If you want to start a location-independent coaching business, you’re in the right place. 

Even if you’re looking to start a coaching business and want to be free of location while creating a big impact, you’re in the right place. 

As someone who’s grown, changed, and built a location-independent coaching business, and has helped her clients do the same, I’ve learned this: 

Not all coaching businesses are built the same. And while most coaching businesses are online coaching businesses, they aren’t automatically location-independent. 

A coaching business model that relies on individual coaching and masterminds is bound to a strict schedule. One that could be hard to honor while traveling, even with the best planning, intentions, and commitments. 

Let’s face it: 

If you’re looking for location independence, you’re also looking for time freedom. 
Am I right? Yeah…

This is why we need to start a location-independent coaching business with the freedom of time AND location in mind, without compromising integrity, impact, and income. 

The good news is, that you’re in the perfect place to learn what you need to start, grow, and scale a coaching business that gives you back time, enables you to travel, and serves thousands of clients.

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What is a location-independent business?

A location-independent business is one that allows the founder and team to work from anywhere while still growing the business.

Notice there are two pieces to this definition:

Firstly, location-independent entrepreneurs create an online business so that they can work remotely from anywhere. However, that is true for just about any online business. 

The second piece is key: In order to truly be independent of location and thrive, the business structures, systems, and offers must also be set up in a way that is conducive to changing time zones, availability, travel schedules, and more. More on that below. 

After all, a freedom-based business exists to create both extensive freedom for the founder and massive impact for the customers while turning a large profit. 

Check out my course, the 6 Figure Digital Nomad Coach Blueprint to get all puzzle pieces in place that are needed to grow a coaching business towards impact, freedom, and profits.

Digital Nomad Myths

Online does not equal location freedom.

See, we’re shooting for the ideal business here, and if your business has you in coaching calls during sleeping or dinner hours, we’ve got some more ways to go. Online or not.

Specifically, we need to help you create packages that sell passively, wow- and retain clients while you’re drinking coconuts by the beach, and blow up your DMs with client inquiries overnight.

Can you take a moment to truly sit with the idea that this is, in fact, possible?

You might not be there yet. Strategy is below, my dear, but for now: can you allow yourself to dream really freaking hard?

Great, so let’s bust some myths for your own visionary’s sake:

MYTH: Any online business is location-independent. 
TRUTH: Only an online business that generates income without you online is truly location-independent. An online coaching business that trades time for money is not sustainable in the long run. 

MYTH: Digital nomad coaches always find a time to meet with clients, regardless of time zone.
TRUTH: If your client roster is too big and you rely on 1:1 offers sold, your timezone will significantly impact your capacity and, in turn, your revenue.

MYTH: Anyone can be a coach. It’s the easiest way to go remote and travel the world. 
TRUTH: Being a coach takes serious training, ongoing mentorship, and a huge personal investment in healing your own inner trauma. That said, it is also one of the most authentic ways to combine one’s desire to grow their impact, income, and freedom. 

MYTH: If you can turn your passion into a business, you’re a coach. 
TRUTH: That’s how the Internet ended up with self-proclaimed coaches who call fear a ‘bullshit frequency’. Get yourself some training. 

Don’t Make these Mistakes:

It’s because of these myths that some people get rich just as quickly as they go out of business. It’s also because of these myths that you might have been led to make some mistakes when first starting your freedom-based business. 

Truly, the location-independent lifestyle requires deep personal inquiry and reflection, demands a high ability to adapt, and can be just as gruesome as it can be rewarding. It’s an inner journey unlike any other, so why exploit it for sleazy sales schemes, I don’t know. 

But I know a better way. 

Time to clean up mistakes and misconceptions, and build a location-independent coaching business that earns you in your sleep, creates international waves of impact, and grows your profits, ready for charity, reinvestment, and growth. 

What you need to Start a location-independent coaching business

Having already prompted you to truly think about your dream life, I’m going to take this a step further:

Likely, you’re fearful of failure: what if it won’t work? What if I jeopardize the survival of my family? Will they ridicule me? And on and on and on…

It’s important to acknowledge these fears. Over time, and with the right coaching, these fears can become crucial guides on your journey.

But we also need a solid vision board that paints your BEST case scenario. It’s only with this board in place that you can then determine our freedom offers, your structure, and your sales strategy.

You can’t build from fear. You can only build from a powerful vision and the willingness to do it in spite of fear. Read more about how to get started as a nomad from a place of personal power.

Your Freedom Vision

Before you set up your coaching business, I need you to tap into your freedom vision: 

What are you doing this all for? I’ve written extensively about how to create a freedom vision in this article and will direct you exactly there. 

See, any entrepreneurial journey will get tough. For a location-independent business, you’ll add in specific tax laws, figure out how to set up a virtual office to make Uncle Sam happy and try to explain it all to your accountant…all while growing your business. You’ll want to turn back. Unless you know where you’re going. 

Your Unique Value Proposition

So, what do you need to start your own coaching business and become location-independent? 

Well, firstly, you’ll need to know what you’ll coach on. I say unique value proposition to please the business jargon. But when you start a location-independent coaching business, your only hope of succeeding with integrity is to focus on YOU, first: 

What are your passions? 

• What is your experience as a professional? 
• What do friends and colleagues come to you for advice? 
• What are you most opinionated about? 
• What can you rant about all day? 
• What don’t you get tired of teaching? 

One of my coaches once told me that my business success lies at the intersection between my passions and my expertise. 

Don’t go out and think that you have to teach yourself an entirely new skill set. What a waste of experience, money, and time. You coach on what you’re already an expert on! 

Want to dive deep on this? This is for you:

Become Great: Strengthen your Coaching Skills

Yes, you 100% need to know how to coach. In order to become a great coach, you need to have been coached, you need a mentor-coach who provides hands-on feedback on your coaching, and you should continuously train to become a more skillful coach.

This is very comprehensive: listen to podcasts of coaches coaching people, read self-development and mindset books, enroll into private coaching or a mastermind, choose to train as a somatic coach, Pranic healer, strengthen your spiritual capabilities.

The list is endless and entirely not optional.

Do I need a certificate to start a coaching business?

No, coaching skills and coach training do not have to come with a certification. I’ve trained extensively as a coach, with different modalities and mentors, but I don’t have a certification. Neither do any of my coaches have one.

If you loved school, getting a certification might be a great way to go. But in order to start a coaching business, you don’t need to be certified. However, training is mandatory.

Foresight: Create a Business Plan

Without a plan, you’ll end up scraping by for years. Without foresight, last minute programs aren’t outcomes of your creativity but needs of your bank account. Without planning, you’ll become the sacrificial lamb of your own business.

So, before you set your rates, launch your offers, post on Instagram, determine this:

• What is the life you want to live a year from now, and how will your business need to work in order for you to realistically live that life?

The answer to this question will reveal your business plan.

What are the legal laws to start a location-independent coaching business?

I’m no lawyer/accountant, but I can confidently say this: Just because you’ve renounced your residency, you can’t justcharge clients via your personal PayPal and call it a business. 

Setting up your business as a legally recognized entity will set you up to bill legally in the short term and grow your team and revenue legally down the line. 

So, go ahead an figure out how to legally set up a business somewhere. And no, it doesn’t need to be your home country, not even your current country of residence. 

The beauty of creating a location-independent lifestyle is that there are certain financial perks you get to uncover. Setting up a legal offshore business will likely result in a great tax benefit for you (legally!). 

I write more about getting your finances set up legally as a digital nomad here.

Note that if you’re a U.S. citizen, your tax liability is tied to your citizenship, not your residency as is the case for most other countries. 

Create Supportive Systems

Systems are platforms you use to make your business more efficient, ways to set boundaries, methods to choose your nexttravel destinations, and habits you implement to stay mentally and physically healthy. 

It’s possible to start a business with post-its when you’re settled in one place. Not advisable all the same. 

Journaling out your business goals and leaving it at that is not possible for a location-independent entrepreneur. 

What’s needed are robust and remote systems that A) help you project-manage, B) automate client nurturing, and C) support your clients without you digging for a lost password. 

Most of this can be helped by investing in the right platforms and software and learning the habits needed to run a successful coaching business.

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Determine the Path: The right Business Model

The right business model isn’t a ‘Which size do you need?’ kind of concern. It’s intricately connected to your dreams, needs, and passions. 

I highly recommend moving away from any thoughts of ‘growing’ your coaching business purely through one-on-one coaching. There’s power in starting there. But this is not the way to location freedom. 

Instead, I recommend a strong emphasis on diversifying your revenue between live coaching and ever-green courses.

Allow yourself ample time to sit with this and discuss your course of action with your own coach who can help you draw up a plan of action that is aligned with your needs and vision. 

How can I start a coaching business that can run without me?

Creating a business that can run without you plugged into it 24/7 is key to location independence.

Coaching, inherently, requires you to want to enter into quite a personal relationship with your clients. However, that doesn’t mean you must trade your time for money for the rest of your time. 

This is what you do: 

Inevitably, there are things you talk to your clients about over and over again. Things that are more teaching than coaching. 

While there’s a much greater strategy to this, you should start by turning what you teach, not coach on, into recorded courses that can be sold. Notice I said courses, plural. 

Just one course alone can’t possibly solve all of your audience’s problems all at once. If it did, it would be quite expensive and loooong. Too long to create any impact. 

Determine your Freedom Offers

Speaking of courses, part of your mission to start a location-independent coaching business must be to determine your offers, time, content, audience, and pricing. 

I call them freedom offers because they must work for you, first. Additionally, your offers, if done right, will also help you attain freedom through scaling your business.

Generally speaking, these are the kinds of offers through which a coach can generate income and impact: 

• Ever-green courses
• X-day programs run live, online, that becomes ever-green after running them
• Retreats (virtual or in-person) 
• 1:1 coaching packages, typically 3-12 months but varies 
• One-of coaching calls (strongly recommend against it) 
• Masterminds / Miniminds 
• Memberships 
• low priced Masterclasses that offer ways to continue learning in bigger programs
• VIP days 
• miscellaneous: speaking, blogging, sponsorships, brand collabs, commissions, etc. 

The ones in bold are the ones that will most quickly move you into time freedom. All others can be part of your offer suite but should be capped at very low numbers and offered with strong boundaries only. 

Once you’ve cracked the code of just how fun and easy it can be to create an offer from scatch, you’ll soon fall in love with it.

My biggest piece of advice here is to simply start! You’re going to fail anyway. And sometimes you’ll win. Why procrastinate the win just to avoid failure? 

If you’re building your coaching business from scratch, it’s time to color the walls!

Create an Audience and Activate your Connections

If you’ve been reading along, you might wonder: who the hell do I sell this to?

Well, of course, when you start a location-independent coaching business, you’ll also need to learn how to create an audience and connections that buy from you.

When I work with new coaches, I always recommend activating their existing connections first. I don’t have my clients start to build an audience until they’ve landed their first clients away from social media.

Doing this teaches coaches the importance of trust, and genuine connections. While you truly can’t scale a location-independent coaching business without social media, you can certainly start there and even grow it up to six figures.

It’s how I started.

You can learn valuable lessons here: what to coach on, how to coach, who to coach. And how you speak to your clients, and about what.

These are all things you need answered by the time you launch yourself into growing a social media following.

Here, my biggest piece of advice is to lead with authenticity. At your 9-5, you may have been asked to tone down your personality. Here, you’re asked to amplify it. Speak your mind, lose the filter, and share your opinions liberally.

Coaching is too personal for you to show up to your audience and connections in a sterile way. Let them know who you are. Every day. In every post.

How do you land coaching clients?

I’ll bet good money that you can land your first 5 coaching clients without social media. You’ll likely need some direction which is here as a blueprint, or available in private coaching. 

Purely by activating your existing connections and inviting them into coaching, you’ll be able to fill five spots. Read through my method here and here and tell me which action steps you’ll commit to in the comments. 

Speak Freedom Invitations: Ethical Selling

Cold DMs and sleazy free webinars that lead to a heavy sales pitch are the opposite of ethical. Don’t engage in them. 

(If you sign up for my webinar above, you’ll notice that I point you in the right direction where you can dive deeper. Multiple times, because I want you to be set up with the right support. But no pitch takes up one-third of the promised ‘webinar’.)

I did a reel the other day on why you’re likely finding it much easier to send cold DMs than to just show up authentically. 

Instead, you want to learn how to organically invite your audience or connections into calls, offers, programs, etc. 

High action, low attachment. 

Create a Strong Money System and Mindset

Notice how this is two-fold? I’m tired of money mindset coaches who’ll tell me that the only thing between me and millions of dollars is my money mindset. 

What about strategy, what about smart taxations, what about actually knowing how to invest? 

Both, management and mindset around money are crucial to building a business that increases profits (not just revenue) and allows you to build generational wealth. 

I outline my exact money system that keeps my money accessible, growing, and secure while I travel the world here. This article is specifically for location-independent entrepreneurs. 

Final Words: Start a Location-Independent Coaching Business with a Possibility Mindset

Building a coaching business is so freaking amazing, because it literally rewards you for healing your shit and for being you. If you learn how to attract a community of amazing people, it’ll be ‘meet your hero’ every single day in your office. And your office will be anywhere in the world. 

I admit it, this sounds really dreamy. But with the right inner work, the willingness to get really uncomfortable in your actions, and a strategy that scales, you can create impact and income on your terms. 

I hope this blueprint helped point you in the right (freedom-aligned) direction. Let me know your biggest takeaway in the comments. <3 

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