Start a Life Coaching Business [2024 Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide]

Coaching your clients isn't just about having coaching skills. It's also about having a trusted process to help them get results.

A proprietary coaching framework is your secret weapon to becoming an effective and confident coach. Think of it as a unique, step-by-step blueprint crafted from your expertise and experience. One that leads your clients to the transformation.

It is a streamlined method, exclusive to you and your brand, that elevates you out of the sea of life coaches. With your framework, you're not just another life coach. Instead you're a beacon of clarity in an often vague internet landscape. Your proprietary framework helps clients find, know, and trust you. They'll understand why they need YOUR guidance.

To give you an example, I developed the Coaching Genius System because it's the thing I wish I would have had when I was first starting out. I wasted a lot of time going the trial and error route.

When I created the Coaching Genius System, I asked myself, these three questions...

Later on, I created this 3C system to assist my one-to-one and group coaching clients in starting and growing their businesses.

Now, let's discuss some advantages of developing your own coaching framework.

I've already mentioned some of these, but let's delve deeper into the benefits that a proprietary coaching framework offers.

Clarity for both you and your client. You can guide your clients to the results they want by using a clear and step-by-step process. It helps you to avoid misunderstandings and confusion about what it is you'll do together. You and your coaching clients will know what to expect in each coaching session. For example, by taking my clients through the 3C system, I help them track their progress and know their next steps. Trust me, clients LOVE clarity.

Uniquely branded. A unique framework connects to you and your brand, setting you apart from other coaches. The coaching industry is getting competitive and it's only going to get more so. Having your own proprietary framework will make your coaching appear as distinctive as you are. In fact, I always recommend to my clients that they name their coaching framework. You'll notice I have two frameworks with unique names. That's on purpose. And it's how you can stand out in a crowded coaching industry.

You don't have to sell yourself. Not only does your coaching framework help clients, but it also structures your sales calls. Instead of having to convince someone that you're a great coach, you walk them through your framework to show them how you'll get them there. Do it right and your coaching framework will do the selling for you.

To get started, I recommend these three steps:

Step 1: Brainstorm your own experience. If you've chosen a transformation that you've achieved yourself, write down everything you thought, felt, and did that got you to the other side of the transformation. Don't edit yourself. Just get it all down.

Step 2: Cut the unnecessary. In the list above, you most likely tried some things that didn't lead you towards your goal. Remove those from your list.

Step 3: Streamline the process. Look for ways to streamline the process for your clients. How can you make the steps faster or easier?

You can create an offer that is hard to resist by showcasing how your unique approach meets your prospective clients' goals. Make the offer so valuable that they won't want to say no.

It's more than a package of coaching sessions. It's a comprehensive solution tailored to help your clients get the results. The price reflects your worth and the result you offer. It makes clients feel they'd lose more by not investing.

Stand Out in the Market. Creating an appealing signature offer helps you stand out in your market. You're going way beyond the "I offer three coaching packages" that most coaches do. Instead, you tell your potential clients, "I've planned everything you need for the best outcome. And I've made it simple and efficient."

Predictable Finances. By providing a clear package, you can calculate your earnings ahead of time. The pay-per-session or monthly coaching model often brings income uncertainties. By making your clients commit upfront by investing in your signature program, you ensure a steady stream of income that you can count on.

Attract Committed Clients. Your signature offer shows how serious you are. Thus, drawing in clients dedicated to getting results. They appreciate coaching and are ready to make the transformation. An hourly-rate model sets up clients to worry about every minute spent with you, instead of focusing on the results they're after.

To get started, I recommend these three steps:

Step 1: Get clear on how you'll deliver your coaching. Will your signature offer be 1:1 coaching, group coaching, workshops, VIP Days, etc? Choose the delivery method that makes the most sense for your personality and lifestyle.

Step 2: Decide on the type of support you'll offer. Support includes things like how often you'll meet, whether you'll offer email, phone, or Voxer support, a discussion forum for group members, or follow-up support after a VIP Day.

Step 3: Create bonuses and resources. To make the offer irresistible, you want to create bonuses and resources that go the extra mile. For example, at the time of this writing, the members of The Coaching Business Accelerator, my group program, get an all access pass to all of my courses, including any new ones I create while they're members.

In this phase we start with mastering the enrollment call.

A successful enrollment call transforms potential clients into raving fans. Unlike a typical sales call, it's an opportunity to connect, understand, and position your offer as their ideal solution. During this call, you keenly listen to their aspirations and concerns to see if offer aligns with their needs. The call serves to demonstrate the value of your offer, while ensuring a mutual fit for both of you.

The key is to make sure that the client and their needs are a good fit for you, your program, and your values. In the beginning of my coaching career, I worked with anyone who said yes. That didn't always work out well. 😝

Less Wasted Time. By mastering the enrollment call, the process becomes efficient, letting you quickly convey your value to potential clients, while assessing whether they're a fit. No more lengthy "sales" calls.

Attracting the Right Clients. Mastering the enrollment call shifts the clients you attract, emphasizing quality over quantity. It's about connecting with clients who value your services and commit to coaching. Using effective techniques, you can draw in clients who are rewarding to work with and avoiding those who aren't a good match.

Financial Prosperity. Becoming adept at enrollment calls has a direct positive impact on your financial success. I'm sure that's no surprise. The ability to effectively run enrollment calls helps you avoid the anxiety of unstable income often associated with running a life coaching business. By refining your enrollment call skills, you secure a consistent client base, bolstering your financial stability, and paving the way for an income that truly reflects the value you provide.

Don't let the challenges of enrolling clients dampen your passion for coaching. It's a must-have skill to develop and with a little practice, it's not as hard as you might think.

To get started, I recommend these three steps:

Step 1: Learn what you can about your prospective client ahead of time. Before someone schedules an enrollment call with me, I have a short form they fill out that helps me understand where they're at in their business, what they hope to achieve, and what they think their challenges are. This helps us make the best use of our time on the call.

Step 2: Get in the proper head space before the call. You want to go into every enrollment call with the right frame of mind. First, you want to go into the call confident in your coaching and in your process. After having worked with hundreds of coaches, I can tell you that once you have developed your own well-thought out coaching framework, your confidence in your coaching will skyrocket. You won't feel like you're winging it. Second, like I mentioned above, you want to go into each call with the goal of seeing if it's a good fit for both of you. Not necessarily to sell them.

Step 3: Use an effective enrollment script or outline. The enrollment call is more than just a chat with a potential client. In order to improve with each call, you need a script or outline to follow so you know what to improve for next time. A prospective client didn't sign up for coaching? Look at your script or outline to see what to tweak.

Finally, your website should be designed and structured in a way to engage your ideal clients -- easy to navigate, engaging visuals, and design that looks good on any sized device.

However, do keep in mind that your copy and messaging always come first.

Showcases Your Experience and Credibility. Your website is the perfect platform to showcase your experience and credentials. A well-written "About" page allows you to tell your story while also demonstrating your expertise and qualifications to a global audience.

Highlights Your Knowledge and Expertise. If you post helpful blog articles, videos, or podcast episodes on your website, your audience can see how much you know in the area you help people with.

Communicates Clearly. A website allows you to clearly describe your coaching offer(s), your coaching framework, your values, and what makes your offer unique. Your potential clients can see if your offer aligns with their needs and expectations. Thus, doing a lot of the selling for you.

To get started, I recommend these three steps:

Step 1: Prioritize content. Like I mentioned above, content is king. Especially when it comes to your website. I see a lot of coaches worry about the design and tech before they work on the words. That's a mistake. Figure out what you're going to say first before you actually create your website. A side benefit is that it will save you a ton of money on tech and design.

Step 2: Choose your tech solution. What you choose should depend on how much control you want over the design. Some platforms offer total design freedom, while others provide customizable templates. Pick what aligns with your vision and how you work best.

Step 3: Decide on DIY or a Web Developer / Designer. This is also an important decision. Reflect on your design skills. If you're adept, proceed on your own. If not, consider hiring a professional to save time and ensure your site looks amazing. Be aware, however, that the majority of designers don't know much about marketing. They just know how to make things pretty. You want a design that is clean, easy to navigate, and professional looking.

A sales funnel, at its core, is a step-by-step journey designed to guide your prospective clients from the moment they first learn about your life coaching business to the point where they schedule an enrollment call with you. There are a lot of pieces, but the main ones include a freebie giveaway, an opt-in page and form, a thank you page, and an automated email sequence that provides value and invites them to hop on a call with you.

Builds Trust. By providing value at every stage of the funnel, you establish trust and credibility with your prospective clients. Which, of course, makes them more likely to invest in your coaching services.

Nurtures the relationship. Not every person who enters your funnel is ready to buy immediately. A sales funnel allows you to nurture these prospective clients with value-based content tailored to their needs. If they don't invest in your coaching while moving through the funnel, at the very least they know what you have to offer when they are ready.

Maximizes Revenue. Because a sales funnel is a strategic way to lead prospective clients step-by-step through the journey towards investing in your coaching, it can encourage them to get on a call with you sooner. Unlike a weekly newsletter that keeps you top of mind for when clients are ready, your sales funnel is designed to lead them to see why your coaching may be just what they need now.

To get started, I recommend these three steps:

Step 1: Prioritize value. Start with the freebie giveaway. What can you offer them that takes them a tiny bit closer to the transformation you provide? Think about it in terms of a quick win. Something they can consume, understand, or implement pretty quickly that leads towards the transformation just a bit.

Step 2: Write your messaging. Just like in the previous step, you want to create your content and messaging before worrying about design and tech. Write your emails, opt-in page messaging, and thank you page messaging before anything else.

Step 3: DIY or Hire a Developer: And like in the previous section, decide whether you want to take on the tech and design yourself, or hire someone to do it for you. Reflect on how tech savvy you are. If tech is no big deal, feel free to do it yourself. If the idea of tech makes you want to cry like a baby, consider hiring a professional to save time and your sanity.

Now it's time to map out your marketing plan.

To do it right, mapping out a marketing plan entails a clear, strategic, and detailed approach to promoting your freebie giveaways and coaching offers. By this point, you've already done most of the work...

Doing all of this work gives you clarity about who your ideal client is and how to reach and engage them effectively.

There are three components to consider when mapping out your marketing plan if you want an online coaching business that helps you reach your business goals.

Content marketing is a marketing approach focused on creating, publishing, and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract your prospective clients. The main goal is for you to stay top of mind when your prospective clients are ready to hire a coach.

Your three main choices are blogging, videos, or podcasting. I'll talk more about these in Step 8: Create Your First Content.

The next step in your marketing plan is deciding on which channels to use to reach your audience and bring them back to your website to consume your content. Your ultimate goal is to get people on an email list so you can nurture that relationship. So they think of you when they're ready to hire a coach.

There are a variety of ways to bring in traffic to your website. Here are just a few...

The goal with both content marketing and selecting traffic channels is to find the sweet spot of your strengths and interests (what you'll be consistent with) and where it will be easiest to connect with your audience.

Not every prospective client will hire you immediately. You have to have a way to stay top of mind that goes beyond social media. The best way to do that is to get your prospective clients on your email list. It doesn't matter if you're a life coach, business coach, executive coach, career coach, etc. Every coach who wants to grow a successful life coaching business needs a way to stay top of mind.

The great thing about email marketing is that it doesn't rely on the potential client remembering to head to a social media platform to see your content. Everyone checks their email at some point. Many people check their email multiple times per day. It's absolutely the best way to stay in front of prospective clients until they're ready for coaching.

It's also incredibly inexpensive and doesn't add much to your marketing costs. Especially in the beginning. Many email service providers have free accounts to start with. Check out the Favorite Tools section of my website to see what I recommend.

Clear Direction and Focus. A well-structured marketing plan provides a clear roadmap to follow in your marketing activities. It helps you prioritize your efforts and keeps you focused on achieving your business goals.

Efficient Resource Allocation. By identifying the sweet spot between where your audience hangs out and your strengths and interests, you can allocate your time and effort more effectively.

No Wasted Time. By developing a strategy that works for you, you won't try to do ALL. THE. THINGS. and will focus on what's actually going to move the needle in your business. We only have so much time in the day or week. Making sure we're not wasting it is uber important. You want to also have a personal life, right?

To get started, I recommend these three steps:

Step 1: Start with some self-reflection. You want to look at your strengths, aptitudes, and interests first. The key is consistency. What will you be able to be consistent with?

The best way to explain this is with an example.

When I first started coaching other coaches, I had a client who had big plans to start a blog. She would create a plan to write 5-10 blog posts before our next session. Then, she'd show up to our session without one piece of content written. After a couple of weeks of this, we had to take a look at the underlying reason why this was happening. Guess what we found.

She hates to write. Absolutely hates it. Not only does she find no joy in it, it sucks the life out of her. Clearly, we needed to find something else for her because no matter how effective having a blog is, if you don't actually write the blog posts, you can't connect with your audience.

Luckily, we did find what works for her. At the time, Facebook Lives were super popular and she was already in the practice of doing them for her Facebook friends whenever she felt inspired. So, we made it part of her marketing plan. Then all she had to do was write a quick email to her email list letting them know when she was going to go live, or send a link to the recording. Which was something she felt she could handle easily.

Step 2: Choose Your Content Marketing. Based on your self-reflection, what content marketing strategy makes the most sense for you -- blogging, videos, or podcasting?

Step 3: Choose Your Traffic Strategy. Once you've got your content strategy down, you need to figure out how you'll get people to actually consume your content. Again, you're looking for that sweet spot of where your peeps are hanging out and what you'll be able to be consistent with.

In step 7, you decided on which form of content marketing you would focus on--blogging, videos, or podcasting.

Now it's time to create your first content.

The good news is that you can use your coaching framework as a guide.

To show you what I mean, let's use my own coaching framework as an example, since you should be pretty familiar with it by now.

On my website, I have four main categories that the majority of my articles fall within. First, the three main categories we're focused on in this article:

1 - Coach: articles about the transformation/results, ideal clients, market research, coaching framework, or signature offers.

2 - Convert: articles about the sales process such as enrollment conversations, what to include on a website, freebie giveaways, and sales funnels

3 - Connect: articles focused on traffic, content marketing, and other ways to market your coaching business

I also have a "Psychology & Productivity" category because these two areas are relevant to my audience. (I haven't met a coach yet who couldn't use help in the areas of mindset, confidence, time management, and better systems).

One of the things I recommend to clients who've never done content marketing before, is to give themselves some cushion.

Once you decide how often you're going to publish your content, you want to create enough content for a month before you ever hit publish. Being a month ahead of the game will allow you to make the process more enjoyable. It can be pretty stressful trying to come up with content the day you're supposed to hit publish.

Some of the major benefits to getting those first pieces of content out the door are mindset related.

Learning by Doing. Your first pieces of content will be a learning experience. You'll get to understand what goes into the process, what works, what doesn't, and how to improve for next time. Never think that your first pieces of content have to be perfect. And don't let their imperfection stop you from hitting the publish button.

Building Confidence. Getting the first pieces out of your head and into the world can be a big confidence booster. It can be the push you need to start producing content more regularly. It took me a long time to publish my first piece of content. I was afraid of what people would say, or even worse, getting haters. Out of the thousands of emails and hundreds of articles I've written, I've only gotten three "hater" emails. And guess what? I survived all three. That's because I've gotten hundreds of responses from people who have let me know how much they appreciated what I wrote. Don't let the idea of haters stop you from helping the people who need your wisdom.

Being of Service and Providing Value. Good content provides tremendous value to your ideal audience--helping them solve problems, answer their questions, or even entertain them a bit.

To get started, I recommend these three steps:

Step 1: Ideate. Look at commonly asked questions in coaching forums and Facebook groups, read articles related to your niche, and keep on top of trending articles in your topic areas. Keep a list of ideas. I like to have a separate working session every week just for the ideation process. I can usually come up with 5-10 topic ideas during these sessions. Then, when you get to the next step, you never have to start from a blank screen. Trust me, that is no fun.

Step 2: Write/create a first draft. This can be anything from jotting down a rough outline for a podcast or video to writing your first draft of a blog post. The idea here is to get your first thoughts down knowing that it won't be perfect. You just want to get the ideas out of your head so you can work with them later.

Step 3: Review and edit. In a separate session (I recommend at least a day later), review your content for clarity, coherence, and accuracy. It's often helpful to read it out loud to see how it flows. If you're anything like me, your first draft will be a bit wordy. A good rule of thumb is to cut out about 20%.

In step 7, you decided on what your content and traffic plan was going to be moving forward based on your strengths, interests, and target market. In step 8, you created your first content, giving yourself a months cushion so you could create content with ease.

Now, in step 9: Build Your Marketing Machine, you're going to put together your weekly marketing workflow and practices to make sure that you can market your business consistently--week in and week out.

I made the mistake early on in my business of building my email list to 1500 and then ignoring it for months at a time. When I did email, I would got a ton of unsubscribes because people forgot who I was. That is NOT a great way to grow a business. Luckily, I learned my lesson and have been consistent ever since.

Learn from my mistakes and build a marketing workflow that allows you to publish content and stay top of mind every week.

There are plenty of online apps to make this job easier for you (thus the name "Marketing Machine").

Builds Trust with Your Audience. If your audience knows that you publish content every Tuesday for example, they begin to see you (even if it's subconsciously) as someone who is reliable and dependable.

Establishes Authority. Regularly publishing content on pertinent topics within your niche enhances your reputation and credibility in the industry.

Predictable Growth. Consistent content generation can lead to predictable growth in terms of website traffic, email list subscribers, and enrollment call opportunities.

To get started, I recommend these three steps:

Step 1: Create a trusted content creation system. A trusted content creation system includes the following...

Step 3: Create a Content Creation Playbook. Establish and write down a step-by-step process for creating content. This can be in the form of a simple checklist or something more robust like an SOP document. The goal is to have a process you can follow with each piece of content so you don't forget any steps. These might include topic brainstorming, research, drafting, editing, graphic design, and scheduling.

So, there you have it, my friend. The world of life coaching is an extraordinary one. You've been given the key steps to embarking on the exciting journey of starting a life coaching business on the right foot. Remember, it’s not just about creating a successful business— it’s about touching and improving lives. You now have the power to help others reach their goals. Take a deep breath and take the leap. Your future clients are waiting for you.