How to Get Paid Using Your Existing Skills With a Coaching Business

Welcome to Business with Chronic Illness, the globally ranked podcast for women living with chronic illness who want to start and grow a business online. I'm your host, Nikita Williams, and I went from living a normal life to all of a sudden being in constant pain with no answers, to being diagnosed with multiple chronic illnesses and trying to make a livable income. I faced the challenge of adapting traditional business advice to fit my unique circumstances with chronic illness, feeling frustrated and burned out than I already was while managing my chronic illness to becoming an award-winning coach with a flexible, sustainable online coaching business. I found the surprisingly simple steps to starting and growing a profitable business without compromising my health or my peace. Since then, I've helped dozens of women just like you learn how to do the same. If you're ready to create a thriving business that aligns with your lifestyle and well-being, you're in the right place. Together, we're shifting the narrative of what's possible for women with chronic illness and how we make a living. This is Business with Chronic Illness.

All right, y'all, I am excited to talk with you on how to get paid based on what you already know and love by starting a coaching business. Now, I wanted to bring this up because I was chatting with some friends over a graduation party. It is June when I'm recording this, but this conversation happened back in May. And I also have been talking to a couple of different clients on sales calls, on sales calls that have been like, I don't even know if I have enough to like get paid and make a living out of what I already know. Like, I feel like I have to go to school, I have to get a certification. Like, I'm not like quote unquote my title or my experience doesn't make me like a coach. And so this is for all of you, whether you are in a professional career, you have a hobby you love that you run as like a side business, a side hustle, or you have just like an innate gift or skill where people like always talk to you all of the time and they're like, how did you figure that out? How did you know to do such and such? And how are— how does this come so easy to you? It might be speaking like in public, it might be singing, it might be a hobby that you enjoy, like being an artist, a sketcher, and you never went to school officially for any of this. Or maybe you have had some training, but you didn't get a piece of paper that says, yo, look at you, you can do this thing, right? So this is for all of you who are like, Nikita, I hear you talking about starting a coaching business. I also am looking for a way to make a living on my own terms that gives me freedom and flexibility, but I don't know how I can do that, right? I want to tell you all something that might blow your mind. I have certifications as a coach, but before I had those certifications, I had clients and I was making money before I had those certifications because I had this experience. Of helping people with different areas and also because I just knew how to figure it out way quicker than the person who was looking for my help. Right. And so for all of you who are living with chronic illness and you have had to change your job, maybe you are on disability right now, maybe you have taken FMLA, maybe you are just in transition of looking for a job that more works around your schedule and your flexibility around what you need physically, I want to offer you an option that doesn't have to be defined by anyone else but you. It doesn't have to be defined by anyone's— one else's time or a sheet of paper other than what you have already done. So I'm going to give you a couple examples of what this looks like on how you can get paid based on what you already know and love in having a coaching business. So if you're like, what's a coaching business? And you're listening to this, a coaching business is basically where you teach or consult or share with people how to get a result or solve a problem.

That's it. That's all it is.

That's all it is. And you'll see more about what I mean by this. But before I get into sharing a little bit about that with you, Answering how to get paid based on what you already know and love in a coaching business. I want to be open and honest with you guys. I have been going through quite a health upheaval. I've talked about this before, probably in my email list. I've talked about this on my Instagram stories, and I haven't done this in a really long time. I had all the plans for this year to have up to like 2 episodes a week for you on the show, but I am going to probably go down to having a biweekly episode for the summer specifically. So you're only going to get 2 episodes every month for me until we get into, you know, fall/winter time. And part of this isn't because I don't have like a stack of content to produce. It's just for me, energy and capacity-wise, like I have been mentally, physically just drained. I haven't felt like this in such a long time and it's mostly because of physical pain. And this is something that I talk with my clients about and I teach my clients on, like always making sure you're making decisions where you're not quitting all of the time, but you're adjusting. And what can you do versus what can't you continue doing and you just quitting the thing, right? And granted, there are times that you're just not going to do it. So for example, last week I did not tell y'all anything about this. I just didn't post anything. You did not get a new episode last week because I just, just didn't. I just didn't. And that's okay.

That's okay.

I still signed 2 clients last week and I have some folks coming in, um, that are interested in my group program. So I'm never afraid of like pausing or taking a break or adjusting how I show up in my cadence as long as I continue to just take those baby steps forward. And I also have systems in place that really are helpful for all of this. And this is something else that I support my clients and teach them how to do. But I've noticed that I just need a little bit of space again with the podcast. And my email and Instagram Lives are going to be probably where you see me more consistently because they're just easy for me to like pop on and pop off, which is crazy. I can do that with my podcast. I can record them. But what I've been finding is my brain fog and my physical pain has gotten to a point that is even more challenging for me to do that on, on a mic. You don't want to hear me moaning and crying recording an episode, and obviously you won't see me doing that on an Instagram Live either. I will be sending you an email, likely. That's where you'll be getting all of the juicy bits about, um, how to start and grow your business living with chronic illness as a coaching business. I hope you understand. And if you're listening to this at any other time after 2024, you're like, Nikita, I listened to this episode where you were taking a break and now you're doing so much, and how are you doing this? Look, you're going to have ebbs and flows in your business. And that's okay. I just want to like truly normalize this idea of always going in like 360, you know, run pace. You can slow down and still create results. You can choose to take care of your health. You can choose to take care of your mental and physical capacity and still grow a business successfully. So I'm living what I preach. I'm living what I teach. I'm living how I get paid. And this is the same thing I teach my clients in the different seasons that you go through living with chronic illness. So be— have heads up, we'll be having at this point, you know, biweekly or every— you'll have 2 episodes a month. You might have some bonus ones here and there. A lot of these episodes are going to be me. I'm saving up some of these guest episodes that we have coming up for the fall. I have so many great episodes. We've got some coming up about AI and like how you can use it systematically, how to be safe with AI. We have some coming up about productivity, about confidence and self-care. We have a couple episodes coming up about growing a business with some past guests that we had on the show and where they are now. So many fun things we're gonna be talking about and the guests and all of that jazz. But I want to make sure that when I drop those episodes, you're getting them during a time that you're probably a little bit more active as well as listening to the show, which is usually after the summertime. So let's be real, that's what I'm doing. Okay, so we're going to biweekly. That's all you need to know, and I will let you know when that will change. Okay, so let's get to this question. How do you get paid based on what you already know and love in a coaching business by starting a coaching business without necessarily like having to go get another certification or another degree or going to school or whatever? OK, so I'm going to give you a couple examples. I'm going to start with the first one, which is based off of my husband who is in the tech community world. He has been— his career has been in all tech. He's literally had his hands from like the data center with the very physical racking things. And don't ask me the terminology of all the things he's done, but racking the servers to coding to cybersecurity to hands and feet of like the mechanics of a laptop or computer software program. Like all these things, things he's got experience with it. All right. And he's worked with startup companies, he's worked with big corporations, and he's got lots of experience in this way. So if this person, if my husband had decided that, hey, you know what, I really want to start a side hustle, I love I love doing this technical stuff, but I'm getting tired of doing it without having the flexibility and freedom over my time. But I also get paid pretty well cuz usually in the tech world or any kind of like higher end kind of jobs, like just any jobs that are like more like needed. I don't know what other ones there are, like HR or sales and different things like that that are like, you usually making over 6 or 7 figures or something like that a year or 5 figures a year. It's challenging to think, how can I even start a side business to have the time? Or how can I have a side business that's going to replace my current income? So I want to share with you how you could do that. So all of the things that you are doing in your profession, for example, like my husband with the data center, he's got coding, he's got cybersecurity, and he's done this with a very, like, variable different types of companies with different needs, circumstances, different teams. That all is experience that can be translated into you starting a business, helping other small businesses solve this problem. So he could decide that he wants to start a side business of helping data centers better equip their— I don't know— their system administrators on how to better create safety environment for their servers. I don't know, I'm making this stuff up, y'all, because I am not a techie like my husband. He could consult or coach small to, small to medium-sized businesses who are looking to really rev up their cybersecurity. They don't even know what cybersecurity needs means. They don't know what kind of things they need to have in place, but he does, right? He could create an offer where he does an audit and he can show them where they will need, like where they're vulnerable and what they need help with. And here are the things they need to have in place and here are the team team members or tools that they'll need to have in place in order to do such and such. And he can offer that as a way to like either handhold them through the process of getting those things in place as a coach or consultant, or he could just give them the plan and they pay him for that. And he checks in every now and then to see how is it going. That's an offer. So if you're in a corporate or professional career in some way, shape, or form, and you are already doing something that you truly love and you enjoy, You can turn that into a, a, a consulting or coaching business where you're working or solving the same problem you're doing right now, but to other businesses. So this is business-to-business type of coaching and consulting. Now, what about if you don't wanna deal with other business quote unquote owners? You wanna like deal with the everyday person. So going back to the same example, what if you're like my husband who wants to teach people how to, like, maybe who are looking to— if you look at his resume, you would be like, wow, he's got a very wide, diverse experience in this technical world. How did he get those jobs? How did that happen? How did he go from, like, doing racking servers to doing cybersecurity, right? Maybe he would help people with their resumes and showing how they can translate those skills to other skills that they are looking for to other types of jobs. He could have a coaching thing of like, hey, these are the things you need to have to place for your resume. These are the things you need to talk about your experiences. We can pull out different things that you've done. That's something that's not to a business owner, that's to another person who's like in the same field but wanting to get a job doing similar transitioning, different roles. He could also like teach people any of these skills. He could literally teach anybody who's like been in school or hasn't been in school and wants to figure out how to, how to deal with racking servers or coding or cybersecurity. He can literally do a course or he could do like one-on-one coaching on like helping people know like what things needs to happen for whatever these type of roles. So he could help anyone that's maybe not a business to learn a skill, add a skill, or navigate their current experiences to find another job or something like that, or cross their experience into, or figuring out a way to use their experience in the technical field in a different, completely different adjacent, adjacent, or not even adjacent type of job. So there's a lot of different ways he could literally create an offer. And for most of my clients who are already in a professional space and they have a career, I like to ask them to think about parts of their job that they actually love and excel at that they want to do. So maybe you do, maybe for example, like if you're my husband, he's in cybersecurity, he, he, he enjoys it, but it's not necessarily his favorite thing. What if his favorite thing was managing the people, like managing people in tech? How could he translate those skills as being a manager or a leader into supporting other business owners or other small businesses to create a more unified experience in another business. Lots of different ways, lots of different angles. Maybe you have a certification already that you haven't really fully used at your job, but you know other people. So I know like Agile is a way of organizing and project management, project management. Maybe you're really great with productivity. Maybe you're really great with timelines. Maybe you're really great with client and personnel communication. Maybe you're really great with whatever it is that may not be in your quote unquote title, but you're really great at. All of those skills can translate to helping someone else or some other business to create similar results of success that are chargeable. I'm going to talk about how they do this in a little bit at the end, but all of these things are possible. So that's an example if you're in like a professional career. Now, if you are— if you have a hobby, maybe you have an innate skill or a gift. Maybe you love to travel. Maybe you have found a way to like travel, right? Maybe you have found a way to be like really fit even though you have a very busy schedule. Maybe you're a hobby photographer, right? You don't really necessarily have photography business, but you know, people ask you to do their like weddings and things like that, and you kind of do it here and there, but you don't really have a desire to start a business, but you would like to teach people. Or people ask you all the time, like, how did you take that shot? Or how did you edit that photo? There are different angles of problems you have solved doing the thing that are— that's so easy to you. So if you travel, if you've been fit, if you are an artist or a crafter or something, and they just have come to you so easily. You just do them. They're fun. It's just you figure it out. You made a plan, yada yada, but you love it, right? You think it can't be turned into a way people pay you, but it can be. I like to give you the example of, for example, let's say you and your husband or your wife are Travelers, and you guys travel a lot. You got— actually have gone on some like dream vacations people have wished they could go on. You both are like working full-time, but you have a very busy schedule and you've been able to do traveling around the world pretty affordably without breaking the bank, but you've done it and people are amazed by how you're doing these things. That can be turned into a business that can be turned into a coaching business. You can help people figure out how to travel on a budget, right? You can teach people how to plan to travel, right? And I'm gonna share with you a little bit of nitty-gritty on all of these little things as I keep going on what makes these things more profitable and actually more sellable and marketable. But just bear with me. These are just ideas of ways we can like coach people. Let's say you are that photographer that doesn't have have a business, but you're really great. You're a really great photographer. You're really good at doing natural shooting or studio shooting, and it's just fun. That's what you do, right? You could have other photographers who have businesses who struggle with taking images in natural light or in studio light, or someone who's looking to start a photography business but doesn't even have a camera, right? But they need to learn. You can coach someone to do that as well. There are different angles of problems you have had to solve to do these things that you do that come so easily and like amaze other people. And all you have to do is learn how to work the problem backwards to see how you solved it in order to help people to do the same. You feel like these things are no-brainer, but other people are looking at you like, I don't know how that has even been possible. A lot of what I teach my clients to do within the container is realizing that you already have a lot of skills that people are searching for. You already know a lot of the mistakes, the mindset drama, the tools to overcome that, that are getting in the way, honestly, of other people figuring out what to do, right? A lot of this stuff is Googleable, but a lot of people aren't doing it right. And a lot of it has more to do with mindset. A lot of it has sometimes to do with the nuance of trying to complete or do a thing. So even in your hobby or your craft that you've been doing since you were a kid, or maybe for the last 10 years, that you've learned so much. I'm sure you did tutorials. I'm sure you went on YouTube and learned this, or even if you went to school, you learned something. And then over time you learned some things that aren't in the school books, that aren't on Google. And that's part of the reason why people will pay you. And this is a part of the reason why you can get paid for what you already know without necessarily getting another certification or going back to school or anything like that. Now, here's something I want you to keep in mind when you're thinking about, oh my gosh, Nikita, I'm so excited. I can take what I already know and like make some money. Yes.

Yes.

Now, how viable those ideas are really is based on knowing that for these things to be viable and profitable, like long-term and sustainable, a coaching business or consulting business needs to be tied to a human need. Something that we got to have. It can't be a commodity. So I know I talked about travel. Travel is important and we would love to do it. But what does travel really help with that you could make it more of a human need, right? Increasing or in one way you could think about it is relationships. How does relationships help? How does travel help relationships? How does travel help with your health? So you want to tie any kind of business that is a hobby or even a skill that you have or anything that solves a basic human need of health, money or wealth and relationships. You can't go wrong when you figure out a way to tie it to those three things because our brains are naturally looking for a solution. To those things. And so that's why there are coaches for every type of industry there is. And it's a little different in your marketing and your sales when you're talking about these things versus when you're coaching a client. It's to get people in the door. And that's really what's important to keep in mind is that in the day-to-day, obviously you're going to talk about some of the emotional things and the mindset things and the things that aren't as tangible.. But when it comes to marketing and having people find that your skills, your hobby, your gifts are valuable and they're willing to pay money for it to be in a container with you, you will want to do it so that it ties in your marketing to their basic human needs of health, wealth, and relationships. We are always looking for solution for that. We're always looking to feel better, have better days. We're always looking for ways to save and have money and take care and have more options. And we're always looking for ways to improve our relationships or create relationships or find things or whatever. This is especially if you're trying to do something from a coaching angle. Now, obviously, I just want to put this other caveat that if you're like, Nikita, I don't want to start a coaching business, I just want to talk about this thing that I do and see how it goes. You could also start an informational business that's not a coaching business, or informational business could be like a podcast or blog post where you're teaching people how to do a thing that you do well and you make money through ads and sponsors and community. Totally a way to do it. But I have found the fastest way to build a livable income is through coaching and consulting, and that's something I help my clients do. So I'll share with you— I have a couple of clients right now, so I have a client who is amazing. She is in a corporate career, but she wanted to prepare her, like, retirement life. And she is starting a leadership-based creativity coaching where it helps people use creativity to help them land and transition into more leadership roles. I have a client that is a done-for-you. So she does like services of like doing social media management for you. She will organize all of that stuff for you and do all of the things for you. But she also now is incorporating a done-for-you, done-with-you offer, which is more of consulting on like how to get your messaging, how to put your process in place that you may not want to do, especially if you're doing it on your own, if you're DIYing these things. I have another client recently who is wanted to do coaching for moms or fitness, and we're talking about how to do that in a professional or career setting. So many different things, but we are working on creating an offer on exactly what that can look like. I will do another podcast episode on what your coaching offers should be for starting out. I will also do another episode on how to find clients because it's really easy. It's a lot easier than you think. I have some clients right now doing what I call market research calls, and these calls help them to get into the habit of getting people to say yes while they market and sell a free call so they can help people and see how they give them results. And I would say 10, 10 to 15% or 10 to 25% of those clients become clients. So at least one or two of those clients on those free calls turn into clients. Some of those more than that often. But it just is really helpful and it's a simple process, you guys. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. You just have to learn how to do it in a way that people find it as a need and valuable. And that's what I do inside of my group coaching program where you learn how to start and grow a business and get paid based on things you already know and things that you already love. And it's not as hard as you think, and it's so flexible and great for you, especially if you're living with chronic illness or dealing with a lot of life hurdles and you need that flexibility and freedom of your time, energy, and capacity. So that's it for this episode. If you're looking to figure out how you can start getting paid for what you already know with ease, go ahead and go to the show notes and check out how to book a call with me or jump into my inbox at info@craftistothrive.com and reach out and I'll send you a link on how to book a call with me. For free. All right, loves, have a beautiful day and I'll see you on the next episode.

That's a wrap for this episode of Business with Chronic Illness.

If you would like to start and grow an online coaching business with me, head to the show notes to click a link to book a sales call and learn how to make money with chronic illness.

You can also check out our website at www.craftedtothrive.com for this episode's show notes and join our email to get exclusive content where I coach you on how to chronically grow a profitable business while living with chronic illness. Until next time, remember, yes, you are crafted to thrive.