Ep:50 What I wish I knew at the start of my coaching business journey

Speaker A: Welcome to the online business Like a Boss podcast. I'm your host, Kristin Morris, and in this show I want to bring you conversations with experts, entrepreneurs and thought leaders who can help inspire, motivate and give you the knowledge to grow your online business. I know when you're just starting out on your journey as an entrepreneur, the learning curve can feel, feel huge. I want this podcast to help shorten that timeline for you by giving you all the tools, knowledge and advice that you need to grow a, uh, wildly successful online business. Let's get started.

Speaker B: Welcome to the online business Like a Boss podcast. And in this episode I want to talk to you about some things that I wish that I knew when I was starting my coaching business. Um, and if you're new in the coaching and expert space, then I do recommend having a listen. It might save you a lot of money and time and, uh, effort in the long run. So I am, um, currently putting together my membership called the Momentum membership. And Momentum is designed for coaches who are new, who are building their business and maybe haven't got their first offer out yet. And it helps lay all the foundations. So getting to know your ideal clients, getting into offer alignment, having your first beta launch to sell your program, and then working out your marketing strategy and doing a bit of sales psychology. Objection. Handling. And then finally how to grow your business. So It's a full six month program that I've dropped into a 27 pound per month membership. And when I was initially building out this program, the idea was that it was going to be a six month container for new coaches to come in and work with me in a group coaching program. And the reason why it was six months is because I recognize that when you're at the start of your business and you don't have an audience, um, and you haven't really decided who your ideal client is or have a proven offer to work with that it can take at least six months to get to the stage where you're ready to start making consistent sales and launching and talking about doing all the fun and clever things that you can do with your business later on. Uh, but then as I was building out the program, I started to think about what it was like for me at the start of my coaching business. So when I knew that I was ready to go all in on my coaching business and this was going to be the thing that I laid my hat on, I hired a coach to work with in a six month group coaching program. And there was weekly calls in the container and every week I would show up to the call with a different ideal client idea or some new offer idea. I mean it was absolute shiny object syndrome on steroids. And um, all through this six month container I was kind of wheel spinning and I didn't put anything out. I didn't really start to build an audience and I didn't get really any closer to my goal of having a sustainable coaching business at the end of it, which was so disappointing. And then I thought, uh, I would maybe just was not working with the right coach. So I went and I signed up for another coaching program maybe a year later. And I was going through that coaching program and the same sort of thing. And I think looking back on it now, I think it was because the investment felt like such a huge deal to me being at the beginning of the coaching business that it gave me absolutely perfection paralysis. Like I knew that the offer that I put out, uh, off the back of working with these coaches had to be like the thing, the offer of my life, of my business, it was, had to be the thing that everyone was going to go, oh my God, that's amazing. And so I think that's where it just kept coming back to the well with different ideas and different things to put in it or different things to take out and who was going to be, I was going to be working with in the transformation and on and on and on and on and on. And that really got me thinking about when I was launching my own group coaching program, is that really the best solution for a new coach or beginner? And so that is what made me decide to just put it all into a £27 per month membership. Because if someone's at the start of their business and they're not really sure and they really need to get a grasp of all these foundational principles and concepts, you know, like refining the ideal customer avatar, starting to build an audience, starting to put content out and seeing what kind of content resonates with their ideal client, starting to get into offer alignment and to define what kind of offer they're going to put out for their ideal clients, what's the transformation statement, the promise that their offer is making and how they're communicating that effectively in their audience. And then finally doing a beta launch, so launching the program, putting a shot across the bow and seeing if anybody is interested in the program before they go and create the whole thing. Um, so these are like really key foundational steps that, that you need to take in your business. And if you're in a coaching program for 12 weeks or even for six months, you might spend the whole container working these things out and get to the end and be no closer to your goal than you were at the start. And so I thought why not make it so that it's a low cost investment, they can come in, they can learn what they need to do. But then you take away that fear of like, I don't feel like I can test my offer because the offer that I put out has to be the thing that's going to help me recoup the investment that I've made in this coach. And you know, I, I need to start making money now because I've just invested all this money. So having like a, a low cost membership, um, right now at the time of recording it's £27 per month. But I know that probably by the end of next year it's going to be about 97 pounds per month just because it is a high value program. But even so, even at 97 pounds per month, um, as opposed to working with someone uh, for thousands of pounds, when you're at the start of your business, it's just so much less pressure. And that's what really felt aligned to me. So what I wish I knew at the start of my coaching business is that you really need to have a clear picture of your ideal client, the offer that you want, and you want to test the offer with your ideal client, with your audience before you consider working with a coach. Because a coach or a uh, strategist or mentor, they can help you put all the pieces together to, you know, maybe refine the offer, make it better, refine your messaging, refine your sales process or help you build a funnel, um, um, help you get more leads into your business. But until you're kind of solid on that transformation and that promise and you know that what you're offering is going to be needed and wanted within your audience and your ideal clients, um, then you could potentially be in a position where you know you're wasting essentially, um, that coaching container trying to figure out these really basic things. So that would be my advice if you are a new beginner coaching expert coming into this space, is to get yourself in a position where you can learn the basics and you can start testing your offer, bring clients in, work with clients in a beta offer at a discounted rate, figure out how to really make your program or your um, course, whatever it is you're creating the best that it can be, get those all important testimonials and case study clients under your belt and then look at working with a coach in a higher level coaching container or program. So thank you very much for listening and um, tune in next week. Don't forget to subscribe so that you get notified for the next podcast episodes. So they're Mondays at 9am thanks and I'll see you next week.