EP 270 — How To ACTUALLY Build Your Online Coaching Business in 2025 (Debunking 6 Common Myths)

If you want to build online coaching business in 2025, then you'll want to watch this video where we are debunking 6 common myths in the online coaching industry that could be holding your business back.

Whether you want to work with more online coaching clients or make more money as a coach, it’s time to learn what’s actually working in 2025 to grow a profitable online coaching business.

There are specific actions you need to take to become a successful online coach — and in this video, Debbie is joined by Nicole to help you avoid wasting time and start taking the right steps to build your business with confidence.

In this video, you'll learn:

• The 6 most common myths that hold coaches back from real growth

• Why more followers ≠ more clients (and what to focus on instead)

• The mindset shift that turns “invisible” coaches into booked-out ones

• How to start showing up confidently without a polished brand or big audience

• What actually moves the needle in your coaching business (hint: not your logo)

• Simple, proven strategies to grow your coaching business online — your way

… and much more!

👉 If you’re ready to take your next step with a business personal trainer on your side, let’s chat! Book a free call with me here: https://debbieshadid.com/apply

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and forward this to a coach who is building and growing their coaching business. CLICK HERE TO LEAVE A REVIEW

Don’t forget to connect with me on social media: Instagram | Facebook

Transcript

 If you're wanting to build a profitable coaching business, this video is for you.

Look, there are a lot of myths out there about what it takes to build a successful business. And today I'm gonna break through those myths and tell you what it actually takes. My name is Debbie Shattered. I have helped over 10,000 coaches not only build, but grow successful, profitable coaching businesses.

And today we're gonna bust those six top myths about what it takes. We're gonna be sharing what I've seen, and I wanna introduce you to Nicole. Nicole has recently joined our team. She is an integrator. We'll talk a little bit about that. She has worked behind the scenes of many big coaching businesses and some small ones too, but she knows really what it takes as well to build a successful coaching business.

So today we're gonna talk through those myths. We're gonna hear from Nicole, her background, her experience, and I'll be sharing experience that I've had and experiences with our clients so welcome, Nicole. Hi. Thank you so much for having me, Debbie. And hello everybody. I am so excited to be here. Like Debbie said, I work behind the scenes as a creator operator.

Some might call me an integrator, and so really what that means is that I help entrepreneurs and coaches to bring their big visionary ideas. To life. So not just coming up with strategies but really helping them to implement that, to create real results and work with more clients.

Okay, let's start with myth number one. More followers equals more clients. Now, I know firsthand this isn't actually true because I don't have huge followings and I have an incredible business. So I just want you guys to know you can start exactly where you are.

Somebody on your list, or somebody that is following you, wants to buy coaching from you today. Your only job is to make sure that you communicate effectively about what it is you're doing. Effective communication to a small list, talking about the right thing, that's how you convert to clients.

working behind the scenes of different coaches. I've seen people with tiny audiences. only present on one platform, In today's world, it's [00:02:00] like I need to be everywhere. One platform, a few thousand followers, and a multimillion dollar business. Versus on the other side people who have had a lot of virality, a lot of growth on social media.

But then struggling when it comes to bringing clients in on the backend. So we oftentimes think, well, if I wanna build my coaching business and get more clients, more people need to know me. I need to grow my following. And like, yes, it is true that that can be helpful and more people do need to know about your coaching.

But it's not just that the number in your following is going to equal the number of clients that you're working with. I think that actually almost stalls people out because they have this idea when they're just getting started. Like, I don't have a big following, so I'm not gonna have a business.

It almost keeps them from going out and doing what they need to do, like simply posting on social media consistently. Exactly. It's oftentimes more important that we're consistent than it is that we have this giant audience. And how do you think you're gonna end up building that anyways? It's through the consistency, but you're right.

So many people, we talk ourselves out of it because imposter syndrome comes up and we tend to tie that follower. Number to our worth as a coach, Sometimes the best coaches, nobody even knows who they are. Yeah, they're just building based on referral and through relationships.

I have one more thing to add here that's kind of funny, is when you're starting out, and I know we're talking about social media here, but when you're starting out, you're so conscientious about the first few posts because you think everybody is gonna see 'em, and you're so worried about getting that Exactly right.

And the truth is nobody even goes to look and see how many followers you actually have, so it doesn't even matter. So just put yourself out there. All right, so talking about social media, let's go to myth number two going viral doesn't actually make you more money all the time, does it Now, Nicole, I know you have a story that you've shared with me that I want you to talk about.

So share your story about your client going viral. Yeah. Before I share this, I do wanna say, you know, going viral can make you more money. There is definitely people who have made tens of thousand dollars on the backend of viral posts, but I have actually seen viral posts end up hurting people's businesses.

this story that Debbie's talking about, I had a client who had a post go viral. it grew her following by thousands of followers. we were so excited. Then afterwards for the next few months, what we actually noticed was a dip in engagement, a dip in reach, a dip in follower growth.

A lot of the new followers ended up falling off, and the posts we were sharing weren't getting as many views the algorithm essentially said, we're feeding out this post to people and they're scrolling right past it, so it must not be good content. But what really happened is that we grew our following by a bunch of people who weren't actually.

A fit for the business, right? They weren't actually in our niche. So I think that's something people don't think about is like, yeah, of course I wanna get in front of a million people who are gonna wanna buy my services. But in order to go viral, you have to appeal to the masses, right?

Because if it's going [00:05:00] viral, a mass number of people are viewing it. But what happens is when we appeal to the masses and get content out there like that. It just doesn't pull in the right people, and it often doesn't build your business in the way that we expect it to. Well, and isn't it true that planning to go viral is nearly impossible?

it happens, but for a new coach to spend their time and effort on figuring out how to do that, that's actually, at least in my opinion, not a great use of their precious time. Totally. I mean, there is different formulas out there and things like that that you can follow that will help boost your chances of going viral.

But if you're a new coach, your real focus should be on what's going to bring in clients. most of the time it's not gonna be those viral posts. I wanna talk about myth number three, certifications. for those of you who have certifications, and I have one too.

Congratulations. That's awesome. But certifications don't actually give you a business. Something that made me so sad when I went through my certification. the coaches that I certified with thought that once they were certified, clients would appear and they didn't have any real thought about the fact that they actually had to go out and do the work to build a business.

And unfortunately. I think a lot of the certifications companies, their job is to focus on making you a great coach. Their focus is not on helping you get clients. They're trying to make you a good coach and that's what you pay them for. But

You have to go out and work and get the clients. Exactly, and what I've seen all too often, and I've been guilty of this myself as well, is just collecting all these certifications because it feels good to learn, right? You get those quick dopamine hits. But

instead of just. Stacking up the certifications because sure, it'd be great if you can get more advanced, more tools under your belt, but at the end of the day, if you wanna make more of an impact as a coach, it's gonna come from helping more clients, not just getting more certifications. Well, and I think the same is true for practicing.

I always tell our clients let's not worry about practicing right now. Because what I know for sure is that you already know more than your niche client, and for now, that's enough. So you don't need to spend your time practicing.

What we need to do is spend our time marketing so that somebody will know you exist. that's the hardest part, It feels safer to sit behind our screen and absorb all this information, but what we really need is that confidence to put ourselves out there and share our coaching gifts with the world.

So I always tell people, look, I'm not against you taking any more courses or learning any more kind of things to do, but do that as a hobby. Because adding that to your business in the beginning while you're trying to figure out how to market and get clients, that's not useful. let's move on to the fourth myth, which is about a website.

A lot of people think once they get their website done, they're gonna have clients. It's kind of like the certification a website equals clients, and it just absolutely doesn't. we actually build websites for people and our clients come to us because they want to have a professional.

Image. I call it your curb appeal, like in your boutique style coaching business, your curb appeal part of it is your website. And so I do want it to look good. the clients that I work with do want to look like they're professionals. On the other hand, even once you have a website, you have to get people to your website.

even that takes skill, like getting the people there. You should honor every visitor that comes to your website. I had somebody who launched their website and they were like, we've only had 14 visitors. And I was like, okay, let's think about this for a moment.

I wonder how many millions of websites there are. I'm not sure. But the fact that 14 people found you online, they clicked on your website and viewed your pages is remarkable. When you think about it like that, you value every single person that gave you their time to come to your website.

Yeah, that's such a good point. How I like to think about this is if you had 14 people all walk into a room, right? Let's say you owned a physical in-store boutique, and 14 people all come in the door, you would be excited. That's quite a lot of people to have. But then we see these big numbers online and we find ourself comparing it to them, and then it takes away from the value of that.

So you can make a huge impact by just even reaching a small subset of people. I've seen this firsthand behind the scenes. I mentioned earlier about that client with millions who was struggling to get clients. On the other hand, I've seen coaches who are, only a few thousand followers don't even have a website.

I'm with you that having a website is really helpful though, and have been able to build a multi seven figure business. just truly showing up, providing value. you can go look at my Instagram and I don't have thousands of followers.

the truth is the people that I have there, they know me, they follow me, they engage with me, and I've sold lots of coaching even with a small audience on Instagram. of course, that's only one of the places where people will find you. A website is just part of what you need.

It's not the be all end all. It's just one piece of what you need to do to create the attention you need to grow and build a business. All right. Myth number five.

We don't need to spend months on your name. I, I know that this is hard for you to hear because people tell me, what do you think about my name or my coaching title? those things don't matter. Although it feels significant, it doesn't really matter.

I recommend to our clients that the best name is your name. Even if you, are gonna be an incredibly successful coach and sell your business someday. You could sell it with your name, most of the coaches out there, they're using their name because that's who people are hiring.

So we have a team, we have coaches that work with us, but still people know me as the face of the business. I recommend that you end all the looking for the perfect name and just name your business your name. What do you think Nicole? I agree. I think keep it simple. similarly with the name, I often see this happen with the title, especially for coaches.

Like what do I call myself? I don't really resonate with being a life coach. Am I a mindset coach? A success coach? There's so many different titles. At the end of the day, your title doesn't really matter. It's more about the transformation you can provide for your clients. a lot of the time as coaches, we think, well, I need to know what I am so that I can introduce myself.

So I actually just wanna share a little secret to introduce yourself in a way that can help Build curiosity and often bring in more clients compared to just sharing the name of your business and your title. how I like to think about it is an elevator pitch.

So you're in the elevator with somebody, you have 30 seconds and they ask you, what do you do? What do you say? Are you gonna say, I'm a life coach who does all this? Or am I a mindset coach? no, stop. Who is it that you help? let's use Debbie as an example.

You know how there's a lot of amazing coaches out there who just wanna serve more clients? Well, what I do is, I help those coaches to build the foundations of their business so that they can consistently be bringing in new clients in a way that feels good and authentic to them.

So what does this do? If you're talking to somebody who is that coach who maybe wants to get more clients who can resonate with that first part they're automatically gonna be curious. Or maybe they know somebody who is, and then you're sharing exactly what it is that you do so they can see themselves working with you and getting that transformation.

So all in all, if you can have more clarity around. Who it is that you wanna help your niche, which is something that Debbie, you talk about a lot. Yeah. And your messaging around that transformation that you provide. That's gonna be so much more valuable than spending all this time trying to figure out what's my name, what's my title?

. Well, and you hit right on the main point. If you can't communicate about what you do in person, on a social media post. In an email, you are never gonna have clients. You've got to get clear about that. And also it has to be, like Nicole described, like one sentence.

You can't just blab onto somebody for 10 minutes. And that's what I find when I get on consultation calls with somebody and I'll ask them, you know, who do you coach and what do you do? 10 minutes later, they're still telling me what they do and it's like nobody else would follow that long. So it is super important.

to really be able to make that kind of one line really, succinct, narrow it down and say exactly what you do and who you help. That's awesome. Exactly. But as we're saying that, another thing that people can get caught into, which leads into our next myth that we're gonna talk about here is, well, if I need to know this transformation that I need, I'm gonna provide for people.

I need to have my offer completely figured out and perfected. Yes. That's myth number six that we wanna share. you do not need to have your offer. making an offer is when you're asking somebody to work with you, you don't have to have all this figured out.

for those of you who have built courses already without clients, congratulations on doing that and let's figure out how we can sell 'em for you. But it's better to build the offer after you have the clients because this whole idea of like build it and they will come.

This just doesn't happen that way. You only get clients through marketing. Yeah. I think we all think about this idea of built it and they will come, like back to the Roman Times they built Rome and the people would come. But the thing is, there are so many coaches out there, and the fact is that oftentimes what I've seen is it's not the best coach who wins in terms of the one with the most expertise who can make the biggest impact.

It ends up being the best marketer. So instead of spending so much time on the back end of your business, Try to think about how can I get into the front end and start talking to clients even when you don't feel a hundred percent ready.

Well look and you get ready by talking about it. I always tell people the best way to figure out how to talk about your business is to talk about your business especially in person, which a lot of people in the online space, they're not even telling their neighbors what they do. They're not telling anyone in person.

And what you learn in person by talking about your business is so much because you see body language and you see signals. you would not see on Zoom. super effective way to learn what to do and how to do it. All right. I wanna give a bonus myth here because there's one more thing I'm thinking that we should be talking about, and I see this all the time actually.

There's a lot of people out there who think that once they do all the things, get their business all set up. And again, our clients love to do all the things, and I am so happy to help 'em set up a professional.

But sometimes all the focus is on that. so we need to spend more time on the getting the client's part than the actual building part.

What's your thoughts on that? Yeah, I think it's just so easy for us to sit behind the scenes and it's fun to, you know, play on Canva and figure out what our brand colors are. Yeah. And make things all polished and fancy, but especially when you're new, it's having those conversations with people about your coaching that can feel the most daunting and high pressure, but that's actually what's gonna make the biggest impact on your.

Business overall, because realistically, the [00:16:00] lifeblood of any business is sales. You need to have that cash flow moving through the business. It doesn't really matter what the website is or the logo, if there's no cash moving through, it's not much of a business. instead of being that hermit behind the scenes, how can you, put that Superman outfit on, put that confidence on and act it out?

we often wait for that confidence, like, once I have my offer figured out, or once my website is perfect, then I'll feel confident to show up. But it actually comes from experience and from doing it like you were talking about, Debbie, you know, Nicole, I appreciate this conversation so much and I appreciate you adding to it

I really value being honest with people. And I just wanna say, you know, I don't want you to be discouraged by what you're hearing because what we're saying is your certification isn't gonna be enough. And you do need to learn how to market your business. But I think the truth sets you free.

Now that you've listened to these myths and you know what you need to be doing, I just wanna challenge you to go do that. Exactly what's one simple step that you could take today, right? One person that you could talk to that could help you move the needle, even if it's just getting a little more clarity yourself around who it is that you help and how.

I wanna share a client story as we wrap up today. We had a client yesterday who landed her first paying client, which is so exciting. I mean, she was on Cloud nine and I was for her too. She said two things. One, she posted on LinkedIn for her first time and somebody reached out to her and said, I think we should collaborate now.

This is somebody who posted one time. collaboration is another way to meet people. The other thing she did was she posted on her personal Facebook page and through a referral, she got a client. It isn't hard to do this stuff. You do have to put yourself out there. be willing to, expose yourself in the places that you don't want to, because using your personal Facebook page, that's hard, but that's what it takes.

so now that we've covered these six myths, what I want you to know is chances are you are not that far [00:18:00] away from having your first or your next client, or from having that profitable coaching business that you deeply desire. I want you to make a difference, and you do that by having clients.

So I have something I wanna share with you that I've just created, and it's a full look at what it takes to have a coaching business. It's a brand new masterclass if you guys are interested in learning. Really the framework for building a profitable, sustainable coaching business. Then comment the word growth and I'll send it over to you.

Nicole, thank you for being here. Nicole's gonna be joining us regularly. We're gonna talk through marketing strategies and what's happening in the online space so we can keep you informed on what you should be doing to have a successful coaching business. if you have any questions for us that you want us to talk about, comment below.

what questions do you have, like niche offer, funnel marketing? Let's talk about it. And if you haven't already, I would invite you to subscribe to Debbie's channel. I have been binging her videos myself, and they are just packed with value, so make sure you stick around for that.

thanks for being here. We're excited to have you in upcoming episodes where we talk more about marketing and how to grow your coaching business.

Until next time, we'll see y'all later. Bye-bye.