Katie McManus breaks down how to build an executive coaching business to $500,000 a year as a solo operator. She covers marketing strategies, certifications, client packages, and event logistics for coaches looking to scale their practice.
If you're an executive coach for people in leadership, then listen up because I'm going to show you how you can make $500,000 a year doing work that you love that actually helps people. First things first. So if you are going to be coaching directors, VPs and their companies are going to be paying for it. Oftentimes their companies know to look for certain certifications. So you want to be a trained coach and you also want to have some kind of certification probably through the icf, which if you're not familiar with that, it's International Coaching Federation. So, so to make $500,000 a year as an executive coach is simple. It's not necessarily easy, but it's simple. Okay, so your package for your one on one clients, you're going to do 12 months with them. You're going to have two 60 minute calls per month. You're going to offer email support in between these sessions. And you're also going to do a 360 evaluation for them so you can see kind of where they're starting and where they're ending. And you're going to charge $30,000 for the year. And if you carry 10 clients throughout the year, that will equal about $300,000 at the end of the year. Obviously that's not your full goal. So in addition to working with one on one clients, you're going to do a whole bunch of executive workshops, you're going to do speaking, you're also going to host day long events for leadership training. Now all these things you're going to charge for and because you're going to be in front of your ideal clients, they are also going to be where you source your $30,000 clients. That's what I like to call elegant marketing. Now in order to build this, you're gonna have to upgrade your marketing strategy along with your marketing assets. So first and foremost I want proper branding. I want you to find a graphic designer who's going to create all the assets for your branding. This is going to help you look super dialed in on LinkedIn, which is where you're going to be marketing more than any other place. You're also going to need a dialed in website. It doesn't have to be like super advanced or anything, but you are going to need a website. Companies that take you serious at this level. In addition to that, you are going to need a professional photo shoot at some point as you're building this. And I'm not talking about one of those stuffy like headshot photo shoots in addition to that for your 360 evaluation, you can totally design your own. One of the things that I absolutely love that has a lot of credibility within companies is the leadership circle. So getting that certification training would be super helpful for someone who's turning targeting directors and VP level executives in addition to that. So you're going to be doing all these events, you're going to be doing workshops, you're going to be doing day long trainings where people are going to be able to sign up. It's going to be really helpful for you to have someone who's handling all the logistics for you. I'm talking renting the space, booking your flights, booking your hotel, posting things to eventbrite, all that stuff. And since part of this whole strategy is to have you speak on stages, both so you can get paid for it and so that you can get clients, you're going to want to have a system which I train my clients on to get booked on stages. And this can either be you doing this every single day or you can hire a VA and have someone like me train them on exactly how they reach out to events to get you booked on their stage. And that's pretty much it. So if you want to build a business to $500,000 a year, that's more or less what it'll take. You could also add a bunch of other assets and things, but yeah, it's pretty simple. And hi, I help ADHD business owners make more money in less time time with fewer distractions. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach and I'm still waking up.
