Everyone is an expert in something. It could be cooking or starting a business or even how to dress professionally. Regardless of your education and professional background, chances are good that you have some valuable knowledge to share with others. Anyone can agree to give knowledge!
Today we sit down with Tony Stubblebine. Tony founded Coach.me from the idea that coaching is the secret weapon of elite performers. Coach.me is a marketplace of the world’s best coaches, matching people with the right coach for their top aspirations. And today on the first day they are again open for applications for new coaches!
What was your motivation for starting Coach.me?
I remember reading this book, Talent is Overrated, that was debunking the concept of innate talent. There is a moment in the book that talks about Mozart, someone widely considered a young musical prodigy. But his father was a music teacher. That was a huge part of his back story. He wasn’t born a genius — his father taught him (coached him, we’d say).
Since then, I have been obsessed with the story behind the success. I wanted to know about every successful person, regardless of their field. I grew up a sports fan, but I was just as fascinated by Project Runway, a reality TV show based on a fashion design competition.
You wish that success was only a matter of hard work. But the completely unfair reality is that so much success is based on your training and experience.
I wanted to address that root injustice – first just for myself. I wondered how I could further achieve my own goals.
I’ve been working in technology forever, and the thing that technology is really good at is distribution. The world’s best coach for starting a home business is working out of his home in some unknown corner of the world. Only his neighbors know about him or can talk to him.
But we solved that problem by moving the coaching online. That’s the goal behind Coach.me. We want to bring all the skills in the world together in one place and then deliver those skills to whoever needs them in the form of personal coaching.
What categories or topics does the site cover?
We are collecting the best coaches in the world, whatever their specialty. That means we have coaching that ranges from business to addiction to diet building.
The number one thing that people want coaching on is business. How do you build a business or grow a freelance career?
Number two is diet. The great thing about our diet coaches is that they all specialize around very specific diets. So if you want to go paleo, we have paleo coaches. If you want to go slow-carb, we have slow-carb coaches. It always bothered me that so many diet coaches in the world were giving generic nutrition advice when most of us really had specific diets in mind.
What is required to become a coach? What is the application process?
I think many of your readers would make great coaches. So, let’s give some history behind where our coaching came from.
In our original coaching experiment, we offered a mix of seasoned subject matter experts with seasoned professional coaches. It turns out that subject-matter experts outperform professional coaches.
And now many of those subject matter experts continue to rely on coaching as an important side business earning thousands of extra dollars per month.
So I have such faith in Work at Home Wife readers. Many of your readers are developing skills as entrepreneurs and marketers.
And coaching is a great business for those who work at home. It is flexible and you can set your own time.
So, if people want to try becoming a coach, we just opened up our platform to everyone (it was open to the coaches we hired).
The steps are fairly straightforward.
#1 We urge you to go through our free certification training. This is the first certification for digital coaching and is based on the lessons we have learned with our core coaches.
#2. Please set up a profile. You can think of it as a digital shingle where you can advertise that you are open for business.
#3. Recruit four people to be your clients. We do not require that these be paying clients, but we do require that each coach has a track record and has coached at least four people.
Here are the links to start the three steps: coach.me/apply
How much can coaches expect to earn? When and how are payments made?
A serious coach relying on us for clients ranges from a few hundred to several thousand dollars per month.
We once had a coach make $7,000 in 24 hours. To do this, you need to focus on marketing as well. This particular coach has already created a mailing list of 500 motivated fans who want to try everything he recommends.
We do a revenue split with our coaches which is usually 50% to the coach and another 20% if they refer the client. We pay monthly by check or PayPal.
We also run an affiliate program. The 20% referral bonus works even if you promote another coach.
We strive to help coaches plan their desired income. We have three ways for coaches to sell their services:
#1 Our Basic Coaching Service is $14.99/week. This is short, chat-based daily coaching. Many coaches can handle 50 or more clients per week. This is how most of our coaches work.
#2. Most of our expert coaches also offer phone calls up to $500/hour. Obviously, you need to develop a valuable specialization to do this job. But the easiest way is to list yourself in our coaching directory.
#3. Trainers who have their own audience and who are strong writers often create training plans. I don’t like the term “information product”, but that’s basically what these are. If you can convert your advice into actionable action (like a couch to 5K training plan), you can put a price on it and sell it. We look for plans that are already selling well and then try to boost them through cross-promotion.
How is the general coaching transaction?
In our digital coaching certification program, we focus on something we call the Momentum Framework. This is the big innovation that coaches need to adopt to succeed online.
Offline, when you’re talking face-to-face, you have a full hour to get to know your client. But digital coaching needs to work differently (and our research supports this).
In the Momentum Framework, you focus first on building a consistent habit. That consistent practice then becomes something that you and the client can talk about every day and learn how to grow, overcome obstacles, etc.
Basically, digital coaching flips your coaching conversation from once a week to an hour, to one minute at a time every day. The client’s daily activities are what make that daily conversation meaningful.
So, how to make that more concrete. In our business coaching, clients come to choose from a menu of leadership areas. A popular area is high priority tasks.
The first thing our coaches do is help them develop the habit of setting priorities for the day.
Then, once that practice has begun, a very simple and natural conversation between coach and client takes place about what the top priority is, what challenges might prevent completion, and finally, the much bigger question: Why is this your top priority?
Over time, that practice combined with regular discussions can turn an employee into an entrepreneurial leader within their company. But it all starts with practice.
What tips do you have for new coaches?
The biggest “a-ha” realization for new coaches is that their job is *not* to tell clients exactly what to do. It is a common misconception that a coach is being hired to be a boss and provide guidance. Coaching is much more successful as a collaboration, with the coach as a powerful listener. Appreciative inquiry is also important – for example, “I see this pattern. How can we solve it?” Often, the client knows the best answer and just needs guidance and support to find it.
After hundreds of coaching relationships fell apart because the coachee failed to practice strong listening skills, I really began to reevaluate my own active listening skills. This is an important takeaway for every part of your life.
Are you ready to become an online coach? visit coach.me Learn more and start your application today.
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