How to Start an Online Executive Coaching Business? (Bonus Template)

Once upon a time world was lead by the trade of raw materials just to stay alive and exchange objects. After the 4 industrial revolutions, the whole nature of commerce and living has changed. Regulations are transforming so every day, we start on a new day of inventions. We go to sleep by investing in different currencies and wake up to 5 new cryptocurrencies. We start the day with conventional social media strategies and end the day with a brand new social media platform.

So how do companies stay alive? By leadership… In such a competitive market every company has to stand out in such different ways and all of them have to work on leadership skills. Leadership, building a culture and bringing communication to the workplace upgrades sales, efficiency, and happiness at work.

A survey conducted on a Fortune 500 company revealed the fact that coaching affected several metrics in their workplace such as employee engagement, customer satisfaction, service quality, etc. How? Because having coaches added to the team, builds up a culture, helps employees team up, come up with new ideas, helping each other, helping customers to discover more and the list go on. In the end, coaching lifts up businesses tremendously.

After COVID, a huge amount of drawbacks happened in the industry but hey, there is a thing called online coaching. So let’s reveal some commonly asked questions about online coaching in this article.‍

What’s Inside?

What is online coaching?

What is executive coaching?

Best executive coaches

How to start a coaching business

-Build a background

-Build your branding

-Build a professional proposal document

-Craft your business packages

-Create a payment plan

-Legal Aspects

-Certification

Executive coaching proposal template

Marketing&Sales

Building an E-Mail List

Jump Start Your Business

What is online coaching?

Coaching used to be more likely to be related to sports. But in recent years, with the help of soft skill development coaching has expanded to the business, health, and everyday life of people. Different sub branched have developed under the name of coaching such as nutrition coaching, wellness coaching, leadership coaching, executive coaching, pregnancy coaching, relationship coaching, and many more. Even though online coaching existed before COVID, it became more popular after COVID due to the need for digitalization and restrictions. Results show that online coaching is as effective as offline coaching. Coaching can be described in 3 different definitions according to International Coaching Community. In the essence it can be described as;

• Changing a person to the desired state by leading them to plan and take action
• Building awareness and empowers decision making that will lead to a change
• Supporting a person to become any level they desire

Although coaching is not a one-time service, it is a long-lasting process that builds a mindset. In the end, the result is directly related to the client itself. ICF lists the reasons why people come to take coaching services as

• Perform better at work
• Expanded career opportunities
• Higher self-esteem
• A clearer understanding of strength and weaknesses
• Building new strategies
• To maximize self-potential
  

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What is executive coaching?

Executive coaching is another brand of coaching that is focused on the business industry. Executive coaches work directly with CEO, team leaders, managers, or anyone that is described as an executive even if it’s an executive of a 3 person group. They are specialized in project management, people and team management, motivation and inspiration spread, building empathy among teams, etc. Coaching can be done with 1:1 meetings supported by follow-ups or as group sessions. 

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3 Best Executive Coaches in History

1. Damian Goldvarg

Damian Goldvarg is an executive coach who is experienced for at least 30 years. He spends his 20 years coaching Fortune 100 companies, so we can say that he’s very trained in what he does. His philosophy is to increase the strengths of each client to develop success. He is also an academic mind, he has his Ph.D. in organizational psychology from the Alliant University of California, he served as the president of ICF for two years and he has five books published until today, published in two languages and named as; Step for Success: Guide for the Immıgrant to the U.S., Coaching Competencies: Following Global Standards, Mentor Coaching in Action, Coaching Supervision and Professional Coaching Competencies. 

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2. John Mattone

John Mattone is one of the most famous or even called a celebrity, executive coaches in the history of coaching since he was the former coach of Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Pepsi CEO Roger Enrico. It’s pretty fair that he’s one of the most famous ones’ right? Behind his fame, there is a mountain of success and business strategies. He’s known for his four staged milestones to success. These stages are Awareness, assessment, action, and achievement. Mattone also is the formal CEO of Mattone Global which is the company he builds to spread his leadership knowledge to other coaches to help more and more leaders. He coached more than 200 executives and he was featured in media organizations like CNN, Fast Company, Business Week, and many more… In 2015 he was rewarded by the International Executive Coach Thought Leader of Distinction Award which is only given to twenty coaches through the history. He has written 9 books and three of them became bestsellers. Our favorite is The Intelligent Leader.

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3. Tony Robbins

Tony Robbins is best known for his leadership coaching sessions but it’s also widely talked that he’s a very successful executive coach too. Since the essence of executive coaching is leadership, it’s not so surprising. Also, he has a super interesting career and clients when compared to others. He has not only coached leaders from the business industry he has also coached 23 grand slam owners and tennis star Serena Williams, signer Usher, the rock band Green Day. After seeing his portfolio you can assume that he’s also a very good companion to the ones with high stress and action on their career. He’s also called the CEO whisperer by Fortune and still works in the market as an executive. Like other coaches, he has chosen the way of spreading his skills and methods with others and written six books which eventually became best sellers.

So how does one become a successful coach? Not for only making money, working on coaching muscles can improve one’s executive and leadership skills. And eventually, became a whole new career? So are you thinking of starting a business of coaching and spread your experience with others in an online coaching way? Here goes your guide…

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How to start a coaching business

It’s not super easy to start a whole new career but coaching has a smooth transition when compared to other career transitions. Because a lot of the time having an experience has a major advantage in this area. But one should be assured that not only imposing its own ideas to others. Coaching is different than that. There are similarities between coaching and other disciplines like mentoring, counseling, therapy, and training. For example mentoring is referred to as a senior person giving to its juniors advice related to experience as a role model. There is a transition of experience. Counseling can be described as working to solve a specific problem by giving solution advice and therapy is when the client desired psychological relief or consultation from a certified therapist. To start your coaching business here are the things you need to do as a starter.

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Building a background

Yes, having experience is a very asset in coaching however one should practice the coaching methods and strategies to avoid common mistakes like imposing ideas, giving wrong expectations, failure, etc. The best way to do this is to become certified by well-known coaching companies. They give training as packages and provide lifetime certification by inviting you to a community. The best know company for this training is ICF, International Coaching Federation, which is called the gold standard in coaching.

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Build your branding

Like in every other business, branding is extremely important in this case too. To start with your branding there are a few things you should decide like the niche. Decide where is your experience is focused and which kind of services you can provide. After that, you need to come up with a brand identity. Yes since executive coaching is for the business world your brand still should represent you so that the potential clients will build a bond with you and come to you. So try to put a little bit of yourself into your brand. At this point, you want to have conducted a business name search to verify your chosen brand name is available for registration. You can learn about some good tools such as Inc Authority and ZenBusiness. A SmallBusiness HQ guide describes both tools' features in detail. If you are a dummy when it comes to design don’t worry Decktopus got you. Jumpstart this branding quiz to decide on your brand style to lead you while you pick your color palette. After you build your brand color palette, your logo time for a slogan. Make sure to have inspirational keywords like “Lift Your Business”, “Upgrade Your Plan” or words that give positive feelings who hear them. Also one of the very important things in branding in coaching is to have a set of photos. In this kind of case, you just need a person with a good eye, with a high-quality camera and good photoshop skills. You don’t need to go to a marketing agency to do all of that. You can use platforms like Upwork where you can find freelancers on-demand and with a low budget.

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Build a professional proposal document

After setting up all of the brandings you need to come up with a good business plan and business proposal to start your sales. Your business plan should include the following; value proposition, niche&market positioning, your key partners, your key resources, your business packages, and your channels. To start with the value proposition, you should focus on your key services and the key values you offer. This part is differentiating from business packages because in your value proposition you need to come up with the problems your clients are facing essentially. The best value propositions are the ones that help people save time or money. So come up with what key pains you want to address in your clients. Since executive coaching’s major topic is business try to come up with some common things business teams and executives are facing. Some of the things executives are facing and go consult for an executive coach are:

Dealing and navigating through career changes:

Generally, executives go to coaching at the beginning of their career because they are exposed to high stress at the beginning of their careers. Orientation to new responsibilities, leading higher volumed teams for the first time, taking over a sinking ship, etc.

SWOT Analysis:

Great leaders work on their SWOT charts consistently. Since everyone is exposed to different things in their both life and business routines we get to change the whole time of our career. The things we got exposed to in our career affects how we deal and coop with our daily tasks. To work on their SWOT analysis and improve it continuously they go to coaches to have an objective third eye.

Productivity

Productivity is another major thing everyone faces in their career. Even if you are trying to build your personal brand or you are managing 5000 people company you get to cope with stress, lower productivity, burnouts, and lack of willpower. To find inspiration, boost productivity in both lives and work business people go and consult on executive coaches.

Goal Setting

While growing a company, the most important thing is to put to the point goals and KPIs. Coaches tend to help and lead business people during their careers to come up with creative KPIs to measure their companies, careers, and their team’s success.

When starting your online executive coaching business, another important thing is to define your niche. Because at the beginning of every business it’s very effective to focus on special service, improving that service, and improving the workflow. There are a lot of coaching businesses out there doing a very good job at the different topics. Just pick the one field you have the most experience in, more clients, or the one you trust yourself the most. Then put yourself out there! Some of the common executive coaching niches are executive coaching in the technology industry, in the healthcare industry, executive coaching on government, for non-profits, and executive coaching for emerging growth companies.

Key partners and key resources for your business are actually the ones that are doing similar jobs to yours. Find the ones that are already attracted to your potential clients, check for their strategies, and partner up with them to grow your business by helping theirs also. The best way to grow is to grow together. Ask for help from your peers always. Offer free consultations to their clients and promotions, etc.

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Craft your business packages

Let’s talk about money! Everything we do is to spread information to others while making money. Every asset and talent we have can be hired. Freelancing and personal branding is a great way to share your assets to executives. To earn money you need to offer things to your potential clients. Categorize the assets you have, to whom they will serve, and which assets you have are great together. Create at least three packages to offer with different price strategies. Define which offer is better for who and for which client profiles. To summarise crafting business packages is bundling different services together. Like mentioned it’s important to decide on the potential profile so that one can guess the needs in a structure. Make sure to list which package is best for who and make sure to explain neatly what will they get in every package. What are the extra features you offer in each package different than others? Name your packages simply like beginner package, weekly coaching, group sessions are great titles to give straightforward messages to the ones that are already attractive.

Create a payment plan

Pricing and offering different payment plans is a savor to close the deal. People do not tend to give money in advance so make sure to offer methods to pay in installment. Also if you are building your business online make sure to create an online payment page integrated with great and trustworthy companies like PayPal, stripe, etc. Just make sure that the payment is the easiest process in your business. Nobody enjoys hard, complicated, and long processing payment processes. 

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Legal Aspects

Legal documents sound boring for starters but this is a step none of the small business owners should skip. Because it’s protecting your business, your assets, secure your payments, and secure your client’s trust. In your proposal document make sure to put disclaimers that are listing your claims with your services like “Services offered does not guarantee you will lose 120 lbs”. Because in businesses like consulting and online coaching people tend to have guarantees and when the service does not meet their expectations they want their money back. Create a strategy when you refuse to pay back and when you are okay to payback. Also in terms and conditions make sure to state the way you work precisely.

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Certification

People like certificates. If you are planning on giving a group session, group training, a solo training offering certificates is a great way to attract customers. Since they will get a reward and accreditation, they tend to pick you instead of your competitors. For certification needs one should go and get accredited itself from federations like ICF or create their own certifications by various companies and tools.

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Building an E-Mail List

It’s not easy to put yourself out there. Especially there are millions of other people doing it, every business owner should grow an audience of its own to market their services. Building this audience they should learn the ways of building brand awareness and of generating leads. Content marketing is one of the best ways of building awareness and generating leads. Content marketing examples are explained in a previous article however to go through briefly building an email list is very important. To building that email list, after building your company website create a library of opt-in incentives. A library of opt-in incentives is consists of free resources that may attract your clients’ interests and the content they are willing to leave their e-mail addresses to capture that information or tips. A good opt-in incentive can be a checklist, a cheat sheet, a test, or a quiz. To generate those kinds of materials find your go-to tool where you can add opt-in forms to collect leads from different documents you created. One of the effective and all-in-one tools is Decktopus where you can prepare tests, documents, proposals, cheat sheets, checklists, informational documents where you can add forms at the end. Also, Decktopus enables you to match the documents to your brand easily by customizing, connecting to your business domain, and embedding them into your website.

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Marketing&Sales

After creating your website, your free resource library, and your opt-in incentives now it’s time to start your marketing efforts to tone up your sales. Email marketing is a great way to send great offers to your customers. Especially on holidays by offering promotions business owners can increase their sales with special holiday offers. To get inspiration for your holiday campaigns check out another article we wrote to increase your sales. 

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Jump Start Your Business

It’s time to start your business and be proud of the person you become. Do not hesitate to put yourself out there and start your online executive coaching business. Decktopus is always here to help. By also becoming our affiliate you can passively earn income from your audience by only referring this tool to your peers, to your clients, etc.

Executive Coaching Proposal Template

Let us offer help! We have already prepared an executive coaching proposal template for you. In this document, you will see a proposal consisting of about us, our strategy, working schedule, testimonials, a quote from you, an offer, guarantee, signature pages, and terms and conditions as you can preview below.

While working on this proposal and editing it make sure to add your brand logo and brand colors from customizing your deck button. Add your brand logo to cover the screen and footer logo section. 

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