How to Start a Coaching Business From Scratch (live session w/ Jo)

Welcome back, everybody. It is the next episode of Fix Your Business, and I am your host, Robin Waite, the Fearless Business Coach. Today we are going to be speaking with Jo Betteridge, who is just starting out on her coaching journey, which is very exciting. After working for 15+ years in corporates across multiple different businesses, from an oil and gas company to a publishing house to a social media marketing business and all sorts of things there.

Yeah.

Welcome to the show, Jo.

Thank you.

Hello. So don't look scared, it's all going to be fine.

Do I look that scared?

I'm going to ease you into it. So, um, you're just on the cusp of kind of starting up your coaching practice, so give us a 60-second précis of kind of, uh, you know, what drove you to set up the coaching practice and what you're hoping to achieve with it in the future.

Okay, well, it's all exploded out of nowhere. I've started to write a novel about healing broken hearts a place called Heartbreak Hotel, people are having their hearts healed and their lives lit up with an inner light and inner passion. And I thought alongside that book, I could do an online course and online coaching so that the people reading the book, having, you know, fallen in love with the characters, can go on their own journey of self-discovery and light themselves up from within. So it's gone from, you know, being a novel to maybe an online course to actually live real-life coaching. So, and this has all just happened in the last month, so it's all exploded. So I'm very new to it and just literally right at the beginning. But what I want to get out of it is to help people feel excited about their lives, lit up from within, and have a real passion and purpose.

Cool. Well, it sounds like— sounds really clear and like obvious about kind of— I'm starting to get a picture of who it is that you want to help and how you're going to help them. And I think it's, um, it's It's one of those things that a lot of the best coaches and coaching practices are built on this need to obviously help people and transform their lives. So I think that's the best place to start. I know you're working with another business coach as well. So we've had a good chat beforehand to work out exactly how this is going to go. One of the things which I think we've established is kind of taking some of those early steps in terms of setting up a coaching practice and how to get started. Do you want to explain kind of, you know, where you're at at the moment and what some of those early steps look like for you right now?

Yeah, so the first step I think is I want to do— we were talking about a 3 for free. I want to start talking to people, you know, where I'm kind of learning the coaching as I go, helping people and they're helping me too. So that's something I want to do, and I also need to develop my customer journey and really plot those steps. Of, you know, them coming to me with a pain point to fix, and then me kind of plotting those steps that will lead them to their breakthrough and their, you know, their outcome at the end.

Cool. Well, should we dive in?

Yes.

Get stuck into that customer journey. Excellent. I'm just going to share my screen up here. One of the best things about working with coaches who are just starting out is the fact that literally we have a blank canvas to be able to design this thing so that it is the perfect business model, customer journey framework that we could possibly build. Sometimes when you take a coach and he's been kind of doing it for years, you know, for a long period of time, sometimes it can be a little bit of kind of unpicking before we actually get into the good stuff and start rebuilding. It's a little bit like, you know, imagine rebuilding a house. You've kind of got to take off all the old plaster and dig up the floor and take the old roof off before you actually start putting everything back together and making it look nice again. So I love the fact that we've got a blank sheet of paper here which we can kind of work from. So I don't know if you're familiar with my— I have a product architecture model which has the 7 perfect steps in a customer journey, and it works for anybody who is in the service client business. So coaches, consultants, and freelancers. And we're gonna try and customize this so it's specific to you.

Mm-hmm.

So it's called the product architecture model because it will eventually start to look a little bit like a house. But initially, and you're kind of going through this process at the moment, we have to do the marketing in order to attract people to our house in the first place that we're trying to sell. So we have a process which we call building marketing assets, basically. Now I know that you've already, for example, started with a Facebook page.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. What else have you got?

I am just in the middle of building a website, so it started off as a blog site just to share my writing journey, but I've realized actually that that needs to be a bit more strategic now.

Yeah.

And not just me rambling off about my, my own thoughts on things, it needs to be, you know, a kind of a more of a sales point, if you like, a shop window. And then I think I need to set up Instagram and Twitter too. And maybe do some live videos.

Love it. Yeah, absolutely. So we're gonna do some live videos potentially on your Facebook page. Oops, if I could spell videos, that would help. Live videos. I'd also recommend potentially looking at setting up a group, which I think your other coach mentioned as well. I said offline before we started recording that I had an idea for that which I think could be quite strategic for you. And I was wondering whether one of the things which you could do was like a— you know, they're quite popular at the moment, but you could do something like a 5-day challenge, which is like a, you know, a 5-day find your fire challenge or something like that.

Love it.

You know, and use that. So basically what you'll be doing is using the group to, you know, as a feeder basically. So when people apply to come into your challenge, you say, cool, one of the first steps is you need to go into your group. So I'm a massive fan of Facebook groups because you get great engagement in them. But the best thing about it is, I mean, yes, okay, it's on Facebook, but technically it's your audience. You own the audience and you get to put whatever content in there. you see is going to be most beneficial to your clients. One of the hardest things, though, is building an audience in the Facebook group if you don't know what you're doing. So something like— I worked with a life coach, kind of going to be doing something similar to you. However, their approach is— not that yours isn't— their approach is scientific. So they do energy coaching, but they have a little device which does blood measurements, looks at enzymes in your blood, looks at proteins in your blood and various other things like that, sleep patterns, and to make sure that you're kind of you know, working at optimal kind of energy. They did a 21-day energy challenge in their group. They did some Facebook ads and spent $600. They're Americans. They spent $600, but they got 1,200 people signed up.

Wow.

So 1,200 new people into their Facebook group. 900 engaged well in the challenge. And when they opened the cart up in terms of like their product launch and taking on the next cohort of clients, they did $25,000 That's incredible. 10 new clients. And we've talked about price, what you're charging. So I reckon you've got a great opportunity to do some kind of a 5-day challenge to kind of, you know, build up the audience in that group. I'm gonna put challenge down there just because I'm gonna need that space in a second. The other thing which I think you could potentially be doing right now as well is getting your Google My Business listing set up.

Okay.

Okay, so Google My Business— if you were to search for like life coach Cheltenham, you normally get a little map and 3 people underneath. Some of them have reviews, some don't. So that little mapping section is called Google Places or Google My Business. So what we want to do is we want to make sure that— and by the way, Google works on trust, so the sooner you set that up, the more trust it's going to have. Okay, so I would recommend setting up a Google My Business listing Right now.

Okay.

Put as much information into it as you can. So you've got 100% of the— there's a little dial which says how much of your profile is complete. Make sure it's 100% complete. And then it loves reviews. Now, I know you don't have clients yet, but you've got friends, family, work colleagues, and people like that who can vouch for you and say that you're a trustworthy human being. You'd be, you know, it's a pleasure to work with Jo in whatever capacity it is. They might not necessarily be able to vouch to your coaching ability yet, But to go out and get 10 reviews as quickly as possible so that you've got a bit of another bit of real estate, which is there. It's free. You can do it very quickly and it, and it will just speed the process up. So when you're ready with your program, it's, you know, you've got some assets already built there.

Perfect.

So Google My Business, I would definitely do that sort of straight away. The group, definitely get that up and running. The challenge might take a bit of planning, but you could launch that, you know, soon enough.

Yeah, well, perfectly. I've just signed up for a 5-day Set Your Facebook Group Challenge Up— Set Your Facebook Group Up Challenge, so I can do that alongside.

Great, that's perfect. So we've got a couple of other steps which I'm starting to kind of— this is going to be your customer journey. I'm running out of space, so I need to move some of this down. Here we go. Forget about the S. So like I said, it looks a little bit like a house. But once we've kind of used the marketing assets, the first step of it, to attract our audience members in there, and I'm going to talk about your audience in a second because I was a bit worried about your avatar and how specific it is. So we will come on to that. The idea is that once we've kind of attracted them, you know, with something, some kind of offer at the front, we've given them a ton of value. They can see what we're about. You've got the book as well. That's another asset, marketing asset. when that comes out. You've then got to start to then— like, you've got— now you've got to corral a big group of people. We've actually then got to start to narrow it down and work out whether they are going to be good clients or not. So there'll be some form of assessment or quiz or diagnostic that you need to run with people. Okay?

Mm-hmm.

So when I, when I first started out my coaching practice, And I was going to share mine because I've got— I don't mind sharing this at all. And I still have this, but in a, like, an online form. So, I mean, this is an assessment form for a business coach. Okay. So for me, obviously. And it talks about the basics of kind of what's your work-life balance like? What should you have? A business plan? What's your product clarity? Have you got your pricing nailed? You know, so it's like a 20-point checklist.

Yeah.

You could potentially, with your clients, start to create a 10 or 20-point checklist as to the things which you're going to be helping them with. So confidence, energy, passion for life, work-life balance, you know, you name it. You could, you could come up with your 20 criteria and then simply get your prospective clients to mark themselves on a scale of 1 to 10. Now, obviously, if somebody is writing down their 10 out of 10 for all of them, they probably don't need your help. Okay, but if we start to see some of these scores that are low, for example, what I'm looking for, especially because my focus is always on product pricing and sales, I'll be looking at this and going, well, if they could be 10 out of 10 for everything else, but if product pricing and sales are low, I'm like, bang, I can help you straight away. I can add enormous value. And it starts to give me a bit of information about the client and see whether it's a good fit or not. Makes sense?

Yes.

So you could, you could create a very simple, your version of this, but a very simple You know, assessment form which can start to kind of break down and work out whether a client is going to be a good fit or not. The other thing as well is, as you start to raise your— and this page is relevant here— as you start to raise your profile and get busy and your book's out and you've got loads of people coming to you, you need to start to think about kind of automating some of this process.

Mm-hmm.

So as they shift from, you know, step 1 marketing assets through into Hey, Joe, actually, I'm really interested in knowing a bit more about what you do. You're gonna want some kind of automation in there. So a very simple way to do that is just to have like an online booking form. So there's tons of different ones. There's Acuity, ScheduleOnce, Calendly. My favorite is Acuity Scheduling, which is one which you can see here.

Mm-hmm.

It's embedded in my website. So it's like a really simple website address to to type in. So fearless.biz/app, people can book into my diary for a free consultation. It's linked up to my diary on my phone.

Okay.

So if somebody books on here, it blocks out the time on here, and my wife doesn't get pissed off with me, which is quite handy. And vice versa, if I book something on here, it automatically blocks it out on here. One of the best things about this is though, there's also a little bit more of an you know, a more detailed application form as well, a bit of background about their business, but most importantly, what's the current revenue? What are their goals? Are they committed to actually making those changes right now? How soon can you get started? So it's more of some of those buying sorts of questions.

Mm-hmm.

So the most important thing though is we want to be getting— starting to gather information about our prospects and booking them into a consultation. Now, so that it's clear, we can start to also then get a gauge for how much activity we've got to do at each level in order to start to sell our core product. So typically between these 2 bits here, you want 70 applications or conversations, as I call them.

Mm-hmm.

And you want to be booking 10 consultations with prospective clients. In order to sell 2 of your core product.

Okay.

So at the moment, so let's just think about this. So you've got your— you can have an online course. But your core product is going to be, let's say for argument's sake, it's a 90-day program.

Yeah.

And it's going to be £1,500. Okay, so a good conversion rate there is somewhere between 1 in 5 and 1 in 3. If when you start enrolling clients, your conversion rate is higher than 1 in 3, that tells me that whatever price point you're selling at is too cheap.

Okay.

Doesn't make you a good salesperson. Normally it's because you're too cheap. So that we can use that as a guide as to how much you can start to sell your core products at. Does that kind of make sense?

Yeah, perfect sense.

But the bit, the bit where— and there are, just to kind of complete this, I'm not going to go into too much detail here. You'll see a couple of blanks. You also have something called a follow-on product. So this could be maybe somebody goes through and does your 90-day program, for example, and they might then just continue with your coaching at £500 a month. Yeah. So what we've— what we're starting to do is build up something called customer lifetime value. So you've got your front-end products. your £1,500 90-day program. You've got your backend products, which is then ongoing coaching. So if you're working on a one-to-one basis, now it might be that when your 90-day program is online course plus some one-to-one coaching or group coaching, right? You may also just be able to sell the course on its own and you could sell that, I don't know, let's say at £249 or something like that. So people could just dip into that DIY, do-it-yourself. And that's all they need. They get the result. They don't need your help anymore. Great. Tickety-boo.

Yeah.

And the final part of this is then what we call social proof. So this goes hand in hand with Google My Business. But it includes things like case studies.

Mm-hmm.

Includes testimonials.

Mm-hmm.

And definitely includes reviews. So your 3 for free, which I definitely think you should do, is actually mostly about building out, you know, the social proof aspect that we've got down here.

Yeah.

So if you're going to do some work with somebody to get just to test out your coaching program, see what sort of results you get, what sort of problems, challenges people are facing, give it to them for free. But say, would it be OK if once we've worked together, I can get a case study from you? Could I do a quick 2-minute interview which we use as a video testimonial? And would you mind leaving me a Google review? So again, that then leads back to our marketing assets.

So how would you recommend me putting it out there? Just put it out on my Facebook page and say, oh, exciting news, I can offer 3 of you an hour's session for free? Because like, what I don't want to do is go, well, I don't know what I'm doing, so I need to practice on you.

Hang on, let me just— I'm gonna have to come back because we're gonna have to coach on this. So no, it's the short answer. So Probably the people you're speaking to are much more sophisticated than a, hey, come and buy my stuff, or even if it's free, I've got something exciting to tell you. What you should be doing is when you're putting content out, make it highly valuable. So today I'm gonna be giving you some 7 tips on how you can, you know, reignite your passion for X, Y, and Z for life.

Yeah.

Go through the 7 tips and what will happen is you'll get a little box underneath where people like, comment, and share. And what that, you know, there's no currency in that necessarily, but it is a bit of an indicator as to like the fact that people like your content.

Mm-hmm.

So if somebody's in there going, oh my God, this is amazing, this is going to transform my life, you could just drop them a quick personal message and say, hey Sharon, thanks so much for commenting on my post. What was it specifically you liked about that post? Oh, by the way, hey listen, you know, I'm going to be launching my Program soon. Would you like a free consultation with me? There are a couple of caveats to that. If it's okay with you, it's totally free. It'll be a full, you know, 1-hour, 2-hour coaching session. But what I need you to do after that is case study, review, testimonial.

Yeah.

So you don't announce it. You put some really valuable content out there, get some engagement, and then the highest engagers you get to do the coaching, you invite them to do that coaching session with. Makes sense?

Yeah, perfect sense.

Because otherwise, like, people just, you know, you'll get all the freebie hunters and the tire kickers who will just go for any free thing, basically, if that makes sense. Whereas actually what you want is people who actually need help. Yeah, it's a bit like if you go and ask, you know, a rubbish analogy, but imagine if you go and ask your mum for some advice on something. Or better still, you go and ask an encyclopedia salesman whether you need an encyclopedia. Of course they're going to say yes. So we've got to— it's part of this qualification process, I think, which you need to refine.

Mm-hmm.

So we talked about having some kind of an assessment form in place. We've got the marketing assets which you're building. Great. We've got some kind of an assessment process in place here to start to qualify people in or out. One of the— you can build a really simple assessment form. And I call it a qualifier matrix, which is exactly as it sounds. It's just a 2 by 2 box. So give me, give me 2 things that either your ideal client struggles with or wants to get a good, you know, what would be a good result for them? Or tell me, just tell me something about, you know, your perfect client.

Um, they're unhappy.

Okay, what else?

Um, I can't think now. I know all the answers. Um, have they got a job that they love?

Um, career, like, like career. Um, uh, so the career is— let's just go with no and yes. So we'll assume that what we mean by that is Yes, they've got a good career that they enjoy. No, they haven't. You know, so what this looks like basically is they might have— if they've got no career and they're unhappy, we've got a bit of a problem. It's more than likely that you can probably work with them.

Mm-hmm.

Right? If they are— let's do some different colours here. So green, we'll do amber next. It might be that maybe they're happy, but they're like generally in life, but their career is not fulfilling.

Okay?

So this is still a tick. We could potentially work with them, but we've only got one area to work with. It could be that they're really— have I done— I've done that in the wrong one, I think, haven't I? No, I haven't. So it could be they're really deeply unhappy, but actually they're in a job they love. Yep.

Mm-hmm.

So yes, we could potentially work with them because we can make them happier. However, if they are really happy and and in a career which they love, we probably can't work with them because they're already there, if that makes sense. So this is just a simple way of working out when somebody comes to us with a set of problems or challenges or something like that, starting to identify whether they're a good fit for our business or not. So when I was asking about your— and I'm gonna split the screen down here— your perfect client, what did you say? Your avatar?

I said someone who was maybe kind of perhaps Middle-aged woman who's got to her stage in life with, you know, a lot of challenges. She hasn't perhaps quite confronted them all. She's unhappy, unfulfilled, feels like she's just existing rather than living, wants to be kind of lit up from the inside, wants a sense of purpose, a passion for something.

If you could, if you could put a name A banner, a sticker, or whatever that encapsulates what you've just described in one word, what would that be?

Lit up. On fire. I don't know.

The antithesis, the opposite.

Oh, the opposite. Down, dejected, depressed, unhappy.

Cool. Divorced or divorcing. So relationship problems.

Yeah, single parent.

Love it. So when we talk— the reason why I wanted to go through that little mini exercise there was because when you talk about middle— unhappy middle-aged women, I would say that— and people generally— I would say that nobody has ever really achieved their full potential. It's so rare that you meet somebody who has just got everything absolutely sorted out. So kind of what you've said to me there is everybody is my avatar. If you target everybody, you target no one.

Yeah.

So that's why we've got to drill it down and be much more specific. So actually, it could be that what we're going to focus on is single, single parents, but single mums in their 40s. And we could go— is there anything that we could go even more specific on that with? That'd probably give us enough information, I think, to get started with, because probably what you've done is you might narrow it down from, say, 70 million people in the UK, middle-aged women, probably now you're down to about, I don't know, 8 million. You narrow it down even further into single mums in their 40s, and now you're down to like a tens of thousands or like low hundreds of thousands. Okay? So, and also think about it this way, Jo. If I were to say something to you like, so I'm a business coach. I help business owners to grow their businesses.

Mm-hmm.

That's statement 1. Statement 2, I help Female wannabe female coaches in their 40s to start up their coaching practice and grow it to $100K. Which one resonates more with you?

The latter, the more specific one.

Because it's super specific. Like, I'm talking about— I could be talking about you, or, you know, so we've got— when you start to kind of put your marketing message out there, you've got to put your yourself in your client's shoes. Because otherwise, like, what's going to happen is they might read your book and go, this really resonates with me, but I don't really know what to do with it next, if you're too vague with that message. Whereas actually, if part of your marketing message states that, no, this is who you specifically work with, what will happen is, you know, 100 people might read the book, The 10 people who fit within your niche, super specific, will go, oh my gosh, Joe's talking about me, and they're more likely to act. And the one thing which most people are really afraid of when they're niching is they're cutting out a massive chunk of the marketplace. Okay, now I'll just give you an example of this. So I work with broad niche service client businesses, okay, who are charging time for money, so we're narrowing it down. So out of the expert space, but specifically coaches, consultants, and freelancers. So when I use those 3 words in front of a room full of people, all of the coaches, all of the coaches, consultants, and all the freelancers kind of prick up their ears and they're interested.

Mm-hmm.

And then I start to talk about the problems and challenges which they have. So I'll say something along the lines of, you are a coach, consultant, or freelancer. You're super intelligent, really bright human being. You get— you've got an amazing program. You get great results for your clients. Your clients love you. But there's a couple of things wrong here. You're super busy all of the time, rushing around like a blue-ass fly trying to satisfy all these people whilst you're not satisfied yourself. And at the end of the month, you check your bank balance and you're scratching your head wondering why there's not enough money in there to reward you for all of this hard work. Whenever I do that social pitch, you imagine the amount of people who come up to me afterwards and say, I did that once at a networking group of about 30 people and I got 5 bookings for diagnostic calls straight afterwards.

Brilliant. Yeah. Because it felt like you were talking to them.

Yeah, exactly. And everybody else— I don't mind alienating everybody else in the room because I'm clear on who I work with. So you've got to get to a point whereby you can articulate your value, your perfect client, and be able to step into their shoes and express their pains in order to start to break down the barrier to attract them into your business.

Makes sense?

Perfect sense.

Cool.

Have you got any questions for me about any of that at this point?

Probably about a million, but I think you've, you've covered, you know, as I said, I'm starting out, so you've, you've covered the main things that, that I needed as a real jumping-off point and, and where to really start with this. And, and it's that kind of scrambling, isn't it? Rabbit in the headlights. I don't know which bit to do first, and I've got all these things to learn and to do. And it's just having a clear process and a vision, isn't it, about where, where to go first and where that needs to lead to?

I think you're— I mean, you're doing the right things in terms of building the audience now. Like, the sooner and earlier you build that audience, the better. But I think one— the one thing which is gonna— if I was to give you a piece of homework off the back of this, I think it'd be to sit down and write that assessment form out.

Yes.

So what, what are the 20— what's your 20-point like MOT that you're going to be testing people against. And then, I mean, literally, when I did my first version of it, it was just business plan, empty space to write a number in, product, empty space to write. You know, it's just a very plain piece of paper just with these things written down in a Word doc.

Yeah.

And that you can then start to use that to steer what content is going to go into your online course. For each one of those 20 points, you may end up with a model which you use in order to coach somebody through a specific challenge. So, for example, fulfillment could be the Wheel of Life.

Yeah.

I don't know if you've heard of that.

Yes, I have. Yeah.

For sense of purpose, you could use ikigai. They don't have to be your models. You could use other models which, you know, are already out there and adopt them for your business. I think, I think ultimately, because you're There's also an element of life coaching which crosses over into mindset.

Yeah.

I do wonder— I think my advice would be, not right now, but eventually, to get a coaching qualification. Something like Animas or the Coaching Academy, I think, would actually be really good for you, just to give you— just to open the door to things like those various different sort of frameworks and tools which you could use in your business. But if you've got the power and the ability to help people now and start changing lives now, crack on. Like, do it. Do the assessment form, design your program, do the 3 for free, and you'll be flying. You'll be well away. That'll give you everything that you need.

Brilliant. I'm excited again now. I was terrified earlier, but you've given me loads of practical things to go away and do.

Well, that's the plan. That's exactly what I wanted to do with the Fix Your Business series. I was gonna say as well, if anybody's watching this and they would like to take part, the best thing to do is to hop onto fearless.biz, find my email address, and just get in touch with me. And if you want to sit in the same seat that Jo sat in, it's not scary, is it, Jo?

No, it's not.

It's highly valuable, isn't it, Jo? You've got a ton of value there.

It's really, really highly valuable. You've helped me no end, honestly. And yes, I was scared to start with, but you really, you know, that little chat we had beforehand really put me at ease. So I can't recommend it enough.

There we go. So if you want to sit in the same seat, Jo's— not physically the same seat Jo's sat in, because that'd be a bit weird. It's in Jo's house. But if you want to come on to Fix Your Business, just get in touch. But, but that's it for now. So this is going to go— this is going out live on Facebook at the moment. We'll be uploading this onto the YouTube channel a bit later on, Jo. But I just wanted to say thank you ever so much. I'm really grateful for you taking the time out to be a guest on Fix Your Business today.

Thank you. It's been such, such high value for me and my, you know, starting off my journey. So thank you.

Cool. It's a pleasure.