It’s the dream: Tapping into passive income for coaches and waking up to sales that came in overnight. Isn’t it? But then there’s another, deeper dream, as well: to actually be fulfilled by what you do, to make an impact.
The dream to have financial abundance, expansive impact, AND location independence, is one many of us share.
Isn’t this why you became a coach in the first place? To live an impactful life on purpose?
By now, you may have realized that your time is, shocker, limited. And so is your capacity for 1:1 coaching clients. Therefore, so is your impact. And your ability to grow financially.
Now what? How do you scale in a sustainable way, helps you stop trading money for time, and is still just as impactful, if not more?
In my experience, many brilliant coaches fear away from scaling their business because the minute they utter that word, their timeline gets flooded with “Use my exact framework” and sleazy ads.
Next, come the DMs: “I can help you create a proven-to-work sales funnel for your coaching”.
Frankly, these messages have held me back from scaling my coaching business via passive income for years.
Eventually, I had come to the end of my wits, being overwhelmed by a full client roster, and genuinely started looking for a way to create passive income as a coach without selling my soul to ‘proven frameworks’ that were going to kill my mojo (and the trust I’d built up with my community).
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When I began to live a location-independent life and work as a full-time coach, I quickly realized that carrying a full 1:1 client roster wouldn’t be sustainable in the long run. I needed a business model that would support my lifestyle and sense of freedom AND serve my clients powerfully.
Thankfully, you can scale your coaching business through passive income without sacrificing your integrity.
I’d like to believe that the most sustainable way to scale a coaching business also happens to be the most impactful. And no, no sleaze here.
Relying solely on 1:1 coaching won’t scale your business or provide the lifestyle you desire. Instead, let’s look at how you can transition from 1:1 coaching to creating passive income streams and enable a truly location-independent life.
The Limitations with 1:1 Coaching for Location-Independent Biz Owners
Don’t get me wrong, working with a coaching client privately is some of my favorite work I do in my business. We go deep – and nothing is off-topic.
The problem is not the individual coaching. It’s doing it exclusively, that’s the problem. It’s doing it beyond time and emotional capacity, that’s the problem.
The beauty of business is that you can shift – and I’m inviting you to shift towards a business model where passive income for coaches is the path towards more insights better service for your clients, and more freedom and income for yourself.
Meanwhile, the limitations of 1:1 coaching sessions for any coach are quite clear:
- Your time limits your income potential (aka, you can only increase your income via higher fees)
- You’re trading time for money, no matter the fee or package structure
- Until you can clone yourself, you can’t scale 1:1 coaching
- Not everyone needs 1:1 coaching and those who don’t need it will turn to a different business for what they need.
- Not everyone can afford 1:1 coaching, and those who can’t will turn to someone else.
- You’re directly involved with a LOT of people’s lives – our emotional boundaries must be strong…and, yet, there’s still going to be a capacity to how much you can carry.
Beyond these pure business-based reasons as to why you shouldn’t exclusively rely on 1:1 coaching clients to build a sustainable coaching business, location-independent coaches face even more challenges with this mode:
- Time freedom: not only does 1:1 coaching limit your capacity, but it also restricts your location independence and time freedom due to fixed schedules and client demands/availability
- Creating clients that pay you a high fee for an intimate, long-term coaching package takes time, trust, and deep connection. Something you can’t accomplish at scale while moving around.
- Consistency and productivity: If you’re moving around a lot, chances are your travel days and settling-in days aren’t going to be best for in-depth client sessions, but you can easily sell a few courses while you’re at the airport.
The Path to Passive Income for Coaches
Let’s get one thing straight: passive income for coaches does not mean that you can sit back and do nothing for your income.
What it does mean, however, is that creating passive income streams will eliminate a follow-up post-sale and that you can scale irrespectively of your time availability.
Take note of these two aspects as we move forward:
- No follow-up: You pre-create a deeply serving offer and automate how people can access the offer. Your work then becomes focused on selling that offer, not on delivering it.
- Scalability: While you can’t scale a private coaching session, a pre-created program can be sold 2 or 10, or 100 times – it won’t affect your time commitment.
The path to passive income for coaches is super fun!
However, I’ve found that the biggest obstacle for coaches towards passive income is not their ability to create offers or even think of offers. No, it’s a belief that our very own industry tends to perpetuate:
“True coaching is highly confidential, deeply tailored, and can take place only over a long time.” Now, I don’t disagreee with that. But I also don’t allow this fact to limit what I create inside my business.
Coaching can be much more than that.
So to move into successfully creating passive income as a coach, I must invite you to broaden your definition of what coaching is, and how a coach can deliver life-transformational resources.
Because a 1:1 session is just one way to transform a person’s life.
Building a Location-Independence through Passive Income for Coaches
As you begin to transition from exclusively offering 1:1 coaching offers towards creating passive income and honing your location-freedom, there are a few crucial elements you must not overlook:
- Your Purpose Statement will become your Northstar for everything you create.
- The platforms you utilize will become your automated vessel towards impact and income.
- Creating an Offer Suite instead of relying on just one online course will help diversify your income.
- You’ll need to learn how to sell through service.
Steps to Transition from 1:1 Coaching to Passive Income
Passive income from coaching won’t appear over-night. Depending on your experience with coaching, selling, and the trust your community has in you, it can take anywhere between a few weeks to months. So, be patient.
As you transition from 1:1 coaching to passive income, you’ll want to make sure that the following elements are dialed in.
You’re welcome to dive deeper via my 6 Figure Freedom Coach Blueprint as a way of knowing exactly what you need (and don’t need) and experiencing an example of what I’m teaching you below.
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Create a Purpose Statement
Without a strong purpose statement, you’ll be lost in the process. That’s why you must start here and can’t just jump into sales funnels and the like.
A purpose statement clearly states what you do, who you do it for, and what the outcome is. You may arrive at your personal statement by examining what it is you do for your clients. Feel free to eliminate what you don’t love doing and focus on what you cold do all day.
Alternatively, you can also examine what impact you seem to have whenever you show up and feel at your best.
Importantly, this is a brilliant moment to remind yourself why you got into this business in the first place. This is a time to look within, not outside yourself. If your mission statement doesn’t resonate with you, it’s not yours. It’s a fabrication.
The easiest way to summarize your thoughts is this formula:
I help X who Y create Z so that A.
X = type of person
Y = their specific desire
Z = result
A = why that result matters.
If you’d like to see an example of this, just head to my homepage and you’ll see my purpose statement right at the top.
One Course won’t do – here’s why
A lot of business coaches will suggest you focus on only one highly profitable product, typically a course that you sell a few times a year or as evergreen. Usually, this course ends up being a 0-100 offer that teaches and coaches on everything you know.
I’ve run these types of courses. I distinctly remember the joy of running the Prosperous Musician Entrepreneur back in the day. Yes – it was joyful! And yes, I’ll run comprehensive courses and masterminds again. But here’s the thing:
The No.1 and 2 reasons why people didn’t join were:
- They didn’t need all of this. They just needed X, or Y, or Z.
- The times didn’t’ work for them.
No. 2 can be eliminated by turning more of your offerings into ever-green. However, you’ll want to retain offers in your business that are hands-on and provide the client with lots of personalized coaching, so not all of your offers should be ever-green.
In order to solve for both No. 1 and 2, I’ll go ahead and suggest you create multiple offers for all of the different problems your clients will phase en-route to their ideal reality.
More on the ‘how’ below.
Expand your Current Offerings
Based on your purpose statement and your experience working with clients privately, I now want you to come up with ways to expand your current offerings:
- What do you find yourself saying to your clients all the time?
- When, during your sessions, do you teach instead of coach?
- Are there handouts you provide your clients with that they fill out on their own time?
All of the above can become offers. Everything that you repeat is scalable. Everything you teach on (instead of coaching) is scalable. Teaching and repeat statements don’t need you to be live and present. They need a recording.
Next, I want you to think of your purpose statement and ask yourself what a client will need to realize that purpose.
Let me explain this further:
There are going to be multiple elements that must be dialed in before a client can truly realize the reality you promise. Each element can become an offer.
The beauty then is that not all clients will need all of these elements. Some will – and they’ll be happy to pay accordingly. But some might just need one or two. And your expanded offers will allow for that flexibility.
Utilize Platforms to your Advantage
Chances are you’re already using some platforms to collect payments and send contracts. It’s time to expand your use of these platforms.
The goal here shouldn’t be to drop hundreds of dollars a month on platforms before you fully utilize them. There are ways to grow your passive income revenue before you buy premium on platforms.
That said, your goal from the get-go must be to utilize technology to automate as much as possible. In brief, clients interested in buying an offer from you should be able to learn about the offer, purchase it, and start consuming it without you lifting a finger.
Platforms such as Teachable or Thinkific can help a great deal with that.
Are your platforms set up to help you automate your selling process right now? If not, now’s the time to invest the hours into fixing it.
It does require upfront research and tweaking, but once it’s set up, you just need to add to it whenever you create new offers.
Selling through Service
Finally, the active piece to creating passive income for coaches: While the purchasing and consumption pieces of your offers should be automated, the initial selling thereof is not.
Yes, you can run ads to automate even this, but you can’t do that until you’ve figured out what does and doesn’t bring in sales. And even when you’ve figured this piece out, you should never stop growing an audience online and selling actively.
This is simply because learning how to sell through genuinely serving and connecting with your audience is going to breed the most connections.
While an ad may sell a $40 offer easily, a connection created over time can easily turn into thousands of dollars.
You’ll want to think of ways to scale the personalized connections you’re creating with your private clients across platforms. Certainly, launch an Instagram account. But also think of guest-coaching for colleagues, on podcasts, or at conferences. Go live regularly on Instagram, launch a blog, or your own podcast.
The game here is not sleazy sales, it’s genuine connection through service and providing value.
Supplemental Passive Income for Coaches:
I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that there are tons of supplemental ways to create passive income for coaches, especially for location-independent and digital nomad coaches.
While none of these are required for sustained financial success, you may find it fun and easy to add them to your wheelhouse.
- Affiliate marketing or commission structures for courses and products you recommend to your clients or audience.
- Brand partnerships where it makes sense for your brand, audience, and your own products.
- Books if you choose to dive deep on one topic or experience and if it is on brand or a strategic way to expand your reach.
- Monetized blog/YouTube channel/Podcast. This is a great way to let your creativity come out and play if you’re one who loves content creation.
Beware to not fall for any get-rich-quick schemes here. Shiny objects won’t bring you money. Rather, they’ll derail your focus from your actual purpose, mission, and what you’re here to help your clients realize.
Make sure that whatever you embark on is in line with your personal definition of freedom, your purpose statement, and your vision.
The Freedom Vision for Location-Independent Coaches
Before I let you go and grow your freedom-based business, remember this one thing:
Building out passive income for coaches isn’t about partying more and working less while the money comes flying at you. It can be that – but what’s going to be most fulfilling and what will yield the greatest success is for you to keep your eyes on the prize:
What’s your freedom-based life look like?
What do you define as being truly free of location and time independent?
What is the work that lights you up?
If you can allow yourself to lead from that place within, you’ll have no trouble creating offers that pave the path towards more freedom and more service.
If you join the 6 Figure Freedom Coach Blueprint for $39, I can help you connect your purpose, expertise, and freedom-vision in a way that will actually make you money. (And yes, you’ll be able to learn about it, check-out, and consume it without me lifting a finger!)
As you embark on this new chapter in your business, note that service can look many different ways, that this is your business and that it must work for you, and that selling is just another form of serving.
Happy scaling! Tell me below – what action can you take right away to move your business forward?
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