How to scale your coaching business

Want to know how to scale your coaching business? Maybe you are, or are close to being, fully booked with 1-to-1 coaching clients and want to find other ways to generate more income and support more people. Or maybe you just want to focus on generating more money whilst working less hours. Either way you are in the right place. Keep on reading to learn how to scale your coaching business.

This page may include affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I may earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you.

Scaling your coaching business versus growing your coaching business

Scaling is the dream for many coaches and it is a hot topic in the online world with many business experts really pushing the message of scaling your coaching business. But is scaling your coaching business the right thing for you to do right now?

To answer that question you need to fully understand the difference between growing a business and scaling a business. Scaling is a type of growth, but not all growth is scaling. Scaling is where the relationship between input and output is broken. If in your coaching business you are working 1-to-1 with clients then there is a direct relationship between input (your time) and the output (revenue). However, if you want to scale your business you focus on breaking that direct relationship between time and money.

To find out more about the differences between growing and scaling, and ensure scaling your coaching business is the right thing to do click here .

HOW TO SCALE YOUR COACHING BUSINESS

If you’ve got this far I’m going to assume that you’ve decided scaling your coaching business is the right thing to do and you’re ready to make it happen.

Step 1: Choose your scalable offers

As mentioned earlier the key to scaling rather than growing is breaking the direct relationship between time and money. In order to scale your coaching business you’ll need to move from working on a one-to-one basis to working on a one-to-many basis. This is what I mean by creating scalable offers.

I go into greater details about how you can move from one-to-one to one-to-many here, but here are the most common options used when scaling coaching business.

Group coaching programme
Are you using a structure, framework or process with your one-to-one clients that you could take a whole group of people through? If so, a group coaching programme might work for you. A group coaching programme usually involves working with a group of people for a predetermined amount of time. The programme is delivered through live calls and a way for members to communicate to one another.

Mastermind
A mastermind is a small group of people who are brought together usually with a shared goal. There is a focus on learning from the host, but also gaining support from others in the mastermind.

Membership
Usually an uncapped group of people who sign up on a recurring basis so the length of time people stay in a membership varies.

Digital Products
A self-study course, templates, workbooks etc which are all delivered electronically with no involvement from the creator.

As you can see there are a number of different ways that you can add a scalable offer into your business. In order to decide what is best for your business you need to consider your audience size and needs, your financial goals, your mission and your long-term vision.

For example, if as part of your mission you’ve declared wanting to impact thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions then it would make more sense to have a lower ticket offering, such as a digital product or membership that more people can be in. However, if you still have a relatively small audience, but your 1-to-1 is booked out then offering a mastermind or group coaching programme would make sense.

NEED HELP CHOOSING WHAT THE RIGHT SCALABLE OFFER FOR YOUR BUSINESS IS?

With so many options it can be difficult to know what is best. I help coaches to choose their scalable offer and then create a marketing strategy to successfully sell their new offer. To discuss your specific needs and find out about how I can help you book a free introduction call.

Step 2: Create your scalable offers

If you’ve decided what you’d like to sell, so now it is time to start creating. If you are going with digital products then you’ll need to make the entire product. If you decided to go with a membership you might just make the membership area. If you decided to go with a group coaching programme you might create the outline, but leave the actual creating until people have signed up.

Step 3: Set your pricing

Pricing is tricky enough when creating your first coaching service, but when you are scaling your coaching business and adding in more services or products you need to think very carefully about your pricing.

You need to think about where your new scalable offerings sit in relation to your one-to-one services.

For example, digital products and membership are generally considered as having less or no involvement from the coach and therefore are cheaper than their one-to-one services. Group coaching programmes again are usually cheaper than one-to-one services. Depending on the other people in a mastermind it could be priced higher or lower than the mastermind.

It is also useful to like about the lifetime client value. Are you using your new scalable offering to be able to work with your existing or previous clients? Or is the idea to use your scalable offering to introduce them to you and then sell to them more in the future. Knowing the longer-term aim will also help you price in a way that makes sense for your goals.

Step 4: Choose your selling mechanism

It is essential that people have a way to buy your new scalable offers so you’ll have to ensure you’ve got everything setup for payment. For digital products and memberships you’ll want to have a way to take payment online and for customers to be able to receive their digital products or login information without you being involved. There are a number of ways you can do this but if you are committed to scaling your business I recommend using an all-in-one online business solution like Kartra. Find out more about why Kartra is the must-have tech tool to scale your business here.

For group coaching programmes and masterminds it might be that you want people to fill in an application form or book a call with you. Get clear on what your selling mechanism will be and ensure you have everything ready to go for once you start marketing.

Step 5: Market your scalable offerings

At this point you have done most of the behind-the-scenes preparation and it is time to start scaling your coaching business. That means you need to tell the world about your scalable offers. Hopefully your one-to-one coaching is fully booked, so you can focus on marketing one thing (your new scalable offering), but it may be that you have to juggle marketing multiple things simultaneously.

You should have a marketing plan for this new offering. A few questions to get you started are:

Who is the ideal client/customer? Does this different from the ideal client for your one-to-one?
What channels will you use? Will you use all of the channels that you are currently using or just have a select few?
What are the key messages? Are you clear about the transformation that someone will experience?
Will you market using a launch or will it be an evergreen campaign?

Use those answers to start creating a plan for how you’ll market your new scalable offers and then start executing the plan.

If you will be marketing using just organic content (email, social and long-form content) then I have a free content marketing plan template and workbook that can help you. I walk you through the whole process of creating a content marketing plan for your business here.

And then you can access the free accompanying workbook by filling in your details below and if you want to get great weekly emails to grow your business be sure to join my mailing list too!

Step 6: Monitor your numbers

It is fairly easy to get a fully booked coaching business when offering 1-to-1 coaching without really knowing all the numbers in your business. You could have built a loyal following on a social media platform and sold straight from there. However, if you’re serious about scaling you need to get to know your numbers. With you now having multiple offerings you’ll need to look at each offering as an individual income stream.

You should keep a close eye:

Volume of sales
Conversion rate
Number of leads
Length of sales cycle

That’s it. You now know how to scale your coaching business.

On paper scaling your coaching business isn’t difficult. However, in reality you need to ensure that you’ve built a engaged audience that is ready to buy and that you have a marketing plan in place to be able to ensure you can sell the new scalable offering with negatively impacting sales of your one-to-one or worse having a negative impact on revenue as a whole.

In the comments I would love to hear more about how you would like to scale your coaching business.

WANT TO GROW A THRIVING ONLINE COACHING BUSINESS THAT GIVES YOU THE MONEY AND TIME TO LIVE YOUR BEST LIFE?

Most coaches want to scale their business so they can have more freedom and still make great money, but if you aren’t careful you can end up trying to sell more things and not make more money (and making your business more complicated in the process).

If you are ready to take your business to the next level by expanding your business model and income streams I’m here to help.

I’m a Chartered Marketer that specialises in supporting coaches to grow their business strategically but without selling their soul.

To find out more about my 1:1 business and marketing mentoring programme click here

And to discuss your precise needs book a free, no-obligation, introduction call to discuss your business here.