could become a viable business. But that was me. Ten sounds scary. Five and below felt too low. So 7 was the optimal number for me.
For you, it can be different.
Then put all your focus for the next two months on getting them through your connections, testimonials, and connection’s connections. Leave no stone unturned to use your contacts and social media. Remember, they’re your warm leads, and that’s how you take off.
Once you cross these currents, you’re okay. You’ve done basic market research, reached out to people to get their opinion, given free sessions, and converted them into paid ones.
Something must be working, for otherwise, this would not have happened.
Now pick everything you’ve learned and move forward. Now you can spend some time on your website, equipment, and all that jazz. Get a customer acquisition journey, check how to see your finances and billing. Probably take a week off to accumulate everything you’ve learned to restructure the whole thing. Who knows?
The point is to keep going. Keep getting feedback. Keep iterating.
That’s how you’ll grow.
