If you’ve been in the coaching business for a while, you’re always thinking about what’s next. You are a coach, after all—growth is in your DNA!
For many coaches, the ultimate goal is to scale the business. And to scale, you’ll most likely have to adjust your business model or create additional offerings.
As an online coach, you are the product, the service, the business—everything. To grow, you have to move away from doing work that requires you to be at its center.
Scaling a business means you are increasing revenue without increasing your output. To do this, you typically have to create an additional revenue stream.
But don’t worry! You already have all of the knowledge, content, and experience in your back pocket. It’s just a matter of honing in on what you want to do.
Let’s take a look at how you can transition your coaching model and take your business to the next level.
Here’s what we’ll go over:
- The types of coaching business models
- How to transition your business model
- Ways to scale your coaching business
The types of coaching business models
Coaching businesses have exploded in recent years. In fact, the market value for personal coaching is already over $1 billion.
The growth of this industry means there are quite a few paths to choose from. Below are a few of the more common coaching business models:
- One-on-one coaching
- Group coaching
- Online courses or training
- Coaching team
Let’s go over what each of these models entails before diving into which one is right to scale your business.
One-on-one coaching
This business model is how most online coaches get started. Coaching clients through one-on-one sessions allows you to impact and communicate with them directly.
One-on-one coaching is also a great way to get a feel for your coaching style, get to know your ideal client, and gain a deeper understanding of their challenges and aspirations.
There are, however, limits to one-on-one coaching. If this is the only service you offer, you may find it challenging to grow. There are only so many hours in the day, and other than raising your rates, there aren’t a lot of ways to bring in additional income.
Group coaching
Think of group coaching like teaching a class. Instead of spending back-to-back hours with individual clients, in a class, you can coach, say, ten clients at once.
Due to the community-like feeling and accountability aspect, group coaching may work better for some industries than others.
For instance, if you are a business coach who wants to help beginner coaches land new clients, you likely have methods that apply to a wide variety of people. In which case, group coaching would work.
But if you are a health coach, your coaching process may rely more on each individual’s personal experience. If this is the case, group coaching might not be right for your business.
Don’t feel like you have to choose between the two, though! Group coaching can be a service you offer alongside one-on-one coaching, as a way to scale your business.
Online courses or training
Since 2000, e-learning (AKA online courses) has grown by 900%, and the industry is expected to triple in size between now and 2025.
It’s clear that the online course creation path is thriving—and another viable business model for coaches.
Online courses are a great way to package up your coaching knowledge and tangible experiences in a way that’s accessible and learnable. Plus, online courses can reach more people than individual coaching.
However, online courses are best for those who already have some coaching under their belts. It will take time to establish credibility and position yourself as an expert who clients can turn to for guidance.
Coaching team
Coaches who are in the business for the long haul should consider creating a coaching firm. Starting a team would allow you to take a step back from day-to-day coaching and instead focus on creating a method for other coaches to follow and use with clients.
This method works best if you have a repeatable and teachable process. Your brand and business are centered around your unique coaching style, so it’s essential to collaborate with coaches who can reflect your brand and connect with your target audience.
How to transition your business model
Fine tune your USP
If you’ve been coaching for a while, you probably have a good idea of what your USP (unique selling proposition) is. But to scale your business, you need to pinpoint exactly what makes your business different from the rest.
Think about your individual or group coaching sessions. What stands out about your process and clients? To help narrow it down, ask yourself these questions:
- What challenges are your clients facing?
- What are their strengths?
- What is their desired outcome?
- How do you help them get there?
You could even create a survey to share with your clients and email list. Dig deep and note anything your clients mention about working with you. By going straight to the source (AKA, your target audience), you’ll get real insight into your ideal client’s goals and how you can help them achieve them with your USP.
Move from individual coaching to group coaching
It doesn’t take long to realize that you can only grow so much when your coaching business is focused on individual coaching. One-on-one coaching limits how much business you can realistically take on.
Don’t get me wrong: this business model works well for many coaches! Sticking with individual coaching is a totally viable option for solo entrepreneurs, and it may be the right choice for your business.
But if you’re itching for a change and want to scale your coaching business, consider transitioning to group coaching. Group coaching can be an easy transition from individual coaching. And you’ll be maximizing your impact by coaching many people at once—and building community (an added value for your clients), to boot.
However, some clients may miss the personalization of one-on-one coaching, but this could be another opportunity to scale! If this is the case for your business, consider offering group classes and adding individual sessions as an up-sell for people to choose once they’ve completed the group coaching.
Create a productized offering
Coaches from all industries have quickly learned that online courses are an excellent way to scale their business. If you have a teachable, repeatable process that others can easily follow (without your direct guidance), creating an online course is one of the best ways to scale your coaching business.
An online course is a productized service, which means your business model won’t rely solely on the hours you put in day in and day out. Instead, you can create a product that will work for you.
Before clients are willing to commit to the full course, it helps to have smaller offerings—like a quiz, for example—that they can check out first. Create digital products that offer a glimpse of what clients will gain from taking the full course, like a short worksheet, webinar, or series of emails with writing prompts.
Ways to scale your coaching business
Automate lead generation
To get your business off the ground, maybe you relied on cold outreach, referrals, or constantly promoting your coaching services on social media platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook.
But as you grow, there comes a time when you become so busy working with clients that you can’t always be online generating new leads.
You have to automate the lead-generation process if you want to scale. With an automated lead-generation system, you won’t spend nearly as much time marketing yourself or constantly keeping tabs on potential new leads. Instead, leads will come to you—even when you’re offline.
So, how exactly do you create an automated lead-generation process?
One of the most successful lead-generation tools is a quiz.
Quizzes are interactive and more engaging (and fun) than other lead-generation opt-ins. They speak to your audience’s goals or challenges and encourage them to participate.
Plus, quizzes can help grow your email list and ultimately increase sales.
Online course creator Kaye Putnam generated $100k in revenue and 1,600 leads per month, all from a single brand personality quiz.
Imagine increasing your revenue and generating hundreds of leads every week without having to put in additional work every day. That’s the power of an automated lead-generation process.
Even though the point of automating this process is to save time so you can scale, there is some upfront work, like coming up with a quiz topic and creating a quiz that will interest your audience. You’ll also have to create content to follow the quiz, such as an in-depth results page, interactive worksheet, or email sequence.
However, the time you spend creating an automated lead-generation process will be more than worth it when your quiz starts to generate leads on autopilot.
Create a sales funnel
The key to using a quiz to scale your coaching business is to give quiz-takers a clear next step once they’ve completed the quiz and find out their results. What do you want them to do next?
Come up with a strong call-to-action (CTA) and take time to nurture quiz-takers through the sales journey by creating a quiz marketing funnel.
A sales funnel typically includes an email sequence and additional lead magnets that position your coaching service or online course as a valuable and credible resource.
Health coach and course creator Jessie Golden uses a quiz at the top of her sales funnel and generates more than 100 quality email leads each week. Jessie’s quiz is followed by an email sequence that leads to a masterclass and then finally to her signature course.
Creating a complete sales funnel for your quiz by providing value at each step of the journey will lead your audience to the action you ultimately want them to take.
The wrap-up
You have lots of options for scaling your coaching business. It all depends on what your ultimate goal is.
First, choose the right business model for you:
- One-on-one coaching
- Group coaching
- Online course
- Coaching team
Once you land on a business model that makes sense for your goals and coaching style, follow these steps to scale your business:
- Identify your USP
- Automate the lead generation process
- Create a sales funnel
Don’t forget that a quiz is one of the most engaging and high-converting lead generation tools! Plus, customized quizzes are easy to make with Interact.
Whether you want to focus on making a direct impact with one-on-one client interactions or you’d rather generate passive income through an online course, scaling your coaching business is more attainable than you may think.
As long as you understand your USP, can automatically generate leads, and have valuable content and tools for your audience, you’ll be on your way to scaling your coaching business.