EP 390 - The Complete Step By Step Roadmap To Starting A Coaching Business Over 50
Are you a woman over 50 wondering how to start a coaching business, how to find your coaching niche, or how to get your first coaching client without a website or complicated funnel? This is the complete, no fluff roadmap for starting a coaching business after 50, built for women who have decades of real experience and want to turn it into income. Your age isn't a disadvantage in this business. It's the advantage, and this video shows you exactly how to turn decades of real experience into a coaching business that works.
We will discuss how to find your coaching niche using your own professional and life experience, how to build a simple "I help" statement that makes people say "she's talking to me," and how to create a signature offer without overcomplicating your business. If you are looking to become a coach or want to know how to start a coaching business after 50, this video is for you.
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The Profitable Coaching Niche Blueprint - Define Your Coaching Niche in a Few Hours So You Can Start Attracting the Right Clients: https://debbie-shadid-shop.fourthwall.com/products/niche-blueprint
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Life Coach Business Building School Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/life-coach-business-building-school-with-debbie-shadid/id1502118085
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TRANSCRIPT
If you're over 50 and you've been thinking about starting an online coaching business, whether this is your next career or a retirement pivot or a flexible side hustle, there may be a very loud voice in your head right now, and it's probably saying something like this: Am I too old for this? Is this space, the online space, only for women that are 25 years old who have ring lights and complicated funnels? And who's gonna pay me for this advice? And who's gonna pay me for my advice? I want to stop you right there because the truth is your age is not a disadvantage. It is the single biggest unfair advantage that you have. You do not have theoretical knowledge from a weekend seminar. You have decades of real-world problem-solving, emotional resilience, and life experience, lived experience that you cannot simply manufacture. In this video, I'm gonna give you the complete zero fluff step-by-step roadmap to launch a profitable one-to-one coaching business or group coaching program from scratch with no complex technology, no expensive websites, and no 60-hour work weeks. Grab a notebook and a pen because we're gonna dive straight into phase one. In the first phase, we're gonna talk about uncovering your lived experience. This will be your coaching niche. You've probably heard a lot about that. Most of us get stuck for six months trying to find the right niche. People buy books, and they take personality tests, and they end up completely overwhelmed. I'm gonna make this super simple for you, and here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna look at the last 20 to 30 years of your life in a couple of buckets. First, I want you to consider your professional expertise. What have you done in your career? Have you managed teams, navigated corporate policies or politics? Either one. Have you handled project management, negotiated budgets, transitioned careers? Maybe you've been a teacher. Any kind of professional experience is worth something. What is it that you could do that you have done in your career well? Or how can you help others get into a career? Anything around the professional space is of high value. That could be either consulting or coaching, either one. The second bucket I want to talk about is life transitions. So maybe you have raised kids. You've successfully navigated the empty nest or emptying your nest, whichever way you want to think about it. You've overcome burnout, built a life after divorce, mastered personal finance, or even reinvented your health in your midlife. Someone out there is currently sitting in the exact valley that you walked through 10 or 15 years ago. They don't need a certified guru. They need someone who has walked the path ahead of them, only a few steps ahead of them. Now, take that experience and put that into this formula. You have heard about the I help statement, and let me show you how that works. I help, and you name the person, achieve whatever the specific outcome is, without, and whatever it is that they want to do, and like, without a big headache, whatever that's gonna be for you. So you help a specific person achieve a specific outcome without overwhelm, without counting calories, without exercise, whatever your niche is gonna be, you can fill in that I help statement, and that will be the formula for how you communicate with people. So just notice, I did not say, "I help women live their best, most empowered lives." That is very vague, and nobody's gonna buy vague. Instead, I help corporate women over fifty transition into flexible consulting without taking a pay cut. Can you see how clear that is? The clearer you are, the more likely it is that you're gonna get somebody to say,"Oh my gosh, this woman is talking to me. She knows what I need." Or you could say,"I help empty nesters rediscover their purpose and launch their first passion project, without having a lot of marital stress and strife." This is a little bit softer of a niche, and I like to think of the ones that have a bigger pain point. I truly believe that people pay to solve pain. So within those two examples, when you have a corporate executive that's having trouble at work, they're gonna pay to get that taken care of. If you have somebody who is looking to rediscover something, now we're talking about something that's a little bit more what I call fluffy. There's not the urgency around it. So I would highly consider that when you think about the two types of niches. Basically what I'm saying is there is your work experience niche, and then there's your life experience niche. Either one of those, you can find plenty of opportunity in there. I want to pause just for a moment, and I want you to write down two life or career transitions that you have mastered, and plug those into that sentence that I just shared with you. I'll recap that one more time. I help the specific person achieve a specific outcome without a particular thing. You got it? Okay. Phase number two is building your signature offer. Now that you know who you're gonna help, here's the golden rule starting out. You only need one offer. Do not have a complicated business. You do not need to build a digital course. You do not need an $8 ebook. Do not create a paid membership group. Those models require massive audiences. You do not have that right now. What you have is a few people that you can connect with, and so what you want to have is a high-touch, one-to-one coaching package. I just listened to an expert talk about what is happening in the online coaching space, and they were making predictions for what is gonna happen in this next year. Their take on AI is that people are sick of it, that content is readily, content is readily available, and the one thing that people want more than ever is they want one-to-one support, accountability, high-touch connection because they want to be able to implement and complete and finish what it is that they want to do, and they need your help doing that. So, I recommend that you build that in your program. Whether it is one-to-one or group, it works for either one. Now, here's how you package it. You're gonna decide what the process is for getting somebody a result. How many weeks does it actually take? So, once you have your offer mapped out, and what I'm talking about is you make a mind map of every step somebody needs to go through to get to their goal, then you can assign a number of weeks to it. We're only gonna know how many weeks we need based on what you need to do with the client. So it might be eight weeks, it might be 12 weeks, it might be 13 weeks. We're not gonna pick a timeframe. We're gonna actually make sure that the timeframe matches the time that you need with the client. You've got to create enough time to make sure that you're able to get them an outcome, but you don't wanna drag it on forever. One thing that has really changed in the coaching space in the last few years is people want fast results. They want instant access and fast results, and they want your personal support. So you don't need to work with somebody for six months if you can do it in 12 weeks. That's what I recommend. So think through your process and decide what is the proper amount of time to get them a result, but also to make sure that they have enough time to be able to complete and to be guided through the process that you have and come out with a really great outcome, 'cause those people are gonna be your best testimonials. Now let's talk about how often you meet someone. This is gonna be personalized to the type of work that you are doing. If you are providing more accountability, then maybe you're gonna have more touch points during the week. If you are assessing somebody's work that they're doing, maybe you're gonna meet them a couple of times a week, or maybe you're gonna have email contact or text message contact, and you're gonna meet them for one 45-minute call a week. Whatever that is, decide the frequency based on what your client actually needs. This is not about looking to see what anyone else is offering and then deciding that's the right amount of time. The right amount of time is what your person needs. Then that in-between support. This is gonna vary depending on your niche. Do you need to be able to have text message support? And by the way, let me pause for a moment and say, I recommend that you get a Google free phone number. This will come up on your regular phone, it rings to your regular number, but it's free, and all of your client communication can be right there. I had a client ask me about Voxer. They said, "Well, why use Google instead of Voxer? Why use Google instead of Voxer?" And I said, "Well, the thing is, anybody who uses Voxer has to download the app on their phone. It has to be something that you open up and go to." A Google free phone number, when you text somebody or you attach a video or a document or whatever you're gonna do, even voice message, they're just doing it like a regular text message. There is no extra work for the client or for you. You decide what the in-between support is going to be, and the last thing I'll say on that is, you decide what hours you're going to answer those messages. You put your phone on silent or you access it through your computer, either way, your Google phone number, and you only answer those messages during business hours, whatever your business hours are gonna be. And then you pick a price. Now, I can say high ticket coaching, but I'm not gonna say that to you. If you're just getting started, we wanna start you at a price that I know you can sell. And I have to say, you're the only person that can decide that. Depending on your program, you decide what the price is, and I would say go with the lower price. When you're just getting started, you want the price to be so easy to sell, because right now what we want is clients. We want you to be able to say,"When I was working with this particular client, and…" Or we want you to have testimonials. That will happen if you are selling your coaching at an affordable price. This is not because the person can afford it. It's because of a level of confidence that you have in your coaching. Once you start to do more coaching and you get bigger transformations, you will naturally raise the price of your offer, and so that higher ticket pricing, it can come later. And I wanna encourage you to not do coach math. One of the things that coaches do is they're like, "Okay, great, $2,000. I'm gonna work with 10 clients. I'm gonna make $20,000." It does not work like that, my friend. In the beginning of your business, you're customizing offers. I don't want to say you're making deals, but you are. You're fitting your offers sometimes to fit the client's needs because you want more clients, because you want to be working with lots of people. So while you will have your standard offer, you want to be flexible. So that coach math where you start doing all the adding of how many people you're gonna sell, those are goals, by the way. Those are goals that you work towards. There's no promise in that. We can all do the calculations, but it doesn't always work out like that, so I want you to be flexible, and that is the most incredible thing. So you might see that I really am very practical and I'm a truth-teller. I am Debbie Shadid. I help women just like you build boutique-style coaching businesses without complicated tech, without paid ads, and with really truthful, honest, straightforward strategies. My goal is to help you get your business built and to get it going in a way that is really sustainable. So that is what you want to think about pricing. Start at a price that you know you can sell it at. The third phase is to figure out your tech, and I know what you're thinking right now. You're like, "Oh, I'm terrible at the tech." Guess what? Everybody is, honestly. When you are first starting out, and that's probably not what you wanted me to say, but when you're first starting out and you are learning new technology, of course it's hard. If you haven't been online, and I know you haven't been online with a coaching business, you've been online with your career your whole life, and you're online every day with your phone, but learning how to do some of the tech for your coaching business, it's different. And yes, there's a learning curve to it, but it really doesn't have to be hard. There are many low-tech ways to start your business, and I'm gonna talk about that because I want you to make your business simple. This is the number one thing that keeps people stuck in their business. What I wanna pause and say is this: You can have a coaching business without any tech. You can meet somebody at a coffee shop, you can network with them at the gym, you can take payment with cash or with Venmo, and you can have a coaching business. Please let yourself think about the easiest way to approach things. You do not need a client management system. You do not need a complicated funnel. You don't even need a funnel. If you're going to use online technology, then here's what I recommend. Number one is Zoom. Chances are you already know how to use Zoom. Use the free account, which gets you forty minutes of time until you need the paid account. And all you need is the lowest level, the smallest account on Zoom. Number two, you need a calendar. I recommend Calendly, and that is a free online scheduling calendar. You do not need the paid version. The free version, start with that first. Don't pay for software until you have the clients to support it. So start with everything you can free because here's the deal. You can upgrade your software in thirty seconds. No kidding. It's just a matter of adding in your credit card and it updates it to a paid version of software if you need it. Like if you get a call booked today, upgrade your Zoom. But don't do it until you need it. Your calendar is the calendar link that you want to share with people and the reason why you really want to do that is because it makes it easy. It converts to their time zone. It sends them reminders. There's a payment link in there. There's lots of options for you. The third thing that you need is a way to take payments. I recommend that you use Stripe. Stripe is a payment portal for credit card processing. You can also use PayPal for business, but I prefer Stripe and within Stripe you can send an invoice. It will give you a link and you can get paid in a proper business way. This is why I don't love Venmo or Cash App or that. Like who does business that way? You don't walk into a boutique down the street and pay somebody with Venmo. You pay them with a credit card or debit card and they process it through Stripe. So I want you to do the same. And the fourth thing that I recommend that you use is Google Documents. You can share a Google document with your client with any details. In fact, a lot of what I use with our own clients is Google Documents. I used to share things in Canva and really fancy things, but practically speaking, anybody knows how to use a Google document or Word document. Maybe you are a Microsoft person and you are using Word, and that's okay. But this is a place where you can keep notes, you can share things with your clients. In fact, you can both work on the same document, which is really cool. You could take notes there, you could give them their action steps, and they can also list their questions there for the next coaching session. That is it. I just told you about four things, and honestly, all of those things, you can use the free version. Stripe and PayPal, there's a small fee for taking the payment, but there are fees for any payment anywhere you take them. So that's not a big deal either. But that's all that is required to be able to start your business and create consistent income. The fourth phase is landing your first paying clients. This is it. I'm gonna give you some scripts. Now, I want you to find your own words, but I always like to provide people with kind of a guide so that you're not wondering, "What is it that I actually do say?" Finding your clients, that's gonna feel a little bit hard till you get good at it. But all I recommend that you do is have conversations. Instead of thinking about, "I have to sell somebody," think about, "I'm gonna meet somebody, I'm gonna share what I do, I'm gonna have a great time talking about what I love most, and I'm just gonna have a regular conversation with another human." This is a key. You don't have to be scared. We don't have to push people, twist their arm, none of that. Just have a conversation, get with the right person, and then you decide if you want to make them an offer. Did you hear what I said? You get to decide if you wanna make the offer. The thing is, is you already have established networks. You have former coworkers, friends, colleagues, people in communities that you're a part of, at church, and you don't have to pitch those people and be aggressive with them. But what you do need to do is have intentional conversations, where you're starting to tell people what you do, you're introducing what it is that you can do to help them, and you are asking for referrals. So you could say something like this in an email or in a private message. You're like, "Hey," put in their name,"Hey, Debbie, I hope you're doing great. I'm reaching out to you because I've officially launched my coaching practice where I help women navigate this thing," right? Whatever it is, you're filling in the blank."And right now I'm offering complimentary 30-minute strategy sessions to help people map out their next career move." Whatever that is for you, you're gonna fill in the blank."If you know anyone navigating a stressful job situation right now or looking to get hired in today's marketplace, I would love to have them connect with me. Are you willing to share my information or refer me, pass it along to a friend? Or if you're interested in talking about what I can do in your career, then grab a spot on my calendar. Let's have a virtual coffee date and talk through where you're at and where you're going." This is an opportunity for you to connect with somebody. When you connect with them, then you get to find out, is this the right person? Could I help them? And then you can offer to help them. When you get on that call, you're gonna ask just a couple of easy questions. Like, tell me where you're at with this thing right now. Right now, what is it that you have going on? You're trying to uncover the pain point. The second question that you ask is, what is actually going on with you, and where is it that you would like to be in the next six months? Like, what's the goal? I call that the rainbow results. What are they trying to get?
And the third question is: 20:28
what is the biggest obstacle that has been stopping you from getting there on your own? Did you see how I did that? You're saying it as if they can't do it on their own, because you pointed out they have an obstacle. What is the obstacle that is stopping you from getting there? And everybody has one. So listen carefully to what they have to say, and I would say listen and let them talk a lot. Be a good listener. Everybody wants to be heard. This honestly is one of the easiest ways to build a connection with somebody, is you be a good listener. People want to be able to spill their guts to you about what their challenges are. You guys know that. And then you can say, "Based on everything I just shared, I know I can help you. This is my specialty. I would love to be able to work with you through this particular thing. Would you like to hear how that works?" Or, "I would like to share how it works." A lot of times I don't ask, "Would you like to?" I use what I call assumptive selling. If they've told me what their problem is and what they want and what the gap is, like why they can't get there, then I know that they want help. You have discovered that through your conversation, and I just say, "Look, what I do is this, and I can help you, and here's how it's gonna work." Anybody can say, "Wait a minute. No, no, I'm not interested," but I'm just gonna assume they wanna get something solved. If that feels too pushy for you Then just ask, "Would you like to hear how this works?" Be very calm, be very relaxed. There's no arm twisting. The fifth phase is to become the CEO of your coaching company. If you're thinking about your business, the one thing that I really wanna encourage you to do is to create freedom in your schedule. You're all working for yourself. Anybody listening to this video is working for themselves because they want freedom. I could almost guess that might be the number one priority. While you might be saying, "I wanna make a lot of money and I wanna make an impact," I think the number one thing driving you is you want to be in charge of your own schedule. So here's what you have to do. You have to decide what that schedule's gonna be. You're gonna have to look at the time that you have and say, "How much time do I have to work on my business, and how do I fit that around the life that I want?" If I'm gonna go run every morning, and I won't be dressed and in
my office till 10: 22:49
30, then my day doesn't start till 10:30. Maybe you work full-time, your day doesn't start till 6:00 PM. Whatever that is, you decide how many hours that you have to work in your business. I'm not gonna tell you how many hours that should be because it's so different for everybody. But the important thing is When you know how many hours you have to work with, that will dictate the kind of offer that you make because maybe your only option is group coaching. Or maybe all the support you wanna give is not feasible in the amount of hours that you have to work. So decide what that's gonna look like. And then you have to have hours every single week where you're building relationships, you're networking, you're following up, you're doing consultations. All of that is ongoing no matter where you are. Even once you're fully booked, my friend, you still keep doing this because there's always a revolving door. Clients come in, they go out. They come in, they go out. You gotta have people, I call it, in your pipeline all the time. And then you need a very big bulk of time to create your marketing, especially in the beginning when you are uncomfortable writing an email, when you're not sure about your social media posts. When you're not comfortable doing videos, it takes more time, but the longer you do it, the more you close the gap on the time, the more you shorten the timeframe. So it gets easier and easier, and what might have taken two hours maybe becomes 30 minutes. So this is an important piece. Marketing is the ATM to your business. If you have a problem in your coaching business, I want you to write this one down for sure. The only problem you actually have is people. And you might be thinking,"People?" And I'm gonna tell you, it's not enough people. There's not a problem with the people that you have, the problem is you haven't talked to enough people, you're not making offers to enough people, you haven't had enough conversations with the right people. It will always boil down to people. Now, how do you get people? It's marketing. Marketing is the ATM. It is the driver, it is the driver to your business. So please, you don't have to have difficult marketing. It could be just connecting in your local market. It could be as simple as you starting to tell people everywhere you go what you do, and explaining it and asking for referrals, connecting with people, and following up. This is actually how you build a freedom-based business. That's it. Simple and straightforward, and then you put guardrails around that time. That is your work time because that's when you're gonna make your living, you're gonna make your income, you're gonna make a difference. The rest of the time can be your playtime. The rest of the time, remind yourself, "I don't need to keep watching YouTube videos. I don't need to keep learning all the things or taking more courses or talking to Chat GPT all day long. I know what I need to do, and I'm gonna do this in the amount of hours that I have." So my friend, you have spent decades accumulating wisdom, perspective, and skills. Do not let that experience sit on the shelf. Do not let fear convince you that it's too late for you to start. It is not too late. You are just on time. It is not too late. You are right on time. You have got such incredible wisdom that trumps anything else any young person has. There's no way for them to measure up to the knowledge that you have, to the life experience that you have. So pick the transformation that you're gonna provide to your niche client, set up a simple offer, and start having conversations this week, not next week. Don't wait till later. Don't wait till next month. This week. There is never the perfect time in your schedule to start a business, but what I can tell you in closing, this is absolutely the perfect time for you to start your coaching business because the coaching business is booming. Over $5 billion in revenue, coaching revenue. You only need a few clients. That is 2026 stats. This is such a big market, and yet I'm gonna bet you don't know one single individual that works with a coach, which to me says there is a lot of opportunity. There is a place for you, there's a place for me, and there's a place for anyone else that wants to build a professional coaching business. So that's it. Now you know what to do, my friend. I wanna invite you to watch the first client framework. I'm gonna leave that linked right here as well. This will actually guide you through the process kind of one step further than where you are right now. I also wanna invite you to have a conversation with me about what it looks like for me to guide you through this process. Be sure to subscribe, and I will see you guys next time. Have a beautiful week. Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.
