Coaches help us achieve our ambitions by cultivating the drive, skills and mindset we need to succeed, whether that’s securing a spot on the varsity soccer team or commanding an audience as a public speaker. In the past decade, this type of leadership has moved online and blossomed into a thriving, lucrative industry.
But who coaches the coaches? Scaling a program, identifying ideal clients and determining performance indicators often requires additional training. Enter Maggie Berghoff, whose Online Business Academy™ mentorship program helps entrepreneurs build their telehealth and wellness coaching companies.
Berghoff first launched her functional medicine coaching company in 2017, building on her own healthcare journey and expertise as a nurse practitioner. She now employs seven other team members, with further expansion coming soon. Many of her mentees have also lived with or healed from a health condition, and are now looking to help clients navigate a similar journey.
“It’s not just a prescription or a supplement recommendation,” she says. “It’s like an actual life transformation.”
Why Focus Wins in a Crowded Coaching Market
A big reason Berghoff has succeeded in building her own functional medicine coaching company? Focus. It’s particularly helpful, she believes, given today’s noisy online marketing space, which is brimming with conflicting ads and social media posts.
“I have my blinders on and I’m so focused on what matters most to myself, my team, my clients, my family,” she says. “I’ve dove down some of those paths and things, but I always just come back to… to grow an actual business, I just need to sit down and work and attract ideal clients, help them get great results and then build a team around that.”
In building her business, Berghoff also pulls from her own experiences as a practitioner and as someone who navigated health challenges.
“I’m thinking, what did I need? What holes did I see? What did I not agree with that I experienced in a negative way that I want to make sure I don’t have other clients’ experience,” she says.
Scaling a Coaching Business by Simplifying
When mentees first enter the academy, they’re often doing too much, Berghoff says. She recommends they simplify their focus by identifying their one ideal client and coming up with one way to attract that ideal client.
“I really believe simplicity scales, and that’s when your business is going to get really big,” she says. “It’s narrowing it in.”
She also helps them with strategy, with a heavy emphasis on their pricing model and offerings.
Her mentees, she says, often shy away from offering products and services at a higher price point because they lack confidence. But low-ticket clients aren’t the same as high-ticket ones, she adds.
“Someone who buys the $19 PDF is not the same human that buys the $5,000 coaching program, so they’re not going to get the same results,” she says. “So your testimonials are not going to indicate what you can do because you’re not able to show anyone what you can do in that model.”
If a coach’s goal is deep client transformation, Berghoff says, that’s going to require a higher-touch, more personalized program, which commands a higher price.
She also helps coaches develop their sales skills and tactics, with a focus on storytelling.
“It’s really about getting to know yourself and your story,” she says. “I really teach that stories sell and that sharing the story behind why you do what you do is going to help you attract clients and opportunities. You need the passion to share your story and help others. But passion without the right strategy also doesn’t work. You need both.”
The KPIs That Matter Most for Online Coaches
For many of Berghoff’s mentees, success mostly revolves around their lifestyle, followed by their finances. For example, some mentees might only want to work a few days a week, but then must determine how much money they need to earn to make that possible.
“I always ask my mentees, ‘What is the life you’re trying to live?’ And we’ll build the business around that,” she says.
Berghoff, for instance, focuses on performance indicators like client results, client retention and brand reputation. When she does, her company “naturally just grows year after year after year,” she says.
“This is a very unpopular belief, but I’m not actually looking at the margins, the [key performance indicators], how many leads we called, how many closes we had,” she adds. “I have all that data… but my through line when I’m making decisions is based on, will this help client results? Will this help client retention? Will this help brand reputation?”
Whenever a mentee is struggling, she says, it almost always is because they’re agonizing over those types of common performance indicators, as well as metrics like social media views and followers gained versus followers lost.
“The number one reason you would fail as a business or in our mentorship program is if you get in your own way,” she says.
She encourages her mentees to focus on gratitude, grit and grace. Gratitude, she says, results from being appreciative of what you have while still striving for more. Grit is putting in the hard work. And grace is not putting heavy pressure on yourself if your journey to success looks different than what you envisioned.
She also advises coaches to focus on doing one thing really well, then sticking to it no matter what—even if they get bored or distracted by the latest new idea.
“There are a million ways to build businesses, but if you find your special sauce of where you belong in this space and just stick to that one thing long enough for it to work, that’s the key,” she says.
Featured image provided by Maggie Berghoff
