Reviewed & Fact-checkedLooking to become a freelance coach or life coach? Do you want to work from anywhere and help people achieve their goals?
We’ve put together this guide for anyone who wants to start a freelance coaching business. This guide contains the vital steps, tips, and advice you need to get started. You’ll learn how to find your niche, build your client base, and establish yourself as an expert in your field.
Use this guide to get started helping people achieve their goals, as you get started on your new career as a freelance coach.
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Let’s jump in!
What exactly is Freelance Coaching?
Freelance coaching is a unique and valuable service that provides personalized guidance, advice, and support in achieving goals.
Freelance coaches are independent professionals who work directly with individuals or groups to develop custom strategies aimed at fostering positive change and growth.
They provide an unbiased perspective through one-on-one conversations, workshops, or events to help their clients hone in on their strengths, identify areas of improvement and devise achievable goals.
In this role, freelance coaches offer specialized knowledge and expertise that can be tailored to the specific needs of their clients.
Ultimately, freelance coaching services seek to empower people by offering them the mentoring they need to set and reach their ambitions.
7 Reasons To Become A Freelance Coach
Becoming a freelance coach can be extremely rewarding in numerous ways.
- Offers an opportunity to work independently, using unique skills and expertise to help others achieve personal and professional success.
- Provides flexibility – you can choose your own working hours and build a lifestyle that aligns with your goals. A great option for working from home or aspiring digital nomads.
- Gain valuable experience and further skills by working with different people from various walks of life with diverse backgrounds.
- A feeling of accomplishment, comes from helping someone transform their life.
- The opportunity to develop lasting partnerships with clients while having the chance to do meaningful work that helps shape its success.
- Learning how to successfully manage clients and handle administrative functions can be invaluable skills that open up a broad range of paths for your career.
- Allows for greater financial rewards as you can set your own rate and work as much or as little as needed towards achieving your income goals.
Overall, if your goal is to make a difference in someone’s life while pursuing fulfilling work of your own, becoming a freelance coach is an excellent option.
9 Steps to Becoming A Freelance Coach
It is important to know the steps necessary to become a successful freelance coach and follow a methodical path.
- Determine your strengths and in what area you can be helpful.
- Apply your strength to a niche market in which you wish to operate.
- Deep dive into your target market and develop an audience avatar.
- Create a unique selling proposition (USP) that speaks directly to the pain points of your audience.
- Understand how to conduct coaching sessions effectively.
- Create the necessary social media, website, and email to set yourself up professionally.
- Determine the most effective method of outreach applicable to your audience.
- Create a funnel going from initial contact through to initial consultation and closing.
- Build processes for onboarding.
Each of these steps contains its own processes, but by following this linear approach you will have all of the bases covered setting you up for taking on your first clients.
Let’s dive in deeper on each to begin!
1. Determine your strengths and in what area you can be helpful
When considering a career as a life coach, it is important to identify your own personal strengths. Doing so will help you become a well-rounded and successful coach for your clients.
To start, make a list of tasks that come easy for you, activities where you have excelled in the past, and areas that you find interesting and enjoyable. Talk to friends and family to get their feedback on any potential skillsets or knowledge they recognize in you too.
To really hone in on what your strengths are, take some online personality tests or complete self-assessment questionnaires. This can provide insight into how you work best and subsequently guide your direction as a life coach.
Ultimately, if you’re passionate about something then consider focusing on that when developing as a life coach; nurturing this passion will give purpose to both you and those looking to cooperate with your business.
Example: “I’m passionate about health and fitness and love going to the gym.”
2. Apply your strength to the target market you wish to operate
Identifying and leveraging your strengths is an essential part of marketing success. The best way to do this is to take the time to get to know your target market.
To begin with, research their wants and needs, the challenges or opportunities they may face, and any other relevant values or characteristics that are important to them.
Then align these key discoveries with your strengths, such as unique and innovative products you offer, high-quality customer service experiences, or deep knowledge of a particular field.
Naturally integrating this kind of tailored message into your communications has the power to demonstrate a deep understanding and appreciation for your target market – ultimately building brand trust and loyalty.
Example: “Because I’m experienced in fitness, my audience is people who also want to get in shape.”
3. Deep-dive into your target market and develop an audience avatar
You may have heard the marketing rule: “Speak to the individual, not the group.” This ties into creating an audience avatar, or a personification of your target market.
Creating an audience avatar from your target market is a very important step when creating any kind of content. By doing so, you can begin to get an understanding of who you are trying to communicate with and how best to engage them.
An audience avatar takes into account the different demographic factors of your target market like age, gender, interests, geographic location, profession, and more.
Once you understand these detailed characteristics, you can use this information to craft messages that will be well-received by your intended audience.
This will result in greater overall engagement with your content which leads to better relationships and higher levels of trust.
A method of finding out the real pain points of your potential audience is to use question-answer sites like Quora or groups on Facebook and find out what the real problems are that people have.
This does two things.
- It illuminates the real problems and language people are using so you can be more relatable to them when you make contact.
- It shows you that within broad niches, there is a multitude of sub-niches based on age, goals, demographics, and more.
Example: “While many people want to get in shape, there are also large audiences of people wanting to just lose belly fat, have longevity after retirement, or want to get in shape after pregnancy.”
4. Create a unique selling proposition that speaks directly to the pain points of your audience
Creating a USP (unique selling proposition) that speaks to customers’ pain points is an effective way for businesses to stand out in the marketplace.
To be successful, take the time to research and analyze your customer base. Determine what problems need solutions, pinpoint the values and benefits you offer, hone in on its relevance to customers, and determine how best to communicate its differentiated message to your target audience.
Once this research is complete, you can craft an impactful USP that covers both a need and a benefit while delivering on your brand promise. With a differentiated offering laid out clearly in your USP, customers will naturally connect with your product or service.
The wording of your USP needs to be in the language that your audience resonates with and any content you create should come out of this one sentence.
An effective formula for creating a USP
I help [Audience] get [Desired Outcome] in [Time Constraint] without [Objection].
Example: “I help entrepreneurs get in peak physical shape in 90 days, without sacrificing time at the gym.”
5. Understand how to conduct coaching sessions effectively
Like with any class, lesson, or consultation, there needs to be a fundamental way to set up a lesson. So, while you’ve already established the macro goal of your audience, each session should have its own micro goal that leads to the overall result.
6. Create the necessary social media, website, and email to set yourself up professionally
By now you have established yourself as a coach on paper. You have your strength and your audience, and you know how to actually coach. The next step is getting yourself out there.
It’s important that you come across as a professional so you aren’t kicking yourself in the foot during your outreach. You do not need a huge social following, but you should at least look professional.
What you can do.
- Set up a profile on the Social Media platforms your audience is mostly found
- Be consistent with usernames, and profile photos, and have your USP and contact in all of your bios.
- Add a domain that you can use on both your site and email. Do NOT offer 4-figure coaching services from a Gmail account — nobody will take you seriously.
- Optional: Create a basic website using a simple creation tool like Carrd.co and add it to your bios.
7. Determine the most effective method of outreach applicable to your audience
There are various ways you can perform outreach to potential clients, and it’s going to depend entirely on what niche you are in. If you’ve really learned about your audience in steps 2 and 3, you should know where to find them.
- For professionals, look on LinkedIn and use a tool like Apollo to extract emails
- Fiverr, Upwork, and other freelancing sites
- Facebook groups based on your niche
- Forums may also be worth looking into
- Niche Blog and social media comment sections
- Look to local events and in-person meet-ups (a lot of people discount this avenue).
You can also create content on your favorite social media platform with a call to action within your content and in your bio.
A common call-to-action is to tell viewers to jump on a free discovery call with you where you run them through a standard coaching session, but pitch your coaching to them at the end.
8. Create a funnel going from initial contact through to initial consultation and closing
You’ll quickly realize that any kind of outreach is really a numbers game and becomes less so the more experienced you become. More is more, basically.
For that reason, you want somewhat of a systemized approach to how you contact and screen potential leads.
If you’re on social media, this could mean messaging people who have responded to your or someone else’s videos in a way that illustrates your coaching can help them.
Be natural, ask more about what problems they’re facing and conduct a mini-version of a coaching session. If you can get them to open up about hurdles they are facing and then come in as the cure to that pain point, it becomes easy to close people and get them on board.
9. Build processes for onboarding
It’s important that you create a simple process for onboarding clients, which includes how you are to be paid as well as a contract. You don’t want to close a lead and then start fiddling about Googling payment processors.
You should also produce a basic contract so things are professional and official. I’d recommend using a contract like this one from Coach Federation and adjusting it to meet your specific service.
Other Key Considerations For Successful Freelance Coaching
Becoming a successful freelance coach or life coach takes dedication, organization, and the ability to improve your skills continuously.
It’s important to recognize that if you want to succeed as a freelancer, you will need to be an expert in your field and have knowledge of how various businesses operate.
Additionally, it is essential to create a network of contacts and develop a professional online presence; this will enable clients and potential customers to find you easily.
Aspirers should also research market trends to identify client needs and make sure they offer services that are tailored toward those necessities.
Understanding communication protocols also plays an important role in becoming a successful freelancer since you will need to interact with colleagues, customers, and business partners.
Finally, maintaining documentation regarding all your work-related processes guarantees efficient management of your practices and builds trust with clients.
To Wrap Up
Becoming a freelance coach can be an enriching experience, both professionally and personally. It can also be a great way to make some extra money on the side.
If you’re thinking of becoming a freelance coach, we hope this article has been helpful. But there’s still more for you to learn!
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