How To Start a Profitable Coaching Business in 2025

How to start a profitable coaching business?

I remember how challenging it was when I made the transition from going full-time as a marketing coach. My goal was the same as yours probably to help people and make a living from it. That’s why getting this right is so important.

At least I did one thing right. I got lucky and I hired one of the best mentors, Donald Stojack and he guided me through the rough patches in my process. He taught me the ropes and helped me to start getting coaching clients and now I feel like it’s my turn to give back.

In this article, I’m going to guide you through the steps you need to take to build a profitable coaching business.

My business is built on a strategy that I call Create Grow Profit. I’ve been making money online now for over 10 years and create grow profit is the marketing strategy that has always worked. Teaching these strategies is also the purpose of my YouTube channel so if you want to learn more be sure to subscribe to my channel.

Before I explain the technical side of the Create Grow Profit strategy, I want to share with you a story that deeply inspired me.

Christian Mickelsen’s journey of building a multi-million dollar coaching business from scratch.

He’s one of the coaches in the space that I highly value and his story has pushed me to be better. When Christian first started as a coach, his goal was simple: to make $35,000 a year which was more than he earned before in the job.

That would have been heaven for him but life as it often happens went differently. Christian was $75,000 in debt from a previous business idea and earning $35,000 a year was not enough anymore to cover that hole. But he still did it.

He earned $35,000 in his first year as a coach. However, he said that the income was inconsistent. Some months were very good and then there were some dry months as well. And that led to other struggles.

He said that he was falling behind with payments on his mortgage and on his car and he was worried that losing his house for example would make him look like a failure in the eyes of others.

In one of his public talks, Christian shared that his struggles were deeply rooted in his past. Growing up poor on food stamps and welfare, he was ridiculed as a kid for his old clothes or broken glasses.

Even if we didn’t have it as bad as Christian, I think we all have our own versions of insecurities that hold us back and sometimes these insecurities block us from doing any marketing at all.

In Christian’s case, his turning point came when he realized that working hard wasn’t enough. He needed a strategy to make sure his business would thrive and grow consistently.

Fast forward to today, Christian Mickelsen has built a multi-million dollar coaching business and he’s built that on top of his strategy that he calls Free Sessions That Sell. If you’ve never heard of it, I highly recommend that you check it out.

Marketing Plan for Coaches

My version of that is Create Grow Profit and that’s exactly what I want to share with you in this article today.

So let’s talk about how you can start a profitable coaching business today.

1. Step One: Create your coaching package
2. Step Two: Grow an audience that cares about you as a coach
3. Step Three: Make profits by booking calls with people from your audience

After a decade in digital marketing and has helped hundreds of people in one way or another to make money online, I can tell you with certainty that almost everyone skips step number two, growing an audience.

For new coaches, it’s the same. Most coaches have no problem creating their package or talking to people on calls, however, very very few coaches have an audience that cares about them as coach.

So let’s break this down.

Step 1 – Creating A Coaching Package

Step one is to create your coaching package.

When you create your coaching package, it’s not so much about the package, what’s way more important is for you to decide who it is that you want to work with. Not only is your aim to identify who it is you want to work with but also which one result or transformation you want to offer them.

The mistake many new coaches make is the opposite of that. They have a very broad idea of which person they want to work with or even believe that they could work with anyone. They fall for a very common trap thinking that offering more results is better. Unfortunately, it’s really not.

Now, I know that you have a lot to offer and you can help people with many different things but when starting your coaching business to become profitable, then pick one thing from the list of things that you can do.

For example, Christian Mickelsen didn’t begin with everything figured out. He just focused on one thing he could do and then he built it up from there.

In my case, I focus on just content marketing. I help other coaches create content and grow their email lists.

There are so many things that I could help other coaches with but I choose to focus on that one result.

Once you know who you want to work with and which result you can offer them, now you can create your framework.

When you start coaching somebody, they’re starting and the result that you help them with is the end state. Between these two states, there’s a gap.

Define all the steps your client needs to take to fill that gap and that’s your coaching framework. Now in terms of pricing and offering your package, I’ve already created a step-by-step article explaining how you can create your coaching packages.

Step 2 – Growing An Audience That Cares About You As A Coach

Step two is growing an audience that cares about you as a coach.

While creating your coaching package is kind of a one-and-done deal, growing your audience is a never-ending process.

Now of course you want to continuously improve your coaching package but if you think about all the hours that you spend working on your coaching business, more than half of your time should be spent here on this step, building your audience.

I’m very passionate about this topic in particular because for all the clients that I’ve helped with in the past, this step is always what’s holding them back.

If you’ve tried all the strategies, you’ve taken all the courses, you’ve worked really hard and it’s still not working please talk to me. You can always contact me on my website creategrowprofit.com.

Meanwhile here’s what you can do to start growing the audience that cares about you as a coach

1. Step One: Post content on social media
2. Step Two: Engage and chat with people on social media
3. Step Three: Build your email list. Do that by regularly giving away free B to people on social media
4. Step Four: Nurture your email list. Do that by sending interesting valuable or entertaining emails to your list and those emails don’t have to be long you can send short emails the way I do it too
5. Step Five: Hold free workshops for your email subscribers. At the end of these workshops, you always invite attendees for a follow-up call just with you

Now if you don’t like social media, there are two alternative approaches to this:

1. You can go to networking events and use that to build your contact list. Make sure you ask for people’s emails and ask them for permission if you can add them to your email list.
2. You can get into podcasting and use that to build your email list. If you want to avoid social media, it works best if you do it as a podcast guest.

However, if you also want to grow your own podcast as a host, then you’re going to have to go back to social media and promote your podcast there.

Nowadays there are also many online networking events. They are so popular that I created a separate article explaining the best practices for remote networking. You can read it here.

Now that you have a strategy to start growing your audience that brings us to step three making a profit by booking calls with people from your audience.

Step 3 – Making Profits By Booking Calls With People From Your Audience

I’ve already mentioned this in the previous step hosting free workshops and offering a follow-up call to the attendees.

I’m specifically mentioning workshops here because you’re starting a coaching business.

As a coach, you want to demonstrate your expertise and your skills and I have found that workshops are one of the best ways for coaches to do that.

You could also do challenges or webinars. Let’s be honest, these are just different labels for essentially very similar things.

It’s about you organizing a life event on a platform like Zoom and helping a group of people achieve a goal on that call.

And if growing an audience is the number one struggling block for most new coaches, then turning their marketing into sales is the second biggest struggling block.

In reality, what sometimes happens is that you go through this entire process that I’ve outlined so far and at the end of it, you don’t get a new client. Now, you wonder what have I done wrong.

If you’ve really gone through the entire process, then so far you’ve done nothing wrong. You’re doing the process and that’s great but you’re still missing one crucial step and that is sales.

But here, I want to give a bit of a personal warning and maybe some of the sales coaches will disagree with me but as much as sales gurus want to make you believe that there are magic words that persuade eskimos to buy ice from you, it just doesn’t work like that in practice.

Don’t think like you failed when somebody doesn’t buy your coaching package because:

• It’s the wrong time
• They don’t have enough money
• Or they need to talk to their partner first

Forget about all the salesy advice because yes timing is a real thing and yes some people don’t have enough money and yes sometimes they need to talk to their partners first.

All of these are valid objections and it doesn’t mean that you have failed in your marketing, however, that also doesn’t mean that we just throw free stuff into the void of the internet and cross our fingers until we finally make a profit.

To make profits and the key to making sales is this, always follow up.

It might sound simple but in the day-to-day reality of most businesses, not just coaches, you’ll be surprised how many people don’t take follow-up seriously and don’t make daily efforts to do so.

1. Has someone connected with you on social media? Follow up.
2. Has someone signed up for your email list? Follow up.
3. Has someone attended your workshop? Follow up
4. Has someone not reacted to your previous follow-up? Follow up again.

I’ve learned this from my mentor, Donald Stojack, he’s a master at enrolling clients and it’s thanks to him that I have a high success rate in my sales. Donald Stojack runs a training program where he teaches his sales techniques and if you’re interested in that leave a comment below this article and I’ll send you more information.

But remember, step one is to get clear on who you want to work with and create your coaching package.

Read this article next where I show you how you can create a highly valuable coaching package for your audience.

My Three Takeaways

1. Having a mentor can significantly guide you through the challenges of starting your coaching business. A mentor can provide valuable insights and help you navigate rough patches, making your journey smoother.
2. Consistent follow-up is vital in converting leads into clients. Whether it’s following up with someone who attended your workshop or engaged with your content, persistent communication can significantly enhance your sales efforts.
3. The journey to building a successful coaching business can be filled with ups and downs. Understand that various factors may impact sales, such as timing and financial readiness. It’s important to remain adaptable, learn from experiences, and continue improving your strategies over time.

And don’t forget to subscribe on my YouTube channel, @creategrowprofit