7 Reasons Coaches Can’t Make a Living Online
This article is specifically written for my readers who call themselves life coaches or business coaches. It’s about the 7 major mistakes I see coaches making online.
For those of you who aren’t coaches, I want you to consider how you can add coaching as another income stream in your overall business model.
The majority of coaches I meet are awesome people…with great background stories, enthusiasm, and skills. They love working with and helping their clients. Their coaching produces real results for their client. Yet their income seems to hit a ceiling. They can’t hit their breakthrough. It seems like they’re on a hamster wheel constantly running in circles without ever getting ahead.
Go through each of these and really examine your practice to see if each element is holding you back. In every coach I’ve consulted with at LEAST 2 of these roadblocks were holding them back. I expect the same is true for you if you aren’t at the six figure level at least.
Road Block #1: You Are a Generalist
Too many coaches try to be a jack of all trades. If you were to ask them what they could help you with, they would answer anything and everything. Ask them who their customer is. Their response…everyone. Here’s a key principle online. You can’t reach “everyone.” That’s too expensive.
It’s much easier to choose an easy to target group of people you can help achieve specific results. For example, do you help female executives improve their love life? Or maybe you’re a Christian life coach targeting those who want to improve their spiritual life? Or perhaps you’re a business coach that only works with dentists?
Let’s see just how specific we can become. A lot of business coaches work with any type of business. You can become even more specific than that. For example, maybe you work only with solopreneurs. Or you become more specific and you only work with real estate agents. Or perhaps your target market is real estate agents who want to become million dollar producers while generating leads from the Internet.
Your customers aren’t sitting at home thinking, “I sure need a coach.” They’re thinking about specific results they want to achieve. They want a better job. Their business needs to earn more money. They want to lose weight. They want a better family life. They want to figure out their perfect career.
Road Block #2: You’ve Never Defined Your System
What exactly do you have people accomplish? What is it you do for them? Results like, “You feel better” or “increase your happiness” are a tough sale because you don’t actually “see” them accomplished. You can’t measure these results. Therefore it’s tough to justify the fees you charge.
Once you’ve figured out the end result you’re going after, now you need to work backwards from that to figure out the steps required to reach that goal. You’re seeing that model throughout this course. We discuss the end result and then we start working through the required steps. The SAME model can be followed with your one-on-one coaching clients. Where are they at now? What is the end result (or goals) they’ve already stated? What steps do you need to help them work through to reach those goals?
Your goal is to figure out the required steps to reach the end goal. It might be 5 steps you take clients through. Or possibly you have a 12 step program (think about how AA and other well known “coaching” groups have systematized their program). Here’s a quick tip. Having this organized system will not only make your coaching much easier for people to understand and join, it will also be much easier for you to deliver. You’re not rethinking the strategy each time. You’re simply applying what has already proven itself to work to each new client’s circumstances and lifestyle.
Road Block #3: Limited to Hour Based Income Only
Here’s a biggie. When I say coaching to many people, they immediately think one-on-one coaching in person or over the phone. Sessions must be held every week or at least 3 times a month. That’s what coaching is to them. Anything else must be something other than coaching. Wake up! The first coaching program I ever ran was a group based program with 20 clients over the phone. We met once a month over the phone in a group teleconference call.
Let’s look at this from the view of your income. Let’s say that you currently only follow the one-on-one coaching model. You also don’t want to work more than 30 hours total in a week. Since you have to take care of your business along with doing marketing, this means you’d not be billing for more than 15 to 20 hours at most (15 hours is more likely with all the other aspects of running your business). If you earned $100 an hour, that means your income would be $1,500 per week GROSS if all your time was booked.
Remember any advertising, website hosting, and outsourcing would have to come out of this money. Let’s take out at least 4 weeks of vacation a year. Your maximum gross income would be $72,000. Let’s be very conservative in our expenses and say you only spent 25% of your income on marketing and other expenses. This leaves you with $54,000 before taxes.
That’s an OK income that beats many coaches, but it’s not even a liveable income in many cities of the US. To increase it means you have to work more hours (doesn’t fit the lifestyle we want), increase your rates (always a possibility but you have to decide if its right for your market), or leverage our time for additional income.
Instead of only working one-on-one with clients, what if you put together a 10 person coaching group? You could actually drop your rates (we’ll use the example of $50 an hour now). With each person paying $50 per hour, and 10 on the call, you’re earning $500 per hour. Your group meets twice per month so this group is worth $1,000 a month while only taking 2 hours of your time. Set up a couple of these groups and now you’ve greatly increased your monthly income while still having more than enough time for all your individual clients.
As you market your practice online you’ll discover there are people out there who desperately NEED your services, but they simply can’t afford to pay your rates (even if you are this low cost). They need another solution. The quickest and easiest solution to put together is have someone interview you about how you help clients achieve such amazing results (you do produce amazing results for your clients, don’t you)? This interview can then be sold as a downloadable mp3 audio or as a CD.
Road Block #4: Not Generating Enough Leads
Not every lead will say, “Yes. ” In fact, on the internet you’re doing well if you can “sell” 1% to 10% of your leads into some type of offer. In person of course you can generate better numbers than this, but most of the coaches I’ve worked with want to create a “lifestyle” business where the majority of their leads are eventually being produced automatically for them online.
In addition you often find you have to “warm” people up to buying from you online. For example, let’s say the initial fee for working with you is $495. You’ll find very few people will show up at your website and click an order button for that service unless you provide them a lot more information first (such as a free initial call OR a teleconference call). And if you simply put your phone number there telling people to call you, only a small percentage of visitors would even do that (like 1% to 5% depending on how “warmed” up they were to what you’re offering).
What to do? What I’ve proven to work is some type of online freebie you give them immediately if they sign up for your email list. Put it behind a “squeeze page.” This is a simple web page where you’re asking people to subscribe to receive your freebie. For example, check out http://www.theterrydean.com. When you go to that page you can either subscribe or leave. Yes, there are a few links to required website elements such as a privacy policy at the bottom, but the whole emphasis is getting people to give me their email address. Then you can follow up on them with content to prove your value to them before they make a purchase.
Road Block #5: Limited Selling Skills
For some coaches I just said a dirty word, “selling.” The word carries a bad connotation. They might have even been told by previous instructors they don’t have to do any selling. You have to break this mindset. Selling isn’t bad. No money exchanges hands until something is sold. If I go to the grocery store, they have sold me my groceries. If there wasn’t someone selling groceries in my area, I’d be in a horrible situation!
What you’re really reacting poorly to are the tricks and deceit some salespeople have used. They might have lied to you about the product. Or they used “hard sale” approaches that made you feel totally uncomfortable. It’s the “pressure” you’re reacting to instead of the selling itself. You don’t have to become that kind of “salesperson” but you will have to learn how to authentically sell your services to your audience.
Even if you want people to sign up for your freebie by email, you’re still going to have to “sell” them on this. Ten years ago you could have just put up a page that said, sign up for my free email newsletter. Not true today. If they’re going to exchange something of great value (their private email address and time), you’re going to give them something of even greater value. This means they have to be “sold” on signing up for your list by telling them what your freebie will do for them. How does it benefit them?
Road Block #6: Not Recognizing your True Value
What is the true value of what you offer? Without fail almost every business owner and coach offers their services at too LOW of a price starting out. I know. I understand. You want to get clients and you feel that a low price is the way to bring in clients, but here is what most people are missing. If you charge Dollar Store prices, you only end up with Dollar Store clients.
Let me ask you this. Let’s say you visited two websites of Internet business coaches. The first one charges $50 an hour and says they can get back with you within hours. The second one charges $500 an hour and you have to register for time to speak with them. Which one do you think is better at marketing their own internet business? Which one is more successful?
If you’re on a really tight budget you might say that you couldn’t afford the more expensive guy, so you have to go with the $50 person for now. But even look at that kind of statement. You’d go with the lower cost for now until you get a little results and can afford the more expensive service. In your mind, you immediately see the more expensive service as better.
If you’re worth more, charge more! I can just hear the complaints from a few readers, “But if I charge more, some of my potential clients may not be able to afford my services.” That’s right. They may not be able to afford your one-on-one services, but that is only ONE way of offering coaching. They can afford your group program or they can afford the ebook your offer.
Road Block #7: Doing It All Yourself
Obviously being a coach is a perfect solopreneur profession. You don’t have to hire any staff to start this business. You can start with a minimum amount of investment as well. But it’s a major mistake to believe you have to do it all yourself. While I don’t have any employees in my business, I outsource quite a bit of work.
There are two types of work you outsource in a business (and coaching is a business). The first type of outsourced work is specialized work. For example, you might not know how to design a website. You could of course buy software and spend the next month learning this, or you could outsource your website design to a professional. The same goes for accounting. You can hire an accountant or you can spend all the time required to learn this.
When you actually count up how much it costs you to learn that subject you’ll find you’re much better off hiring someone else to do the job. Even if you’re pricing your services at only $50 an hour, if it takes you 40 hours to learn how to put up a basic squeeze page, you’ve just invested $2,000. You could have probably had it done for $300 or less.
The second type of work you want to outsource are repetitive tasks. For example, writing regular articles to submit to article directories or customer support for your downloadable ebook. There are writers out there you can hire for a low cost per article who will write articles on your subject and submit them. You will find that your ebook customer support issues are often centered around few basic questions such as people losing their download, not being able to open it, or even forgetting what they bought. Once you’ve answered all these questions you can hire someone else to take care of the customer support.
As soon as you can afford it (your business is producing more than the minimum you need to survive), get yourself a virtual assistant. Depending on who you get to be your VA, you’ll find they can do a lot of the basic tasks (like editing your site or writing articles) to designing graphics…or even managing your affiliate program eventually.
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Comments
13 Responses to “7 Reasons Coaches Can’t Make a Living Online”
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I would add two more to the list …
Many of the clients (coaches) that I work with have figured out how to get clients off line but when they move on line they
>>>don’t make time to understanding how business is generated through online marketing.
They put up a website and maybe load it with a few articles. Then they sit back and wait. When nothing happens they are frustrated.
One of the things that I learned from you Terry, is that there are some tools and tasks for connecting with your marketplace regularly.
On the recent interview that we did on the Get More Business Show you mentioned creating “intersections” for doing business. I find that the coaches I work with
>>>don’t create enough “intersections” with tool available on the Internet – tools such as blog posts, articles, audio & video.
Online marketing works best when you educate yourself on the tools available online and their power; and you create a daily schedule of actively creating “business generating intersections”.
Great post. I think I want explore a couple of these points more.
Melody
If more of the coaches I know will heed these pointers, I think they would clarify a lot for themselves, which then results in being clearer with prospects.
Not defining the niche is probably the mistake I see most often, and being VERY fuzzy on the benefits someone can expect.
I like the 12-step approach you advocate. When I hire coaches, I want real specifics. I want to know for sure they can take me where I need to go next.
Also I want to hear or read very specific testimonials on their website to see if this person is addressing the exact issues I need help with.
Becki
Terry,
You’re absolutely right on with this article. And a couple of GREAT additions by Melody.
“What kind?” or “So what?” are two good questions to ask yourself as a business coach of whatever type.
I am a _______________ coach. What kind?
I can do ______________ for your business. So what?
Terry, Like you, I dont want to put myself at a level of coach or teacher if I cant make it work for me, even though I had much, much training and reading, it should be working better.
At what point can/should one consider themself good enough to attach a label of coach/teacher/qualified, or do you only consider sharing what youve learned as good enough?
Thanks Sir
Abe
this is a great article, after 20 years of coaching people, I see them move on to bigger and better things, I just returned a week ago from a time with some of the people I coached for years to do own their own business.
they are doing so well, and bringing in millions of dollars in their business, even during the bad turn in the economy,
But, I did not create a system to get them to need my service in their best of times. I am doing my best to create a system of my own using the background of helping these sucessful entrepeneurs. I did it before, I can do it again, but this time it will be with a system of my own that I can get residual benefits.
thank you for the article.
Although I’m not a coach (I run a membership), your article is really helpful. I never really thought about having an objective for my members, but I figured that out the other day, and I’ll reword everything in a way that helps my members.
Thanks for the advice. The application is much broader than you can imagine. Jinger Jarrett
While this entire post was excellent (as is all your advice, Terry), a few words really stood out for me: In #5 — “….what your freebie will do for them. How does it benefit them?”
After reading this, I realized an error I’ve been making. My freebie announcement on my optin box says: FREE “7 Tips for Creating a Call-to-Action Website” This is good but I haven’t stated the benefit of getting this free report.
I’m going to change the wording to: FREE “7 Tips for Creating a Call-to-Action Website” to Sell More Books — now this says what the benefit is.
Thanks as always for your advice,
Phyllis Zimbler Miller
Thank you everyone for your comments.
Melody: Some great additions.
Abe: You don’t have to be successful at “everything” to be a coach. I would go for success in one specific area (even if it’s only one element of the overall picture). So in other words, in the internet marketing field, maybe you’re doing well at article creation (you could coach others on that) even if you’re not good at PPC, copywriting, etc. You just become more specialized in what you can present yourself as good at and success at right now.
Other good advice that I read somewhere is to have 2 levels of distinction. If being an expert on PPC, for example, separates you from the crowd then also have something that distinguishes you from among all the PPC experts.
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Hey Terry, I hope this email gets to you. For the past 6 months I have been researching all the big names in marketing. I resonate with yours a lot. The way you write reflects the kind of person you really are.
To the point: I have written a couple of books, I have held many seminars, lectures, work shops, etc. I have been on tv, radio (both internet and mainstream media, as well as newspaper articles .My focus is to bring all this to the web. I have started tweaking the website to appear more pleasing.
I would love to talk via email or by phone. I know your time is valuable, so I will keep this short. I would appreciate much if you could glance at my website, look at the info I present and teach, and share with me the best approach to getting all this to the email masses.
My focus is to eliminate all the b.s. and just to what will work optimally.
Your loyal reader
Chares. The Soul Mechanic
Hi Charles,
Thank you for contacting me. Currently my coaching is booked up (has been for a while as when I do get someone who cancels there are people immediately waiting to take that space). I’m planning to do a group type program which WOULD include me giving personalized advice on specific subjects, but I do not have a time frame for when that will be available.
I just thought that coaching and mentors are cool creatures. They guide people and help them grow, both business and character-wise. But I agree with you, it can truly have some pitfalls though.