A lot of us are creating content, selling courses, making podcasts, etc. All these things provide a lot of value to our audiences. But today I want to talk about coaching, which has a lot of benefits as well (-many you may have never considered before.) With coaching, you can give and sell your information directly to those who want it. And, you can tailor your expertise to each client and apply it exactly to their situation, which helps so much more than posting a video.
So let’s get into it!
Why Coaching?
First of all, coaching is such a simple way to start monetizing your audience. You have no need for a big funnel or website. You just need a way for people to contact you and for them to send you payments. That’s it! It’s really so easy to jump into.
And the return is great! You get to connect one on one with another person, look them in the eye and help them with their struggles. Now you might be feeling like this is a lot of pressure but the process of them just talking through their struggle out loud and processing it with another person is amazingly helpful.
Getting Started
You have to start with a plan of what this process will look like. It doesn’t have to be super rigid and detailed. But you need to know the first high level things that you’re going to talk about with all your potential clients. What is your on camera presence going to be like? How will you present yourself in a way where your client is going to feel confident that you are going to invest in them?
They most likely want coaching from you to get them from point A to point B. They don’t need to know every detail of how you are going to get them there, but they do need to know upfront what it will be like to work with you and what to expect in the process.
You also need to know your limits. What can you do for someone and what can you just not deliver. When I first started, I said yes to everything that had to do with YouTube, but at a point I had to decide, what do I want to be the best in the world at? What do I want to specialize in? What drives me and get’s me excited? It might take a bit to figure this out, but if you focus on your passion and what you are best at delivering on, your clients will be far more satisfied and so will you.
Do some free sessions! Don’t ONLY offer free sessions, because people will take it more seriously if they are paying for it. But it’s so helpful to see how you like coaching. Does it give you energy or drain you? Do you love this or would you rather go in a different direction? It’s so helpful to know this off the bat by doing some free sessions before you have the pressure of a business behind you.
Decide how much to charge. Charge whatever you feel like your time is worth. To do this, you will have to take away from whatever else you would have been spending your time doing. What is it worth to you to do this? That number is going to look different for different people and that’s ok.
Platforms
You also need to decide how you want to do this. Do you want to schedule meetings? Do you want to have options to interact in between those scheduled times? If so, how are you going to do that in a way that works best for both you and your client?
You have totally heard me talk about Volley before and I can’t say enough good things about it for coaching. For those of you who don’t know, Volley is an asynchronous video messaging platform. So basically, a client leaves me a video message. Then when I have time, I watch it on double speed and send a video message back. I love it because I don’t have to deal with email or scheduling meetings. (Both of these things are huge time-suckers and mental drains as well.) Instead, my clients and I both connect when it works best for us without needing to really plan ahead. I love how flexible it is and how much of a personal connection we both feel using it. It really allows busy people to actually make this coaching possible.
So practically what does this look like?
Travis Chambers
Let me introduce you to Travis. Travis spent 7 years building an online video agency and now is working on short term exotic rental developments. So he has plenty of expertise that he can help people with but he focuses mainly on ecommerce.
Travis started coaching because he felt like he had a moral obligation to share what he learned with others. He decided to use Volley for this because he hated being stuck in meetings all day and figured the people that he was coaching would feel the same way. (Can I get an Amen on that one?)
Money Changes the Perception
So funny enough, Travis gave out his volley link on his socials a couple times and offered to help anyone who had questions and was looking for some guidance. He didn’t really receive much interest. But, the second he offered one on one coaching through Volley for $1000 a month, 8 people signed up. He spends an 1.5 hrs a week checking in, giving assignments and following up and makes $8,000 a month. Crazy right? And Travis doesn’t have a huge audience. With 13k followers and an average of a few thousand views per reel, this was pretty shocking for him.
Travis says that his life was greatly impacted by the authors of several books that he read: $100 Start Up, 4 Day Work Week, and Trust Me I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator to name a few. All of the decisions he’s made for his family has been led by these books. Sometimes it’s so helpful to just talk out your ideas with another human being and have them confirm or deny your ideas and ask intriguing questions that may help you look at things differently. Travis had this in his life early on and wanted to allow this as an opportunity to allow other people to have this as well.
Why Charge?
Travis learned early on that charging for value actually make it more valuable. Once he invited a bunch of founders to a retreat at his cabin with this similar connection and coaching intention. But everyone was so wishy-washy on whether they would come. But the moment he said $850 and sent a sign up link, the retreat filled up in 2 days. Plus, the vibe was completely different. People were dedicated to go and to be present while they were there which is exactly what he intended.
How did he land on 1,000 a month? He had to figure out what was enough money to be substantial enough to make his clients committed, but small enough that he did not put himself in a super high pressure situation with unrealistic expectations.
When he first started coaching, he began with a higher amount and higher deliverables. He had some interest, but he found that he was getting himself into a situation where he felt like he was having to sell himself as a coach. Now, he feels like he found this sweet spot and he couldn’t be happier. With this new approach all Travis did was post on his Instagram story and when people responded he just sent them an invoice on Paypal. That’s it.
If you feel like you can’t do this, just try it! You have nothing to lose! Throw it out there and maybe you’ll get a nibble. And if you don’t, that’s fine too!
Making it Easy
Volley just rolled out a new service called, “Consult with me.” This will be a paid link where people can buy time to talk with you. This works perfectly with coaching.
All you have to do is sign up, fill out your bio and you can create a few offers. There are one time or recurring opinions and you can even stack the offers if you want.
Once the offer is created, it all shows up on the front of your “Consult with me” page where people can tap a button and go through the checkout process to connect. It only take 5-7 mins to set up the whole thing. Then you can add the link to YouTube, your Instagram bio, website, etc.
Want to get some ideas of how this is done? Join our Volley for Creators group. Or you can join the Volley for Coaches group which is for people who are doing this exact thing and you can ask questions and bounce ideas off people etc.
Have comments, reactions, questions about all of this or just want to say hi? Leave a voice message for us and we may use it in an upcoming podcast episode. Until then…
Keep Changing Lives!
Tim Schmoyer