WOW! Here is Everything I've Done to Earn Money as a Coach

Hello, hello, everybody in the Healthy Wealthy Coach group. This is Mary Schiller, your fearless leader. Thank you so much for being here in the group, and if you're joining me live, that's great. I sometimes have trouble seeing the comments that people post, but if I happen to miss them, I will go back after I have signed off. And make sure to catch them then. So type a comment anytime. I'll put that there and hopefully I'll be able to see them. So I wanted to host this talk. There's one today and one tomorrow. Today's topic is— hi Clifford, hi Ingrid, hi Ali, thanks for joining. Today's topic is everything that I can recall having done since I started my coaching business back in the spring of 2016. Hi there. To make money. I thought it would be really interesting, maybe helpful. Hi Kimberly. For you to hear this long list. Hi Clifford. To hear this long list of things that I've done. And as I go through them, I will, you know, pause at various points and give you some of my impressions. Hi Sydney. Of what it was like to do this particular thing or anything that comes to mind. Please feel free, like I said, to post comments or questions. Sometimes Facebook is a little bit fussy and it doesn't let me see the comments. They kind of appear and then they disappear. Again, if I happen to miss your question, I will come back afterwards and watch— I'm sorry, and respond. Of course, if you're watching this on the replay, feel free to post a comment or question and I will come back and check and look. All right. So, here we go. As a little bit of background, I will tell you a little bit about what got me started as a Coach because that kind of, well, hi, Graham. Hi, Doug. Will, you know, give you some perspective on what my situation was at the time. So, some of you have heard me tell this story where I had left a full-time job in, I guess it was the summer of 2015. I had been working for an employer for quite a few years by that time, around 7 or 8 years, and I was really done. And so I took a job at a startup, and unfortunately that job did not pan out, and I ended up leaving in, I believe it was January or February of 2016. I'm a little fuzzy on the dates now. But the timing was quite interesting in that I had nothing else to do. I didn't have a job. I didn't know that the job wasn't going to work out, so I hadn't planned on anything. And I really didn't want to go back to doing what I had been doing previously. My career had mostly been as a professional writer and a writing teacher at universities. I'd also been an online course designer and instructor. And so I just really didn't want to do that anymore. I didn't want to work for someone else, and I wanted to work for myself. But I had undergone a major transformation in my own life and had been sharing that with people just very casually for a couple of years by that point. And I just decided that that's what I wanted to do for my profession. I wanted to be a coach, and I wanted to help people to transform their lives and share with them what had been so incredibly helpful to me. So when this happened, when I lost this job rather unexpectedly, I really didn't want to stay there anyway, but I thought maybe there was some middle ground I could strike with the company. Hi, Jeanette. Hi, Rachel. Hi, Gary. I thought that I could maybe stay on there for a while, but that just wasn't going to happen. So there I was staring at a really bleak-looking bank account as well. We had had some really unfortunate expenses that were unforeseen, and I really had no clue if it was going to work out for me as a Coach or not. I had, at that time, I had really nothing to stand on. I had no Coach training. Which is kind of shocking to a lot of people. I had a handful of people on an email list. I think it was around 150. I would say at least half of them, if not more, were from a business I tried to start a few years earlier and flopped. They weren't even really interested in anything related to life coaching, certainly. I had been doing a daily blog post. I had an audio blog that I'd been doing at that point, I think around 4 months. I had a few people on my email list from that, but I really didn't have much to stand on. On paper, it didn't really look like a great move to jump into an entirely new career and just kind of, you know, see what came, came of it. I really was kind of operating on pure instinct and inspiration at that point. And the company that I had worked for gave me a little bit of severance, enough for me to sort of get my head on a little bit straight. And that was running out. And I realized, you know, I need to make X amount per month to pay these bills. So how am I going to do that? And I just thought, well, I'm just going to come up with a coaching, a one-to-one coaching offer, because that was the only thing I could think of to offer right then, and send it out to this tiny list and see what happens. So that's what I did. I sent this offer out. I sent— I had made it kind of a page on my little website for these offers. And I said, if you'd like to chat with me about whether it's right for you, here's how to choose a time on my calendar. I think I was using Calendly. To do that. That's what happened. Within just a few days, I think it was less than a week, I had a few new clients and I had reached my money goal. I was quite surprised at how quickly I was able to do that. Candidly, I really didn't think anybody would pay attention to me. Looking back, I think the reason behind that was pretty simple actually, which was that even though I had no reputation, I had no training, it was, it was nothing, you know, that most people would think you need. I did have one thing, which was I had been very consistent in making contact with people even before I thought about having a real coaching business when I was just doing this blog. You know, I was communicating with people daily through this blog. They would get my daily audio via email every morning at the same time. And people felt very connected to me. And because it was my voice on these audios and I was speaking to them, I think they felt like they already knew me. I was also very active in some other Facebook groups, a couple in particular that related to my coaching kind of niche. And so people had seen me in there and I had taken a couple of programs offered by other coaches and people had seen me there. Hi there, thanks for joining. And so even though I had at that time had had no intention of becoming a professional coach, Those activities, I believe, were extraordinarily helpful in generating those first few clients. A second thing that I just realized that was also very helpful was I had been interviewed and continued to be interviewed by other people in this same niche. I was fortunate enough to be interviewed by a couple of the biggest names. In that niche, and their interviews were shared quite a bit. I think those two things were instrumental. It was me being super consistent and really connecting with people and having some back and forths over email and things like that, and then being interviewed by people. Those were two big factors, I think, for my ability to get my business going quickly. So that was the first thing that I offered was a one-to-one. I'm just looking at my list of all the things, was one-to-one coaching. Another thing that I have done and that I started doing very early was the thing that was the free download on my first, website was an ebook that I was giving away in a PDF form called The Joy Formula. And I had several people ask me if I could please put it on Amazon because they wanted it in actual book form and in Kindle form. So that launched me down a whole new path of figuring out that whole thing and how to self-publish. And I ended up publishing, self-publishing 10 more books. On Amazon. I already had one previously, but I adjusted it and changed it a little bit. I now have 11 books on Amazon. I have to be honest and say they don't bring in a lot of money. However, I have gotten many clients from those books. Even if the books themselves, I haven't promoted them or done any paid ads or anything like that, which I could do and I may going forward, but they have certainly led clients to me. So that's been a nice thing. When I finished this, I had decided that I wanted to do a year of these audios. When I finished those, they kind of sat for a while and then I decided to sell them. So I took, I think it was, I think I made 2 sets. I think there might have been a set of 100 and then a smaller set of maybe 50 or something. I tried to take what I I felt were the best ones. I put those into a product and I sold those audios. Those have actually made quite a bit of money. I was just looking back at the sales for that and they're in the thousands of dollars, those audio sets. That came from me just doing this daily audio blog every day for a year. As many of you know, I have sold a lot of online courses. Some of those online courses have been standalone, meaning people just go through them on their own, and I would say the majority of them have included some sort of, of group call regularly or some kind of one-to-one setup where there might be a one-to-one call included in the group program. So I'm just looking to see if I'm missing any comments here. It doesn't look like it. Um, hang on a second. Um, anyway, so that's another thing that I've sold often. I've sold lots and lots of group programs that include an online component. So sometimes the emphasis is more on the online course with sort of the support of a group call and things like that. Other times it's kind of been the reverse where the focus has really been on the group interaction and the other pieces have been sort of extras or bonuses or things that people can refer back to. So I've kind of done it both ways. What else is on my list? I have also done some group coaching programs that did not include any sort of online course materials. They may have taken place over a couple of weekends or something like that, and people received the recordings, but they didn't have any extra online component to them. So, you know, that's a really nice way to start leveraging your time is by considering what you could offer to a small group of people without kind of stressing out about creating a bunch of stuff to go with it. You don't have to do that. You can certainly create something from what you already do and invite people that you're already connected with to join you in it. That's exactly what I have done for almost all of the group programs I've run. I have hand-invited people. I've literally sent personal invitations. I learned that pretty early on in my business when I was offering a couple of group programs with another coach. We partnered for a couple of these, and she described it as casting her group program where she thought about people that she knew already, and she would think about who would make a nice mix. You know, kind of when you're planning where people are going to sit at a table, maybe at a wedding, like, oh, will these people get along? You know, will they have good conversation? That's how she often would construct her group programs. And so that's what we did. So we talked about the topics and we, we kind of looked at all the people we knew and we thought, who would really benefit from this? Who would be an exciting person to have? Who would bring, you know, different aspects of their personality and, you know, creativity and all of that to the program? And we would invite them personally. We would also, I'll talk about this tomorrow when I talk about how I marketed things, but done a lot of group Zoom calls, informational calls, and that's how I was able to fill a lot of those programs. Let's see, what else is on my list? Oh yes, this is something I've done pretty frequently actually, is I have sold access to a masterclass. A live masterclass, and then, or, and/or, either the class has been for a fee and they get the recording included, or the class has been free and then if they want the recording, they can pay for that. And that's a really nice setup if you want to test an idea that you have. So if, because it doesn't take a ton of work to do, you could potentially host it on, you couldn't charge for this because Facebook doesn't let you charge for things that you do in a group like this. But that's the kind of thing where you could charge for the recording. You could host it in a Facebook group and then charge people for the recording. Or you can use something like Zoom for that. That's another option. I mostly used a platform called Crowdcast. Which is actually a really nice webinar-style program but also allows you to bring people on camera with you to ask questions. It's a combination. People can type in comments and questions and/or you can bring them on camera to ask the questions. That's kind of a nice feature. I would recommend Crowdcast. They've changed their pricing so they've got a lower tier pricing level now that they didn't have. A nice entry point for something like that. It's very easy to learn and use for the administrator like me and also for the people who are watching. I know some of you on this call have attended my Crowdcast talks, so that's really fun. Sorry, I've got a bit of a frog in my throat tonight. Alright, back to my list. Oh, one more thing I wanted to say about the masterclasses is I think I've also hosted those on Zoom. And what's really, really great about anything you do like that where you host like a 90-minute conversation, you know, where you're teaching and, and then it's being recorded, is that when you have that recording, you can do tons of things with it. Tons of things with it. That's why I love things like Facebook Lives, live webinars, because once you have that recording, I'll give you an example. I am right now putting together a new offering and I have included one of my masterclass recordings as a bonus in this program. You can include it as a bonus. You can keep selling it on its own. You can transcribe it and use the written portion as fodder for social media posts, for blog posts, for other topic ideas. If you have the slideshow, you can give that to people as a download. You can create— I think for most of my masterclasses, I have created some sort of a downloadable handout or workbook. That people can go through after the call. You can also use a live masterclass as a really nice way of inviting people to work with you further. Whether they paid for it or not, if they spend that much time learning from you and they ask questions and things, it's a really nice way for them to get to know you. Hi, Sydney. To host some Facebook groups, do you use Crowdcast or some feature of the group? That's a good question, Cindy. In Crowdcast at one of the higher price points, you can set it up so that if you want to do it for free, it delivers your content to Crowdcast, anyone who is attending on Crowdcast, Facebook, and YouTube even. You can also do talks on YouTube Live from your phone. There are all kinds of ways that you can host things like this that are either free or inexpensive. One of the reasons that I like using something like Crowdcast is because people have to register and I can then collect their email addresses so they can be added to my email list. Let me see. To host courses in the group, how did you do that? Crowdcast is interesting because it's a platform where you can host a live talk. And people can attend live and then they can watch the recording on the very same page. There's no different link. So sometimes, um, I would send out the link and say, if you want to watch this, just register and you can watch the recording right here. It's super easy. Other times I turned off that feature and I downloaded the recording and put it somewhere else to sell. I should mention two places I've sold. Some of you will be familiar with this. Two platforms I've used to sell digital downloads, meaning, you know, things like the audios I mentioned or some of these recordings of these masterclasses. I have sold on Gumroad and/or Payhip. They're really, really similar services. They make it really, really easy, like super easy to sell any kind of digital product. You can even sell a digital course on there if you have it set up so that people can just kind of download the whole thing and go through it as they want to. So if you're looking for a platform that is inexpensive and works really well, I would highly recommend those two for anything digital that's really, really uncomplicated. I should also mention that when I have sold online courses, I have used all kinds of platforms. I've used email, literally just sending emails out with some text. I have sent emails out that link to a private YouTube video. For people to watch. I'll list some of the course platforms I've used. CourseCraft, Thinkific, Teachable, Kartra, which I'm getting off of, and now I'm on MemberVault. I probably should say I wouldn't recommend that one. Okay. So there are some of the platforms that I have used. There are lots of other ones that are equally good. Those are just the ones that I happened to find over the years. Another one that people seem to like is Podia. And also, Kajabi is popular, as is Simplero. But I haven't used any of these. One thing I really love about— combining group support with an online class is that people learn much better if they have some kind of group interaction or some kind of one-to-one interaction while they're doing an online course. Personally, I feel like the dynamics of a group are better even than one-to-one. So if you're thinking about offering an online course, then you may want to consider how you can bring some kind of interaction and live real-time support for people because it makes a huge difference in their finishing the class and their making progress. So I would recommend that. And again, if you have more questions, just go ahead and post them. Going back to my list here. Oh yes, so another thing that I have done to make money as a coach was I sold my services as a writing coach since I have a background in writing. I have helped people finish their books or write their books. I have worked as an editor on a number of book projects. And I've also helped people to self-publish. So I've walked people through that whole process. So that's another thing that I've done since I became a coach. I have also done consultations related to people's websites because that was an area that I have a lot of expertise in and I'm kind of a techie. So I've done that as well. I've also worked with people more recently on their messaging. So I've sold some VIP sessions related to getting your messaging right. That's another thing that I've done. Oh, hi. Yeah, hi, Jeanette. I've done a lot of things. I'll mention a little bit about doing a lot of things at the end of this. You know, I really do love the VIP type of session where I might meet with someone for 90 minutes to 2 hours. We work through something together and then they go back and work on it themselves. They may email me and then we have another session to see how things have turned out. That's a really nice setup that works very well because it's very concentrated and people tend to get right on it because they know that, you know, it's a time-limited thing and people can make great progress in that kind of setup. And it's also a fairly easy thing to sell because it's short-term and people really like to get results quickly. So that is another thing that I've sold. Okay, yeah, another thing that I am actually doing right now which I never expected to do— this, this really kind of came out of nowhere— is I am coaching another coach's clients. So they are enrolled in a program, I believe it's 12 weeks long, and I am meeting with them weekly to check in on their progress. So we have this weekly kind of accountability call where they have certain things that they were supposed to have finished the week prior. And so I check in with them and we, you know, see what successes they've had and we see where they might be kind of falling off and where they need some support. So that's what I'm doing for this other coach. And she got interested in hiring me for that because she saw that I had recently become a certified trainer in the 12 Week Year, which is this amazing kind of productivity system. I'm really kind of Summarizing that very succinctly because it's a lot more than that, but that's another thing that I've done now as a coach was I received this certification and I am looking at how I can offer something in 2020 that will really bolster people's ability to make progress much easier and with more fun and ease and faster too. Because to me, that's a lot of the missing ingredient for people is being able to consistently do something over time so that you can see the results of that. Uh, let's see, did I miss anything on my list here? I'm sure I'm forgetting something, um, but I think that probably covers most of it. A couple of things I wanted to say is that there are opportunities out there for you to license content. So for example, two of the programs I currently offer, I bought a license to sell them. I had to redo everything and put my own, I put my own spin on it, but I didn't start from zero. I purchased a license. It's the same with the 12-Week Year. I pay an annual license to keep that certification alive and I've gotten materials from them that I can use. So you know, you don't always have to create things from scratch. There are opportunities out there like that and some of them are really reasonably priced as well. So you know, there are all kinds of things you can do that don't cost much for you but can bring a lot of value to people that you can charge quite a bit for. My sense is that after you've been listening to me, you know, for almost half an hour, you may be thinking, "Oh my gosh, that's so many things that you've done." And it's true. I have done a lot of things. And it's because I'm always listening to a couple of different things. First, I'm listening to what's calling to me to do. And what I enjoy doing, and that's varied at different points. Oh, I forgot another thing I've done is I did email coaching. So I did coaching over email and video. So instead of meeting with people one-to-one on a Zoom call, we communicated by email and video. So that was another thing I forgot to mention. But the other thing, other than just listening to myself, is I I try to see what would be most helpful to people, like what format could I deliver this in that would be easy and accessible for people and really help them to succeed. And I'm constantly looking in that direction too. Like if I think of an idea for an online program, it's always like, okay, is this something that people can really do on their own, you know, or do they need some support? And if they do need some support, what would that look like? Or I might say, you know, this particular program might work really well for a small group of 5 or 6 people as opposed to 20 or 30. Or some other offer I could see, you know, really this is good for a one-on-one, like those VIP sessions where I work with someone on their messaging to get that clear and get it easier for them to write about and talk about what they do. So it really does, you know, it shifts depending on me and my own desires and what I'm looking to do and also how I'm trying to serve people. I feel somewhat fortunate that I have quite a bit of tech skill, so that is never something that has stopped me. But the good news there is that all of the platforms that I have used have improved dramatically over the years, and so many of them are just so easy to use now that really that's not a barrier either like it used to be. You know, I studied— I started in online teaching back in the '90s, and I can tell you it was a lot different then. We were literally writing HTML code to try to make our classes look good online. So things have changed and have become much easier. Hi, Ellie, how'd you find those licensing opportunities? One I came across by accident where I was looking at this one coach's offers and somebody had said in her Facebook group, she was talking about this program, and somebody said, oh, I really am glad that I purchased a license to teach that program because it's been really great for my business. I inquired and I was like, "Oh, how do I do this?" She showed me how to do that. That was kind of by accident. It may just be a question of asking people, "Do you license your content? Do you license your program?" The 12 Week Year was because I was on their email list. And they sent out an announcement that said, we're doing this training and you can purchase a license. I also just, I guess it was last week, purchased a license to use a specific online platform for a new offering I'm gonna be coming out with in January. So I guess once you kinda keep your eye open, you start seeing these opportunities that you may not have noticed before. So I don't think there's, Yeah, they came up organically. They weren't things that I set out to look for. I just happened to start noticing them. I don't know if there's any sort of directory like that. I kind of doubt it. I think they're just things that you can sort of start looking for and you'll probably start seeing those opportunities. Another way that you can do something like that is There's a company called, I think this is right, Ready To Go Marketing. I believe I have that correct. I'm trying to think of the woman's name. Hang on a second. I'm going to look at my email. Yes, her name is Kim Clausen. She offers ready-to-go programming. So you may have heard of a PLR, which is something license something, I forget. It's material that you can purchase and then use it as is or rebrand it and sell it. You can do kind of anything you want with it. Most of it is not good. It's pretty low quality stuff, but hers is actually really high quality. It's not cheap. I should put that caveat, but I have bought, I had bought it in the past and was amazed at the quality of what she puts out there. It's very, very well done. It's programming that you could literally just take and start either offering it as a one-to-one coach or in a group coaching program or even an online program. And it comes, she has lots and lots of different topics. So that's one, Ali and everybody, that I can think of that I would recommend in terms of the quality of what she is putting out there. And yeah, those are the only places I can think of. That's the only place I can think of that I would actually recommend. Oh, I forgot. Yes, there's one other way I can think of that I've made money as a coach, and that's as an affiliate. I have only so far been an affiliate for one big program, which was Jeff Walker's Product Launch Formula, and that brought in a fair amount of money. I was actually quite pleased with that. I have a small email list still. It's only around 1,000, and it's been at that for like 2 years. My project starting in December is to start growing my email list because I want a bigger reach. But you'd be amazed at what you can do even with an email list of that size with some creativity and some ingenuity. Affiliate marketing has been nice. I've also made some money through affiliate links for tech services that I would recommend. I've earned some money that way. Those things add up, especially if you put any focus on them. You can really do well with something like that. For example, I'm now an affiliate for MemberVault. I would love to offer some trainings about how people can use MemberVault. Then if they purchase MemberVault through my link, then I get a commission for that. There are very few people whose programs I would actually be an affiliate for. Jeff Walker's was one. I can think of one other person that I would recommend that I am an affiliate for, but I haven't actually push the program. But that's another thing you can do. And, you know, so don't count out anything. When you are trying to build your coaching business, you may think that your options are kind of limited. But what I'm hoping that you've gotten from this talk is there are lots and lots of ways that you can do what you do. So I think with that, I will just pause and see if there are any final questions. Tomorrow I will talk about all of the things I've done to market all of my offerings, which have all been free, just my time. I have, like I said, I have not as yet spent any money on advertising or boosting or anything like that. I might have boosted a Facebook post once and thought it was a waste of money. But anyway, It's something that I'm looking to do now. I haven't felt ready to do it, candidly. I didn't feel like I had enough kinds of offerings in place. I just didn't feel ready. Now I feel like I am. Now I feel like I have a good solid foundation. I won't just be throwing money away and getting subscribers who aren't a good fit for me or who I just are wrong. I'm going to do it in a way that's going to make sure that they are the right people. Do you have any questions? I'm hoping I'm not missing your comments. It looks like I'm up to date, but I can't really tell, to be honest. Let me just take another sip of water. Again, sorry for the slightly froggy voice here today. So was this helpful? If you could type a comment and let me know. Was it a little bit overwhelming or fun or— when I looked at the list and like I said, I forgot a couple things that came to me just now. I thought, you know, no wonder the past few years have been so fun. You know, look at all the great things I've been able to do and I've really enjoyed all of it, even the things that you know, didn't end up selling well, I still enjoy delivering everything that I've delivered. I've loved every person who has come my way. I've enjoyed working with them and supporting them. Hi, curious, how do you decide what platform to use for things? Oh, how did I decide this was a Facebook thing? I guess for these talks, I considered doing them on Crowdcast, but I just kind of felt like I wanted to make it easier for people to attend. And since people are on Facebook a lot, it just seemed like the right venue for this. For the talks that I've given on Crowdcast, I've usually— not that I didn't prepare for this, but I'm usually a little more prepared. Like sometimes I have slides. Or I have things kind of at least an outline of things that I want to say. But really, it's kind of interchangeable. The advantage of doing something on Crowdcast or WebinarJam, I also have WebinarJam, of course you can get people's emails and you can reply to them. But that really wasn't my goal for this. My goal for this wasn't to get all of your email addresses. It was simply to share with you what I've done in my business and see if it was helpful to you. And, you know, if you do want to get some help, of course, you know, I'm here. You can email me, mary@maryschiller.com, and if it seems appropriate, we'll get on a Zoom call and chat about what I might be able to do to help you. So, you know, I'll type my email address here. You can always reach out to me. And yeah, it's been really fun sharing all this. It was, it was quite exciting for me to see this list when I wrote it out, you know, to see all the things and remember all of the different topics that I've covered over the years, you know, because I started as a life coach and then kind of gradually moved towards more business coaching. And gosh, I've covered the gamut really, and I hope to continue to. I'd love to start offering more online courses, do-it-yourself courses on all different kinds of topics. So that's part of my plan going forward and trying to make them accessible to people. So if there aren't any more questions, I guess I will sign off. And I hope you can join me tomorrow at the same time, same group, Healthy Wealthy Coach, and I will share everything I have done that I can remember, and I'm sure some will come to me as I'm talking, that I have done to market my offerings over the years. So bring your questions, and I'll come back here and check for more comments and questions after, when the recording is up. So thanks for being here, everybody. Have a wonderful day or evening wherever you are in the world, and I'll talk to you soon. Thanks so much.