You’ve heard that coaching is a great way to help people while earning a decent income, and you think you have the chops for it. But you’re not sure how to start a coaching business from scratch.
Then it’s a good thing you’re reading this article. Here, we’ll share actionable steps that will help you build a thriving coaching business and bring your dreams to life. Some of the things you’ll learn include:
- How to choose a coaching niche
- How to price your coaching program
- Marketing tips and tricks
- And how to comply with legal requirements
Skip ahead:
- What is coaching?
- What do you need to become a coach?
- Why should you want to be a coach?
- Eight steps for building a successful coaching business
- Growing your coaching business
- How to start a coaching business from scratch FAQs
What is coaching?
We’ll start by explaining what coaching is all about so everyone’s on the same page.
Coaching means providing personalized guidance to help someone (or a group of people) achieve specific professional or personal goals. It’s about showing them the ropes based on your knowledge and experiences so they can avoid common mistakes and reach their goals faster.
Think of a coach as a personal trainer at the gym. The trainer sets fitness goals, designs a unique workout plan, shows you how to perform exercises correctly, and motivates you to push through tough workouts. While you do the actual work, the trainer provides the expertise, encouragement, and accountability to help you achieve your fitness goals.
Types of coaching/coaches
You’re spoiled for choice when it comes to becoming a coach. Here are a few options you can explore.
| Focus | Clients | |
| Life Coaching | Personal growth, life balance, goal setting, overcoming obstacles | Individuals seeking to enhance overall life satisfaction |
| Executive Coaching | Leadership development, strategic thinking, performance improvement | Executives, leaders, high-potential employees |
| Career Coaching | Career development, job search strategies, interview preparation | Job seekers, career changers, professionals aiming for advancement |
| Business Coaching | Business growth, entrepreneurship, management skills, operational efficiency | Entrepreneurs, business owners, managers |
| Health and Wellness Coaching | Lifestyle changes, nutrition, fitness, stress management, overall well-being | Individuals seeking to improve physical and mental health |
| Financial Coaching | Financial planning, budgeting, debt management, wealth building | Individuals and families aiming for financial stability and growth |
| Performance Coaching | Enhancing performance in sports, music, arts, or specific skills | Athletes, performers, and professionals aiming to excel |
| Mindfulness Coaching | Developing mindfulness practices, stress reduction, enhancing mental clarity | Individuals seeking to incorporate mindfulness into daily lives |
| Relationship Coaching | Improving personal/professional relationships, communication, conflict resolution | Couples, families, and individuals looking to enhance interpersonal relationships |
| Spiritual Coaching | Spiritual growth, finding purpose, aligning life with beliefs and values | Individuals seeking deeper spiritual understanding and fulfillment |
Related: How to design a coaching business plan model
What’s the difference between coaching and mentoring?
“If I’m providing personalized guidance, doesn’t that make me their mentor?” Not exactly. While coaching and mentoring overlap to some degree, they play different roles in improving a person’s life.
The major difference between coaching and mentoring is the timeline. Coaches help you achieve a specific goal within a well-defined timeframe — usually a shorter period, like a few weeks or months. Mentoring, on the other hand, is a long-term relationship that can span several years or decades. A mentor provides ongoing support for a particular aspect of your life, such as career or marriage.
Here’s a table showing the key differences between these two skills.
| Coaching | Mentoring | |
| Timeline | Short-term | Long-term |
| Focus | Specific goals and skills | Overall development and guidance in one or more aspects of your life |
| Approach | Structured sessions, techniques, and feedback | Sharing experiences, giving advice, and acting as a role model. |
| Relationship | Professional and personal, but with clear objectives and timelines. | Personal and often informal, usually longer-term. |
| Examples/use cases | If you’re working towards a specific revenue goal, a coach can guide you to develop a premium product offering that helps you achieve your target. | If you are planning to switch careers and enter a new industry, a mentor who has successfully made a similar transition can offer insights, share lessons learned, and guide you through the process of building a new professional network. |
What do you need to become a coach?
Coaching is a great responsibility. You have people depending on you to achieve their goals and transform their lives. So, you need to be sure you’re cut out for it from day one.
A good coach checks the following boxes:
- Experience
Experience means that you’re knowledgeable in the specific area or subject you want to offer coaching services. Maybe you worked in that industry for a few years, or you’ve acquired professional certification showing that you’re an expert in that field.
This is especially important if you want to offer Your Money Your Life (YMYL) coaching services, like becoming a financial or legal coach, as these niches significantly impact a person’s financial status, health, safety, or overall well-being. You can’t afford to wing things.
Having verifiable experience gives you credibility, making it easier to attract the right audience.
Track record
Picture this: You’re looking for a coach, and you come across two people who might fit. The first one has relevant experience and certification but no student testimonials. The second one, on the other hand, has the right experiences plus positive feedback from past students. They even let you schedule a conversation with a past student and ask questions directly. Which coach are you likely to choose?
If you’re like us, then the second coach is a no-brainer. Why? Because there’s proof that they’ve helped people like you in the past. In other words, you can trust them to a large extent.
So how do you build a track record as a coaching newbie? Good question! One way is to offer free coaching services in exchange for a testimonial. You can also share free coaching advice on social media or via podcasts and guest blog posts to build trust with your target market.
Learn more: How to use blogging to build an audience and sell
Empathy
The difference between working with a coach and watching a YouTube video for advice is personalization. And there’s no personalization without empathy.
Empathy lets you put yourself in your client’s shoes to understand their challenges better. That way, you can connect with them better and provide meaningful support tailored to their unique situation.
Remember, no two coaching clients are the same. Approaching each case with empathy enables you to asses each client objectively, grasp the full scope of their circumstances and offer tailored support.
Why should you want to be a coach?
If you meet the requirements in the previous section but are still having jitters about setting up a coaching business, allow us to convince you further. Here are four reasons to be a coach as a digital creator.
Coaching is lucrative
In 2023, the average hourly rate for a life coach was $244 — 9% higher than the figure from 2019. This tells you two things: coaches are making bank, and you’re likely to earn more money as time passes. What’s not to love?
There’s a huge demand for coaches
The coaching industry is worth about $6.25 billion, representing a 17% increase from the previous year. The significant increase in market size indicates a growing demand for coaching services, creating a substantial client base for new coaches to tap into. In other words, people are willing and able to pay for your coaching services; you just need to start.
It’s flexible
You decide when and how to coach. You can do it as a side hustle for extra cash if you have other commitments, such as a full time job. In the same vein, you can scale your coaching business into a full-time career with ideal clients all over the world.
You can also set your own schedule and work from anywhere, especially if you offer online coaching. Offer one-time sessions, take on a handful of clients for a longer period of time, or some other arrangement — it’s totally up to you.
You’ll enjoy personal fulfillment
Coaching allows you to make a significant positive impact on people’s lives by helping them reach their personal and professional goals.
Many coaches find deep satisfaction and meaning in their work, as it involves guiding and supporting others on their journey to success and fulfillment.
Eight steps for building a successful coaching business
“I’m ready to start a coaching business. Now what?” Here’s exactly how to go about it.
Choose your niche
Having a niche allows you to focus on a specific area of expertise, which helps you stand out in a crowded coaching market. Prospective clients aren’t looking for a Swiss Knife coach. They want someone with specialized knowledge who can help them solve a specific problem. Niching down makes it easier for the people you can actually help to find you.
The right niche typically lies at the intersection of three things: experience, interest, and market.
- Experience: Think about your professional background, education, and any unique skills you possess. You need some level of knowledge in the subject to be a good coach.
- Interest: What do you enjoy doing? Think about those activities you can engage in for hours without getting bored.
- Market: Most importantly, are people willing to pay for this? Do some preliminary research to see if others already offer coaching services in these areas. If yes, then it means a market exists, and you can make a living off it as a profitable niche.
For example, here’s the ideal background for a creator who wants to be a fitness coach:
- Experience: Studied dietetics and nutrition
- Hobbies: Enjoys working out; creates fitness programs for friends who want to lose weight
- Market: Worth about $15 billion
Learn more: Expert tips for finding the right niche
Narrow down to a specific pain point
This tracks closely with our earlier point. Choosing a niche is only one piece of the puzzle. To really stand out, you need to hyperfocus on one pain point and present yourself as the expert.
There are two ways to do this:
Look to your own journey
Think about what you struggled with as you tried to achieve a specific goal. That challenge might be a recurring obstacle others are facing and presents a solid coaching opportunity.
For example, when Jo Kelly was taking acting classes, she struggled a lot with stage fright and noticed that it wasn’t an isolated problem. In her words, “Most of my acting colleagues were suffering from the same thing,” she says. “We were all so passionate, but when it came time to act, we were afraid.”
She decided to find a solution to this problem and then became an acting coach — helping other actors overcome stage fright. “When I discovered the solution, I spent the rest of my time really helping actors unlearn their conditioning so that they could show up and be themselves with that childlike energy that they used to have,” explains Jo.
Now, she’s not just any acting coach. Instead, she’s an acting coach who helps upcoming performers overcome stage fright.
Ask your audience
Go straight to the source and ask your target audience what they need help with. The easiest way to do this is to conduct a social media poll or survey to gather direct responses.
You can also administer email surveys or organize focused groups to get one-on-one feedback from your audience. It’s good practice to offer an incentive to encourage and reward participation. For example, you can offer a coaching discount for the first 20 participants.
Choose a coaching delivery method
The coaching delivery method is how you will connect with your audience and make the content available to them. It should be convenient, scalable, and familiar to your audience.
Generally, there are three coaching delivery methods: in-person, online, and hybrid. Most people start out with in-person coaching but eventually transition into online coaching because the latter allows them to scale, deliver more personalized help, and reach more people.
Take hockey coach, Jason Yee, for example. He grew his in-person coaching person business to 300 students a year before switching to online coaching on Thinkific to reach more students and deliver exceptional coaching experience.
“Online courses help me reach more students and allow me to deliver even more in-depth training than I could in person. Students are developing their skills faster by watching the videos before trying the moves on the ice,” Jason explains.
Why use Thinkific for online coaching?
Thinkific offers an all-in-one online coaching platform that allows you to:
- Host live events with Coaching & Webinars: You can schedule and organize group or one-on-one coaching sessions in Thinkific without necessarily having a community. This can be done as a one-off paid session to earn extra income or as part of an existing coaching program to offer more personalized guidance to clients.
- Receive payments easily: Thinkific Payments (TCommerce) makes it really easy to sell and receive payments globally. With the Buy Now, Pay Later feature, you can offer flexible payment plans to boost conversions and connect with more clients.
- Market your online coaching program: Thinkific integrates with various marketing and business tools, including email marketing platforms, payment gateways, and analytics tools, to help you market and sell your online coaching program effectively.
- Track and report on performance: Thinkific provides insights into student progress, course performance, and sales analytics, empowering you to make data-driven decisions to improve your offering and grow your coaching business.
Embed: How to create an online coaching program
Structure your coaching program
You already know what to teach your clients to help them succeed. But, you need to structure your coaching program logically, otherwise you end up with an information dump that’s more confusing than helpful.
To kick things off, break your main topic into categories. For example, let’s say your main topic is: How to improve your written communication. Your subcategories could be:
- How to brainstorm ideas
- How to transform ideas into text
- Grammar rules for written communication
You can break each category further into subtopics and create separate courses for them. Or offer different modules within a central coaching program.
Now that’s out of the way, the next step is to select content formats for supplementary materials to support face-to-face coaching. You can choose text, audio, video, or a mix of these. The most important thing here is to choose a format that:
- Your audience is already familiar with
- Makes it easy for them to understand your coaching content
For example, let’s say you’re a fitness coach for working parents. In addition to one-on-one coaching sessions, you can offer bite-sized video content with quick exercises that they can complete in their limited free time.
Format(s) determines the coaching tools you use for content creation and delivery. Say you’re creating video content. In that case, you’ll need cameras, a good microphone, and video editing software, at the very least.
Learn more: The best equipment and software for online course creation
Set your pricing and coaching packages
Pricing is always a big decision for coaches. You want to charge a price that reflects the value of your coaching program and helps you earn good money. At the same time, you want to make sure that the people who actually need your coaching program can afford it.
We’ve already created an extensive guide for pricing all types of digital products, including coaching programs, so I won’t focus too much on that here. What I’ll do is share some pricing strategies that can help you solve the dilemma.
Offer tiered pricing
Tiered pricing is a pricing model where the price of a product or service is set at different levels depending on the features, functionality, or level of service provided.
For example, you can have three pricing tiers:
Tier 1: Online coaching courses ($250)
Tier 2: Online courses + monthly group coaching call ($350)
Tier 3: Online courses + one-on-one coaching call + exclusive membership community ($500)
Your clients can then choose the pricing structure that best fits their needs and budget. Check out how Jay Acunzo and Melanie Deziel of The Creator Kitchen pull this off.
Allow clients to pay in installments
Consider allowing clients to spread payments over a specific period of time if you’re offering premium coaching. That way, people who can’t afford the one-time payment can still participate in your coaching program.
Freelance coach, Rachel Meltzer, does this really well. Her clients can either pay a one-time $2000 coaching fee or spread the payment over three months ($665/month).
Sell bundles
If you offer multiple coaching products, you can bundle them into a single, discounted package. It’s a great way to help your clients save on cost compared to buying each digital product separately.
Let’s say you have three coaching products costing $3,000 dollars if purchased separately. You can offer a bundle at a 20% discount, making these products more affordable for clients.
Here’s a great example from Melissa Steginus.
Create a coaching website
Even if you’re offering in-person coaching, you’ll still need a website. Think of it as a central hub for your coaching program. People will go there to learn more about you and your offering and, hopefully, sign up for coaching.
A website is key to marketing too. It’s where all your marketing efforts — whether it’s PPC or social media campaigns — converge. Since all these marketing activities drive traffic to the website, your coaching website becomes a key point for tracking and analyzing their effectiveness.
Tools like Google Analytics can help you monitor visitor behavior, source of traffic, conversion rates, and other critical metrics to measure the impact of your marketing efforts.
Thinkific’s site builder lets you create a beautiful, on-brand website for your coaching program. With customizable themes and drag-and-drop pages, you can build a professional website in minutes without writing any code. Thinkific also makes it easy to optimize your website for optimal SEO performance, so you can rank higher in the search results for relevant keywords.
Market your coaching program
Just because you’ve built a valuable coaching program doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy an influx of clients. To make that happen, you need to deliberately put your program in front of people who are willing and able to pay for it.
Here are a few tips for marketing your course:
- Attend industry events, webinars, and networking sessions to connect with potential clients and build partnerships with other professionals in your field.
- Set up a drip marketing campaign to acquire, nurture, and convert leads into clients over a specific period of time.
- Partner with influencers in your niche to get your coaching program in front of a wider audience.
- Presell your coaching program to generate interest and secure commitments from potential clients before its launch.
- Use social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn to engage with your audience, share valuable content, and promote your coaching program.
Related: 58 Ways To Market Your Online Course and Increase Sales
Set up a legal structure
While you don’t necessarily need a business license as a coach, you do need certain permits to operate legally in your business jurisdiction.
If you’re in the U.S., for example, you may have to obtain a DBA license (Doing Business As) to operate as a sole proprietorship. You may also require a seller’s permit to collect and remit sales tax.
Research the legal requirements for running a coaching business in your country or state to ensure you’re on the right side of the law.
Growing your coaching business
You’ve set up a coaching business, but it doesn’t end there. To grow, you must assess the business performance regularly to identify areas that require improvement.
Analyzing business data is an important part of this, yes. But more importantly, you need to speak with your clients to gather real-time feedback on how to better serve their needs.
Want to learn more about growing an online coaching business? Download our comprehensive coaching guide for practical tips and tricks to help you succeed!
How to start a coaching business from scratch FAQs
We’ve answered the common questions you have about starting a successful business as a coach.
How do I start my own coaching business?
To start your coaching business, you need to choose a niche first and develop a coaching program that speaks to your ideal client’s pain points. From there, you can develop coaching packages, set up a legal structure, and start to market your program to your target audience.
Where can I sell my coaching program?
Use Thinkific to create, market, and sell your coaching program. With our seamless site builder, marketing integrations, and TCommerce payment gateway, it’s never been easier to sell your coaching program to a global clientele.
What qualifications do I need to start a coaching business?
Qualifications for starting a coaching business can vary, but having relevant training, certifications, and experience in your coaching niche can be beneficial.
Does Thinkific have coaching?
Yes. Thinkific has a Coaching & Webinars feature that you can use to schedule and host one-on-one and group coaching programs easily. Creators can monetize and charge for these live events, opening up a new revenue stream for paid coaching sessions.
