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How to create passive income streams for your coaching business so you can stop trading time for dollars.
As a coach or healer, you often start with 1:1 services. It’s a great way to get your first coaching clients and get your feet wet doing what you love.
But at some point, you’re going to max out on 1:1 clients, either due to burnout or simply lack of time to serve them.
You don’t want to be working 40 hours a week, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year. (Who does?) You started your business to have more freedom and flexibility, not less!
So what’s the solution? Creating passive income streams for your coaching business.
What is passive income?
There are soooo many myths about passive income, so let’s clear up what passive income actually means:
- Passive income is income generated by your business that does not rely on your time and availability to serve clients. Meaning you don’t have to be available every Monday at 3pm for a call or have 24 hours to respond to clients via email or in a Facebook group.
- Passive income is not the same as a group program or a course where you show up for group coaching calls regularly. Group programs and supported courses can be great sources of revenue! But they aren’t technically passive income.Anything that requires your presence to deliver is not passive income.
- Passive income is kind of a misnomer because it’s not totally passive. You do have to spend time validating, creating, and marketing the thing to earn that passive income. But, when done correctly, it should work over time to bring you revenue on an on-going basis.
Why passive income is important for coaches
As mentioned above, passive income is important for coaches because there may be times you don’t want to rely on 1:1 income to grow your coaching business.
Many coaches want:
- Freedom and flexibility to spend their time as they wish
- To take only the 1:1 clients they love serving (and not the ones they aren’t crazy about)
- To help as many people as possible.
Having passive income generators in your business can help you accomplish all of those goals.
Think about it: Even if you make $1000 from passive income each month, that may cut down on the 1:1 clients you need to take, free up your time and energy, and allow you to be choosy about who you serve, while expanding your revenue.
Passive income products can be another way to serve coaching clients
The truth is, not every prospective client can afford to work with us 1:1. One-on-one services are usually the highest tier offering (along with the highest touch service), and not everyone who wants to work with us will be in a place to invest in that service.
Creating a passive income product can help you serve more clients at a lower price point. This offers several benefits:
- You can reach those who aren’t quite ready for your 1:1 services.
- You can serve more people, broadening your impact and your coaching brand.
- Your passive income product can serve as a first step for a client who may eventually sign up for your 1:1 services. (It can be a “starter” product, and if it solves their problem, they’ll be more likely to sign up for another of your offerings.)
Examples of passive income for coaches and healers
There are many sources of passive income that coaches and healers can use to grow their businesses.
Here are some examples:
- Digital products, such as a PDF guide, a worksheet, a spreadsheet, a planner, a calendar, or an ebook.
- A standalone evergreen course, meaning a course offered off the shelf, year round, without weekly calls.
- Audio resources such as guided meditations or training.
- Paid newsletters. While many coaches do free newsletters, you can also consider using a platform like Substack to charge for your content.
- Affiliate income that you receive through being an affiliate for other programs
There are other revenue streams that people *think* are passive income, but that actually aren’t, for example:
- Group programs. This still requires you showing up to deliver the coaching and serve the participants.
- Supported courses. Supported means that you still show up and provide support, whether it’s in the form of weekly group coaching calls, Q&As, etc.
- Voxer coaching. Again, this requires your time and getting back to the client in a timely manner.
- Masterminds. See the note on group programs.
- Membership programs. For membership programs, you will still be on the hook to create regular monthly content for your members.
- Free content. Free content such as blog posts, podcasts, and free newsletters are not passive income in themselves, though they can be used as promotional tools to generate passive income.
- Advertising. Advertising is paid marketing, such as Facebook ads or Google ads. They are meant to generate revenue, but they aren’t passive income. It’s just advertising.
All of the above can be valid sources of revenue for your coaching business, but they do not fall under passive income.
Myths about creating passive income for your coaching business
When people think of “passive income,” they think of income that just arrives to them with without any effort.
But that’s not the case at all. Passive income isn’t actually passive at all. Instead, it’s doing the work up front to generate more future income.
Here are a few myths about passive income:
- Generating passive income takes no work at all. Creating a passive income product still requires you validating, creating, and marketing your product. Rarely does a passive income product sell itself, unless you have an audience as big as Amy Porterfield or Tony Robbins. (Even affiliate income requires some effort on your part as far as sharing the program and possibly offering bonuses.)
- You need to have a super large audience to have a passive income product. Having a passive income product can actually help you grow your audience. You don’t need to have a million or even 10k followers to create a passive income product. You can (and should) create one now, to act as a first tier / tiny offer product.
- It brings in money automatically. Your passive income product doesn’t automatically make you money when you publish the landing page. You’ll still have to market and promote your passive income product. The good news is that you can create a marketing strategy that works for you.
How to create passive income streams for your coaching business
You can start creating passive income streams for your coaching business in these 4 steps.
Step 1: Do research for your passive income product.
First, like with any new offering or product, you want to do market research so you can understand what your clients want and need. (There are a few exceptions to this, such as when you already have a resource that you’ve been delivering and now want to turn it into a passive income product.) To be sure you’re getting the market research information you need, you can download my Market Research Guide for Coaches.
Step 2: Create your passive income product.
Once you’ve done the research to know what passive income product will work best for your business and fit in with your existing product suite, you will create the product. You may need to hire a designer or create it yourself. You will also need to figure out where and how to host your passive income product. This might mean you need a website plug in or separate platform that can host digital products, such as Membervault.
Step 3: Market your passive income product.
Again, it’s not enough just to publish the landing page. You need to actively share and market your passive income product. Build a marketing strategy that includes several channels that will allow you to get the word out about your passive income product. (This will require organic marketing and possibly ads if you have some money to put behind it.) You will also want to be sure to clearly communicate the value of your passive income product with clear messaging!
Step 4: See the passive income come in.
At this point, when you’re regularly marketing and promoting your passive income product, you should be seeing some sales. Like anything, you want to pay attention to what’s working and what’s not in terms of your marketing, so you can adjust and improve your marketing, thereby selling more passive income products as you go.
Want to create passive income for your coaching business?
Sign up for the Passive Income Challenge for Coaches!
In this weeklong challenge, you will choose a type of passive income product for your business and start creating the product, so you can build a new revenue stream for your coaching business.
We start soon! Sign up here.
