Different Ways to Monetize a Coaching Business

This week, Emily Merrell and Lexie Smith outline different ways to monetize a coaching business. They speak to the importance of diversifying your revenue streams and exploring the various products and services that can seamlessly be added to a coaching business model.  

Here’s what you’ll learn: 

• Tips on how to diversify your coaching offering suite
• Ideas on how to create more revenue streams within your pre-existing business
• What affiliate marketing can do for your coaching business as an added revenue stream
• How to monetize partnerships and collaborations with other businesses
• What passive income and how can it be added to your coaching business
• Different things you can offer on an online store that makes sense for coaching
• How to create and monetize a membership for your coaching practice
• How speaking, events, writing, podcasts, and moderation can act as added revenue streams 
• And More!

Transcript

 Different Ways to Monetize a Coaching Business - Podcast Transcript

Lexie Smith  

where your black sweater Tuesday. Hi everyone.

Emily Merrell  

Oh, I didn't even realize that I got this. I have I have a confession. Okay. I have a sweatshirt problem.

Lexie Smith  

Okay,

Emily Merrell  

I see a sweatshirt and all I want to do is to get cozy. So I will be in a store. It doesn't matter what city I'm in. I have this desire to buy a sweatshirt. So this past weekend I was at Nashville and they had this sweatshirt right next to like a Nashville sweatshirt. And I chose this one because it looked like I could actually go out in the world with it and I wasn't in my pajamas. But I'm gonna pee. It's cozy and it has pockets.

Lexie Smith  

Show do show this is now officially fashion podcast. There you go. There's some pockets Yeah, I growing up in Portland, Oregon. Feel like I had 5000 sweatshirts moved to California and I'm like, I'm a Cali girl. I don't need all my winter clothes and I literally purged 14 emerald. I still regret it to this day. I got rid of so many cute winter coats. I like dove into Cali life hard. I got rid of tons of winter shoes. I literally this year went to the pumpkin patch and flip flops because I realized I didn't have a pair of casual sneakers. I now do. I ordered some kids because I'm cool.

Emily Merrell  

I do love kids. I love kids and converse and whatnot. I'll tell you a quick story. You know in the in that same vein, I really struggle with footwear winter footwear is is the challenge and living in New York City. I felt like I had to wear heels or always I always wore heels and dressed up and I had these rag and bone booties that were probably like three inches that I would walk across the city and I thought they were the most comfortable shoes. Put them on now and my feet is like why? Why did you Why are you doing this to me? And so when I was 25 I went on birthright which is a free trip to Israel.

Lexie Smith  

I didn't know I'm already learning something new. I didn't know you're

Emily Merrell  

learning something. This is how I met Jenna. So I met my best friend Jenna. Yeah, I didn't meet a boy I met Jenna. And I was hiking when I was called Israel outdoors so we're gonna be hiking most of the time. And I had to be really intentional in my packing we didn't I don't even I think the suitcase I used was like a duffel bag because a way bags didn't exist back then. Or like small cute carry ons didn't exist. And so the two pairs of shoes that I brought that I thought in my brain were functional. I packed a pair of hiking boots, and then from my like, you know walk about boots or paint shoes I got Do you know what Vince Camuto is? Or have you heard of Vince or heard of it? I have I have that I have my friend Carolyn nice work at Vince Camuto so we got amazing discounts to Vince Camuto and I had a pair of black patent leather flats with crystal rhinestones on the front. So I showed up in Israel wearing leggings and those and then my other options were were hiking boots and to this day my friend Jenna makes fun of me and knew that she wanted to be my friend because I had on these this ridiculous outfit of it because I didn't I didn't have in between I didn't own sneakers at the point that time like sneakers weren't cool they weren't in it was like your fashion face the rag and bone booties or the rhinestones or hiking boots so there's no point to that story.

Lexie Smith  

But no there is in watch me take that story, share a little story and mold it into the perfect transition. Okay, so I lived out of a backpack when I lived abroad for six months and I packed I mean I spent months preparing I got all those like super freezer bags. Anyways, I brought one pair of black boots with me because I'm living out of a backpack, right hiker. I think it broke maybe one or two months into my trip that one pair of boots I had and now all of a sudden I had to find new boots because I was relying on one pair of boots and today we are talking about different revenue streams to have in your coaching business because you don't want to run Lie on just one. That was that

Emily Merrell  

was good. Yeah, I'm gonna give that to you. That was pretty good. Yes, exactly. We're going to be talking today about different shoes that you should I mean, different revenue streams that you can have. There's going to be the expensive shoe revenue streams, gosh.

Lexie Smith  

rhinestones, your boots, your kid walks out all the shoes, revenue streams of coaching. Emily, would you like to kick us off?

Emily Merrell  

You don't want to just do this whole episode and metaphors?

Lexie Smith  

I mean, it probably will keep happening since we're on that roll

Emily Merrell  

campaign campaign. Right. Okay, so we're going to talk about different revenue streams. And, yes, I'm going to bring it back to shoes a lot of times. So you? I am I am. I'm sorry, you can stop listening now, or watching if this is if this is too much for you. But first and foremost, think about all the familiar millionaires and billionaires out in the world. Do you think that they have one revenue stream? Do you think that they survived recessions by having one stream of revenue to keep them going? No. Thank thank you for Lexie, in the back for that answer. You're right, no, they had multiple revenue streams. They diversified their their income, they diversified where they were putting their money. Similarly, maybe they were investing their money in houses or they were playing the stock market, whatever it may be, they weren't just sleeping with their money under their mattress. And similarly, in entrepreneurship, it's really easy to think that you need just one revenue stream to get by put all of your proverbial eggs in one basket. But the reality is, you can get to that number that you want to get to that much faster with multiple revenue streams.

Lexie Smith  

Yeah, and we want to dive into if you have a coaching business, the revenue streams within the coaching business. So the obvious ones, right, there's a coaching program. However, I will say you can diversify your revenue streams with different programs. So that's one category we'll start with. So different programs, you can have one on one programs, group programs, short form programs, a 90 minute power hour to a six month retainer. So one way upfront, you can diversify your coaching business is by diversifying your offer suite. But beyond a traditional coaching, offering, and what are some other things you can do what other revenue streams and shoes can you add to your closet,

Emily Merrell  

while you can have affiliate marketing, so you could be someone that helps promote other people's programs, someone who's incredible at doing that is Marie Forleo. So she's kind of like the one of the OG coaches out in the world. And she's done. You know, when she is launching her program, because all of her ambassadors are posting about it, they're writing emails to their audience about it. Some other ways that you could do it similarly, or you can have an a shop on your website,

Lexie Smith  

who I'm gonna pause, go back to because affiliate revenue is let's dive into what that is, and what that looks like a little bit more. So what Emily is talking about when people go through Marie Forleo is programs and they have success, or they like it, they can then turn around and sell the program at her niche next launch. And they're given a specific code, you can generate this code or this URL through a variety of platforms. teachable is one, there's tons out there. And basically, let's say, for example, Emily, and I decided to become affiliates. For Marie Forleo, we can send out an email saying, hey, Marie Forleo, like, join her course. And if people click our link, right, which we can embed into just a plain old button and sign up, then we are given a commission of that sale, a small percentage, sometimes it's a flat fee, or it can be you know, a 10% of a sale. That is essentially what an affiliate link is. You can also see this for platforms or software's like QuickBooks has affiliate link progress, low desk, tons and tons out there. Jenna Kutcher if you guys aren't familiar with that name, huge piece of her revenue, and this is something she talks about in her podcast is done through all the various affiliate links that she pushes out through her channel. So sorry, sorry to interrupt you. I just wanted to

Emily Merrell  

I think that was that was that was a wonderful explanation of it. And I also want to let people know that they don't have to have one of the referral links set up if they're like, oh my gosh, I want to do this or I want to be a part of one. You can also have it be a mutually discussed agreement. So it could be an a mutual introduction. So for example, if someone gives us an introduction to Ready, Set coach and they're like, oh, Susie would be great for ReadySet coach program. Susie ends up signing up for Ready Set coach, we will send a A Thank you referral bonus, basically

Lexie Smith  

a referral a referral fee a little bit yeah a little different than the affiliate but a more casual for smaller businesses. Yeah.

Emily Merrell  

And I have a whole line item, at least I know you do lakhs to have just getting a tracking all of those. And that brings me in multiple 1000s of dollars every single year just by being generous, just by making strategic introductions to the right people who know you will also be rewarded for it. And it's a great way to if you're that person looking for individuals to capitalize on your already existing excited and wormed audience to do the searching for you.

Lexie Smith  

In to kind of give you guys an idea for coaching, I was approached recently for my PR agency by a marketing firm who wants to have a formal partnership where anyone I send them, I get a 10% recurring. Now I actually don't know if I'm going to do it, that's a whole nother conversation. But I want to plant that seed as it refers to coaching, there could be a situation where, let's say you're a social media coach, and you have a partnership with a email marketing coach, and you guys can, you know, create a system that feels good to you, where wonderful is the other, it can be a flat fee, it can be recurring. Good news, you can make that up. But this whole concept of a partnership, you know, from a traditional affiliate marketing revenue stream to a more informal referral to a formal partnership.

Emily Merrell  

Yeah, I think it's, we'd be remiss not to share that with you all. And there's so many other there's so many other revenue streams available out there. So Lex mentioned a few of them as well, in terms of one on one group. VIP days is another popular offering to wear I know of someone who has a whole business where she just books, about four VIP days a month and that's half of her day, four times a month, charges a premium charges 5000 $6,000 for them. And that's her income so she can volunteer and travel and do all the other passion projects during those other times.

Lexie Smith  

I will say a Asterix that Emily and I want to put out there so you guys don't mistake what we're saying this isn't us giving you the advice to go create a offer suite of five different coaching offerings,

Emily Merrell  

correct. Oh, I'm so glad you said that. I do want to say though with that Asterix, double Asterix next to it. It is an opportunity to have some things that might not be listed on your website, as a potential upsell or down sell for someone. So you might have someone that wants to work with you. And maybe the four month program isn't the right fit. But the one off coaching is not the right fit. You might have some special offerings that you're not going to list that you're not promoting. You're only promoting those two things that you can upsell or down sell to. So those are just some things to remember. backburner.

Lexie Smith  

And if you want to explore that topic more I'm going to plug or other episode on how to extend the life cycle of a coaching. available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple.

Emily Merrell  

Max, how can people find out how to work

Lexie Smith  

with us? Super simple go to ReadySet coach program.com In show knows.

Emily Merrell  

Oh my gosh, her voice we gotta hire her for voiceovers Lex, what are some other revenue streams that you can think of?

Lexie Smith  

So we've talked about affiliate links and referral revenue. We've talked about just different service offerings within coaching. Let's talk about some different passive

Emily Merrell  

passive, passive passive dribbling.

Lexie Smith  

Oh, I love Paso Robles wine I want to play we call it passive income. And one of the ways that is very popular, something you can consider doing is spinning up a online store. Now for a coaching business. What can you offer in an online store? One example? Templates. Okay, if you have templates you routinely use in your coaching practice, why not throw it up online? I have one on the PR brain.com for pitch templates. I already have them made right. Every once in a while I possibly get someone who purchases that puts that in their cart. I want to make sure we also give a huge shout out to pod squad Academy. This is an RSC grad name is Alexandria. She is incredible in every single way. Pod squat Academy stands for print on demand. So Emily, do you want to explain to them a little bit more about that stream?

Emily Merrell  

Oh, yes, I know so much about print on demand. Let me let me dive into

Lexie Smith  

the concept just high level or

Emily Merrell  

I just can't wait to explain this to you. No, I'm kidding. So print on demand basically is it means that you're not keeping the inventory in your house. So rather than ordering 1000 nameplates that Say like You go girl, you're able to process the order as they come in. It's an incredible revenue stream. I mean, Alexandra is teaching these women how to literally print money in her pod squad Academy because these people don't have to file the inventory put up that upfront cost sheet, they're able to create a store when it works for them. So I kind of think of it like an Uber but for printing things, and it could be everything swag,

Lexie Smith  

right? So swag. So like if we wanted to throw up sweatshirts in our ReadySet Coach store or coffee mugs, and this has been a longtime list on Emily nice. We should do. Maybe this will make us actually do it.

Emily Merrell  

You know, we should probably do this. We're gonna have a little sidebar after this episode is finished recording.

Lexie Smith  

So so a couple of different ideas, right, you can do templates, you can also have online courses. That's another thing that you can pre bake and add to a online store. And then yeah, swag which a great option for swag is considering print on demand.

Emily Merrell  

Yeah, I think that's a wonderful thing to mention. So another revenue stream that I loved. And I would be, I have to mention, because it's what I love the most in this world, is events, is hosting events, it could be hosting a live event and charging a ticket for it could be an in person, it could be virtual, it could be a library of recordings that people pay for, and watch at their own convenience, but charging money for when you speak. So in that same vein, what else because

Lexie Smith  

you're gonna be Becker and Emily and I both have had quite a few clients and coaches who have had a lot of success in this category. I'll speak to one high level, she is a career coach. And she often leads paid workshops for companies for very nice amounts of money, one to two hours max, and so she has developed an entire speaker fee or speaker revenue stream. So yes, you can do to Emily's point, kind of one off events, let's say you're hosting a workshop charge 20 bucks, that's great. Or you can also go after more bigger ticket speaker opportunities, not just on a stage, right, you can go into companies or into different situations and get paid to

Emily Merrell  

speak. And I think that's the biggest misconception about speaking that they feel like they need to fill an auditorium for it to be a successful opportunity. But a lot of times, these companies, the smaller companies that have groups or teams of 10 that want your expertise and want you want the intimacy of being able to have you in their office, so don't forget to look in your own backyard and see who's available or work at companies who'd be interested in speaking up.

Lexie Smith  

Awesome. Okay, so another one. I'll let Emily go over it rhymes with Himba ship.

Emily Merrell  

Oh, I was going to do moderating

Lexie Smith  

next. Oh, gosh, well,

Emily Merrell  

she membership is moderating Well, Ganesh membership, which membership membership? I was like, Sure. Moderator.

Lexie Smith  

So she's gonna say, No, we can go back to that guy. No,

Emily Merrell  

no. Membership. Yeah, membership is a huge one. And it is also a really good top of funnel opportunity to create a low line could be a Facebook membership. It could be it could be a Slack membership. It could be something that you build into your website, it could be something where you're just offering them resources. Once a month, whatever the membership looks like. We've we are members ourselves have so many incredible communities where we're paying $18 A quarter to $2,000 for the year. There's so such a variety of ways and communities out there. So it would be a shame for you not to create a community or create a membership if this is feels aligned with you, because it's easy money and it's a great way to continue it continue to build the like know and trust have an audience.

Lexie Smith  

And well we have a whole episode where we gave some shout outs to some of our favorite communities. I want to shout out some of our recent grads. Amanda, she has a pretty naked community. She is also a coach. We have Mackenzie with Kinder with Mackenzie she has a community for parents and their littles as well. We'll see we have Amy, Amy has community, the fears collective really a whole episode on this but lots of coaches who are taking the route and just to give you an example of what this could look like, let's say your career coach, another client of mine is a career coach and she launched something called the millennial management, millennial manager collective. So it's a place to routinely bring in new business to Emily's point and service them for a nominal fee and you can always upgrade them into a larger coaching to container

Emily Merrell  

and then there's also opportunities to once you have a group or if you create a group where you create courses where you can unlock the course within your membership. So there's a lot of synergy with membership and coaching. Look into it. Okay, so

Lexie Smith  

what what do you want to talk about that rhymes which moderator was gonna just say moderating.

Emily Merrell  

If you are an expert in something, if you're an expert, coach, and you're not maybe you're not really keen on speaking in stages make you a little queasy. But you love asking questions, because you're a coach, and you're phenomenal at it. Moderating is another revenue stream, where you can be hired to moderate an a panel or a fireside chat, either for a business or for a larger conference. So that's a new revenue stream also to consider. Oh, I have one more Lex. It rhymes with smodcast.

Lexie Smith  

Is it podcast? No. No, no, just kidding. Yeah, it is. Really? Podcast, that's a really good one. Yeah, you can launch a podcast, there's a few ways that this can bring in revenue, it can be as simple as generating leads, but you can literally monetize your podcast, you can monetize your podcast, through ads, sponsorships, partnerships, you can monetize it through making swag print on demand for your podcast. There's a lot of really, really great ways I want to give a shout out to bright sighted media, which is our mutual friend Christine's company. She's actually now a podcast network, but she has tons of great information and a podcast that goes into all that world.

Emily Merrell  

Yeah, she's wonderful. I have actually one last one that I thought of it's newsletters. You can monetize your newsletters. So similar to what we talked about earlier about affiliate links, or referral partners, newsletters, and also your Instagram or social media platforms is a great place. It's an easy lift to monetize. So I'll give an example. If a brand that feels mutually aligned with what you're selling, so say flow desk reaches out to you or you reach out to flow desk, most of the time, you're going to have to reach out to said place initially. But like, Hey, I've got a really engaged audience of 1000s of coaches who are starting their business, I would love to do a dedicated email for you. This is how much it would cost and you can monetize it. So that's

Lexie Smith  

like an example of sponsorships and really leveraging your audience and monetizing your audience. On the newsletter, There literally is a platform now that allows you to monetize your newsletter. It's called sub stack. I'll give a shout out to my other podcast just because I have a whole episode on some stack pitching and sip and if you want to dive into it, what it's relevant. It is I don't know. Yeah, sub stack is huge. And it's a way that it's allowing people to offer easy to sign up paid subscriptions to newsletters. It's been really heavily utilized, utilized in the freelance journalism community. Which brings me to the last one I wanted to bring up. If you don't want to speak if you don't want to moderate if you don't want to have a podcast, and you're more of a writer, you can also because your coach, leverage your thought leadership to land paid byline. The byline is where you are the author, you are the writer of a given piece of content. So content writing, right? You don't just have to do video or audio or speaking. I mean, literally, guys, we've just thrown 1000 1000 ideas at you. There's the sky's the limit. Right? You can pick your poison based on

Emily Merrell  

you what works best for you. Yes, thank you. You're welcome. Words, words are heard today, guys. It's a coffee, we need more coffee day. That's basically, yeah, she's got the Mama needs, Mama needs more coffee, we got to just add that one in there. So in conclusion, as a coach, if you are starting your coaching business, some of the things to think about as you start it, build your audience. That means like, if you're hosting events, keep track of those emails of the attendees, add them to your newsletter. Build those followers on Instagram, build those followers on LinkedIn because you're on your your audience, and the line is also going to be a key to your monetization.

Lexie Smith  

So homework time, what we want you guys to do is pick one new revenue stream from today's episode, to just brainstorm to look into to dream a little so if you're someone who already has a one on one coaching offering, or a group program, and the pod squad Academy perked your ears that's your homework, look into it, so don't don't feel like you need to all of a sudden, gear up with 10 new things after this episode, pick one pick one to start one to look into and explore

Emily Merrell  

then and let us know how it goes. And like always, we'll see you the next time on The

Lexie Smith  

Ready Set coach podcast.

Emily Merrell  

Bye, y'all. If you're enjoying the ReadySet coach podcast, please leave a review wherever you We're listening for more information about Ready Set coach Visit Ready Set coach program.com