You’re likely making A TON of mistakes in your online business without even knowing it! And these mistakes could be stunting your business growth and making you feel like you are running on a hamster wheel. It’s unlikely that anyone told you that you need the same amount of training, if not significantly more training, in online business and marketing than you do in health coaching! It’s a steep learning curve and in the beginning, you often feel like you are getting nowhere and making zero progress.
Today, I’m going through the five online business mistakes that typically health coaches make in the first few years of business.
- The problem with being too generic (and looking a lot like Walmart!)
- The dangers of being “professional” online
- The top thing to NEVER sell as an online coach
- The one thing that you should avoid as a new coach
- BY far THE BIGGEST MISTAKE new coaches make that keeps them playing small (and not making money!
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ONLINE BUSINESS MISTAKE 1: Not choosing a specific niche
When you’re an online business, the market technically is everyone who’s online, which is billions of people. And we can’t talk to all of them because they’re all different people who have different problems. So we really need to target a subset of the market. You want to be able to say what you do and who you help in 10 seconds or less.
I am a broken record on this topic so if you need more guidance on niching, I have plenty of resources on this.
- Profitable Niche Markets
- How to Nail Down Your Niche Client
- How to Identify Customer Paint Points
- Niching Like a Boss
ONLINE BUSINESS MISTAKE 2: Sounding like a textbook
When you show up online, don’t be Wikipedia. If people wanted Wikipedia, they would just go to Wikipedia. People want to have fun and they want to learn in a way that is different. So really what they want is to be able to connect the people who they’re learning from, and they want authenticity. We have to bring our unique personality and unique flair to everything we do and everywhere we show up online.
You can still show you know what you’re talking about and be yourself. Here are some more resources on how to be authentic in your online business:
- Vulnerability – Do You Need it in Business?
- Is Swearing Unprofessional in Business?
- Authenticity Marketing
ONLINE BUSINESS MISTAKE 3: Not having a signature program
Selling single sessions is a fast track to burnout, and probably fast track to being broke. It is the biggest online business mistake I see health coaches make. You want to sell a signature program. This is something I teach inside my program, Health Coach Accelerator.
If you haven’t created a signature program, here is how to create a signature program.
ONLINE BUSINESS MISTAKE 4: Going straight for paid ads
It’s important when you’re new and starting out that in order for ads to be successful, you need to know who you’re talking to and you need to have that signature program. You need to prove that what you want to run ads for, works organically first. The reason for this is if something doesn’t work, driving more traffic to it isn’t going to make it work. Once you can prove that it works (beta-testing, testimonials, etc), that is a great time to put ads behind it.
I launched my HTMA Expert Course organically five times before I made it an evergreen product and started running ads to it.
ONLINE BUSINESS MISTAKE 5: Being cheap with your business and not investing
Simply put, if you don’t water the plant, it will not grow. This means, Iif you don’t invest financially in your business and yourself, you’re going to be stuck. So hire a mentor or take a course and make sure to invest in the platforms that are going to help your business.
The things that you do need to invest in when you were a new business owner:
- Email marketing software: ConvertKit or ActiveCampaign
- Client management software: Practice Better
- Graphic design software: Canva
- Video conferencing/webinar platform: Zoom
- Payment platform: Stripe
When you’re new, if you’re struggling in business, the best thing you can do is take an online course that teaches you how to build your business, like my Health Coach Accelerator, or hire a mentor to help you, because it’s really hard to figure out these online business mistakes on your own. My one regret early on in my business is I tried to DIY it for so long. As soon as I hired a coach, things took off for me within six months.
