What it Takes to Make Your First $250K in Coaching

Everyone talks about six figures, a six-figure coaching practice, your first $100,000.  And that may be a great first milestone to work towards. But what about the next level – $250,000? What does it take to get there? To understand what it takes, let’s look at how you get to your first six figures – it’s easier than you might think!

Simple Formula to $100K in Coaching

In spite of so many coaches struggling in the first few years of their business, getting to $100,000 in coaching is not that hard. Here are the basic steps that will easily allow you to do that:

1. Specialize in a “hungry” niche market

2. Create a coaching program for them

3. Market this program via articles, teleseminars, and simple strategic alliances

This is all there is to it, really. To create $100K a year, you need to generate $8,500 a month. And that means getting 15 people to pay you $567 a month; or 5 people paying you $1000 for private coaching and 10 people paying you $350 a month for group coaching; or a combination of some coaching and speaking income.

At any rate, it doesn’t take a lot of clients to create your first six figures as a coach.

The Journey to $250K in Coaching

I remember the day I realized that my income surpassed $250K.  It hit me then that it’s a quarter of a million dollars. Such a wonderful ring to it! It’s the first time the word “million” was in my income!

$250K starts with several mind shifts.

I think the most important mind shift is 1) deciding that you want to grow your coaching practice to the next level. Many coaches are completely happy operating at their current level and there is nothing wrong with that. But this is where you can’t have a “wishful thinking” attitude.

Last year Lori Davila was like many coaches, working hard in her business but deep down knowing she wanted something bigger, yet not knowing exactly how. That was what led her to attend the Coaching Millions Super Summit.

All too often people go to conferences, come home with a bunch of notes, and don’t do the legwork to make real change in their business. So before Lori left, she decided that rather than let this be a conference of gathering information, that she was committed to making it an experience of deep transformation.

One of the key shifts that Lori got from the event was hearing the stories of very successful coaches who had started from nothing and truly built empires just by shifting their beliefs and taking the right steps. Hearing that they had made the journey from where she was to something bigger fired her belief and helped her realize “if they can do it, I can too!”

So 2) seeing that it was possible and already done by others is another key step to reaching your next income milestone.

Another major shift was the realization of how important leveraging your time was by 3) moving away from a one-on-one client coaching mindset. Lori quickly saw if she wanted to help people on a greater scale and boost her income, she needed to 4) develop a line of products.

When Lori got home, she made the space in her life and discovered the products came POURING out of her. That big discovery was the spark for her core product  “The Secret Sauce for Creating Wealth Doing What You Love”.

These fundamental changes in Lori’s business not only exploded her income, but also made more time for her to enjoy her life and spend time on the lake with her husband.

“I have my new website, blog, products, thousands of subscribers, retreats for wanna be writers, and I’m changing the world!” says Lori. “The summit completely motivated me, and I am projecting $250K in revenue my first year!”

So, how do you get from $100K to $250K in coaching in more practical terms?

Designing a coaching program, getting your group coaching going, and creating a few educational products is a great way to reach $100K. But to get to the next level a few other things become important:

1. Start a membership-based mentoring program, also known as a coaching club, which allows you to work with a lot more clients and significantly grow your continuity income every month.

2. Getting a virtual assistant and outsourcing becomes essentially at this stage in your business – there are simply not enough hours in the day to do it all, so delegating lower-hourly-pay tasks is key.

3. Becoming more skilled at strategic alliances and joint ventures will help you get to that next level much faster. In fact, it might take only ONE good deal to push your income over the edge and into $250,000.

4. Creating different levels for people to experience your value. A line of educational products and coaching programs (one for each goal, topic, or level) will allow you to leverage your time better and become a highly valuable resource in your niche.

5. Automating many of your processes, systems, lead generating, sales, and other tasks you used to do manually is going to free up the time and energy for you to do what you do best!

6. Stop using coaching jargon and start using the language of your prospects!

But there’s one very important factor that many people continue to dismiss… Surrounding yourself and spending time with people who have already reached that level.

You can’t cheat the process of shifting your thinking, which takes listening and watching other people who have achieved YOUR goal. And that’s important at EVERY level of the business game.