How can a coach earn more with less stress and high profits?
In my 6th year of my coaching business I wanted to scale up. All the pundits said: “Group and online programs are the way to leverage your time and increase income.”
I bought into that. Just 6 years into running my membership program and two online training programs I had to take a sabbatical from my business.
During my recovery from stress I looked for a better way that I could enjoy more.
You see, online and group programs require a massive leads list and continuous marketing campaigns to keep them filled and earning well.
Profits can be low because of the pricey apps and team needed to help you do it all. If someone says they make a million doing group and online programs, realize that they haven’t shared profit numbers or the hours it takes to make that happen.
I found a way for coaches to earn well that’s low stress and high profit.
Find the full transcript and more resources for coaches at prosperouscoach.com/269.
Hey Coaches!
You know, the other big cost to running online and group programs is that you can’t do deep work with your clients.
During my sabbatical I was ruminating on how to launch Prosperous Coach 2.0. I did a deep dive into my own values, strengths and the lifestyle I wanted.
I realized that I left corporate because I wanted freedom. I wanted to do what I’m good at and make my own choices. I wanted to help people and do meaningful work.
Well, I know for sure that’s not what I had for those 6 frenetic years chasing a 7 figure business and all that comes with it … mainly stress and headaches.
There are some big name people who have this down and they have a small army to help them make it happen. I just wanted more quality of life right now, not later.
So, I decided I would go back to doing one-to-one work with clients. Not only is this more manageable by far but, for me, it’s more enjoyable. I get to know my clients. There’s history there. I can offer more value.
But I didn’t for sake earning well. The solution for me was to create a long-term, high-ticket Signature Program that is tailor made for my audience – coaches. And I’ve been teaching other coaches this business model and earning approach for more than a decade now with good results.
If you’ve been listening to Prosperous Coach Podcast for a while, and I hope you have, you’ve heard me mention Signature Programs a lot. It’s the centerpiece of my business —my bread and butter way to earn.
If you’ve been floundering around trying to sell coaching session packages and not earning enough, listen up … I’ll tell you how to do this!
Create a Customized VIP Coaching Program
I help all my VIP clients create their Signature Program and the customer journey to attract clients.
I constantly hear from those coaches that offering a high-ticket Signature Program helps them to feel confident that they have something of real value to offer.
Of course, like all successful aspects of a coaching business, creating this program has critical steps that go before and after.
1. It begins by targeting a viable audience – one that’s full of seekers – people who do invest in their professional and personal growth.
2. Next you uncover their biggest known problems and the ultimate outcome they want to achieve. That becomes your coaching niche.
3. Then, you put together a Signature Program tailor made to that audience. Your program has a clear set of milestones that you’ll help your clients achieve on the way to that ultimate desired outcome.
4. Then, you learn how to articulate that to prospects in a way that’s benefit rich, supplying them with assurance of both tangible or concrete and intangible or emotional things they’d like to achieve with your help. That there is a structure in your program helps them to trust you and feel inspired to invest.
5. Lastly, you need a strategy to attract clients, build trust and rapport, then gently send them through a conversion process, sometimes called a funnel, so they are motivated to have a Discovery Call with you, where you’ll enroll them.
Two Examples of VIP Coaching Programs for Different Types of Coaches
For example, let’s say you’re a relationship coach helping people to find their soul mate. Your program might include the following milestones – takeaways you’ll help your clients achieve:
1. Identify Your Personal and Partnership Values - what are the client’s must haves and deal breakers for their life partnership?
2. Get Yourself Ready to Have a Partner - what are the client’s strengths but also habits and behaviors in need of adjustment? What are their limiting beliefs about relationships? You might even have something like a life makeover in your program.
3. Set First Date Goals and Shine - help them set personal boundaries and show up with confidence.
4. Meet Wonderful People and Connect – help them get out there, show up as themselves, relax and let go of expectations, trust the process.
There’s a clear arc to the program and plenty of opportunity for the client to bring the agenda to sessions.
This structure is more about helping prospects feel confident to work with you.
Or, let’s say you’re a leadership coach and target HR leaders to gain greater impact in their role – something you’ve discovered from market research that’s a top goal of HR leaders. Your program’s milestones might include:
1. Creating a vision for the impact they wish to make.
2. Identifying what’s been in the way.
3. Uncovering their professional strengths and learning how to leverage them.
4. Identifying skills and behaviors that need attention and areas to stretch.
5. Develop good habits to strengthen their resilience, mindset and competencies.
6. Building their rapport, identifying sponsors and other relationships that would help their star rise.
7. Helping them develop a thicker skin and become bolder in meetings.
Either of these programs could be a 4 – 6 months or longer and command high prices. That means you need to enroll less clients and that means less marketing.
You can see that the FOCUS in these program descriptions is not about you and your skills as the coach. It’s about the target audience and what they want so much they’ll invest to get it.
At the same time these kinds of milestones are what all coaches can help their clients achieve without much special knowledge – just enough to understand the audience.
Bundle Significant Value Into Your Signature Coaching Program
So far in your coaching business you might be simply trying to convince a client to hook on … to want coaching and be willing to invest in a certain number of sessions up front.
It’s painful.
And it’s without context especially if you have not yet narrowed to a viable audience, done market research and discovered what your audience wants so much they’d be willing to invest in your help to get it.
Those are the first steps for any coaching business.
Programming your coaching into a VIP program creates a context for why a person would want to invest at a high level in their future success. And, you can develop this program without even using the word “coaching”. That’s your toolbox not an outcome they know they want.
Identify What They’ll Get In Your Signature Coaching Program
The next step for creating your program is to identify the features. What do they get when they invest in the program? Consider bundling some of these things into your program:
· A certain number of private one-hour sessions, say 10 – 18 sessions depending on length of your program, your preferences, and what it takes to achieve the goals
· Unlimited emails to you
· Session recaps
· Guides, forms or assessments you create to ease a process that are specifically designed for your audience
These things still involve coaching and coaching skills. But they add excitement to a program and help justify the fees to enroll.
Schools of Thought About Pure Coaching
If you’re still in coach training some trainers may insist that coaching should never be programmed. In other words, you shouldn’t create an offer other than coaching sessions because it means that you take away the coach’s agenda.
If you’ve been listening to me for a while, you know I believe that you can both serve a client’s agenda AND offer a specific program for a specific audience that solves their biggest problem and gets them where they want to go.
After 20+ years of experience in my own coaching business and helping hundreds of coaches reach financial success in their businesses in my private VIP Signature Program called Coaching Business Breakthrough, I know that selling coaching by the session only may keep you at poverty income levels.
What do you think? Could a high ticket one-on-one Signature Program be meaningful, fun and valuable for you while it helps you earn more and work less?