Have you got a great idea for a coaching business? If you’re excited to start but not quite sure how, this guide will help you get set up.
In this article, we’ll show you how to start your coaching business from scratch, what you’ll need, and how to cost your business. Read on to learn more about your first moves as an aspiring online coach!
How To Start Your Coaching Business From Scratch
Coaching might seem like a tough field to get into, but every successful, profitable business begins as an idea.
Whether it’s for a financial coaching business, to help others with their health and wellness, or to practice as an all-around life coach, turning that idea into a fully-fledged entity is a relatively structured process.
It takes research, planning, commitment, strategy, and even marketing to gain traction in a crowded e-coaching marketplace, so it’s important to ask yourself a few questions before you begin. If you’re serious about becoming a coach, stress-test your idea and see what differentiates you from other life coaches.
- Is your value proposal new in any way? (What’s unique or innovative about your offer?)
- Is it at all useful? (Does it solve a problem for your clients?)
- Is it feasible? (Do you have the budget and time to invest in building a new business?)
Life coaching as a broader field meets these three criteria, but try to dig a little deeper into your idea. Identifying your unique selling point before you begin is a superb strategic advantage to have.
Setting Up Your Own Coaching Business: A Checklist
If you’ve got a solid idea for a life coaching practice, the good news is that any motivated coach can build an online business.
While the specific steps may vary depending on where you are and the niche you’d like to coach others in, the following checklist contains the things that every aspiring new coach generally needs to do.
- Create a life coaching business plan. This can be as long or short as you like; your plan should outline your business vision, mission, and what you’ll need to bring it to life.
- Research the regulations in your local area. The requirements for starting a business entity vary across different states, countries, and regions, so you might consider hiring a professional lawyer to help you here.
- Consider getting a coaching certification. Accreditation isn’t a mandatory part of online coaching, but there are many good courses available that can teach you valuable coaching skills.
- Establish an online presence. Explore your potential target markets online before you begin, so you can hit the ground running once your first life coaching package or program is developed.
- Create a signature program. Plan and develop your first coaching solution, and don’t be afraid to test it out on some willing participants!
- Determine your pricing. How much will you charge your clients, and how might you scale up?
- Find clients. If you’ve begun warming up leads in Step 3, now’s the time to launch your first product.
Virtual life coaching software like Quenza is designed especially for coaches and can help you from Step 1 (creating your business plan) to creating everything you need to design, build, and deliver your first successful program.
In the next section, we’ll show you how to create online classes and programs easily with Quenza’s digital toolkit.
3 Tips For Successful Coaching Sessions and Classes
It’s a good idea to start building your first program of classes or sessions as soon as you’ve created your business plan and begun networking – this way, you’ll have a pool of potential clients to pitch your first solutions to.
Here are a few more tips to help you.
1. Create a Roadmap for your Program
Map out what activities or forms your program or package will include in order; we’ve used a few Quenza Expansion examples to illustrate:
- A Pre-Coaching Questionnaire invites your clients to consider their coaching goals
- Coaching Contracts or Agreements define the terms of your services
- Goal-setting exercises like Quenza’s Goal Visualization can be tailored to suit your programs
- Initial assessments e.g. the Wheel of Life or Life Domain Satisfaction activity
- Feedback surveys or Post-Session Rating Scales.
2. Automate Programs for Delivery
Second, assemble your coaching pathways or programs using Quenza’s Pathway Builder using your roadmap as a guide:
You can assign each activity as a step to create sequences in Quenza’s Pathway builder, as shown above. To deliver your programs on schedule, simply allocate an interval between each step to drip feed your programs to your clients – it’s much faster than sending each activity manually.
3. Build Your Own Activities
If you can’t find the right activity template to modify in Quenza’s Expansion library, creating your own is quick and simple.
Building activities such as worksheets, quizzes, lessons, and more is simple with Quenza’s drag-and-drop Activity builder, and you can embed multimedia like videos, mp3s, and images to up the engagement factor of your exercises:
It’s a great way to share completely unique resources with your clients, and you can even use your own practice logo on each activity.
Quenza toolkit is full of more helpful coaching features that not only bring your business to life, but also help you build and maintain engagement throughout your programs. Why not start by designing some versatile coaching exercises that you can refine as your programs develop?
How Much Does It Cost To Start Your Business?
As regulatory requirements vary along with your location, so too will the cost of starting your own coaching business.
While industry statistics put the figure anywhere between $7,500 and $25,000+, the specific cost for starting up your practice will be a factor of:[1]
- Lawyer fees
- Business insurance
- Trademarking
- Optional certifications, and other variables.
Online coaching businesses are generally much less expensive to start and run long-term because they don’t require dedicated office space, equipment, or overheads such as rent and utilities.
A Look At Starting Your Online Coaching Business
Once you have an initial program to offer, you’ll also need to think about the forms required to onboard new clients.
Quenza’s Expansion Library contains some helpful intake templates (such as this Coaching Client Agreement) that you can use, or you can create your own coaching contracts to share your forms digitally with clients.
You’ll also find a host of customizable questionnaires, feedback forms, and other useful Expansion templates in Quenza that you can brand with your practice logo, such as:
- This Pre-Coaching Questionnaire
- Quenza’s Session Notes for Clients template
- The Coach Evaluation Form, and
- This Session Rating Scale.
To learn how to create more of your own templates, be sure to check out Quenza’s guide to coaching notes.
Best Software For Your Coaching Business
As a new life coach, you’ll come across a wealth of coaching software solutions available to help you run your business. While many of these tools are brilliantly effective at performing certain functions, such as calendar management, invoicing, or client relationship management, very few go beyond practice management to support your unique approach to coaching.
If your goal is to differentiate your business and run a scalable, profitable practice, then a flexible, specially designed software solution for coaches is by far the best long-term choice option for you.
Designed by professional e-coaches for other coaches, Quenza is an integrated toolkit that’s purpose-built for the job.
10 Ways To Use Quenza For Coaching
With Quenza, you have an integrated toolkit containing everything you need to practice professionally as a coach, such as:
- Design and build unique coaching forms
- Craft and share your own life coaching tools, quizzes, games, and multimedia-rich activities
- Create unique life coaching assessments like the Wheel of Life tool
- Modify popular life coaching exercises from your Expansion library to save time
- Plan your coaching sessions in advance with Quenza’s Pathway Tools
- Stay connected with your clients using HIPAA-compliant live chat
- Coach groups of up to 50 members at once with Quenza’s unique group coaching feature
- Provide your clients with a free, mobile-compatible coaching portal in different languages and your own brand colors
- Keep track of all your client data, results, and progress in real-time, and
- Build your own marketing materials using Quenza’s easy-to-use Activity builder.
As a life coach, you’ll have everything you need to stay organized, support your clients, and move the needle for your business. With Quenza’s ever-growing suite of coach tools, you can start your life coaching business easily and focus on what matters most: helping others grow.
Final Thoughts
Looking for more life coaching tools for your very first program?
Check out our 21 Popular Life Coaching Tools, Worksheets & Exercises resource for some inspiring activities, exercises, meditations, and more.
We hope you enjoyed our guide. To take your first steps as a professional life coach, start your $1 trial of Quenza, our e-coaching toolkit.
Quenza will help you create unique, branded life coaching packages and programs from anywhere, and will give you everything you need to build and run a thriving online practice easily.
