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If you're in any sort of online business, chances are you've come across ads from "gooroos" talking about online coaching/consulting and how to get clients or scale or blah blah.
I've been in this space for a few years now so I want to shine some light on it because...
It's growing quickly. Every year it gets more saturated in every niche. I only got in back in 2018 (but had an online agency for a few years), but it changes quickly within a year. If you read this in 2023, it's going to be even crazier. It's not an industry that is going away. The online education space is expanding. There are software companies built specifically for this space. This is the decade it really goes mainstream, and that's a good thing because it means you can easily cash in on it.
I'll unpack this and how the internet marketing world has influenced the online coaching space.
THE HISTORY
Direct response copywriting paved the way for online consulting. Many of the strategies from direct response were implemented in IM to make the industry thrive. So in the 2000s, you would start seeing those ads with clickbaity headlines and pages that sold low ticket offers. Selling coaching/consulting online in that era was unheard of. I believe Rich Schefren pulled it off and leveraged his Internet Business Manifesto because he wanted to share what he was doing and that led to him selling his consulting. He wasn't the only one doing this. Other guys were selling some seriously good offers too. But most of this was sold to internet marketers. They were selling offers specifically for them.
Things stayed in the internet marketing world until they started evolving in the 2010-2020 decade.
If you were in IM in around 2014-2015, you saw ads from a couple of people who were taking the online course idea and transitioning it to coaching/consulting.
Sam Ovens was big in this. Ruffino was another. And then some other ones started popping up.
They were really good at hammering the ad > webinar > book a call funnel. Traffic was still cheaper then. Way less competition. Way less headaches from FB ad police.
As with anything in IM, copycats appear, and then it comes down to pumping traffic and increasing conversions. Better offers had to stand out with better bonuses and scarcity/urgency.
Everything was classic "take what you know and turn it into an online course/coaching/consulting".
And "charge high ticket because that brings cashflow".
Russell Brunson launched Clickfunnels around the same time for IM to sell products online and they were really strategic about getting the online coaches/course creators onboard. Community was created and the rest was history.
At that time, I had a digital marketing agency. I used CF for marketing clients as well as dabbling in selling digital products. I got in on CF in the early days. But I never leveraged the coaching element until years due to one reason:
Imposter syndrome.
I never felt qualified. I never felt like I had anything to share even though...
I read Millionaire Fastlane in grad school and then left to form an app startup. I leveraged what I learned there and consulted 1-1 with clients and then turned that into a marketing service. It wasn't until around 2018 I started to get into coaching/consulting online on the side. Still had imposter syndrome so I never fully committed.
I got stuck in the "those who can't do... teach" mentality which prevented me from really teaching. But when working with marketing clients, I had no problems teaching them and owrking directly with them. They valued my expertise.
I felt that in 2018 it was already really saturated anyway. BAM - another limiting belief.
Today... it's even MORE saturated. MORE competitive.
And then there's the bigger problem. There are a TON of people who actually are unqualified. They buy someone else's course or program, and then turn around and teach that exact thing and make it their own business.
So now, there are a million coaches teaching coaches how to coach coaches.
^Take that and apply it to any industry
Fitness
Finance
Dating
Relationships
Hobbies
It's become a cesspool honestly. There are accounts on Instagram and Youtube which talk about how people are being scammed.
But, we have to look at the greener side and can't focus on the negative, because there are some really good coaches/consultants out there.
Now, the market has become more sophisticated. You have to be able to really get results for your clients. The best will make it to the top while the weeds will be taken out. This is GOOD for the industry. The people who evolve with the industry will make it through. The ones who don't will have to do something else.
And what's even better... the door is open for people to help with specific key areas inside industries. It's less about the niche and more about the problem that's being solved.
This is better for the consumer
Finance - CPA, reducing taxes, trading,
Health - fixing gut issues, metabolic issues, losing weight, building muscle for skinny guys, high performance, etc.
THE BENEFIT
Because the market is growing, more and more people are becoming aware and COMFORTABLE with paying for online services. 15 years ago, if you told your friends you were paying $3000-$25,000 for online coaching, they would've thought you were wearing a tin foil hat. Far too much skepticism back then.
Today, it's getting easier. People are selling small services like 1-hour coaching to 8 week packages to 12-month programs.
It's really high margin until you build a team. But most people can do $10k-$30k/month on their own at 95% margin. Start running traffic and building a team and you'll definitely scale while reducing margins to about 45-60% at $100k-$500k/month.
Yes, there are people doing $1million/month as a primary business. And there are people completely happy doing $30k/month on the side of their main businesses.
When I was just doing coaching, $30k/month was totally acceptable because of high margins.
I was selling $10k/packages.
Fulfillment was about 2 hours per week. ~ 10 hours per month
A guy I know does $250k/month on a bad month. Plays golf almost every afternoon.
Others like to have the big business that does $500k-$3mil/month with a large team and that's great for them too.
You can set your business up the way you want to do it. And you don't need to overthink it the way the gurus make it out to be.
You could start selling tomorrow if you wanted to.
You might be sitting on a goldmine of expertise you didn't know you had (jump roping, buying NFTs, sales training, being a better spouse, etc.) and could package it up and work with people to help them achieve that thing.
The information economy isn't going away.
If you wanted to get started here's what you can do:
1. Create an MVP offer (beta price point is fine)
2. Validate an offer by finding out if people want it
3. Sell 5-10 people into it (or 1-1 if you'd like)
4. Run the first round and get feedback
5. Use the feedback to refine it
6. Sell at scale because now you know what the market wants
7. Turn it into an evergreen business so it can be hands-off for you
8. Take leftover profits and reinvest into other cashflow businesses, assets, etc.
Also, there's so much stuff about this industry and how to market your offer, etc. Instead of overcomplicating things, start small and go upward. I made tons of mistakes along the way because I didn't simplify things.
But regardless, online coaching/consulting helped me build a network to where I could create some amazing partnerships. I've used it even more as leverage and a networking tool. The harvest I reaped from the seeds was far greater than I intended.
Hope this helps!
P.S. I have a lot to say about this industry. There is a ton of bad in it. But there is also a ton of good. So I want to highlight the good and how you can profit from it even if it's just $10,000/month on the side.
I've been in this space for a few years now so I want to shine some light on it because...
It's growing quickly. Every year it gets more saturated in every niche. I only got in back in 2018 (but had an online agency for a few years), but it changes quickly within a year. If you read this in 2023, it's going to be even crazier. It's not an industry that is going away. The online education space is expanding. There are software companies built specifically for this space. This is the decade it really goes mainstream, and that's a good thing because it means you can easily cash in on it.
I'll unpack this and how the internet marketing world has influenced the online coaching space.
THE HISTORY
Direct response copywriting paved the way for online consulting. Many of the strategies from direct response were implemented in IM to make the industry thrive. So in the 2000s, you would start seeing those ads with clickbaity headlines and pages that sold low ticket offers. Selling coaching/consulting online in that era was unheard of. I believe Rich Schefren pulled it off and leveraged his Internet Business Manifesto because he wanted to share what he was doing and that led to him selling his consulting. He wasn't the only one doing this. Other guys were selling some seriously good offers too. But most of this was sold to internet marketers. They were selling offers specifically for them.
Things stayed in the internet marketing world until they started evolving in the 2010-2020 decade.
If you were in IM in around 2014-2015, you saw ads from a couple of people who were taking the online course idea and transitioning it to coaching/consulting.
Sam Ovens was big in this. Ruffino was another. And then some other ones started popping up.
They were really good at hammering the ad > webinar > book a call funnel. Traffic was still cheaper then. Way less competition. Way less headaches from FB ad police.
As with anything in IM, copycats appear, and then it comes down to pumping traffic and increasing conversions. Better offers had to stand out with better bonuses and scarcity/urgency.
Everything was classic "take what you know and turn it into an online course/coaching/consulting".
And "charge high ticket because that brings cashflow".
Russell Brunson launched Clickfunnels around the same time for IM to sell products online and they were really strategic about getting the online coaches/course creators onboard. Community was created and the rest was history.
At that time, I had a digital marketing agency. I used CF for marketing clients as well as dabbling in selling digital products. I got in on CF in the early days. But I never leveraged the coaching element until years due to one reason:
Imposter syndrome.
I never felt qualified. I never felt like I had anything to share even though...
I read Millionaire Fastlane in grad school and then left to form an app startup. I leveraged what I learned there and consulted 1-1 with clients and then turned that into a marketing service. It wasn't until around 2018 I started to get into coaching/consulting online on the side. Still had imposter syndrome so I never fully committed.
I got stuck in the "those who can't do... teach" mentality which prevented me from really teaching. But when working with marketing clients, I had no problems teaching them and owrking directly with them. They valued my expertise.
I felt that in 2018 it was already really saturated anyway. BAM - another limiting belief.
Today... it's even MORE saturated. MORE competitive.
And then there's the bigger problem. There are a TON of people who actually are unqualified. They buy someone else's course or program, and then turn around and teach that exact thing and make it their own business.
So now, there are a million coaches teaching coaches how to coach coaches.
^Take that and apply it to any industry
Fitness
Finance
Dating
Relationships
Hobbies
It's become a cesspool honestly. There are accounts on Instagram and Youtube which talk about how people are being scammed.
But, we have to look at the greener side and can't focus on the negative, because there are some really good coaches/consultants out there.
Now, the market has become more sophisticated. You have to be able to really get results for your clients. The best will make it to the top while the weeds will be taken out. This is GOOD for the industry. The people who evolve with the industry will make it through. The ones who don't will have to do something else.
And what's even better... the door is open for people to help with specific key areas inside industries. It's less about the niche and more about the problem that's being solved.
This is better for the consumer
Finance - CPA, reducing taxes, trading,
Health - fixing gut issues, metabolic issues, losing weight, building muscle for skinny guys, high performance, etc.
THE BENEFIT
Because the market is growing, more and more people are becoming aware and COMFORTABLE with paying for online services. 15 years ago, if you told your friends you were paying $3000-$25,000 for online coaching, they would've thought you were wearing a tin foil hat. Far too much skepticism back then.
Today, it's getting easier. People are selling small services like 1-hour coaching to 8 week packages to 12-month programs.
It's really high margin until you build a team. But most people can do $10k-$30k/month on their own at 95% margin. Start running traffic and building a team and you'll definitely scale while reducing margins to about 45-60% at $100k-$500k/month.
Yes, there are people doing $1million/month as a primary business. And there are people completely happy doing $30k/month on the side of their main businesses.
When I was just doing coaching, $30k/month was totally acceptable because of high margins.
I was selling $10k/packages.
Fulfillment was about 2 hours per week. ~ 10 hours per month
A guy I know does $250k/month on a bad month. Plays golf almost every afternoon.
Others like to have the big business that does $500k-$3mil/month with a large team and that's great for them too.
You can set your business up the way you want to do it. And you don't need to overthink it the way the gurus make it out to be.
You could start selling tomorrow if you wanted to.
You might be sitting on a goldmine of expertise you didn't know you had (jump roping, buying NFTs, sales training, being a better spouse, etc.) and could package it up and work with people to help them achieve that thing.
The information economy isn't going away.
If you wanted to get started here's what you can do:
1. Create an MVP offer (beta price point is fine)
2. Validate an offer by finding out if people want it
3. Sell 5-10 people into it (or 1-1 if you'd like)
4. Run the first round and get feedback
5. Use the feedback to refine it
6. Sell at scale because now you know what the market wants
7. Turn it into an evergreen business so it can be hands-off for you
8. Take leftover profits and reinvest into other cashflow businesses, assets, etc.
Also, there's so much stuff about this industry and how to market your offer, etc. Instead of overcomplicating things, start small and go upward. I made tons of mistakes along the way because I didn't simplify things.
But regardless, online coaching/consulting helped me build a network to where I could create some amazing partnerships. I've used it even more as leverage and a networking tool. The harvest I reaped from the seeds was far greater than I intended.
Hope this helps!
P.S. I have a lot to say about this industry. There is a ton of bad in it. But there is also a ton of good. So I want to highlight the good and how you can profit from it even if it's just $10,000/month on the side.
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