How I Built a High-Ticket Coaching Business in 9 Steps
In this video, I'm gonna share with you the nine steps I took to create a six figure high ticket coaching business, and what I plan to do to get to seven figures. Stay tuned. Hey there, YouTube. My name is Rich Ux. I'm the CEO and founder of the Rich+Niche Academy, which is for freelance digital marketers and has become essentially a high ticket coaching business.
Along with selling things like online courses and community spaces. Many of you know that many of you are inside the Rich+Niche Academy. But today I just want to talk about the steps I took to get here to create this business. I think it's a powerful case study and I think a lot of people out there are looking to get into coaching and are, and would want to, um, you know, replicate my success. So I'm gonna talk about the nine steps I use to start this business from scratch. If you wanna start your own coaching business or just take your business to the next level, this video is probably for you.
So sit back, relax, and try to take this all in. I think it's important before I share my nine steps that we recognize what's going on in the info, um, world, in the coaching world. Why is this exploding? It's really a combination of technology. Uh, you know, remote capability, the ability to scale a coaching business and help so many more people.
Um, the affordability that's created for coaching, so many more people can reach their goals. I think we're breaking out of this career and job oriented mindset into a skills based oriented world. And so people want to accumulate skills really quickly. And courses and coaching is a way you can do that. So once people have become experts, it really makes sense for them to pass back that knowledge and help other people, you know, achieve their goals, find their skills and pathway. So I think coaching and the info, you know, education, digital info business.
Uh, infotainment. I think this world is really skyrocketing. I'm, I'm happy to be a part of it. I think it's a very value driven world.
It's a better lifestyle for us all really to be, uh, bringing value. This way we don't have to spend money on transportation hotels. Uh, we can execute our services worldwide and start building out these digitally enhanced lifestyles, Finding balance in all the same time. Like, I don't wanna work 60 hours a week, 50, even 40 hours a week.
Like, I'm hesitant to do that and to sacrifice that much time. So if you think like that or you like these ideas, then perhaps take this journey on. So let's talk about the nine steps that I took that I think were sort of the critical steps.
To get this business, uh, to the point it is today. And that point, I would say is like, you know, a thousand students buying courses somewhere around a hundred students purchasing high ticket coaching. It's somewhere around that sort of amount. I haven't really checked recently, but that's where I would define the size of this business. After about two and a quarter, two and a half years, the community is operating pretty much by itself. I do try to check in there quite often, but I would say that everything is running pretty well.
I use organic traffic for 95% of all website visits, and so that's kind of the framing of my. And, um, let me talk now specifically about the nine steps. The absolute first thing I did, and at this time, I wasn't even thinking about creating a high ticket coaching business really. I mean, maybe I was, but I wasn't really on my mind yet.
It was just creating videos on a niche topic for YouTube. I just started putting out videos that I thought made sense, that I thought would help people that I thought were unique to what I was doing. I had a slightly different style than other people. I did a lot of desktop tutorial and video sharing.
A lot of people in the industry at the time were doing like heavy, you know, uh, aggressive sales styles, motivational style videos. Uh, I found out that people didn't really gravitate that as much. So people positioned me as a unique authority and expert. You know, after 3, 6, 9, maybe 12 months, it was hard to really track how long that phase took, what really happened. Was had one video rank well, early on, because I think I was a bit early in the opportunity, that was the video, how to become a digital marketing consultant. You know, I think I was really a pioneer in this area, and I think if you want to be a high ticket coach, it's really optimal.
To seek out some unique vehicle that you can use so that you are very unique and specific in the market, and other people maybe can't even copy it. So step one, make niche videos on YouTube. Lots of keywords, keyword heavy.
If you search the words digital marketing and any variations, I'll typically come up either in the YouTube search. In the Google search, or you'll probably find me in the related videos, you know, once you're on a bit of a rabbit hole in the industry. Step number two is I compiled all my knowledge and quickly offered a private cohort for about six to eight people.
I charged them $900. And it was 12 weeks. That was my very first time teaching anything like this.
I made slides and each week I taught something different. I had very little structure back then. I basically kind of came up with just 12 great topics that if anyone learned those 12 topics, they'd be way ahead of most people. It was great reviews. People really enjoyed it.
Multiple people went on to do bigger things with their career utilizing digital market. So I'd call that like the alpha cohort. I just called it digital marketing training. Like these people knew nothing about digital marketing.
I offered it to them, a little bit of a hodgepodge. Some people knew each other, some people didn't. And then I also said, if you bring a friend, You both can get a discount. So a couple people brought friends. That was great. So that really was about validating that my knowledge, ideas, methods were valuable to people.
And then if I could teach it to these people, I would get a lot of feedback and that would just help me define everything going forward. So don't hesitate to run a small group. Could be a. Could be one week, could be 12 weeks, like me, could be an hour a week, could be intensive, eight hours a day for three days. You know, it's up to you. But of course at this time, because you're sort of testing, you know, you're just trying to get people, You really have to be thoughtful about what they could commit to.
My third step was chunking out a small aspect of what I do, especially something that's kind of at the beginning of the process, something that's unique, and I created a free online training, which you could sign up by giving your email so soon. All the YouTube videos pointed to a single landing page, and that landing page offered people a free training that was about 30 to 40. They gave their email and I was now building an email list of leads. Who wanted something specific that I was offering that would likely lead into similar paid offers. This is the lead magnet. It's very common these days.
Some people are doing less and less free lead magnets and are opting for just a low ticket product, seven to $27. I think that's a great idea. I might do. But I really think it feels good to be building an email list and to see that number growing. I think that really motivated me in just knowing that what I was doing was building a list, and that one day I would make an offer to that list. I would sell them something, I would send them email campaigns designed to sell and that certain people would buy.
The next thing I did, logically after. Was announce a paid course. I announced it quite a a ways ahead of time. I launched my first paid online course on January 20th, 2020. It was a bit of an auspicious day, but I announced that course December 1st, 2019, so almost two months ahead of time.
And in that time I was promoting the free course. And putting out more valuable content. That was related to my paid course.
Everything was cohesive. Now this paid course was about eight hours of video material, but it was packed with powerful knowledge and much more than just videos. You also got powerful PDF worksheet. You got the community access.
I was holding office hours twice a week for like 90 minutes where you come ask me questions. So there's a ton of value. In my paid online course. Now this was about validating that I could take my coaching ideas from live to a non-live. Because that would be more scalable long term. So even though perhaps I would eventually get into high ticket coaching or whatnot, still wanted to build out the paid online course, why not? Why not have that there? Especially for people who can't afford sort of the done with you, go do it yourself.
Right. The fifth step, and this was kind of happening simultaneously, was I created a niche community. For anyone who bought the paid course and really enhanced and enforced shared values around freelancing, you know, remote capable careers, multiple income streams, the things that my customers, I believed care about. I built them this online area that they can go and be with other people and share their ideas around that. This was probably one of the hardest elements as I, I really have to check in.
Every day, and right now I'm just testing like what I can get away with. How much do I have to be a part of the community? Because ideally a community runs itself. It's still maybe not quite there, but I do feel that it's in a great place and I think that it's something that's worthy of an investment because that community becomes your audience. That community helps support your video content. That community can become referrals and affiliate. So I think it has a lot of value to create a community.
Number six, the sixth step I did was I started hosting a weekly call that was a little bit more exciting and fun. So really just adding value to my entire ecosystem and community. But this allowed me to have so many opportunities to answer questions, bring value, and refine my knowledge and how I teach coach, and give people insights around things that aren't something that I've spent a lot of time researching or writing about. Like the course materials, you know, inside and out.
But when people ask you unique scenarios or questions, you don't always know the answer. So it's great to have these weekly connections with people. People would come in, join the call for like an hour.
We would do like a round table update. I might give an insight or two to each person that spoke. And then we came up with all sorts of different group activities that.
You know, we did over a hundred of these calls. We did so many different group activities and this get lets you learn about how other people learn. This lets you learn about what people really like and what they want.
So it's a very great experimentation ground. And I do believe that there's power in offering sort of this bridge, right? You have this private high ticket coaching environment, very exclusive. Then you have the free content.
And then you have this kind of middle ground where people are kind of doing it themselves, working together, and so if you can just come in once a week or even twice a month, that would really enhance that middle group of customers. See a high ticket coaching business. Isn't just about selling high ticket, you might as well have a full funnel because not everyone can afford your coaching and some people they want to go step by step. You should be thoughtful about how you design that experience and really try to have a ladder of value. You know, there's no reason just to have the high ticket and it's all the same stuff. It really is all the same.
Even the free content isn't that much different than the paid content, but it's structured much more differently. It's structured for an outcome. There's added resources, and if you can add something like a community, you're gonna help yourself defend against people who steal your content and try to resell it and things like that.
Soon after that, I launched another online course. And I launched it with a cohort, so we'll call this like the beta group and sort of the second version of my cohort. This was slightly different topic than what I work with today, but it was very, very similar. In fact, I'd call, this was a submodule of my full cohort today and.
It's an opportunity to test where you're at with people. Test your ability to sell high ticket test, your ability to deliver, test your ability to get referrals, testimonials, case studies, et cetera. You want to keep working towards selling high ticket wherever you can, and it's really sensible to launch cohorts. It's a cheaper price typically than doing one on one, and people start together and they get.
Group mentality where they're working with people, they stay more accountable. I've seen great success, and I think that it's probably the most scalable way to approach all this. You really can't have 21 on one clients, even 10 one-on-one clients could be challenging depending on what you offer.
Your brain would not be able to retain all. But in a one to group or a cohort scenario, no one expects you to hold all of their situations and challenges, weaknesses, and strengths in your mind. You can constantly get a summary from people or you can have them adding context.
Of what's the situation they're facing? Then you can address it there. So I love people to just dabble with cohorts. You know, you have a new topic coming out, launch it with a cohort. It's a great way to get added feedback and go through the course yourself essentially, and make sure it's what you want as you put it into your library.
Of self-paced online training, that's do it yourself. Over this period, I created a couple supplementary courses, smaller courses, or just more courses that could be made as bonuses, upsells down cells, cross cells, or just simply given to people as part of bigger bundles to really get them the outcome they want. Because if someone has an outcome, they want their.
And there's still one problem that's unsolved. They may not care that you can solve the rest of their problems because their one is still gonna be there. So when I think about getting people the results I get them, which is helping them start a location, independent business, I think about every single thing that can go wrong.
And there should be a course or essentially a, a set of training. So that person doesn't face that problem and they can, you know, shore up any fears or concerns they have. And they know going into this whole process, like there's nothing to worry about because this expert, this coach, has provided me everything I need at every possible decision making point. And that's valuable for people.
So that would be number step number eight is supplement your materials. Really create something complete. The last final ninth step was basically making a commitment to launching cohorts.
I was a bit nervous about it. I was. Thinking how much work it would be. I was thinking that I wouldn't be able to keep up and, and certainly my schedule has struggled a little bit. Basically what I'm doing is I'm launching six month cohorts.
My cohorts are a bit longer. You might not want to go that long, but I believe if someone does something for six months, they're really gonna make a transformation and they're gonna believe. Much more in themselves because they've been doing it for so much longer. But what I did do is ended up adding a salesperson who works on commission.
So I give them about, um, 15% of the sale. And I also hired basically a executive assistant or a content editor just to help me with other tasks that I was falling behind on. And I said to myself, You know what? I'm gonna launch this every single quarter. I'm gonna cap it at 12 people.
I'm gonna sell it out every time. Version one, uh, launched around $1,800. Price point, pretty cheap, but. A new format and I needed validation.
I needed to know that this was gonna work and I wanted to make sure it sold out. Next quarter, version two launched at a $2,500 price. And offering early enrollment, giving a discount if they want to come early and lock up those seats really helps get the revenue bolstered.
But hey, if they want to join last minute, it's 2,500. And then third one, move the price up to 3000. Again, offering a six month payment plan as well as early enrollment. Just keep building that list.
Of course, I created a special lead magnet specifically for this program. There's an email flow that that goes from that, but those really were the nine steps I took to get to where I am today. And in my third cohort, I have people closing themselves without a salesperson on $3,000 package. To me, that's huge validation of the brand, the social proof, the quality of the sales experience, and the offer is, it must be right if people are willing to click $3,000 without even talking to a salesperson. Of course, most people talk to a salesperson and that's fine.
They want their last minute questions answered and, and they get them answered, and that's. But the fact that you can get a sale for that high without any interaction, very valuable. Of course, I jump on a call with those people to meet them and enroll them after they've paid, get them excited.
Look, I don't spend nearly a dollar on ads. I'm an organic guy. It's been working for me.
However, that is the next stage for me is to build out an affiliate program and to run ads and build out multiple channels of profitability. Organic is incredibly profit. But it's not that scalable. You know, you can't force the algorithm.
Whereas ads can be very scalable. So working on more trip wires, self-liquidating offers to find those paying customers, get them on calls, get them enrolled in the coaching program. And uh, yeah, it's been a truly exciting journey. Um, . I think that coaching and helping people is a truly wonderful opportunity, uh, a great career. I think you gotta be legit.
I think you have to keep honing your skills. I think you have to master your craft and live up to that authority and that expectation. But if you can do that, I think it's very wonderful to pass on skills to people in such short amount of time.
I mean, it took me five to 10 years to accumulate the skills and understanding I. And now I can pass it on in three to six months. I mean, I think that's worth a lot.
And I think that it's such a, you know, messy sort of mind around digital marketing. It's important for someone to clarify it for you and make it straightforward. And I think that a lot of coaches do just that. And also just giving people the belief in themselves that they too can have a life better than they have today.
And I think that they don't have enough of that in their friends and family, and so they need people who can root for them, and that's another great reason to have a community layer as well. Well, that's the end of this video. Good luck to you. If you're planning on becoming a coach and you want to build out a similar business model, I would be available for private consultation if you want me to help advise on building your business or coaching company.
Shoot me an email, rich@richandniche.com and, and perhaps check out my courses, join my community, see how I'm operating things. And heck, you're gonna learn a lot about digital marketing as well, which is basically just a form of communication and, and how we're able to communicate with our coaching students, prospects, clients globally, remotely scalable. It's all there. So until next time, don't forget to leave a comment, like and subscribe. And may the algorithms be ever in your.
2022-10-22 14:38
