How to make $80,000 your first year as a coach
If you’ve been thinking about becoming a life coach, a career coach, a health coach, or a business coach. Here’s my 1 piece of advice: DO IT NOW.
But I know why you’re doing research or wondering if it’s possible to make money once you start this new venture.
I can confidently tell you YES you can make $80,000 your very first year.
Even if you:
don’t have a big audience
don’t have “enough” certifications
worry you don’t have “enough” experience
feel like you’re not ready yet (you just need a little bit more time..)
I promise! I’m going to show you step by step how you can create a substantial amount of income with a very simple, easy to do business model, no matter what stage you’re at.
Let’s get into this simple business model for your first year of becoming a coach.
This is the exact step by step process I used to make $80,000 my first year as a brand new money coach.
Again this will apply to your business, if you’re becoming a health coach, career coach, executive coach, or business coach.
Step #1: Create a high end offer
Ummm what?
Shannon I can’t create a high end offer.. I don’t have testimonials or results or a lot of followers.
Grab and edit your own worksheet HERE
Who would pay money to listen to me?
Please don’t listen to those thoughts any longer.
You are experienced, you are smart, you are enough, I am positive you have done amazing things in life.
People want to work with you!
For this high end offer, you’re going to create a package around $2,0000.
Here’s how you’re going to put this package together RIGHT NOW:
Make your package anywhere from 3-12 months
(My clients personally thrived in the 4 month mark)
How are you going to meet with the client or how are you going to support the client?
(For example: I meet with clients on Zoom and support them in between our calls on Voxer)
When are you going to have sessions with them?
(Weekly, bi-weekly? Most coaches will offer bi-weekly Zoom sessions with some type of support in between the sessions. Sometimes that support is Facebook messenger, Email, or Voxer).
YOUR PROCESS. This is really the meat of the package and I’m going to break that down below:
Crafting your Process + Package:
Your process is going to be how you’re going to take your clients from point A to point B.
This is a huge part of crafting your offer and making money that a lot of coaches skip over.
It’s what:
makes your coaching set apart from others,
it’s what will actually help you clients, and
it’s the #1 thing that will give you confidence about selling this package and getting clients results.
Your process is what you did that took you from point A to point B.
Pick a time in your life when you did that for yourself (start a business, make more money, lose weight, have better relationships, etc)
Let’s go back to that point A:
Point A: Pick a place or a time in your life when you wanted to do something and you were struggling or frustrated
Tell me how you felt
Tell me what other people did that annoyed you?
When you went to sleep at night, what were you thinking?
When you woke up in the morning what was your first thought?
What were you worried about if you were to change your situation?
Best thing here to really understand your client and your process is to give SPECIFIC examples about where you were on your journey.
For example: Point A for a health coach:
Mid 30’s new mom that wants to lose the last 20 pounds post partum. When she wakes up in the morning she thinks about how she can have any time to herself that day with the new baby. She gets out of the shower and puts on leggings because they’re the only things that fit her now. She scrolls Facebook and see’s her friends who are already back to their pre-baby weight or who are in amazing shape because they didn’t have kids. Without time to herself she feels like she’ll never get back to pre-baby weight and she’ll be trapped in leggings hells forever.
Point B: It’s where you are today.
How do you feel?
What is different than when you were at point A?
What’s different about going to the grocery store or the park or scrolling your Facebook feed? Than when you were at point A.
Tell me why what other people doesn’t annoy you? Don’t annoy you anymore.
Celebrate + Reflect on where your life is.
When you go to sleep at night what are you thinking?
When you wake up in the morning what are you thinking?
How do you feel about your body, relationships, or money?
Put this all together and this is called YOUR PROCESS:
Break this down into a 3-4 step process (what took you from point a to point b in 3-4 steps)
What do people need to do to get from point a to point b?
What do people need to realize or overcome?
What do people need to change to get from point a to point b?
Then write them down up here and feel free to go deeper.
Like what does step 1 look like? Are you asking them questions? Are you teaching them? What are you teaching them? Are you consulting?
That’s it! You have your $2,000+ package.
Step #2: Work on your money mindset
Selling things for money?
Feel really awkward asking people for money for your work?
Know you’re undercharging but fear no one will pay your new prices?
Think no one will pay that much money to work with you?
You are now in the realm of selling your work for money.
The problem is: most people feel SUPER AWKWARD ASKING FOR MONEY.
That problem is rooted in your money mindset.
Your money mindset dictates everything you feel around money.
It dictates everything you believe about money, things like:
rich people are dicks
rich people are douchebags
or maybe more personal beliefs like:
Grab and edit your own worksheet HERE
I’ll always be poor
I’m terrible with money
I can never save money!
You might notice some things pop up as I walked you through the first step of creating your package, things like:
I’ll never sell a package this expensive
no one in my following can buy this!
what if people give me their money and they don’t get results!?
Those are totally normal, a majority of people have these thoughts when they attempt to put a high end price on their work.
But the biggest thing here: is to work on those thoughts, reprogram new one’s, and build new beliefs around money.
Your money pattern programming is what you have been conditioned to believe, think, and feel about money.
You are programmed from where you grow up, how much a job pays you, what your parents made or thought or felt about money, etc.
But in order to create a NEW pattern with money.. One that gets us to these crazy ridiculous goals we have.. And also making that money by sitting on our butts at home just doing what we love, (which throws us for a loop too), we are going to have to ACKNOWLEDGE our memories, our wounds, our thoughts, and our patterns.
Here’s an example of a couple questions I want you to ask yourself, this will really shed some light on what your current money mindset is:
Not having the money or clients I want allows me to.....
(I know you’re thinking.. Umm what? It allows me to be.. Poor? But think about, living in this place probably does allow for things that you like. Maybe it allows you to watch more TV, maybe you think if you get too many clients you’ll take time away from your family, etc.)
To be rich I have to..
The only way I can have a lot of money is
It would be easier to not book A LOT OF clients because
Your brain is going to need a couple minutes to process theses questions and at first you may not have answers, that’s totally okay!
It’s challenging your brain to think in a different way and to become aware of what your unconscious thoughts are around money.
If you put as much attention into your money mindset as you do into making your website pretty, you will make money faster, easier, and less stressful.
If you thought answering these questions was fun, grab this free 44 page journal with a lot more of those.
In this 44 page journaling book learn how to uncover money blocks, beliefs, or habits that are stopping you from making bank in your business + life
Discover what beliefs you have about money that are holding you back.
Grab the questions that improved my income by $13K in 2 months
Learn what is the aligned action for you to go next level
Break through your limiting beliefs around why you're not making the BANK you want
Learn how I raised my prices by $8K and STILL booked clients
Step #3: Create a short term and long term content strategy
Let’s build a sustainable coaching business, one that will get you to $160,000 next year.
That means creating content that will get people to you even when you’re not on your computer. Because I’m sure at some point in your life you would like to take a vacation!
When I had my $80,000 year as a coach I was creating a lot of content for Facebook and I got all of my clients from there. But once I entered my first trimester of pregnancy and spent most of my time with my head in my toliet, I realized that my business was built on a platform that required me or an assistant to always be creating new content.
I really didn’t want to do that anymore nor did I want to be doing that with a newborn!
Let’s break down what is really good content:
it requires time and effort ( I used to slap together Facebook posts and throw them on my blog…that’s not a good blog post!)
it gets in front of people who need it now (people are seeing it in their feed now)
your content needs to collect email addresses (yes! ask people to get on your list!)
that will get in front of people who need it in a year from now (this is long term content)
The biggest lesson here is to not do millions of content poorly.
Pick 2 and only build on them, even 2 might feel like over kill but it’s important to have one that’s short term and one’s that’s long term.
Here’s your options for creating content:
SHORT TERM CONTENT PLATFORMS:
Facebook
Instagram
TikTok
Short term marketing is any social media platform that requires you to crank out new content in order for people to see it.
Think about when you create content for Instagram, in order for people to stay in touch and for you to be relevant in their lives, you have to always be creating new content, same with Facebook.
I focused a lot of my efforts on Facebook and while my group brought me in great results, I realized once I stopped creating new stuff, people would stop seeing my offers or marketing. Since then I’ve shifted my focus to content that will bring me traffic in the long run.
Short term content platforms are great for getting clients fast and connecting with people, which are all necessarily for a healthy coaching business but it’s important to put as much effort to long term marketing as well.
LONG TERM CONTENT PLATFORMS:
Pinterest
YouTube
Blogging
Long term content is any platform where people can search for answers to their questions and come across your content.
Whether you created that blog post today or 2 years ago, if your content answers this question that people are searching for, they’re going to push your content to them.
I created a really good Youtube video about 4 years ago when I was teaching about Etsy (this is where my first business was started) and I offered a free 7 day course with the video. At the end of the 7 day course I pitch a course on Etsy and I still make money from it every month.
I would even encourage you to focus on long term content first and then break down the in depth content that you create for these platforms and share it to your short term content platforms.
For example: If you write a really in depth blog post, like this one you see here. You can take pieces of it and share it to Facebook or Instagram.
The biggest lesson here: pick 1 short term and pick 1 long term, don’t try to DO EVERY PLATFORM.
It’s really important to put in a consistent effort that isn’t half assed.
Step #4: Create 1-2 more offers
Here’s why I push for filling high end coaching packages first:
Let’s imagine after creating your content strategy, you get about 100 people on your email list.
In the coaching industry there are standard conversion rates:
1% for any offer above $997
2% for any offer between ($500-$997)
3% for any offer below $500
There’s lots of different factors in order to hit these rates but this is the average and I’ve seen it this way with my audience too.
Now if you sell a high end coaching package for $2,000 let’s break down the math:
1% of 100 = 1
That means you’ll sell one $2,000 package and now let’s imagine you put this client on a 4 month payment plan and charged $200 extra for the payment plan:
$2,200 / 4 months = $550 a month for the next 4 months
That means for the next 4 months you’ll have $550 coming in.
What’s great about this, is it allows for you to have a baseline of consistent income. This means you can keep building your list and sell another package next month.
That will bring you to $1,100 and you can keep signing clients and building on that.
BUT a 1:1 offer is not SCALE-ABLE, which means you can’t serve thousands of people at once, but don’t worry you’ll get there some day.
This is why I highly encourage you to play around with a middle and low end offer.
Here’s what I want to advise you to do:
Don’t try to move on to the middle offer or introductory offer when your audience numbers are still low.
It takes an audience to fill a group program
Working with clients 1:1 will give you more data and information about your process, how it works, and what tweaks you need to make as you work with more clients
Working with clients 1:1 also gives you testimonials that you can use to fill these other offers
Don’t try to create and fill these offers until you have about 500 people on your email list minimum
When you’re ready to start creating new offers this is a great model to look at to scale your business. Your middle and introductory offer can look like whatever way you want to put it together! There’s no right or wrong way to do this, I promise!
It’s essentially up to you to what you want your next offers to look like, if you want to create a course or a boot camp. If you want to host it on Zoom or Slack or Voxer, trust me there’s no wrong way to deliver your program.
That’s it! You have a $2,000+ Package! How freaking easy was that?
Now the hardest part…
SELLING THE PACKAGE. Ugh the fear, the worry, and maybe even the thoughts of worrying what others are thinking about you:
“Who do they think they are!? Selling $2,000 packages for stuff they could get for free?!”
Here’s the worst part about selling high end packages:
WE ARE OUR OWN WORST ENEMY!
That means we:
procrastinate,
we aren’t consistent with selling it,
we lack the belief that we could sell the package, and
we worry what others will think.
I want to make this SUPER easy for you, I’m going to give you 2 free amazing resources:
Here’s a financial blueprint on how to make $10K months as a coach with a small audience:
In this training you will receive:
a 15 minute video on how to calculate what price your package should be
how many people you need in your audience to sell your first package
your worksheet comes with your own profit calculator (plug your own numbers!)
Here’s a video training + PDF on how to create content that attracts $10,000 coaches.
This is my most in depth free content!
It comes with 4 videos where I walk you through:
how to wrist posts that get likes and comments
how to write posts that set you up as a leader and influencer in your community
how to write posts that attract clients that pay $10K+ for coaching
It’s simple, easy, and digestible, these are posts that you can start writing TODAY.
