by Phil Beene, Co-founder / Nudge Coach
In this post, we’re sharing the 2 online coaching business models that we’ve seen both solopreneur coaches and larger teams scale successfully.
There’s never been a better time to grow an online coaching business. But building a successful online coaching business isn’t easy.
It may sound contradictory, but both statements are true.
Online businesses take a lot of work, especially if you’re an independent coach or entrepreneur, but they also open you up to a whole world of opportunity.
The internet gives you access to potential clients all over the world, so even a niche life coaching business, for example, can scale and grow to be quite large and profitable.
But scaling isn’t easy. It only happens if you have a business model in place that’s designed to scale profitably online.
The purpose of this post is to introduce you to 2 of the online coaching business models that we’ve seen scale the most profitably. This is based on our years of experience working with coaching businesses of all sizes using the Nudge platform to build and launch custom programs to their clients.
The 2 models we chose stand out because we’ve seen each scale profitably many times over our history.
If you’re transitioning from an in-person coaching model, you may find our previous post on online coaching models a helpful as well.
There is no magic bullet that will make your online coaching business a massive success. But if you can generate enough interest, using one of these models will drastically increase your chances of success at scaling your business profitably.
Each of these models are also uniquely suited to be built into the Nudge platform. Learn about creating a free Nudge account here to get started.
2 Scalable Online Coaching Business Models
ATM Model (Alignment, Transformation, Maintenance)
Triple “C” Model (Course, Challenge, Coaching)
The ATM Model
ATM coaching model is a scalable coaching model for anyone from a successful independent coach, to a large coaching business.
“ATM” stands for 3 types of program offerings that make up the model:
Alignment: A low cost entry-level programs aligned with your primary offering
Transformation: Your primary higher value program offering clients some kind of desired transformation
Maintenance: A lower cost ongoing (evergreen) program to maintain positive results and stay on track
And as the acronym not-so–subtly suggests, it will result in more money for your business if you get it right.
Fundamentally, ATM is designed to address two key problems of scaling a coaching business:
Attracting and engaging more good quality coaching leads
Keeping your best clients longer and earning more from them
Most every coaching business has a primary program it offers that promotes some kind of desired transformation for clients. (Thus, the “T” for “Transformation” in ATM.)
However, a coaching business based solely on a single Transformational program can be hard to scale.
On one end, it’s hard to bring in a lot of good quality leads and nurturing them enough to be ready to commit to a high-priced transformational program. (Problem #1 above)
Alignment programs are the ATM’s solution for attracting and engaging more good quality leads.
An Alignment program is like a miniature version of your primary program that’s designed to make it easy for your clients to get started if they’re interested in what you offer.
For example, let’s say your transformational program promises to help clients get their career back on track and land their dream job.
An Alignment Program that brings in more of the right prospects could be a lower cost mini-course on how to be great at networking. Or a 30-day networking challenge (how many networking lunches can you land in 30-days?)
The lower price-point makes it easier for a prospective client who isn’t ready to shell out the full price of your Transformation Program to sample what you have to offer and see if you’re what they are looking for.
Once they sign up, now you have their captive attention and more time to show them that you’re the expert they should trust.
And that’s how an Alignment Program solves the problem of helping you capture and convert more quality leads into clients in your primary (Transformation) programming.
Now, the second challenge of scaling: How to keep clients longer and earn more from them. Or in terms of business metrics: How to increase the lifetime value (LTV) of your clients.
This is where the “M” in ATM comes in.
Maintenance Programs offer clients a way to maintain the success they’ve achieved through working with you by staying connected with you for light accountability beyond their Transformation.
And they give you a low friction way to keep paying clients who get value from working with you for longer.
Maintenance programs typically involve a relatively low monthly fee, and give clients access to various perks like:
weekly educational content
accountability tools to help them keep the results and good habits they’ve developed
access to special events, like webinars
access to Communities
If it sounds like a membership to you, then you’ve got the idea. A Maintenance Program is essentially a membership program focused on maintaining progress already made, which makes it an ideal complement to coaching.
Now, the full ATM model does take time to implement and mature, so if you want to start the process of building a more scalable online coaching business, then the next model might be the right next move for you.
The Triple “C” Model
The Triple C Model is similar to the ATM, but more laser-focused on driving a high volume of purchases, and qualified prospects for coaching programs.
The 3 “C’s” in Triple C stand for:
Course
Challenge
Coaching
In this model, either Courses, Challenges, or both are used as lower barrier-to-entry options to attract and convert more paying customers.
During the Course and/or Challenge, you can strategically promote the value of your full coaching program, and convert new coaching clients.
Courses and Challenges are pretty interchangeable in this model, so the client journey can take one of three shapes:
Version #1: Promote both the Course and the Challenge equally as the entry point. Then upsell to Coaching in both. (Note that you may only have a Course or a Challenge, we’re just showing both for a sake of example)
Version #2: Promote the Course as the primary entry point. Then upsell to both the Challenge and Coaching within the Course.
Version #3: Promote the Challenge as the primary entry point. Then upsell to both the Challenge and Coaching within the Course.
No matter how you slice it, this is an online coaching business model you can scale, either as a solopreneur coach, or with a team.
The scalability comes from the fact that neither your Challenge nor your Course will require direct interactions from the Coach, aside from possibly a little Community-level support.
For example, in the Nudge platform you can set up a Course or a Challenge at the Company Admin Level as opposed to at the individual Coach account level, so that direct messaging with a Coach is not a feature of these programs for your clients.
(This is one of the major benefits of Nudge’s Scale Plan and White Label Plan. If you want to talk with someone about setting something like this up, book a Zoom with us here.)
Choose Your Online Coaching Model
We chose both of these models because either can be built out by a successful independent coaching business, or a larger team looking to be more efficient.
Of course, even with a coaching platform like Nudge that makes it infinitely easier to deliver all of this with a customizable coaching app for your clients, once you have enough clients coming in, you will need to add to your team.
But, when that day comes, if you have one of these models in place, you’ll be set up to scale profitably.
