EP 296 - What Tech Women Over 50 Should Be Using in 2026 to Start A Coaching Business
If you’re wondering what tech women over 50 should be using in 2026 to start or grow a coaching business, this episode is for you. You do not need funnels, expensive software, or advanced tech skills to get your business started - you just need a few simple, affordable tools that will support you in growing your coaching business.
Women over 50 make incredible coaches because of your life experience, your compassion, and your wisdom… but oftentimes, complicated tech can feel like the biggest obstacle to growing your coaching business. The tech should serve you - not slow you down. In this episode, I’ll walk you through the exact tools I recommend (and the ones you can ignore) so you can build your boutique-style coaching business with clarity and confidence.
In this episode, I walk you through the exact tech setup I recommend for women over 50 who want to start or grow a coaching business in 2026. You’ll learn which tools actually matter, which ones you can ignore, and how to keep your business simple, affordable, and easy to manage - even if you don’t feel like you’re great at tech.
Here’s what you’ll learn today:
- The simple tech women over 50 should use to run a coaching business in 2026
- What website platform I recommend for new coaches
- The software that makes you look polished and professional
- What tool to use to book discovery calls
- The software I recommend for virtual client sessions
- The AI tool that will edit your videos and create reels in minutes
- The simplest email marketing tool for building your list
Tools for coaches I reference in this episode:
- Flodesk (email marketing): https://flodesk.com/c/DEBBIESHADID
- Descript (video editor): https://get.descript.com/cj4n2vzke4vu
- Squarespace (website builder): https://www.squarespace.com/
- Canva (graphic + brand creation)
- Calendly (calendar software for scheduling sessions)
Want to grow your coaching business by becoming a speaker at our upcoming Design, Live, Thrive Summit? There’s only a few spots left! Apply now: https://www.debbieshadid.com/apply
Ready to build your coaching business in 2025? Register for our upcoming LIVE workshop here: https://coaching.debbieshadid.com/workshop
Free Resources for coaches:
- Free Masterclass to Grow Your Coaching Business: https://coaching.debbieshadid.com/masterclass
- Canva Workshop: https://coaching.debbieshadid.com/register
Tools I recommend for coaches:
- Flodesk (email marketing): https://flodesk.com/c/DEBBIESHADID
- Descript (video editor): https://get.descript.com/cj4n2vzke4vu
Connect with Debbie:
Website: https://www.debbieshadid.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/debbieshadid/
🎙️ Listen to the podcast: Life Coach Business Building School: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/life-coach-business-building-school-with-debbie-shadid/id1502118085
Don’t forget to subscribe for weekly episodes on coaching business strategy for women over 50, tech tools for coaches, and simple business growth strategies that really work: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz6RS8kQGMLJqJrK9uKdjtg
#DebbieShadid #LifeCoachBusinessBuildingSchool #CoachesOver50 #WomenCoachesOver50
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
Do you feel like you're standing on the brink of something really amazing as we enter into the new year? If you are a woman over 50, I'm gonna bet that you have a dream. Actually, we all have dreams. I wanna talk to you about the priceless life experience that you have, and if you are considering a coaching business or if you're building a coaching business. I know this is what you wanna do. You feel this deep commitment, this deep sense of needing to help people, right? Needing to take all of your life experience, all that you have gone through, all that you've learned, all that you have done in your life, and you wanna put it to good use. You wanna help other people. I know you're ready to do this, But I also know that there's probably this nagging thought about the technology. You're telling yourself, I'm terrible at tech. I don't know how to do this social media thing. Like I'm no good at this, Which is keeping you stuck. Is that right? So many women in your demographic, and actually so many women, even younger or older. Are you standing on the edge of a brand new year ready to do something amazing? You have this picture in your mind of how it's all gonna unfold. If you're a woman over 50. I know that you have a lifetime of priceless experience. I know that you have this deep desire and passion. To really be able to pull all of that experience and the training and the certifications and really all that you've done, all that you've learned and you want to give back can you relate to that? I bet you even have this vision of how this is gonna unfold and you are hoping right now to position yourself so that this will be your exit plan, maybe out of a career or this will be what you do once the kids are out of the house. Can you guys relate to that? So many women feel this way, and also they're worried about technology. Raise your hand if that's you. Does that sound familiar? I know there's this story that you have about being terrible at technology, and I have to tell you, if you are in the online space, if you're watching videos on YouTube, if you're on Instagram, if you are signing up for things and attending workshops, chances are you've been told about lots of types of software. You've heard about funnels, you've heard about cRMs client management systems. You've heard about automations and everything you need to do, and it is so overwhelming, and I wanna tell you, you're not alone. Literally, everybody I talk to feels the same way. They're like, I don't know how to do that. And every time I sit down to watch a training, like I'm smart, but I can't figure it out. I wanna tell you. It really doesn't have to be that complicated. In today's episode, that's what I'm gonna talk about. I'm gonna talk to you about how to not get caught in that technology trap. I'm gonna talk to you about why that pricey software is not anything that you even need. In fact, You don't even need it until you're earning more than a hundred thousand dollars in your business. So let's talk about how you can get started. Here's the truth that I want you to know. You could waste months, years, and I'm telling you what, thousands of dollars trying to put together dozens of confusing software systems that you do not need. You could be following advice from a young person online who is selling you this software and telling you that is what you have to be a coach. And I'm telling you what. You actually really don't need hardly anything to have a really incredibly successful, easy coaching business. I don't want you to burn any more time, burn any more money, or waste any more of your energy Or experience any more overwhelm over technology. Okay, enough is enough. I'm gonna tell you what to do. You get to decide right now to just tune out all of the noise. I'll tell you exactly what you need in 2026. You don't need to be a tech wizard to launch a wildly successful coaching business. You only need a handful of very simple, easy to use, and I'm gonna say affordable tools that will help you land your first clients, launch your first group coaching programs and really build an incredible business that feels easy to operate, that is actually manageable. So today I'm gonna walk you through those things so that you can learn what tech you need, and then you can focus on what matters, which is coaching, connecting, marketing, and getting clients and becoming somebody who can really impact the world. So the foundation of your coaching business is your digital storefront. Now, I know a lot of you guys are like, I don't need a website, but here's the deal. I believe that it really is a must have. If you imagine your boutique, you guys have heard me talk about that. If you've been around here, your business boutique, you do have to have some kind of storefront and a website is that, it can be very simple. It could be a single page. That's sometimes called a landing page, by the way. There's all different names for things, but basically a single page on your website with a contact form that just lets people know. You know, I'm legitimate enough that I have a website and it needs to be clean. It needs to be easy to read, easy to understand, which is beautiful, simple graphics, something that really represents the elevated successful coach that you are going to be. So that website is your digital presence 24 7. And it really is a marketing assistance. It is like your corner of the internet, your boutique, that's what it is, you guys. So when someone learns about you, what happens? They go look to see who you are. This is the age 2026. I'm calling it the year of trust where you need to build trust. And having a website is one of the ways that you do that. You have a place where people can see you, where people can connect with you, and they can discover a little bit more about you. They need to see you in more than one place. So if you're a woman over 50 starting a coaching business or growing a coaching business in 2026, hands down, my number one recommendation is Squarespace. If you have anything else, don't worry. Just use what you've got. Don't start over Squarespace though. It is so easy. It requires no code. You don't have to do any coding if you don't even know what I'm talking about. Trust me, you need Squarespace. The platform is gorgeous, it's user friendly, and it is mobile friendly. Okay, so you can pick Squarespace. There are dozens of template. it is very modern. You can have simple text and images on it. You don't have to worry about plugins or security things or anything breaking. Guys, it really is the easiest and really, quite honestly, very affordable option. So again, you don't need a 20 page website. You need a homepage, which is your landing page where you're just gonna tell people about what you do. By the way, if you are going to build a website, I really wanna encourage you to connect with me because we actually have a format for writing your marketing message on your website. And by the way, lemme give you a clue. It doesn't start out by saying, hi, I am Debbie, I'm a life coach and I'm gonna help you. That is not what you want on your website. Your website is supposed to be about them. So if you need help writing your marketing message, please connect with us. We also actually have a template for how you want your website to look. And I'll just tell you, we help people with branding. So if you're building a website, please keep it simple again, you just need that one landing page, the one homepage, everything can be on there. It's basically something that somebody can scroll through in sort of one swipe, you could add an about me page where you tell a little bit about you, and then you really just need a contact page. You don't even need a work with me page or anything else, so that's what I recommend. You do not need e-commerce. You don't need a checkout page, none of that. Okay? Keep it simple. The second thing that you need is Canva. You've got to look like a pro. If you have not done my Canva training, just comment the word Canva Or click the link in the show notes or right below this video and you can access my free Canva training. I'll teach you how to use Canva in less than 40 minutes. Now, why do I recommend Canva Pro? You can use the free version, but with the pro version, you can save your fonts and your colors, and you guys, it just saves time. It's less than $15 a month. It is an incredible investment, and you can learn how to use Canva. and l ook like a professional as if you hired a designer to work on your brand. So you can use Canva to create elements for your website to create your freebie that will be on your website to create your social media graphics and anything else that you need. The pro version though, is worth it because you wanna set up your brand kit again, which is going to include your colors, your fonts, your logos. All of those things all in one place. It's gonna be amazing. Once you learn how to use it, please watch our training on how to get started with Canva. You'll learn it all in one training. Alright? The next thing that you need is your calendar. Okay? This makes sense, right? You gotta be able to get people on your calendar. And so how do you do that? I recommend that you use Calendly. Calendly, you can start out with the free version, which allows you to have one appointment type. So that means that your consultations, and it also means that whatever coaching calls you have are gonna be the same kind of appointment link. If you decide to upgrade. You could have one appointment link for consultations and one for your coaching calls. When you upgrade, you can also have those important reminders. And look, I'm just gonna tell you, people need reminders to come to a consultation call. It is not their job to remember that they signed up with you. Yes, it's great if they add it to their calendar. But it's our job to remind them, to text them and say, Hey, your call starts in 15 minutes. Here's the link. Or to remind them, it's also very useful to get information from 'em, gather some information on a form. All of that is available if you upgrade on Calendly. Again, a very affordable. The most simple option that we recommend that you do, and you can even take payments through Calendly. if you happen to sell one-off sessions, you can actually collect a payment before they schedule their coaching call. So that's what I recommend. You're gonna add that calendar link to your link bio on your Instagram page your website. It integrates with your personal calendar, like your Google Calendar or your Outlook calendar, so it will automatically block out time when you're busy. if you're gonna go get your haircut and you add that on your Google calendar, provided you block out 30 minutes before and 30 minutes after, it's gonna block off that time. So you don't have to worry that you're gonna get double booked. You'll always have time available for somebody who wants to have that discovery call with you to be able to get on your calendar. Okay? So that is Calendly. the next thing I wanna talk to you about is Zoom. Now we're all already using Zoom. There are some incredible AI aspects of Zoom, which it takes your transcript, it summarizes meetings for you. It is really fantastic in what it does for you, but you do need the paid version. The reason why you need the paid version is because the free version only goes to 45 minutes, and this timer comes on. And so whoever's on the other end is watching the timer go down. Now, some of you guys are gonna ask me about Google Meet. I do not recommend that. You could use Google Meet. It is free. It does have some incredible options The way that it works and it sends out the replay to somebody, it actually adds it back to the calendar appointment. It's pretty cool. But I will tell you, the world doesn't use Google meet. The world uses Zoom, so use the thing that's easiest. Make it easy for your clients, potential customers, people who have never had coaching, make it easy for them to connect with you. You're supposed to make it easy for them, not easy for you, okay? And Zoom is super affordable, so please use the paid version. Make sure that you set it up so that it's secure so that people can't get into your Zoom. Okay? There's several things that you can do to protect that space, we had an incident this year where somebody came into our Zoom room that was uninvited, so you wanna make sure that you have things secure in there. Registration is another great option on Zoom. We actually do that for our workshops. We have people register on Zoom. That way I can tell who's actually attended the workshop. You can also set up a client appointment and share the Zoom link by adding in their email address. So lots of great things that you can do with Zoom, and I wanna encourage you to customize the waiting room. You can even customize the waiting room with your branding with a little message that says I'll be there shortly. Those kind of things. Okay, so that's a great thing to do. One last thing I wanna tell you about Zoom. You do not need to buy extra storage. You just need to download the videos that you want to keep onto your computer, you can have storage like through your Google Drive for a very, very small amount of money, and you can even store the videos there. Or if you wanna store videos for free on YouTube, you can do that by adding the videos there and keeping 'em unlisted. And that's a great way to be able to share videos with people later on down the road too. So make sure that you keep your Zoom account cleaned out. Otherwise, you're gonna have to pay for storage on Zoom. As you grow your business, the next thing I wanna talk to you about is another incredible AI tool called Descript. Descript is the easiest video editor I have ever used in my life. I could literally teach you how to use Descript in no time. I'm actually gonna leave some affiliate links below. Yes, I make a small commission on those, but there's a link for Descript. There's a link for several of the other tools I'm gonna talk about, but you guys, Descript. Honestly the most incredible thing. If I was editing this YouTube video, I could go through and every time I said Okay, or right or so, I could eliminate all of that. You highlight the word. You either cross it out or you delete it. It is so awesome, and it splices the video right back together so you can even restart. Like if I said something wrong, I could restart the sentence. And you just look at the transcript, You highlight that part and you. Delete and it cuts out those words. It is so amazing. Then you can actually have Descript do shorts or reels for you. It will automatically make clips for you and it will actually put whatever kind of transcription you want on there. It can be like karaoke style where the words are highlighted. It can be just transcription with words across like captioning, standard captioning. So many options. I'm just telling you what. It is amazing. It is a great tool to have and you're gonna love it. Okay, let's talk about building your email list. It's a hundred percent must thing to do in 2026. It will be the most effective thing that you do for your business. Once you get people onto your list. This is how you're gonna sell people is through consistent email marketing That's how you nurture people. Our most favorite tool that I will leave a link for as well is Flodesk. Flodesk is the easiest email marketing tool that you can use. It is very similar to Canva. If you know how to use Canva, you know how to use Flodesk. It has forms that you can use for signing up for your freebie for workshops. It also has workflows, which is a series of emails or a funnel. you can do one-off weekly emails. It is so easy to use. Their mobile view of emails is fantastic. They have great deliverability. Highly recommend that you use Flodesk. It is something that all of our clients have used for years. Very, very easy to teach. I highly recommend that you use that. One last thing I'll mention to you about Flodesk is there's forms that you can add to your website, so you could add a popup form on your website to gather email addresses. Through a freebie. You can also add what's called an inline form, which is, if you go to my website, there's a little Canva training. It's at the top of my website. It's a bar. You can add that to your website, gather names that way. Or you can take just a link for a form and you can put it on a Facebook post, or you can put it on a LinkedIn post, or you can put it in a story on Instagram or add it right below a video on YouTube so you can have a form link that you can take and put somewhere else. It really provides so many options. Again, very, very easy to use. so that is it you guys. That's the entire thing that you need for your business. you don't need a client management system. I'm telling you, You can keep track of your clients on a spreadsheet, okay? I do recommend that you get familiar with Google Documents. Google spreadsheets. those are like Excel spreadsheets or it would be like a Word document, get familiar with those because those are easy tools to use as well. But. That is all you need, you guys. That's it. Squarespace for your site, Canva for design, Calendly for scheduling. Zoom for your calls. I talked to you about Descript and Flodesk for email. How amazing is that? That is it, and I'm gonna tell you that's about a hundred dollars a month to operate your business. You can use those same tools for your business and earn up to a hundred thousand dollars in your business. Imagine that to operate a business. For a hundred bucks a month, all you need is available to you, and all of it's really simple to you. So I hope that's helped you. Please do not let technology stop you from sharing what you are meant to do, from using what you have learned in your life, from using your trainings, your experience, all the transformations you've had to impact another generation, to impact your peers, and to just change the world. That's it. You guys There are so many links below this video or in the show notes. If you're listening to the podcast, please comment below. Tell me what you'd like to learn from me. Tell me what your key takeaway was. I'd love to know what software you're using, drop any questions you have. I will answer all of them there. Okay, you guys, thank you so much. Have a beautiful day. I cannot wait to see what's happening for you in 2026 as you build your coaching business. Have an amazing day. Bye-bye.
