January 6, 2022
One of the most common questions new coaches ask themselves is “How soon can I start making decent money as a coach? How fast can I be successful as a coach?” It’s a crucial question especially for those who are just starting as full-time...
One of the most common questions new coaches ask themselves is “How soon can I start making decent money as a coach? How fast can I be successful as a coach?” It’s a crucial question especially for those who are just starting as full-time coaches or who want to quit their jobs to become full-time coaches, and need to make ends meet.
In today’s episode of our 5-day Start Strong Series, we’re addressing this question to help you make good money as a coach. This is the fourth episode of our 5-day series where we’re answering some of the most frequently asked questions from the coaching community to help you grow your coaching business in 2022.
If you’re just starting out as a coach or you want to transition into full-time coaching, this is the perfect episode for you. We’re going to talk about what “decent money” means, how long it will take to make a living as a coach, how to create an action plan, the secret to following through on your plan, and much more!
In the previous episodes, we’ve covered how to identify your coaching niche, how to get clients consistently, and how to stand out as a coach. You won’t want to miss them!
Key Insights:
Coach Ajit (00:00):
You are listening to Master Coaching with Ajit podcast that inspires coaches to impact the lives of their
clients more meaningfully. I am Coach Ajit and I'm known for coaching high performers, entrepreneurs,
and leaders. I'm also a serial entrepreneur and author of many books. On this podcast, I am answering
your burning questions. I'm also demonstrating and deconstructing behind the scenes coaching sessions.
Coach Ajit (00:35):
And today I have a very interesting question that I had a really difficult time in figuring out how to
answer without lowering expectations or increasing expectations. The question that I got and that I get
frequently is how soon can someone new truly start making decent money as a coach? And sometimes
it is framed differently by saying, how soon can I be successful? How soon can I accept financial
abundance as a coach? So this question comes in many different ways. It's a difficult question to answer,
because what is financial safety? What is decent money? What is abundance is subjective to the person
that is actually asking the question. So what I've done is an effort to answer this question. Most
practically, I am going to take a pessimistic approach. I'm going to take an approach, which is very
tactical. It's very rational. It doesn't include ideas of manifestation.
Coach Ajit (01:37):
It doesn't include the ideas of possibilities. It actually ignores optimistic thinking and keeps the
conversation, keeps the approach really realistic. Now this question is being answered in this very
special series that we are doing here at Master Coaching with Ajit Podcast called Start Strong. Start
Strong is our podcast series where we are giving answers to the most frequently asked questions by
coaches. We want you to have an amazing 2022. And for that, we are answering these pressing
questions that you have asked as a coaching community again and again. So today's question. How soon
can someone new expect to truly start making decent money as a coach, the first step to really knowing
how fast or how soon you can make decent money and to calculate it for yourself is to firstly define
what does decent money mean? What is that amount of money that you truly seek for you to feel safe
for you to feel abundant in your coaching practice?
Coach Ajit (02:40):
One of the things that you may realize in the world outside and also in your behavior is money or
abundance is something that we always seek more off. If you make $10,000 a month, we wanna make
$12,000 a month. If you're making $5,000 a month, we wanna make $7,000 a month. If you're making a
hundred thousand dollars a month, we wanna make $200,000 a month. We are always seeking to create
more abundance in our life. It's the chase that keeps us excited about the journey that we are on, but it
is also the challenge that we experience because when you're in the chase of constantly creating more
and getting more abundance in your life, what tends to happen is your focus stays on the money and it
goes away from true happiness and true joy. So while yes, more money may impact a little bit of your
material, happiness.
Coach Ajit (03:28):
And that is great. If that's what you seek a curious idea, and a curious thought must always be presented
on what is my minimum livable income? What is decent money for me? What is good money for me?
What is the minimum money that I need to create for me to feel satisfied and joyous in my life? And
then of course you can have some more, but at least you have an actual number that you can say, this is
exactly the number. And here's the reason why this number is a true number for me to know that when I'm making consistently that kind of money, every month, I will feel safe. I will feel abundant. I will feel
like I am making decent money. So the first step to knowing how long it'll take you to make decent
money is to identify that number. As you're listening to this podcast, you may say there's a number in
your mind.
Coach Ajit (04:14):
And that number pops up. Let's say for the sake of this podcast episode, we'll call that decent money,
$5,000 a month. You need $5,000 a month for you to have decent amount of money for you to feel safe
for you, to feel financially, comfortable and free. And that's what you are really chasing here. Now take
this number 5,000 for our example, and divide it by 10. So if you divide 5,000 by 10, you get $500. The
reason why I use 10, firstly, it's an easy number to remember. And secondly, it's a small enough number
for you to be able to generate the number of clients month after month. If 10 seems too much for you,
you can make this number five. If it feels too little to you, you can make this number 20. The point really
is to pick a number of clients that you feel is safe enough is small enough and realistic enough for you to
feel comfortable, that you can create those many clients in a month.
Coach Ajit (05:08):
For the sake of example, for this podcast, $5,000 is decent money. And 10 clients is a reasonable
number of clients. You can create every single month that puts $500 per client. So all you are really
looking for is to create 10 clients at $500 each generating about $5,000 in income for you every single
month. Now, if you're creating clients at $500 a month, usually you can enroll about one to two clients,
every five conversations. So that means for you to enroll 10 clients, you need to engage in 50
conversations. 50 conversations puts you at about two conversations a day every day for every day of
the month. So if you wanna create 10 clients, you need to have about two conversations a day that are
likely to be an enrollment conversation. Now we get to the interesting part while in theory, this all
sounds great and amazing.
Coach Ajit (06:03):
We don't really know until we deploy this strategy in practice. What if for the next one month, you have
a tracking sheet on your wall, whatever you work, where you track every day and every conversation
that you had. Now, while this fun with math may give you some idea of how many conversations you
need to have, how many people you need to enroll at what price point for you to have decent amount
of money. We need to really test it in the real world to know what works and what doesn't. And that is
why, what you need to do next is take a sample size of your everyday activity for the next one month.
For the next one month, be intentional to follow a plan that would fit your making decent money plan.
For example, set yourself up to be able to do two to four conversations every day for the next month.
Coach Ajit (06:53):
And as you set yourself up for these many conversations, as you plan for these conversations, as you
look forward to these conversations, as you engage in these many conversations, you will find during
the course of the month, are they too many? Are they too little? Does that feel exciting? Does that not
feel exciting? Does that really convert at the rate I was saying? Does it not convert at that rate, it
converts at a higher rate? The truth of with the numbers roll out exactly as I present it as an example,
will only be known when it actually is deployed. For the next 30 days, engage in an exercise where you
are actively trying to make this math, this plan work. And the reason why we are doing that. So we can
find if this math actually works for us, or we need a different paradigm, or we need a different math, maybe you will find that you actually need to have more conversations, or you may find having these
many conversations seem too much too daunting, and maybe you'll price your product differently.
Coach Ajit (07:49):
And then you will hope for a lesser conversion rate or a more conversion rate. What you're really
looking for is to get some real numbers on the paper. So when you are actually creating a plan to create
a decent amount of income in the most real way possible, you're working off of data, not just
hypotheticals. Now, as you'll start putting this into a practical plan, as you'll start executing it, what will
happen is a lot of data will get revealed to you. You may find out that your price is too low. You may find
out that clients need a little bit more time to say yes, there are some follow up conversations required.
You may find that instead of coaching 1-on-1, you'd rather just have an event and get it done within one
go, you may find you wanna do an online course. You may find other variables that you did not consider
when you were making the initial plan to keep this plan as real, as possible track as much data as
possible.
Coach Ajit (08:41):
The more data that you have, the more information that you have when you will actually create a
practical plan, it'll become easier for you to realistically predict. When would it be that you will safely
able to say that you are making decent income month after month. If you're somebody who is trying to
transition out of a current career, if you're somebody who's been struggling to make a real career out of
coaching, this would be a great exercise for you too. Write down a plan, execute that plan for 30 days,
see what works, what doesn't work. And based on that, adapt your plan, increase your prices, or
increase your conversation. Change your packages, change your outcomes, tweak it till the time it
works. It works as a system. There is no one way for me to say what price point in what market would
work. And so for the sake of this conversation, I'm gonna generalize and say that it may take anywhere
between two to five trials for you to realistically know that a particular price point a particular product, a
particular offer works for a particular audience that you can easily access.
Coach Ajit (09:46):
It may take you anywhere between three to five months to figure out what works, what price point
works, what package works, how long you have to be in a conversation for that package to work and be
enrolled in and so on. So forth. Once you're identified that say three months from now, now is the time
for you to really extrapolate that plan, to see how long it'll take for you to really start creating decent
money. Let's take an example. Let's say you found out that you actually are better at selling a $3,000
package that engages a client for three months, and you only wanna sell two to three of them every
single month, which only requires about 25 conversations. If say that was the truth of your packaging,
your pricing, your results that you're creating with your clients. Now, what you're really trying to figure
out is how can you consistently have 25 conversations every single month?
Coach Ajit (10:34):
So you can enroll three people into a $3,000 package that will create an average of $5,000 a month
because you will have some people rolling over or months and so forth. Now this is rarely rough math.
I'm in no way, trying to suggest I'm a mathematical genius or believe that you are a mathematical
genius. But what I'm really hoping for you to take away from this conversation is that once you have
data, once you have some information on what works, you can create some amount certainty for you to
know how long it will take for you to create a decent income. But here's a caveat. Here's the thing that you must know. The only way you consistently create decent amount of money is if you stay consistent
to the process, to the system, you see a lot of us are so excited about creating a new opportunity in our
life that we take massive action and we take big steps and we are so excited in the first month, the
second month, the third month.
Coach Ajit (11:31):
But then as life goes on, we lose momentum. We lose the pace that we had set ourselves up for. And
that is exactly where you may hit a landmine. You may hit something that will take away all the hard
work and stop creating the results that you had previously anticipated. So my invitation for you would
be take that extrapolated business plan and make it real, but make it real for a long enough time. That
becomes a habit that if you don't do those activities, that creates conversations and create clients, it
feels like something is missing in the day. It feels like that you didn't do what really gives you joy. The
more consistent you are in following up with the processes, the systems, the habits that create
consistency in your being, create consistency in your communication, the easier it will be for you to
create a decent income for a very long time.
Coach Ajit (12:23):
For that matter, more likely than not, your decent income will keep growing as you stay consistent and
you keep creating results and you keep coaching. And that is how long, my friend, it takes to create a
decent income as a new coach. I know there's a friend of yours that really can use this information. So
go ahead, share this episode with them. Leave us a five star rating and leave us a review on your favorite
podcasting network, wherever you listen to this podcast on. This podcast is an exclusive that has been
created for this very special series to help you win 2022. This series is called Start Strong, where we are
answering the most frequently asked questions by our coaches, by our coaching community. Thank you
so much for tuning in. This is Coach Ajit and you're listening to Master Coaching with Ajit.