You don’t know what you don’t know. And that’s part of the evolution of coaching and gaining experience. My hope here is that I can expedite your coaching by learning through my experience rather than having to learn the hard way.
When it comes to coaching, you really need to realize that your identity is much deeper than the word coach. In order to reach your goals in this industry you also need to adopt the identity of entrepreneur, marketer, salesperson, businessperson, etc. Even If you are the greatest coach in the world but nobody knows it (hello marketing!) you won’t have clients. The same is true if you can’t sell your services in order to help more people.
I was once told that sometimes in order to make money, you have to spend money. I never understood that until I started using TrueCoach. Here is my story:
In 2018 I found myself unsatisfied as I was working a desk job. I had spent the 9 years prior in college and private sector strength & conditioning. After feeling burned out and unable to make a living I decided to give the 9-5 life a shot. I came to the very quick realization this was not for me. I’m grateful because I found clarity in wanting to be an online coach. It combined my passion for coaching and also gave me flexibility and financial freedom. My plan was to build up a clientele while working this desk job until I could break off on my own.
At this stage in the game I had about 5 clients and was doing the whole old school method and sending out spreadsheets. I was familiar with TrueCoach and many other online programming platforms although I decided not to use them at the time. I distinctly remember telling myself: Once you “make it” you can start using TrueCoach for all your clients. It’s ironic that at the time it seemed like paying $20 per month for TrueCoach was a HUGE expense.
Now, I should disclose that I’ve coached Division 1 College Athletics, CrossFit Game athletes, and a professional hockey player. I’m used to being around high level educated athletes. As I was starting my online coaching business I started small with friends and family.
I had this particular client who came to me at the age of 50 to transition from running Marathons to incorporate more strength training into his fitness regiment. He wanted to cut back on pounding the pavement. While he was experienced in the realm of running he had never lifted weights in his entire life.
If you have considered online coaching I”m sure you have wondered about the difficulty of teaching movements remotely. I’ll do you one better. He didn’t even understand the language of training! He had never been given a program to read with sets, reps or tempo work. This truly stretched me as a coach because I never even considered this in my coaching process.
Here I was thinking I had the most badass Excel spreadsheet that would make any college strength coach geek out. Yet my client looked at it like it was written in a foreign language. That was the first hurdle.
Then he had no idea what any movement was, so I created a Google document with YouTube links to every single movement. Five pages later and I was about to have a breakdown. No way was he actually going to reference this spreadsheet up and down for every movement before hitting the gym. Let alone remember them while he was there.
That’s the exact moment I opened up my web browser and found the TrueCoach website to do some research. I saw they had a 2 week free trial and said, okay, I’ll give it a shot. This was the best decision I ever made.
I’m sure I would have lost that client out of confusion and frustration without the ease and accessibility of TrueCoach. It allowed me to do what I do best by focusing on building a relationship and coaching my client.
It’s comical to think back at how it seemed too expensive at the time. The app literally pays for itself and gives me back the time and freedom that made me want to be an online coach in the first place.
Because ultimately it’s not about me, it’s about my clients. And TrueCoach allows me to offer the best service and product to my clients by giving them the quality they deserve. I’ll never forget getting my client signed up for the app. He texted me the next day after his workout and was elated with how easy it was to use and being able to see real time videos while at the gym. Honestly he could have cared less about the perfect program, what he really wanted was an easy guide of what to do when in the gym.
I’ve been using TrueCoach since that moment and never looked back. Every new client is impressed by the professionalism and ease of use within the app. Not only has it given me so much time (resulting in making more money) back, I’ve built a system for onboarding clients and can now cut my hours of programming in half.
In addition to this it serves as a central communication center for my clients. I can now separate work and play because I don’t have clients texting me all the time at odd hours of the night. They know to use the app and I have created clear boundaries around how often and when I check the app to give feedback.
So yeah, sometimes you need to spend money in order to make money. Use my experience and save yourself time and money in the long run. Even if you don’t have a big client base built up then consider this a way of investing in your future. I promise it will pay off before you know it. While I once thought I would use TrueCoach once I “made it”, it was actually using the app that helped me “make it”.
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