Taming Technology: How to Easily Manage Your Coaching Business

If there is one thing that confounds coaches and holds them back from building a solid business, it’s technology. You struggle to figure out how your autoresponder connects to your website, and what page to send buyers to after they complete their purchase. You’re confused by the sheer volume of choices available for every aspect of your business. And you can’t even decide if you need a credit card processor, or if PayPal is enough.

You’re not alone. Every business owner goes through this. As a coach though, you really only need a few pieces, and they’re not that difficult to manage.

Your Website

This is your home base online. It’s where potential clients will go to learn more about you. It’s where you’ll blog, post videos, maybe host a podcast, and create your sales and landing pages.

Sound complicated? It’s not. All you really need is WordPress or a complete platform such as Shopify or Woocommerce, and any good VA can help you get that set up and running in just a few hours. This is the best example of putting technology to its best use!

Email Manager

The next step is to begin building your mailing list, and for that, you’ll need an autoresponder service such as AWeber, Klaviyo, or MailChimp. Ideally, you’ll want to create a series of follow-up emails that are sent on a pre-determined schedule. Once again, this is where technology can help you automate this task. These are a part of your product funnel and are designed to promote your products and services to your new subscriber.

You’ll need to create an opt-in offer—perhaps a free report or cheat sheet—then place a form on your website to collect email addresses.

Again, this is not something you must learn to do yourself (unless you really want to) as any good VA can quickly create an opt-in form and put it on your site.

Shopping Cart or Payment Processor

Customers must have a way to pay you, whether for a product or private coaching. The simplest way to set this up is to simply create a PayPal button, then paste the code generated onto your sales page. OR as stated above, choose an all-in-one platform that has payment processing built into the platform.

You’ll receive an email whenever someone buys, and then you can follow up with welcome packets or product delivery.

If you’re looking for a more automated system (and I highly recommend it as a massive time saver), then consider purchasing a shopping cart. These can be self-hosted or monthly services, but they all work similarly. Your cart will take care of product delivery, add your new client to the appropriate mailing list, and even send follow-up emails. You can even choose a cart that tracks affiliate sales if you’d like to entice others to promote your products and services.

Technology doesn’t have to be scary. It may seem a little intimidating at first but just like when you decided to start your business, the hardest part is just starting! Use the availability of modern technology to help you. It can save you stress, time, energy, and definitely money in the long run!