How To Start A Coaching Business In Nigeria (10 Easy Steps)

If you want to start a coaching business in Nigeria, this guide will give you everything you need to get started.

Everyone has amazing skills and knowledge in their toolbox and can become a coach if they please.

You will be surprised to know that there are coaches in almost anything you can think of. I’ve seen sleeping coaches, productivity coaches, writing coaches, and a lot more.

Asides from being an amazing business model, the coaching business model is a really profitable one, especially for coaches that can actually provide results.

If you’re still in doubt, Read this breakdown to learn how profitable online coaching is.

So if I could start with anything, it would be that if you’re extremely good at anything, you could become a coach at it.

I’d want to briefly highlight that there’s a huge difference between a coach and a consultant.

Coaching Business Vs Consulting Business

No	Coaches	Consultant
1.	Coaches solve problems	Consultants provide advice and expertise
2.	Coaching sessions are often until results are seen.	Consulting sessions are mostly one-offs
3.	Coaches provide results	Consultants give solutions
4.	Coaching programs can take months before completion.	Consulting doesn’t take too much time

In summary, coaches walk their clients through problems until results are seen, while consultants just provide solutions and don’t really care if results are gotten.

Warning: If your skill doesn’t provide a clear result, you’re better off being a consultant.

Benefits of owning a coaching business

• You’re literally sharing tips on topics you’re already passionate about hence making running your business a lot more fun.
• Coaches, in my opinion, get paid a lot more than consultants, since they dedicate their time and effort to making sure their clients get their desired results.
• You literally have all you need to start a coaching business, your skills, and the tips in this article.

Disadvantages of the coaching business model

• It takes a lot of time
• You need to have a proven system for getting results
• You’ll need to understand each client differently and solve their unique problems

How To Start a Coaching business in Nigeria.

1. Decide what skill you want to be a coach on

I mean what is a coaching business without the skill?

The skill you’ll be selling will be a major determinant of the success of your coaching business.

If you’re like me, you’re probably multi-talented.

So how in the world do you decide on what you should coach people about? because some skills are not just worth the effort.

Here’s What makes a Coaching Skill Viable:

• It needs to solve a high-value problem

If your talent doesn’t solve a precise problem, you’ll almost never get paid.

More so, the problem in question needs to be a High valued and urgent problem for which a solution is highly sought.

If you’re able to discover a skill that solves a problem that clients are actively looking for solutions on, you’ve found a gold mine.

For example, if you can help people solve their bad drinking habits, you’re a high-value coach.

This skill solves a high-value problem and your potential clients are actively seeking solutions to this problem every single day.

• It needs to provide a clear result

Your skill might be amazing but if the result it brings for your potential client is way too abstract, we might have a problem there.

Your skill needs to offer measurable results so your clients can know when you’ve earned your Pay.

Here’s a perfect example: if You’re able to stay happy all the time, that’s a skill, you might be tempted to want to create a coaching business around this skill, but here’s why this is a wrong idea.

How do we track when your clients are seeing results?

The coaching business model is all about results. With the drinking coach example, we actually know when a coach has achieved the desired result for his client.

• You need to have a proven system for getting results

Before you even think of starting a coaching business, you need to take the time to evaluate whether you can provide the desired result over and over again.

If the result your skill got you was by chance, you might want to stay away from this business model and rather stick with consulting.

Since all that’s required of a consultant is the knowledge they applied to get the results they achieved.

This third requirement is probably the most important.

If you don’t want to give refunds consistently to your clients or worse get lawsuits, you need to make sure you’re getting paid for a problem you can actually solve no matter its gravity.

For this to be possible, you need to have a proven system for getting results.

2. Pick a coaching niche

Your skill is just one part of the whole coaching business puzzle, finding a profitable niche is another piece.

A popular marketing quote goes thus “the riches are in the niches”.

This means, the more niche you go in your business, the more likely you are to be successful with it.

So what in the world is a niche?

There are larger markets for online businesses for example health and wellness and you’d agree with me that there are already coaches in these markets as well.

As a new coach, starting out in a huge market like that would mean you going up against the fierce competition already existing on these marketplaces, the wiser thing to do is to niche down.

This simply means finding a smaller segment of a larger market and launching your coaching business around it.

The perfect example for this would be a coach who focuses on finance, the wiser thing to do is focus on providing coaching services in a smaller segment of finance e.g “how to save money”.

A lot fewer finance coaches will be offering this laser-focused coaching service and you’d be a lot more attractive to a potential client looking to save money than a generic finance coach would be.

3. Decide on a name for your coaching business

Once you have your skill and niche ready, it’s time to decide on a name for your coaching business. 

It might sound strange but your name actually makes your business feel more professional and can also help in boosting your brand.

Many coaches fail to put in enough time to decide on the perfect name for their business.

You only get one chance to make it work, and unless you want to keep rebranding your business and changing its name, make sure your business name rocks.

Your business name is also very important when you’re creating social media profiles and registering domain names, it has to be consistent everywhere.

What you decide to name your coaching business would solely depend on you but I highly recommend that you follow these guidelines

• It needs to be short and sweet
• It needs to be easily memorable
• It needs to give hints about what you offer.

Here’s an entire guide to learning exactly how to name your coaching business in 3 easy ways.

4. Decide on a model for your Coaching business

 There are several coaching business models and you need to be quite selective when making the decision of what the best model is for your business. The model you choose will be hugely dependent on

• The time you have available
• The Number of students you can handle at once

The various coaching models include

a. One-on-one Model

In this model, you’ll be taking on one client at a time.

This is the traditional coaching model, It’s most common among more expensive coaching programs.

These coaches are paid more than the regular ones are they have to dedicate special sessions to attend to the problems of each specific client.

b. Group Coaching Model

As the name entails, the model involves a group of students being attended to all at once by their coach.

This is more time-effective and is excellent for coaches who already have a proven system and gets almost the same kind of clients with similar issues.

This model can either be virtual or in real-time.

c. Course model

This model happens to be the hybrid version of the group coaching model, it’s almost a passive system and can be really profitable if used correctly.

In this model, coaches create an exact step-by-step blueprint that would be effective for solving the problem in question.

This way they only have to put in the effort for creating these courses, and once the course is ready, everything from that point becomes almost passive.

Although this model is awesome for busy coaches, it’s commonly priced lesser than the average coaching program, since the coach in question isn’t trading time to get the work done.

For some reason, I’m quite averse to this model as it takes away from the core value of coaching, “To Build Relationships”.

d. Membership

This model is a masterpiece for recurring revenue.

Coaches looking to build a community of like-minded individuals looking to solve a common problem will most likely resonate with this model.

If you have an endless pool of resources and information to share concerning solving a particular problem, this might be the model for you.

Here you’ll charge your clients per month or otherwise for providing them with a consistent and irresistible benefit that’ll help in solving their problems.

You need to choose a model that suits your personality and makes you feel good about your new business. 

This article goes more in-depth into the different business coaching business models that exist.

5. Get case studies, certification, or testimonials.

Each of these three requirements plays a separate role in boosting the credibility of your coaching business and attracting more clients to it.

A. Case Studies

Case studies are specific client journey that describes the actions you took and how you solved and got results for that particular client.

Case studies are really essential for marketing your coaching business especially if you’re in the B2B industry.

To create case studies, you need to have worked with a client or have gotten the desired result for your potential client.

The perfect case study is with clients who are an exact description of future clients you want to work with.

This way, your potential clients with this exact problem read through your case study and know right away they’re in the right place to look for a solution.

B. Certifications

Delicate coaching niches such as health and fitness, finance, relationship, life coaching, and the like, require certifications.

Since these niches are sensitive aspects of your potential client’s life, legal terms require that you get accredited to offer coaching advice in these niches.

Less sensitive niches like productivity, and self-help, to mention but a few can thrive well as coaching businesses without certifications.

C. Testimonials

Simply put, testimonials are what past clients have to say about your services and how capable you are of getting results.

You might not need to have all three of the above-listed requirements but at the very least get yourself some testimonials.

Testimonials are really magical when it comes to getting clients for any business, it serves as social proof and plays on human psychology.

Humans are much more likely to make choices based on what others have to say.

Honest Testimonials can really reduce the time it takes for a new prospect to convert into a paying client.

More so, they are an asset for you as a coach.

To be able to get honest and heart-warming testimonials from your clients, only means you’re capable of providing results and that your system actually works, further validating your coaching business as being legitimate.

So before you even think of launching your dream coaching business, you might want to consider sorting out this aspect.

6. Craft an Irresistible offer

You have the important elements of your coaching business out of the way, it is time to build an offer.

Your offer is the coaching package you’ll be presenting to your prospective clients as what they need to get results.

Your offer has to contain coaching sessions and resources that have proven to get results for you or your previous clients.

It also has to be really irresistible and attractive, your prospect should see your offer and just can help but buy.

Elements Of an Irresistible Offer

a. Capitalizing on their pain point

If you carried out your Niche research well enough, you must have by now figured out what the pressing pain points of your clients are.

The next step is to craft an offer that prioritizes the solutions to these pain points.

They need to see your offer and know straight away that it’ll be able to solve their pressing problems. They need to feel like they’re losing by not signing up for your coaching business.

b. Be hyperspecific about what you help them solve

The worst mistake you can make as a coach is trying to solve too many problems.

This is especially common with life coaches who feel they’re responsible for every segment of their client’s life.

To avoid this being the case, make sure your offer boldly states what you help them solve in a specific way while making sure to avoid being vague and building confusion with your clients.

c. Highlight the major result you bring to the table

This is a step further from the previous tip and this one involves you making your prioritize letting your clients be aware of the results you provide.

Results are the king of conversions and the more you show how result-oriented your business can get, the more likely you are to close deals and get more clients.

d. Make them feel less at risk with your price

With coaching programs, things can get a little too pricey, and although these programs might be well worth their prices, Your clients need to feel the same way too.

You need to reduce the friction your clients feel about spending their hard-earned money on you and instead get them to understand that they’re making the right decision doing so.

Some amazing ways to reduce buyer friction include:

• Offer a Long Term Refund guarantee E.g a 30-Day refund guarantee, this way your client knows that they can always get their money back in the case of any issue.
• Offer a Free trial of your service to have them test and try your service’s potential to solve their problem.
• Charge in Bits: For example: if your coaching program is $1000, you could ask for 50% upfront and the rest once the project is completed.

e. It has to be time-bound.

Urgency is the key to higher conversions, if your clients don’t see a reason to buy from you now, they might as well delay their payments forever.

There has to be an element of urgency that pushes them to take action now as opposed to sometime in the future.

The perfect urgency statement for coaching businesses especially ones with the group coaching model is “Register Now, Limited Group coaching spots available”.

It makes your program feel like a seasonal academy and causes your prospects to want to act fast rather than consider why they shouldn’t buy from you.

7. Plan your Marketing strategy.

With the above 6 steps, your coaching business is almost ready to launch but before that, you’ll need a Strategy.

A failing business is one without a strategy to get in front of the right audience.

There are several ways to market a coaching business and it can get really overwhelming.

Owning a coaching business myself, I can say that the coaching business model requires delicate and strategic planning.

You need to make sure we’re attracting the right audience that actually converts into clients for our business.

Unlike other business models, coaches charge premium prices and no one randomly makes decisions about services and packages that cost a fortune, it needs to be thought over again and again.

This is why your marketing strategy as a coach needs to cater to this fault and ensure that clients see your business as worth the pay.

We advise you to read this article on how to market your coaching business online for an in-depth breakdown.

Here are a few marketing strategies I highly recommend for coaches

a. Joint Ventures:

This is a strategy where you partner up with a fellow business owner who has access to your exact target audience and then build a symbiotic relationship with them.

One where you offer them some form of value and get them to send their audience as clients for your business.

A perfect illustration will be a Business coach partnering up with the admin of a Facebook group and helping them with their business for free in exchange for referrals from this admin in their Facebook group.

This way you only have to build a relationship once with the admin and have them be your angel marketer.

b. Network Marketing:

This marketing strategy involves going to communities and groups where your ideal clients hang around, to give value and build credibility.

You can do this by answering some of their frequently asked questions, sharing tips on how to solve the problem in question, and interacting on a personal level to understand the prospect in question.

The goal of network marketing is to build a strong relationship with your prospect and get them to see you as an expert credible enough to solve their problem and even so ask for your help.

Remember, let them come, worry about building your credibility and clients will naturally resonate with your business.

The different platforms you can use for network marketing include:

• Quora
• Reddit
• Facebook groups: Sounds interesting? then you’ll definitely love this article on how to get clients on Facebook Groups.
• Forums
• LinkedIn groups

c. Content Marketing

This has proven to be the most powerful and cost-effective way to market a coaching business and there’s definitely a good reason behind this.

When done right, Content marketing allows you to give immense value to potential clients and have you build credibility and trust with them. If you craft the perfect content strategy, you’ll be attracting the right type of audience who actually resonate with the content you share.

They grow to know, like, and trust you, and with the right system in place, you’ll funnel them into becoming clients for your business on Autopilot.

There’s so much that goes into getting content marketing to work for you, but once you get it right, it can be a powerhouse for getting consistent paying clients to your coaching business.

Read This article to discover 21 online marketing platforms to leverage for your coaching business.

8. Plan your client onboarding process

So let’s say you followed my tried and tested guidelines for starting a coaching business to the core, and you’ll be sure to start getting new clients on a regular basis.

Your client onboarding process as the name implies is a sequence of actions you take every new client through to make sure they are fully registered and are ready to get to work with your coaching business.

Since we’re building our coaching business as one that lives online, here’s my client onboarding process so you can visualize it much better.

When I get a booked call from a potential client, I run a background check on whether or not they are a good fit for me and my business, if they are, I send them a contract and an invoice to finalize the buying process.

I get paid and immediately redirect my client to a dashboard where we could get right on to business.

9. Prepare your toolbox

Your coaching business is at the point of its launch, but you’d be needing some software and tools to make this happen.

At this stage, your coaching business only lives on paper, you need a way to actualize and bring it to life.

Your toolbox will help make this possible, there are several coaching tools and resources, but I’ll be listing the ones that have made my coaching business successful and a major pleasure running.

a. A Website:

For your coaching business to feel complete and professional, you’ll need to create a business website. I call this a tool because my website has become a major traffic driver for my coaching business.

How this works is, Once you create a website and optimize it for S.E.O, it’ll start to rank on google and drive free traffic to your coaching business.

Read this article to learn how to create a business website from scratch.

b. Calendly:

This software allows your clients to book a call to work with you.

Calendly is perfect, especially when you’re running an international coaching business.

It can be really hard to figure out the time zone your clients are in and book the perfect time to hop on coaching sessions without having a mental breakdown.

Calendly has to be a lifesaver for my business as I’m now able to time-block free hours of my week as my available time and my clients only get to choose from those time blocks to have a session with me.

Other amazing tools you should have as a coach include:

• DocuSign: For signing Contracts
• Zoho invoice: For creating invoices
• Paypal: For receiving payments
• Zoom or Loom: For video sessions
• Client Dashboard: This is home for communicating with your client seamlessly, you could try Whatsapp, slack e.t.c.

10. Launch your coaching business

Viola, your coaching business is all set and ready to be launched. Make sure you revisit this coaching business guide for any queries you have.