The crazy world of online coaching/consulting and how to cash in and learn from my mistakes

[DarkZero]

If you're in any sort of online business, chances are you've come across ads from "gooroos" talking about online coaching/consulting and how to get clients or scale or blah blah.

I've been in this space for a few years now so I want to shine some light on it because...

It's growing quickly. Every year it gets more saturated in every niche. I only got in back in 2018 (but had an online agency for a few years), but it changes quickly within a year. If you read this in 2023, it's going to be even crazier. It's not an industry that is going away. The online education space is expanding. There are software companies built specifically for this space. This is the decade it really goes mainstream, and that's a good thing because it means you can easily cash in on it.

I'll unpack this and how the internet marketing world has influenced the online coaching space.

THE HISTORY

Direct response copywriting paved the way for online consulting. Many of the strategies from direct response were implemented in IM to make the industry thrive. So in the 2000s, you would start seeing those ads with clickbaity headlines and pages that sold low ticket offers. Selling coaching/consulting online in that era was unheard of. I believe Rich Schefren pulled it off and leveraged his Internet Business Manifesto because he wanted to share what he was doing and that led to him selling his consulting. He wasn't the only one doing this. Other guys were selling some seriously good offers too. But most of this was sold to internet marketers. They were selling offers specifically for them.

Things stayed in the internet marketing world until they started evolving in the 2010-2020 decade.

If you were in IM in around 2014-2015, you saw ads from a couple of people who were taking the online course idea and transitioning it to coaching/consulting.

Sam Ovens was big in this. Ruffino was another. And then some other ones started popping up.

They were really good at hammering the ad > webinar > book a call funnel. Traffic was still cheaper then. Way less competition. Way less headaches from FB ad police.

As with anything in IM, copycats appear, and then it comes down to pumping traffic and increasing conversions. Better offers had to stand out with better bonuses and scarcity/urgency.

Everything was classic "take what you know and turn it into an online course/coaching/consulting".

And "charge high ticket because that brings cashflow".

Russell Brunson launched Clickfunnels around the same time for IM to sell products online and they were really strategic about getting the online coaches/course creators onboard. Community was created and the rest was history.

At that time, I had a digital marketing agency. I used CF for marketing clients as well as dabbling in selling digital products. I got in on CF in the early days. But I never leveraged the coaching element until years due to one reason:

Imposter syndrome.

I never felt qualified. I never felt like I had anything to share even though...

I read Millionaire Fastlane in grad school and then left to form an app startup. I leveraged what I learned there and consulted 1-1 with clients and then turned that into a marketing service. It wasn't until around 2018 I started to get into coaching/consulting online on the side. Still had imposter syndrome so I never fully committed.

I got stuck in the "those who can't do... teach" mentality which prevented me from really teaching. But when working with marketing clients, I had no problems teaching them and owrking directly with them. They valued my expertise.

I felt that in 2018 it was already really saturated anyway. BAM - another limiting belief.

Today... it's even MORE saturated. MORE competitive.

And then there's the bigger problem. There are a TON of people who actually are unqualified. They buy someone else's course or program, and then turn around and teach that exact thing and make it their own business.

So now, there are a million coaches teaching coaches how to coach coaches.

^Take that and apply it to any industry

Fitness
Finance
Dating
Relationships
Hobbies

It's become a cesspool honestly. There are accounts on Instagram and Youtube which talk about how people are being scammed.

But, we have to look at the greener side and can't focus on the negative, because there are some really good coaches/consultants out there.

Now, the market has become more sophisticated. You have to be able to really get results for your clients. The best will make it to the top while the weeds will be taken out. This is GOOD for the industry. The people who evolve with the industry will make it through. The ones who don't will have to do something else.

And what's even better... the door is open for people to help with specific key areas inside industries. It's less about the niche and more about the problem that's being solved.

This is better for the consumer

Finance - CPA, reducing taxes, trading,
Health - fixing gut issues, metabolic issues, losing weight, building muscle for skinny guys, high performance, etc.

THE BENEFIT

Because the market is growing, more and more people are becoming aware and COMFORTABLE with paying for online services. 15 years ago, if you told your friends you were paying $3000-$25,000 for online coaching, they would've thought you were wearing a tin foil hat. Far too much skepticism back then.

Today, it's getting easier. People are selling small services like 1-hour coaching to 8 week packages to 12-month programs.

It's really high margin until you build a team. But most people can do $10k-$30k/month on their own at 95% margin. Start running traffic and building a team and you'll definitely scale while reducing margins to about 45-60% at $100k-$500k/month.

Yes, there are people doing $1million/month as a primary business. And there are people completely happy doing $30k/month on the side of their main businesses.

When I was just doing coaching, $30k/month was totally acceptable because of high margins.
I was selling $10k/packages.
Fulfillment was about 2 hours per week. ~ 10 hours per month

A guy I know does $250k/month on a bad month. Plays golf almost every afternoon.

Others like to have the big business that does $500k-$3mil/month with a large team and that's great for them too.

You can set your business up the way you want to do it. And you don't need to overthink it the way the gurus make it out to be.

You could start selling tomorrow if you wanted to.

You might be sitting on a goldmine of expertise you didn't know you had (jump roping, buying NFTs, sales training, being a better spouse, etc.) and could package it up and work with people to help them achieve that thing.

The information economy isn't going away.

If you wanted to get started here's what you can do:

1. Create an MVP offer (beta price point is fine)
2. Validate an offer by finding out if people want it
3. Sell 5-10 people into it (or 1-1 if you'd like)
4. Run the first round and get feedback
5. Use the feedback to refine it
6. Sell at scale because now you know what the market wants
7. Turn it into an evergreen business so it can be hands-off for you
8. Take leftover profits and reinvest into other cashflow businesses, assets, etc.

Also, there's so much stuff about this industry and how to market your offer, etc. Instead of overcomplicating things, start small and go upward. I made tons of mistakes along the way because I didn't simplify things.

But regardless, online coaching/consulting helped me build a network to where I could create some amazing partnerships. I've used it even more as leverage and a networking tool. The harvest I reaped from the seeds was far greater than I intended.

Hope this helps!

P.S. I have a lot to say about this industry. There is a ton of bad in it. But there is also a ton of good. So I want to highlight the good and how you can profit from it even if it's just $10,000/month on the side.

 

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[woken]

Building a course is not where most gurus fail. It’s the fact that they need to keep up appearances on social media when nobody buys it.

Consulting is one thing. Courses, on the other hand, I don’t like.


Most courses are a mashup of different ones, all saying the same thing, depending on the subject.

I’m not saying there aren’t good ones, just that the majority repeat the same thing. Most sell lifestyle. That’s what sells.


It’s easier to sell “ How to make 5 figures/ month while playing golf in the afternoon” than it is
“ How to save .6% on your business expenses.”



I might not know much, but I try to stay away from gurus and courses after lots of disappointing ones.

 

[TheKingOfMadrid]

I might not know much, but I try to stay away from gurus and courses after lots of disappointing ones.

What I really don't like about what appears to be the top 20% is how predatory it becomes - usually unfolding into glorified pyramid schemes to take money from the most desperate.

I saw a course recently that was well advertised where they were saying that even in you're in debt and on your last $1000 you should buy their course because it's more important.

 

[woken]

What I really don't like about what appears to be the top 20% is how predatory it becomes - usually unfolding into glorified pyramid schemes to take money from the most desperate.

I saw a course recently that was well advertised where they were saying that even in you're in debt and on your last $1000 you should buy their course because it's more important.

Yes, that’s the only way of saving yourself when you’re in debt ! By going even deeper in bad debt.

Can’t stand them. I block straight away.

$4997 - limited time offer that never ends for a course full of basics.


I’m not blaming the OP. He’s saying you should provide value and take the opportunity. Problem is that you can only provide so much value. Then they get to the point where they have to decide if they keep going like this, shut it down or start promising the fountain of youth.

 

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[OleksiyRybakov]

The problem about the gurus is not that they sell horrible advice. The question is rather, why? The reason is that lots of the people have not learned anything from school. I think that almost everyone can learn on how to become a financial influencer in two weeks.

A financial influencer posted a question on TikTok where a person bought an asset for 60 dollars, sold it for 70, re-bought the same asset for 80 and re-sold for 90 and the question was how much profit the person made. For me, this should normally be a lesson that daytrading might be less profitable than holding the assets and that people cannot predict the price evolution. But 70% of the commenters failed to even answer how much profit the person made.

If you believe that the majority of the people on other social media platforms are much smarter - this is not the case as well. On YouTube, an influencer posted a question about "What would you choose - 200 dollars every day or 1 million once at the beginning?". This is a question where people should usually discuss time evolution series using functions like A(t+dt) = A(t) * r + c (r: interest or dividend rate, c: saving per time interval, t: time, dt: time interval, A: amount of money) and look at different parameters. I do not expect the majority of the commenters to understand the geometric series (which might be useful here), but at least, I would expect them to plug the values for different interest rates into Excel. It turns out that if the interest rate is small, it is better to choose 200 dollars every day. But with increasing interest rates it is better to choose a million after a certain margin rate. However, most of the people are only answering things like "Oh, I would just invest the million," (but did they figure out that investing could be done with both the million and 200 dollars?) or "I would just put the million into S&P 500 and get 10% interest rate" (if they did the math, they knew that the required interest rate for the million to be better should be more than 10%).

Or over here is another conversation on finance:
Commenter: How can I find ideas about where to do business?
Influencer: Oh, just go for it and do what you love!
Commenter: This is seriously the best advice that I have heard in life, TYSM!
Me: I would actually recommend you to look on different internet forums and to pay attention whether some people are needing a certain feature to be improved.
The commenter did not react and probably did not care about my opinion at all.

The same situation happens on channels about politics and lots of different topics. Only on channels that talk about advanced math and science the commenters tend to be much smarter. But there are not so many people that would like to talk about math and science so educating complex things does not sell.

And this is exactly the reason why people have to sell horrible advice. I am pretty sure that 90% of those people that have watched my video "Compound interest is a scam" did not understand the phrases "compound interest" or "controllable unlimited leverage" at all. Try giving financial advice where you do not explain everything and expect people to be able to Google up information and you will already fail. But this is the world where some people think that London is the capital of Paris. And the worst thing is, those people are allowed to vote and to be elected.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Building a course is not where most gurus fail. It’s the fact that they need to keep up appearances on social media when nobody buys it.

Consulting is one thing. Courses, on the other hand, I don’t like.


Most courses are a mashup of different ones, all saying the same thing, depending on the subject.

I’m not saying there aren’t good ones, just that the majority repeat the same thing. Most sell lifestyle. That’s what sells.


It’s easier to sell “ How to make 5 figures/ month while playing golf in the afternoon” than it is
“ How to save .6% on your business expenses.”



I might not know much, but I try to stay away from gurus and courses after lots of disappointing ones.

Thank you for the write up. I've avoided coaching, courses and all the typical upsells for 10 years. I don't see myself doing them in the next 10 either.

But yes, online education is a huge, growing space. The problem is, as you said, it is a cesspool and you never know what you're getting.

 

[Ronak]

Lots of predatory behavior in this world. One of the worst is unscrupulous gurus hijacking true principles and distorting them to manipulate people into mediocre programs. For example, "invest in yourself. You paid 100k for a degree and nothing to show for it. My 5k program is a fraction, and can make you millions!"

True, on principal. But non sequitur. Just because a degree was a waste, doesn't make your program any better.

Or making the program so complicated, unrealistic, or simply unethical, that no one actually follows through. Then the guru blames the student for "not wanting it badly enough to hustle hard".

That said, there are some genuine programs out there. But man, sometimes the sleaze level is just so overwhelming, I can see why people are put off.

I recently set up a call with a 20 something coach. He actually has some good content that made me want to do a call. I even paid in advance, so the sales call was supposed to be more of an onboarding session.

I was instructed to jump through some hoops, which included watching some intro videos and making sure I was in front of a computer with zoom, ready to go with full focus. The time comes and goes, he doesn't show. 10 or 15 minutes later, he calls my phone instead. Ok, fine. He's traveling, he says, so he wanted to call instead. No apology. Whatever. Then, he starts microwaving his lunch while talking to me. Excuse me? This is what is paid thousands of dollars for? The call itself offered no meaningful content or even affirmation of my investment, not even a fake strategy session. Just "dude" this, and "dude" that. Then I come to find out that the thousands of dollars doesn't include any one on one time, but for a special low price, I could upgrade. So he starts upselling me within minutes of the call. I say no thanks, ask for a refund and curse myself for the wasted time.

I guess I had the wrong "mindset".

On the other hand, all that makes it easier for the true value providers to stand out, if they can actually cut through the noise. I believe in fundamentally providing genuine value and charging well for it. But the industry has serious issues.

 

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[Andy Black]

@Lex DeVille has an amazing thread somewhere about the pyramid nature of some coaching out there. I can’t for the life of me find it to link to it.

I like being a consultant doing the work while allowing people to look over my shoulder so they can DIY it or become a consultant themselves. Like selling the sawdust in the sawmill. I’m enjoying it too.

In my mind, I’m doing people a disservice if I don’t offer courses/coaching just because some see it as slipping into guru land.

I think it’s a shame many assume those who sell a course or coach others are charlatans or money-grabbers. It doesn’t bother me now though.

 

[David Fitz]

My problem with courses these days is that they seem to be getting longer and longer.

2 hour videos to show you how to set up your Facebook Page and Pixel....just get to the point.

Then they use repeated webinar's and Zoom calls that last for hours and usually have some guy picking his nose and you're left there thinking man I paid $1000 for this crap.

I've got 3 refunds on courses this year because they were so bad.

 

[Andy Black]

My problem with courses these days is that they seem to be getting longer and longer.

2 hour videos to show you how to set up your Facebook Page and Pixel....just get to the point.

Then they use repeated webinar's and Zoom calls that last for hours and usually have some guy picking his nose and you're left there thinking man I paid $1000 for this crap.

I've got 3 refunds on courses this year because they were so bad.

I think this is a big opportunity. Stand out by producing less.

 

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[silent]

I've got 3 refunds on courses this year because they were so bad.

Don't know how many you have bought but getting a refund is great! I know a lot of courses have mind-boggling rules on when you can ask for a refund. Though, when selling, it never gets mentioned...

 

[TinyOldLady]

@Lex DeVille has an amazing thread somewhere about the pyramid nature of some coaching out there. I can’t for the life of me find it to link to it.


Personally, I like the idea of being a consultant doing the work while allowing people to look over my shoulder so they can DIY it or become a consultant themselves.

Kinda like selling the sawdust in the sawmill.

I’m enjoying it too.


In my mind, I’m doing people a disservice if I don’t offer courses/coaching just because some see it as slipping into guru land.

I do think it’s a shame many assume those who sell a course or coach others are charlatans or money-grabbers. It doesn’t bother me now though.

GOLD! - Lex DeVille's: Guru Cults Exposed: The Tactics "Experts" Use To Pull You In & Suck You Dry

 

[woken]

Lots of predatory behavior in this world. One of the worst is unscrupulous gurus hijacking true principles and distorting them to manipulate people into mediocre programs. For example, "invest in yourself. You paid 100k for a degree and nothing to show for it. My 5k program is a fraction, and can make you millions!"

True, on principal. But non sequitur. Just because a degree was a waste, doesn't make your program any better.

Or making the program so complicated, unrealistic, or simply unethical, that no one actually follows through. Then the guru blames the student for "not wanting it badly enough to hustle hard".

That said, there are some genuine programs out there. But man, sometimes the sleaze level is just so overwhelming, I can see why people are put off.

I recently set up a call with a 20 something coach. He actually has some good content that made me want to do a call. I even paid in advance, so the sales call was supposed to be more of an onboarding session.

I was instructed to jump through some hoops, which included watching some intro videos and making sure I was in front of a computer with zoom, ready to go with full focus. The time comes and goes, he doesn't show. 10 or 15 minutes later, he calls my phone instead. Ok, fine. He's traveling, he says, so he wanted to call instead. No apology. Whatever. Then, he starts microwaving his lunch while talking to me. Excuse me? This is what is paid thousands of dollars for? The call itself offered no meaningful content or even affirmation of my investment, not even a fake strategy session. Just "dude" this, and "dude" that. Then I come to find out that the thousands of dollars doesn't include any one on one time, but for a special low price, I could upgrade. So he starts upselling me within minutes of the call. I say no thanks, ask for a refund and curse myself for the wasted time.

I guess I had the wrong "mindset".

On the other hand, all that makes it easier for the true value providers to stand out, if they can actually cut through the noise. I believe in fundamentally providing genuine value and charging well for it. But the industry has serious issues.

“Dude”, my advice is :

Spoiler

Please insert a $50 note to see advice.

 

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[OleksiyRybakov]

My problem with courses these days is that they seem to be getting longer and longer.

This is true because to explain things to the majority it is important to explain every single step and the level of education tends to decline.

 

[David Fitz]

I think this is a big opportunity. Stand out by producing less.

Definitely.

Just like yours.

You can get the Udemy Google Ads course for $10 but it's about 179 hours long or you can get mine and have your first ad up and running within an hour for $15 per month.

 

[David Fitz]

Don't know how many you have bought but getting a refund is great! I know a lot of courses have mind-boggling rules on when you can ask for a refund. Though, when selling, it never gets mentioned...

Yeah I have seen that but I've always stated my reasons why and they seem to understand.

 

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[HabitsCampaigner]

I have years of experience offering online courses (and taking them) and I have made (and spent) great money at times.

Launch events are key to a successful course.

However, after reading MJs three books, I have come to the conclusion that the primary value distinction here is Exceptional Talent. If you're a superb actor, very funny, completely likeable or entertaining... you can easily move people enough that you stand out from the crowd. Crowd is a keyword here.

As I work to decide next business, I keep wrestling with online courses but my intuition keeps saying "invent that physical thing that makes life easier"... Maybe I need to find a course on Selecting the Best Business Idea ;-)

 

[Andy Black]

Launch events are key to a successful course.

I'm not a fan of launch events.

I'd rather start sooner and see if people raise their hands , as documented here:

• Just start already

I have come to the conclusion that the primary value distinction here is Exceptional Talent. If you're a superb actor, very funny, completely likeable or entertaining... you can easily move people enough that you stand out from the crowd.

I think it depends on the course. Do they want to be entertained, or do they want to go from A to B as fast as possible?

My goal with my courses is for them to be no-fluff, actionable, organised into short lessons, and take people from A to B as fast as possible. (And for other lessons my goal is to help people understand WHAT to do and WHY.)

I don't think I'm particularly funny or entertaining. I may be likeable, but I don't think that matters. What matters is that I get my offer in front of the right people at the right time.

I don't even have to have the best course in the industry... it just has to be good enough, priced right, trusted, and found at the time it's needed - like most services or products I'd argue.

As I work to decide next business, I keep wrestling with online courses but my intuition keeps saying "invent that physical thing that makes life easier"... Maybe I need to find a course on Selecting the Best Business Idea ;-)

Many people automatically think selling courses is less valuable than selling products or services.

You could sell someone a fish, get paid to fish for them, or teach them to fish.

It's a shame people know the value in teaching a man to fish but then look down so much on courses and coaching.


Hope I'm not derailing this thread. It was about consulting/coaching I think.

 

[HabitsCampaigner]

I really appreciate this @Andy Black - you’re making me think. I’ll let you know how my own experiment goes.

 

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[Johnny boy]

Do u have a course on how to make courses for people to learn to make money selling courses? I can't find any I want to be rich like Tai Cardonerchuk

 

[Kevin88660]

If you're in any sort of online business, chances are you've come across ads from "gooroos" talking about online coaching/consulting and how to get clients or scale or blah blah.

I've been in this space for a few years now so I want to shine some light on it because...

It's growing quickly. Every year it gets more saturated in every niche. I only got in back in 2018 (but had an online agency for a few years), but it changes quickly within a year. If you read this in 2023, it's going to be even crazier. It's not an industry that is going away. The online education space is expanding. There are software companies built specifically for this space. This is the decade it really goes mainstream, and that's a good thing because it means you can easily cash in on it.

I'll unpack this and how the internet marketing world has influenced the online coaching space.

THE HISTORY

Direct response copywriting paved the way for online consulting. Many of the strategies from direct response were implemented in IM to make the industry thrive. So in the 2000s, you would start seeing those ads with clickbaity headlines and pages that sold low ticket offers. Selling coaching/consulting online in that era was unheard of. I believe Rich Schefren pulled it off and leveraged his Internet Business Manifesto because he wanted to share what he was doing and that led to him selling his consulting. He wasn't the only one doing this. Other guys were selling some seriously good offers too. But most of this was sold to internet marketers. They were selling offers specifically for them.

Things stayed in the internet marketing world until they started evolving in the 2010-2020 decade.

If you were in IM in around 2014-2015, you saw ads from a couple of people who were taking the online course idea and transitioning it to coaching/consulting.

Sam Ovens was big in this. Ruffino was another. And then some other ones started popping up.

They were really good at hammering the ad > webinar > book a call funnel. Traffic was still cheaper then. Way less competition. Way less headaches from FB ad police.

As with anything in IM, copycats appear, and then it comes down to pumping traffic and increasing conversions. Better offers had to stand out with better bonuses and scarcity/urgency.

Everything was classic "take what you know and turn it into an online course/coaching/consulting".

And "charge high ticket because that brings cashflow".

Russell Brunson launched Clickfunnels around the same time for IM to sell products online and they were really strategic about getting the online coaches/course creators onboard. Community was created and the rest was history.

At that time, I had a digital marketing agency. I used CF for marketing clients as well as dabbling in selling digital products. I got in on CF in the early days. But I never leveraged the coaching element until years due to one reason:

Imposter syndrome.

I never felt qualified. I never felt like I had anything to share even though...

I read Millionaire Fastlane in grad school and then left to form an app startup. I leveraged what I learned there and consulted 1-1 with clients and then turned that into a marketing service. It wasn't until around 2018 I started to get into coaching/consulting online on the side. Still had imposter syndrome so I never fully committed.

I got stuck in the "those who can't do... teach" mentality which prevented me from really teaching. But when working with marketing clients, I had no problems teaching them and owrking directly with them. They valued my expertise.

I felt that in 2018 it was already really saturated anyway. BAM - another limiting belief.

Today... it's even MORE saturated. MORE competitive.

And then there's the bigger problem. There are a TON of people who actually are unqualified. They buy someone else's course or program, and then turn around and teach that exact thing and make it their own business.

So now, there are a million coaches teaching coaches how to coach coaches.

^Take that and apply it to any industry

Fitness
Finance
Dating
Relationships
Hobbies

It's become a cesspool honestly. There are accounts on Instagram and Youtube which talk about how people are being scammed.

But, we have to look at the greener side and can't focus on the negative, because there are some really good coaches/consultants out there.

Now, the market has become more sophisticated. You have to be able to really get results for your clients. The best will make it to the top while the weeds will be taken out. This is GOOD for the industry. The people who evolve with the industry will make it through. The ones who don't will have to do something else.

And what's even better... the door is open for people to help with specific key areas inside industries. It's less about the niche and more about the problem that's being solved.

This is better for the consumer

Finance - CPA, reducing taxes, trading,
Health - fixing gut issues, metabolic issues, losing weight, building muscle for skinny guys, high performance, etc.

THE BENEFIT

Because the market is growing, more and more people are becoming aware and COMFORTABLE with paying for online services. 15 years ago, if you told your friends you were paying $3000-$25,000 for online coaching, they would've thought you were wearing a tin foil hat. Far too much skepticism back then.

Today, it's getting easier. People are selling small services like 1-hour coaching to 8 week packages to 12-month programs.

It's really high margin until you build a team. But most people can do $10k-$30k/month on their own at 95% margin. Start running traffic and building a team and you'll definitely scale while reducing margins to about 45-60% at $100k-$500k/month.

Yes, there are people doing $1million/month as a primary business. And there are people completely happy doing $30k/month on the side of their main businesses.

When I was just doing coaching, $30k/month was totally acceptable because of high margins.
I was selling $10k/packages.
Fulfillment was about 2 hours per week. ~ 10 hours per month

A guy I know does $250k/month on a bad month. Plays golf almost every afternoon.

Others like to have the big business that does $500k-$3mil/month with a large team and that's great for them too.

You can set your business up the way you want to do it. And you don't need to overthink it the way the gurus make it out to be.

You could start selling tomorrow if you wanted to.

You might be sitting on a goldmine of expertise you didn't know you had (jump roping, buying NFTs, sales training, being a better spouse, etc.) and could package it up and work with people to help them achieve that thing.

The information economy isn't going away.

If you wanted to get started here's what you can do:

1. Create an MVP offer (beta price point is fine)
2. Validate an offer by finding out if people want it
3. Sell 5-10 people into it (or 1-1 if you'd like)
4. Run the first round and get feedback
5. Use the feedback to refine it
6. Sell at scale because now you know what the market wants
7. Turn it into an evergreen business so it can be hands-off for you
8. Take leftover profits and reinvest into other cashflow businesses, assets, etc.

Also, there's so much stuff about this industry and how to market your offer, etc. Instead of overcomplicating things, start small and go upward. I made tons of mistakes along the way because I didn't simplify things.

But regardless, online coaching/consulting helped me build a network to where I could create some amazing partnerships. I've used it even more as leverage and a networking tool. The harvest I reaped from the seeds was far greater than I intended.

Hope this helps!

P.S. I have a lot to say about this industry. There is a ton of bad in it. But there is also a ton of good. So I want to highlight the good and how you can profit from it even if it's just $10,000/month on the side.

Depends on what you sell.

The courses that have really bad reputations are the one that sell ideologies and hopes.

If you sell your expertise in a niche without the need to promise a financial game changer to someone’s life I don’t see an issue.

Teaching about relationship is selling hope. Teaching how to shop for clothes and doing makeup is not.

Teaching about sitting at home making millions is selling hope. Teaching about advertising using Google Ads and Facebook Ads are not.

Just as lawyers and doctors who charge as consultants, they promise you nothing.

My friend was doing a course on frequently used business Chinese sentences and vocabularies for business owners buying from China and selling to China. How controversial can it be?

 

[DarkZero]

Depends on what you sell.

The courses that have really bad reputations are the one that sell ideologies and hopes.

If you sell your expertise in a niche without the need to promise a financial game changer to someone’s life I don’t see an issue.

Teaching about relationship is selling hope. Teaching how to shop for clothes and doing makeup is not.

Teaching about sitting at home making millions is selling hope. Teaching about advertising using Google Ads and Facebook Ads are not.

Just as lawyers and doctors who charge as consultants, they promise you nothing.

My friend was doing a course on frequently used business Chinese sentences and vocabularies for business owners buying from China and selling to China. How controversial can it be?

Completely agree 100%

It all comes down to what you sell.

The ones who get labeled as "scammers" (whether they are or not is besides the point) are usually in the make money space and selling "hope".

Many people are just really good motivational speakers.

But focusing on specific results that people can get like you pointed out: specific strategies without big promises

Everything that you see in this space is designed to anchor the thing as bigger than it is...

Rather than learning a skill set.

And I'm not talking about the big guys that you see with millions of followers.

The small guys with virtually no audience are doing it as well.

There are a lot of charlatans in the space. A lot of fakes. A lot of bad people.

But there are also good people. And I believe that everyone in this forum is full of these types as I can see by the threads.

Oh and for most people, they don't even need to sell something. They can just share the message without any desire to even build an audience or sell anything.

But if they wanted to sell something at some point, they could. They just don't have to.

This whole industry went from providing value to just being about polished copywriting.

And people with terrible products can outmarket great products. It really sucks honestly.

But the best people are the ones who are DOING what they teach, rather than just teaching what they teach.

 

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[DarkZero]

I'm not a fan of launch events.

I'd rather start sooner and see if people raise their hands , as documented here:

• Just start already

I think it depends on the course. Do they want to be entertained, or do they want to go from A to B as fast as possible?

My goal with my courses is for them to be no-fluff, actionable, organised into short lessons, and take people from A to B as fast as possible. (And for other lessons my goal is to help people understand WHAT to do and WHY.)

I don't think I'm particularly funny or entertaining. I may be likeable, but I don't think that matters. What matters is that I get my offer in front of the right people at the right time.

I don't even have to have the best course in the industry... it just has to be good enough, priced right, trusted, and found at the time it's needed - like most services or products I'd argue.


I think many people automatically think selling courses is less valuable than selling products or services.

I could sell someone a fish, get paid to fish for them, or teach them to fish.

It's a shame people know the value in teaching a man to fish but then look down so much on courses and coaching.


Hope I'm not derailing this thread. It was about consulting/coaching I think.

All of your points are 100% right Andy.

There is amazing value in coaching. Unfortunately, the ads on FB/YT have ruined it.

There are systems people can learn, like your Google Ads strategy.

And people desire to learn skills that can help them do the thing they currently do or learn to do somethign entirely new -- whether it's for biz/work/hobbies.

Are there regurgitated/rehashed/stolen course out there? Yes.

I also know that courses have very low completion rates, which is why coaching/consulting has really taken off online.

In fact, they used that in their marketing for years. "Why you should be a coach instead of a course creator--- because courses have low completion rates. blah blah"

But there are still plenty of courses that are outstanding. And plenty of coaches that are amazing as well.

There are just far more bad ones that need to be sifted through.

I think people don't realize that they get coached all the time. Mentorship is a great thing. For me, MJ is a mentor and I've never met him or had a conversation with him. I treated Millionaire Fastlane like a course and extracted the principles to apply to my own life.

The industry hasn't been regulated. But I think the issues in the space are forcing more consumers to be aware that they need to do their due diligence when purchasing something or investing in a coach (if at all).

I can list of about 30 people who have incredible marketing but their product doesn't match up with how they appear. They have a raving fan base who salivates on every word, but when you buy their stuff, it's nothing to write home about. It's easy to sway with words.

But it's better to just focus on getting results.

 

[DarkZero]

Do u have a course on how to make courses for people to learn to make money selling courses? I can't find any I want to be rich like Tai Cardonerchuk

I don't have the following: a lambo in my garage, private jet, or baseball cards.

 

[HabitsCampaigner]

I think people don't realize that they get coached all the time. Mentorship is a great thing. For me, MJ is a mentor and I've never met him or had a conversation with him. I treated Millionaire Fastlane like a course and extracted the principles to apply to my own life.

I can list of about 30 people who have incredible marketing but their product doesn't match up with how they appear. They have a raving fan base who salivates on every word, but when you buy their stuff, it's nothing to write home about. It's easy to sway with words.

I agree about books, @DarkZero - love the ongoing conversations I have with authors like MJ.

On the 30, I'd love to hear who. I have had many bad experiences too, even in the book/mentor format (4hr workweek my a$$)

 

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[HabitsCampaigner]

In fact, how I discovered MJ’s first book, The Millionaire Fastlane , was searching for someone who actually did it, with the intention of identifying the beliefs used to get there.

 

[SebKor83]

If you're in any sort of online business, chances are you've come across ads from "gooroos" talking about online coaching/consulting and how to get clients or scale or blah blah.

I've been in this space for a few years now so I want to shine some light on it because...

It's growing quickly. Every year it gets more saturated in every niche. I only got in back in 2018 (but had an online agency for a few years), but it changes quickly within a year. If you read this in 2023, it's going to be even crazier. It's not an industry that is going away. The online education space is expanding. There are software companies built specifically for this space. This is the decade it really goes mainstream, and that's a good thing because it means you can easily cash in on it.

I'll unpack this and how the internet marketing world has influenced the online coaching space.

THE HISTORY

Direct response copywriting paved the way for online consulting. Many of the strategies from direct response were implemented in IM to make the industry thrive. So in the 2000s, you would start seeing those ads with clickbaity headlines and pages that sold low ticket offers. Selling coaching/consulting online in that era was unheard of. I believe Rich Schefren pulled it off and leveraged his Internet Business Manifesto because he wanted to share what he was doing and that led to him selling his consulting. He wasn't the only one doing this. Other guys were selling some seriously good offers too. But most of this was sold to internet marketers. They were selling offers specifically for them.

Things stayed in the internet marketing world until they started evolving in the 2010-2020 decade.

If you were in IM in around 2014-2015, you saw ads from a couple of people who were taking the online course idea and transitioning it to coaching/consulting.

Sam Ovens was big in this. Ruffino was another. And then some other ones started popping up.

They were really good at hammering the ad > webinar > book a call funnel. Traffic was still cheaper then. Way less competition. Way less headaches from FB ad police.

As with anything in IM, copycats appear, and then it comes down to pumping traffic and increasing conversions. Better offers had to stand out with better bonuses and scarcity/urgency.

Everything was classic "take what you know and turn it into an online course/coaching/consulting".

And "charge high ticket because that brings cashflow".

Russell Brunson launched Clickfunnels around the same time for IM to sell products online and they were really strategic about getting the online coaches/course creators onboard. Community was created and the rest was history.

At that time, I had a digital marketing agency. I used CF for marketing clients as well as dabbling in selling digital products. I got in on CF in the early days. But I never leveraged the coaching element until years due to one reason:

Imposter syndrome.

I never felt qualified. I never felt like I had anything to share even though...

I read Millionaire Fastlane in grad school and then left to form an app startup. I leveraged what I learned there and consulted 1-1 with clients and then turned that into a marketing service. It wasn't until around 2018 I started to get into coaching/consulting online on the side. Still had imposter syndrome so I never fully committed.

I got stuck in the "those who can't do... teach" mentality which prevented me from really teaching. But when working with marketing clients, I had no problems teaching them and owrking directly with them. They valued my expertise.

I felt that in 2018 it was already really saturated anyway. BAM - another limiting belief.

Today... it's even MORE saturated. MORE competitive.

And then there's the bigger problem. There are a TON of people who actually are unqualified. They buy someone else's course or program, and then turn around and teach that exact thing and make it their own business.

So now, there are a million coaches teaching coaches how to coach coaches.

^Take that and apply it to any industry

Fitness
Finance
Dating
Relationships
Hobbies

It's become a cesspool honestly. There are accounts on Instagram and Youtube which talk about how people are being scammed.

But, we have to look at the greener side and can't focus on the negative, because there are some really good coaches/consultants out there.

Now, the market has become more sophisticated. You have to be able to really get results for your clients. The best will make it to the top while the weeds will be taken out. This is GOOD for the industry. The people who evolve with the industry will make it through. The ones who don't will have to do something else.

And what's even better... the door is open for people to help with specific key areas inside industries. It's less about the niche and more about the problem that's being solved.

This is better for the consumer

Finance - CPA, reducing taxes, trading,
Health - fixing gut issues, metabolic issues, losing weight, building muscle for skinny guys, high performance, etc.

THE BENEFIT

Because the market is growing, more and more people are becoming aware and COMFORTABLE with paying for online services. 15 years ago, if you told your friends you were paying $3000-$25,000 for online coaching, they would've thought you were wearing a tin foil hat. Far too much skepticism back then.

Today, it's getting easier. People are selling small services like 1-hour coaching to 8 week packages to 12-month programs.

It's really high margin until you build a team. But most people can do $10k-$30k/month on their own at 95% margin. Start running traffic and building a team and you'll definitely scale while reducing margins to about 45-60% at $100k-$500k/month.

Yes, there are people doing $1million/month as a primary business. And there are people completely happy doing $30k/month on the side of their main businesses.

When I was just doing coaching, $30k/month was totally acceptable because of high margins.
I was selling $10k/packages.
Fulfillment was about 2 hours per week. ~ 10 hours per month

A guy I know does $250k/month on a bad month. Plays golf almost every afternoon.

Others like to have the big business that does $500k-$3mil/month with a large team and that's great for them too.

You can set your business up the way you want to do it. And you don't need to overthink it the way the gurus make it out to be.

You could start selling tomorrow if you wanted to.

You might be sitting on a goldmine of expertise you didn't know you had (jump roping, buying NFTs, sales training, being a better spouse, etc.) and could package it up and work with people to help them achieve that thing.

The information economy isn't going away.

If you wanted to get started here's what you can do:

1. Create an MVP offer (beta price point is fine)
2. Validate an offer by finding out if people want it
3. Sell 5-10 people into it (or 1-1 if you'd like)
4. Run the first round and get feedback
5. Use the feedback to refine it
6. Sell at scale because now you know what the market wants
7. Turn it into an evergreen business so it can be hands-off for you
8. Take leftover profits and reinvest into other cashflow businesses, assets, etc.

Also, there's so much stuff about this industry and how to market your offer, etc. Instead of overcomplicating things, start small and go upward. I made tons of mistakes along the way because I didn't simplify things.

But regardless, online coaching/consulting helped me build a network to where I could create some amazing partnerships. I've used it even more as leverage and a networking tool. The harvest I reaped from the seeds was far greater than I intended.

Hope this helps!

P.S. I have a lot to say about this industry. There is a ton of bad in it. But there is also a ton of good. So I want to highlight the good and how you can profit from it even if it's just $10,000/month on the side.

Thanks for the inspiring thread. Can you recommend valuable sources where I can dig deeper into that topic (books, websites)?

Greets

Sebastian

 

[HabitsCampaigner]

Thanks for the inspiring thread. Can you recommend valuable sources where I can dig deeper into that topic (books, websites)?

Greets

Sebastian

The Millionaire Messenger by Brendon Buchard and Launch by Jeff Walker

 

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[Guest-5ty5s4]

If an online course costs more than a book, I am extremely skeptical.

If a class is in-person, takes weeks, and has a real live instructor spending their time teaching, I understand it costing more. Doesn't mean it's a good buy if there are other options, though.

Maybe that's just me.

(there's this idea that if you can pay more you should pay more. I get it from the seller's perspective, but from a buyer's perspective, it just doesn't make sense)

 

[HabitsCampaigner]

If an online course costs more than a book, I am extremely skeptical

The only difference is if the course involves excellent interaction and feedback. And not talking with a teacher’s assistant in Mumbai.

And I totally agree about the ‘pay more if you can’ balcony.

It’s interesting that we as a society so value The Event more than process that we pay more for an event-like course with a launch and deadline, than we do for a book where you need to work through it with self-motivation.