A coaching business can be an auspicious career. It certainly provides a valuable service to people who might need guidance in specific areas of their work, business, or life. But, at the same time, it gives coaches a career that doesn’t just pay the bills. It also gives them a strong sense of purpose too.
A report by the Coaching Federation shows that the coaching business industry is currently the fastest-growing one, with a CAGR of 6.7%. There has also been a 33% increase in the number of coaches from 2016 to 2020. All that said, coaching is a promising industry to be a part of, but it’s also not invulnerable to challenges.
Being a Life or Confidence Coach in the Digital Age
Whether you want to be a confidence coach in Australia or the United States, location doesn’t matter as much as it might have a few years ago. So, for example, when lockdowns happened in Victoria and New South Wales this year during the COVID-19 crisis, we heard of confidence coaches in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and many other areas in the country and world continuing their business virtually.
What these times have shown us is just how much opportunity there now is online. We’re in a digital age where we can coach people remotely via Zoom or an online course. Likewise, our workforce can now be virtual too.
Our Founder, Linh, interviewed one of our Virtual Assistants named Marie, who helps a social media, business, and confidence coach in Sydney with her social media strategies. She provided a lot of input into how a Virtual Assistant can help a coach. You can watch the interview in the video below.
When It’s Time To Hire a Virtual Assistant
The first question that people ask us all the time at Outsourcing Angel is, “is it the right time to hire a Virtual Assistant for my business?” In the coaching sphere, most business, life, or confidence coaches start as solopreneurs. But as their business grows, they continue to experience a sense of overwhelm. Sadly, many coaches end up getting burnt out.
It should be a priority of every business owner and coach to avoid that from happening. So, it’s essential to see the tell-tale signs that it’s time to hire a Virtual Assistant for your coaching business. So let’s discuss some of the signs that we have observed in Outsourcing Angel’s many years in the outsourcing industry.
You’re Constantly Overwhelmed
The first and most common sign that you need a Virtual Assistant for your coaching business is that you are constantly overwhelmed with the demands. Running a coaching business is no joke. You have to market your brand on social media, create content, book speaking engagements, get on many phone and Zoom calls, keep your finances in order, and everything else in between.
The moment your physical or mental health starts to suffer because of business growth and opportunity, your company ceases to become a delight. Instead, it’s now turning into a burden! Of course, no one wants that, especially in an industry like coaching that can be extremely rewarding when done right. So when you’re overwhelmed, that’s one sign that it’s time to outsource work.
You’ve Hit a Growth Plateau
If your business hasn’t been growing financially for the past few months or years, no matter how much work you put into it, the business has most likely hit a growth plateau. At the start, it is good to keep costs to a minimum. But when you’ve hit a threshold where you’re consistently making a profit, and you no longer have the bandwidth to take more clients or create more programs, it’s time to think about hiring a Virtual Assistant.
Human resource is an undoubtedly important asset to any business. But, unfortunately, wages can be expensive in Australia and other developed countries because the cost of living is high. Thankfully, with technology, a small business owner in Australia or the United States can hire a Virtual Assistant from a developing country where living costs are lower and save significant dollars.
You’re Spending Too Much Time on Admin Work
The one type of work that often bugs down coaches is the administrative aspect of the business, like data entry, calendar management, social media post scheduling, and so on. These are tasks that better belong in the to-do list of a Virtual Assistant.
When coaches outsource administrative work, it gives them time to do more meaningful work like networking, creating coaching programs, upskilling, or doing actual coaching work! With a Virtual Assistant working in the background as you do your thing, the business continues to run smoothly.
You Need Help Finding and Converting Leads
As Linh said in the video, “At the end of the day, a coaching business is a business, and it needs marketing.” And that’s very true. Like any other business, a coaching business will need marketing. There are many ways to market a coaching business. You can start a podcast, create a blog, run social media ads, perform search engine optimisation, and create freebies like ebooks and cheat sheets. But all that takes a lot of work.
Hiring a marketing virtual assistant to help execute promotion and advertising campaigns and activities could be the key to accessing more markets and growing your paid client base.
Tasks Your Virtual Assistant For Coaches Can Help In
If you want to become a life coach who reaches clients from all over the country and the world, it’s time to start working with a virtual team today. But some might wonder what tasks they can give to a Virtual Assistant. So here are some things you can start outsourcing to virtual staff today.
Lead Generation and CRM
Leads are the lifeblood of any sales strategy, but it’s also not a walk in the park. 61% of marketers say that lead generation is the most challenging aspect of their role. When starting a coaching business, you likely start with your current network of friends and colleagues. That’s all great until you have reached out to everyone you know.
The next step should be to start generating leads outside your network. The world is your limit. But a lot of work goes into lead generation, and even more work goes into managing those leads through a sales funnel or CRM. Getting a lead generation and CRM Virtual Assistant to generate leads, do research on strategies, and then manage those leads, so none of them fall through the cracks could give your business a lot of growth potential.
Social Media
The next set of tasks a life coach or confidence coach can outsource to a Virtual Assistant is social media-related tasks. Social media is arguably the most effective marketing tool in a small business owner’s arsenal. Getting a social media virtual assistant means a coach can outsource any tasks to manage a social media presence and brand.
In the case of our Virtual Assistant Marie, she creates the content for her client Jade, who runs Focus SME. That content includes graphics and video content. Jade then simply approves the designs when they’re ready to go. Apart from content creation, Marie also takes social media engagement and responding to social media questions off Jade’s plate, so she has time to focus on other things.
Calendar Management
Booking appointments and setting meetings with clients are an integral part of the coaching process. But it’s not necessarily something that a coach has to do themselves. Having a Virtual Assistant take care of calendar management is another good outsourcing opportunity for coaches and coaching business owners.
To successfully delegate calendar management to a Virtual Assistant, one will need to use a few tools to allow virtually operating in this regard, including:
- A cloud-based calendar — We highly recommend using Google Calendar as it integrates with one’s emails and many other programs like CRM tools, schedulers, and project management dashboards.
- A booking app — Use an app where people can set appointments with you. One good tool is Calendly, which we use at Outsourcing Angel.
- Zoom — For clients to book virtual meetings for coaching. A Virtual Assistant can take care of creating the Zoom links and sending them to a client. Getting a paid version is an excellent investment to make, as you’ll also be able to use a Zoom account to hold online webinars and training programs.
Curriculum and Coaching Program Development
One of the core competencies of a life coach or confidence coach is their expertise in creating teaching programs that add value to people. Ideally, most of the coach’s time should go towards creating programs for their client.
But on varying levels, a lot goes into the curriculum process that should also be delegated. Some examples of tasks that coaches can outsource to a life or confidence coach Virtual Assistant include making powerpoints, developing worksheets, sending follow-up homework to students, or keeping a student record.
In Marie’s case with her client Jade, she also helps brainstorm on her programs and research ways to help their clients achieve their goals. In cases where your Virtual Assistant has proven experience in this area, they can also help in this regard too.
Graphic Design
Getting a confidence coach Virtual Assistant to help with graphics is another excellent way to level up your coaching business. Stunning graphics and visuals are a staple to any business brand as it leaves a lasting mark in your target audience’s hearts and minds. With a graphic design Virtual Assistant, a coach can get help in creating visuals and collaterals for the following:
- Logo and other branding elements
- Social media graphics
- Website and social media banners
- Ebooks
- E-brochures and promotional posters
- Coaching program branding
- Video thumbnails
- Email headers
- Keynotes and powerpoints
- Business cards and other print materials
- Catalogs
- And many others
Getting a graphic design Virtual Assistant to work on your print or offline graphics like handheld brochures or flyers is possible too. For example, if you want to become a life coach in Sydney, you don’t need your graphic designer to be in Sydney. Instead, you can hire an online designer to create the layout, send a softcopy, then source printing locally.
Website Management
Building a website or blog for one’s coaching business can create a lot of added benefits. On top of being an online portfolio, it can also be a marketplace for e-books, learning materials, and online courses. The e-learning industry is on a boom as the market will most likely hit $325 Billion by 2025.
So if a life, business, or confidence coach wants to tap into that market, they will need help from a technical Virtual Assistant to manage an e-commerce website or blog. Virtual staff can take care of tasks like updating a blog, uploading products, fulfilling orders, enrolling students, or taking care of customer concerns.
Suppose you want to look into other tasks not included in this list that you can outsource to a Virtual Assistant. In that case, we have a complete guide to all the types of Virtual Assistants and VA tasks that business owners can leverage to free their time. If you want a copy of that guide, you can head over here to download your FREE copy!
Ready to hire a resourceful Virtual Assistant?
Book your 1-on-1 Discovery Call today to chat to our Outsourcing Specialist about what kind of Virtual Assistant you need for your business and we’ll find you a reliable and experienced VA
Tips to Thrive With a Virtual Assistant
Here’s an important reality check— Not all people with Virtual Assistants will succeed. Like anything in business and life, hiring a virtual assistant for coaches takes commitment to get it right and succeed. For a coach looking to outsource work, they’ll need to commit to doing it right. After hiring a Virtual Assistant, try applying these tips to have a thriving and productive relationship with your remote assistant.
Hire for the long-term
More commonly today, business owners hire staff on a freelance per-project basis. But this approach can be counterproductive if you need someone to provide constant support as a per-project staff isn’t always readily available on days you’ll need them. Moreover, hiring per-project staff could lead to higher turnover rates, which means you start from scratch with the relationship every time.
When hiring a Virtual Assistant, business coaches and life coaches should think about hiring long-term Virtual Assistants. Hire a Virtual Assistant on a recurring basis and offer them a fixed rate to work certain hours for you in a day. You can either hire someone part-time to begin with or get them to work full-time at eight hours a day, five days a week.
Onboard Your Virtual Assistant Well
After finding a Virtual Assistant, the next thing you want to do is set an onboarding call or training to explain the ins and outs of the company. When Jade hired Marie, she took time to talk to her Virtual Assistant about the company’s mission and vision.
A great onboarding experience could improve client retention rate by as much as 82%, as studies tend to show. So if you want to retain a client long-term so that you don’t have to keep repeating onboarding, don’t skip the orientation. It also helps to record more technical orientation points in a program like Loom so that your Virtual Assistant can watch the instructional over and over again.
Invest in Training your Virtual Assistant
When Marie took time to learn marketing back in 2015, she spent the next few years upskilling. That avenue became an opportunity for her to grow as a Virtual Assistant and become a massive value-add to Jade’s business. To this day, she continues to learn and upskill, and Jade invests in her in that regard. As one of Outsourcing Angel’s Virtual Assistants, we invest in learning opportunities for her too.
We do this because the client and company grow as the Virtual Assistant grows. Don’t think of education opportunities for your Virtual Assistant as an expense. It’s an investment that promises good returns. Give them time to do research and learning in the week and pay for them to enroll in courses and training to improve their skills.
Select a Good Communication Tool
A Virtual Assistant for life coaches and confidence coaches should have a set communication system to provide the coaches with feedback, updates, and insights. There are at least two ways that the Virtual Assistant and the business owner should communicate. The first way is for project and task management purposes. Marie and Jade, for example, use Trello to manage tasks and projects so that they can both keep track of progress and send each other updates as needed.
The second level of communication is through chat apps. Marie uses WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. There are dozens of tools out there too. For Outsourcing Angel, we like to use Slack as it provides one place for us to throw in ideas. You don’t have to get a fancy tool if you’re only starting. Starting with a chat app of your choice would be a great place to start.
Create a Culture of Respect and Trust
Company culture is a vital key to effective business practice, which is true in a virtual setting. Marie shared with us how important respect is in a relationship and expressed gratitude towards Jade for showing respect by giving her a chance to share her thoughts on some strategies and allowing her to shine in her role.
Cultivating trust towards each other is also a crucial aspect of the virtual relationship. It is entirely possible even if you don’t meet your Virtual Assistants face-to-face daily like you would in a physical office space.
Coaching a Coaching Virtual Assistant
As life or confidence coaches, you help your clients improve by being an effective coach to them. Accordingly, coaches need to apply the same principles with their Virtual Assistants and coach them. At Outsourcing Angel, we love to coach our Virtual Assistants, giving them insight into improving professionalism, proactivity, productivity, and other aspects of their work.
So if you want to start working with a Virtual Assistant today and place them in a program where they receive constant coaching from fellow Virtual Assistants and our internal leadership team, book a discovery call with us today and start your outsourcing journey with us!
Ready to hire a resourceful Virtual Assistant?
Book your 1-on-1 Discovery Call today to chat to our Outsourcing Specialist about what kind of Virtual Assistant you need for your business and we’ll find you a reliable and experienced VA