With the continued expansion of the digital economy and the broad-reaching benefits of social media platforms and channels, coaches can now bring their message across the corners of the earth. Online coaching has become valuable because people don't have time to gain expertise, and the digital economy has made knowledgable service providers more accessible than ever. As of 2022, there are over 22,000 life coaching businesses in the United States - and that niche experienced 6% growth from 2021 to 2022.
Three key factors determine the continued success of the online coach.
- How successful is a coach at driving their clients toward desired results
- Creating stable recurring revenue
- De-coupling your ability to provide service and coaching from the hours in your day
Coaches have been turning to Subflow and solving for all three by adding an SMS membership or subscription to their tech stack.
Consistency for Your Clients is Success for You
The average person has a forgetfulness rate of 50%. That means that for all the things you want your clients to do - taking their supplements, filling out their journal, or doing their daily meditation - there's a real chance they will forget. Add to this that motivation is often highest at the beginning of starting something new (like working with a coach) and then wanes over time. It's not that your clients don't want to see results; human brains are wired for distraction, and we can only stay focused on something for so long.
Coaches using Subflow have reported tremendous success keeping their clients engaged, consistent, and accountable using the SMS broadcast feature offered through the platform. Once subscribers are enrolled, coaches can easily broadcast daily, weekly or monthly reminders, inspirational quotes, or even just check-ins to see how their members are doing. Consistent communication keeps clients more engaged, on track, and accountable for meeting their goals, leading to better results and happier customers.
The value of doing this through SMS compared to email or other forms of communication is that SMS has a much higher open and engagement rate. In fact, according to recent studies, SMS has a 98% open rate compared to 20% for email. In addition, it's shown that SMS is seen and read within minutes of being received, whereas email can often sit unopened in someone's inbox for hours or even days.
This immediacy and engagement are why Subflow is such a valuable tool for coaches - it helps them stay top of mind with their clients, which leads to more business and more satisfied customers.
Avoid the Feast and Famine Revenue Cycles
The vast majority of their revenue for coaches comes from one-off sessions or programs, which leaves them vulnerable to the feast or famine cycle. As a result, they make a lot of money when working with clients but often have long gaps between them where they struggle to make ends meet.
When you structure your business to rely on one-off sessions, you are at the mercy of your client's schedules. They may only need you for a few weeks or months, and then they may not need your services again for several months or even years. This scenario leaves you with big holes in your income, which can be very difficult to manage.
It requires you to be in customer acquisition mode, which presents challenges continually. Unless you have built a supportive and robust organization around your coaching business, you are likely a coach, accountant, advertising marketer, and CEO. Operating your business like this can quickly become overwhelming, leaving coaches feeling burned out and stressed.
Launching a membership or subscription product to your coaching service can alleviate many of these issues. Not only will you have a more reliable and consistent income stream, but you'll also be able to keep your clients engaged, providing them with the support they need to see results. Time is the single most crucial factor in creating lasting change. Offering an unlimited time-based product makes an opportunity for anyone to be successful as long as they are engaged in your services. Whether your clients and customers stay subscribed for three months or three years, they can take as much time as they need to absorb your coaching - in a way that is safely monetized for you as the coach.
Offer Something for Everyone
For many coaches, their product and service offering can include the following items:
-1:1 coaching
-Group Coaching
-Workshops
-Events
-Consulting
-Public speaking
-Online Courses
-PDF, e-books, and downloadables
Most of these products and services, except for online courses or downloadables, can frequently be cost prohibitive for some customers. Therefore, it is appropriate for direct coaching that requires your hours of focused attention should be priced higher than services that do not.
It would help if you were cautious about building your business and how much your MRR or ARR results from your direct time. If you want to increase your business' scalability, then you'll want to find ways to continue earning revenue without having to be the one directly providing the service.
The great thing about Subflow is that depending on how you decide to build out your membership, you can provide service to an unlimited number of members and subscriptions simultaneously. Not only can you provide service to more people simultaneously, but you can also even structure your membership to be a lower-priced offering. By creating a more general coaching membership and not customized - you can lower the price of the product, making it available to anyone who may be unable to engage with you in your 1:1 or group coaching products. A general SMS membership is a perfect way to attract and engage more clients while providing a valuable service that compliments your 1:1 coaching.
Set Up Your Coaching Business for Scale
By solving three of the most prominent problems coaches face, you can set your business up for scale from the very beginning. Then, as you gain traction and grow your coaching business, you won't have to make any drastic changes to how you operate. Instead, you can keep doing what you're doing but reach more people quickly.
With Subflow, you can create everything from a low to high-priced subscription membership, and your offering can be either personalized, more broadcast in nature, or somewhere in between. If you're unsure where to begin - reach out to our team! First, we work hand in hand with coaches to help understand their business and what possibility Subflow could mean for them and their business. Then, we will walk you through the imagination, creation, and launching of your Subflow subscription membership.
Get started with Subflow today!
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