How to Design a Coaching Business Model Canvas -
Not all coaching businesses are exactly the same. The profession spans many different types of coach (e.g., business, health, fitness, life, etc.)) and styles of engagement (e.g. one-on-one coaching, conferences, courses or books).
This is why a universal business model for coaching doesn't exist. Your business model will reflect your distinct business model, your value proposition, how you earn money and the way you provide your coaching services.
It's not that you need to create an entirely new model completely from scratch in order to achieve success. Utilizing free and tested resources and templates for entrepreneurs (like that of the Business Model Canvas we will discuss in this post) will help you skip the initial steps and ensure that you ensure that your business model is aligned with a widely recognized framework.
Follow this tutorial to master the art of developing custom-designed business model for coaching canvasses and laying the perfect business model for your coaching practice.
What exactly is a Model Canvas for Business? Model Canvas?
The Business Model Canvas is a widely used framework built on a simple template that outlines all the essential elements of company. It assists entrepreneurs to see their company from a top-down view and identify opportunities and weak points early in the early stages of planning.
The concept of the Business Model Canvas was developed in 2005 by Alexander Osterwalder (and a team consisting of around 470 co-creators). He explained the concept at length within his work Business Model Generation:
"A business model defines the reasoning behind how an organization produces, distributes and retains value."
-- Alexander Osterwalder, Business Model Generation
Osterwalder's framework has nine building blocks that are grouped in four parts:
- Infrastructure (key activities, key resources and key partners)
- Offering (value proposition)
- Customers (customer segments, channels, customer relationships)
- Finances (cost structure, revenue streams)
Key activities are what your company must perform to ensure that it is delivering its core value propositions in the most optimal way feasible. In this section, you should outline procedures and automatization, as well as organize your team's work.
Key resources sums up the essential elements required to generate the value for customers. They are the assets you have: your staff, revenues and know-how, as well as technology gear, etc.
Key partners outline who can help you do your work as there is no need for everything to be handled within the company. Coaches can be part of an expert network or work with designers to create your marketing collateral.
Value propositions outline your services and the way they can be adapted to meet your customers' needs. This element should set you apart from the competition. Executive coaches may focus on in risk reduction, fitness trainers might offer proprietary training programs for example, and so on. It is possible to distinguish between quantifiable (e.g. money) and qualitative (e.g. feeling) value propositions.
Customer segments identifies your target audience. There is the possibility of having multiple target audiences identified as personas for your brand, with different requirements and characteristics. On a macro level your target audience could be aligned with the masses as well as a particular niche market. be segmented, varied and multi-sided (i.e. be the platform).
Channels define how you want to connect with customers by presenting your unique value proposition. It could be a retail site, an e-commerce service or a profile on social media, or a combination of several channels.
Customer relations are the way you'll get new customers, how to keep them and the ways you can increase their value over time.
Cost structure defines the things that a business must invest money in order to provide its proposition. It should contain fixed costs like salary or rent in addition to variable costs like credit card processing payments. As your business expands the cost per unit of value produced could go down (e.g. through scaling and optimizing the processes you use) or up (e.g. in branching out to a more complex set of services).
Revenue streams are the way a business earns money. As a coach, you may sell online classes, subscriptions, eBooks as well as other items. Face-to-face coaching sessions can also a revenue stream.
As revenue streams are central to any business and are the first thing people are thinking about when they discuss business plans, we'll go deeper into the potential income streams (both primary and supplemental) available to coaching professionals.
Primary business models for coaches
There are many ways to make money in the coaching business. Here, we review the top income streams for coaches.
Coaching
The majority of coaches' businesses are built around -surprise!the coaching. This is the simplest method to begin generating revenue.
The revenue stream is comprised of diverse subcategories.
One-on-one coaching doesn't require complex curricula to get up and going. It's more about being attentive to the needs of your clients and using your expertise (in any particular field) to aid the client.
The good thing about coaching is that you can start at any time as there is no significant initial investment required. Additionally, most clients stay with the top coaches over time which means you're likely to grow via word-of-mouth marketing at no cost over time.
One-on-one coaching has its drawbacks. is that it gives you only a few opportunities to expand and expand your company. In the event that you do not establish an agency, and then hire others to coach, you'll only be able to make money when you're doing hand-on tasks (even if you primarily offer online coaching).
Group coaching is an interesting option to expand the coaching you practice. This allows you to increase your hourly fee in relation to the total number of customers in the group.
But, this kind of coaching demands greater preparation and experience. Additionally, it can restrict the scope of your work. As an example, workplace coaching for executives and teams is a field that is designed for coaching groups. Coaching for life that concentrates on individual needs, fears and objectives, on the other hand would be a good fit to one-on-one coaching sessions.
Coaching for groups or one-on-one can be provided in-person or via a computer. The latter can significantly expand the number of customers you can attract no matter where you're located.
Workshops
Workshops are also a center of a business coaching model. As opposed to group coaching that is tailored to every group, workshops are standard learning settings. The only thing you need to do is create the framework one time, then you can sell it for years. You can also cost per seat, and enroll more lucrative corporate customers.
Workshops are a defined offering that can be purchased for an individual or an organization. But they're not a self-serve item. Workshops are collaborative, and require the participation of everyone. In the case of branding, for instance, coaches might sell a vision-setting workshop in which they assist an executive team in defining the company's longer-term goals.
Workshops are more difficult to sell in comparison to "regular" training sessions. Workshops are a higher cost that is usually charged at the expense of a business. The decision-makers might not commit to your workshop unless you have an established reputation.
Speaking engagements
If you're looking to get not as personally involved with people or groups of people as a coach, you might discover speaking events to be an appealing source of income.
Speaking opportunities are usually at the disposal of those who have a good fame and recognition. Many authors write their books to ensure they have leverage to get speaking gigs.
Presenting at conferences or special events can be very profitable. In just 30 minutes, you can yield tens of thousands of dollars. This is also an excellent opportunity to market your work, like coaching, book workshops or else.
Additional revenue streams to coaches
One of the greatest strengths of coaching is that you can combine all kinds of income streams in order to make your financial results more reliable and adaptable.
Below are a few profitable strategies you can think of on top of organizing workshops, coaching as well as speaking at industry conferences.
Online courses
One of the largest source of revenue available to virtually any trainer is through online training.
An online course could be designed for almost every purpose and you only have to invest the time to set the course up only once. The cost can be as high or as low as you want and keep generating revenue over the years.
Anyone is able to set up an online course. Even if you're not an expert or don't consider yourself technically proficient, starting is simple. The only significant cost to your time is that which you invest upfront.
Create your initial course in just one day, and begin selling the course right away. What are you waiting on?
Sites for coaching membership
We mentioned above that planning how you can increase your revenue per client is an essential part of your model for business.
If the online course is a one-time purchases, how can you maintain the same monetization for the same audience?
The members pay on a recurring basis and can then learn and ask questions with one another and feel they are part of a community to something larger than them.
Communities and membership sites are very powerful because they attract committed audiences that can later be monetized in other ways as well.
Start building your community early on. Create your own Facebook Group, collect emails to use in your newsletter or even invite your students in online courses to stay in touch.
Advertising
Many successful coaches are also content creators. Having a blog as well as an Instagram account, or even a YouTube channel play a variety of important functions.
Making valuable content available to the public for free could provide great prospects for your principal income streams (e.g. speaking or coaching). But it can also be a revenue stream of its own
- You can sell advertising on the blog by using AdSense.
- On Instagram Instagram, you are able to collaborate with brands in order to create sponsored posts.
- On YouTube You are able to either use native advertisements or make ads with brand.
Although it's hard to establish advertising as your primary source of revenue with no substantial number of people (in hundreds of thousands), it can prove to be an intriguing way of diversification.
Affiliate sales
Most major e-commerce websites and software vendors offer affiliate programs. For example, if you mention an Amazon book (or any product) purchased from Amazon on your blog, you can make a profit from every purchase made through your own link.
Books
They are the primary source for ideas. There's no other tool as effective for a coach as having an original idea and writing the book to support the concept.
Not only can books create a significant revenue stream for you, but they also provide the most effective form of marketing you can solicit. The books you sell are coaches' packages along with online and workshop training courses. It is also possible to make use of books for speeches and coaching at the highest level clients.
If you think writing a novel is intimidating, do not fret. It's best to start with a small amount, keeping notes around the ideas you enjoy and creating your own solutions. As your practice grows, your expanded knowledge and experience will practically write the book for you.
Tools and software for auxiliary use
It's possible to take productization to another stage and transform your concepts into tools for software or that can help clients (e.g. cards decks that are based off your workshops or simple Excel-based spreadsheets that keep the track of savings in time).
That's the path that Strategyzer (the company behind the Business Model Generation book) has chosen. The app integrates exercises from the book into an interactive online environment.
Building software is hard. If you've got an idea that is great and you have a crowd asking for it, you might want to look into it.
Turn your business model into a reality
After you have a good understanding of all the components in the coach Business Model Canvas, it's time to design your own.
Use the coaching business model template below to plan your business model, value proposition, process and revenue streams. Then build your coaching program!
Start your journey as a coach through the creation and sale of your online training course. Try for free today and discover how simple it is to begin. No tech skills required.