What I’d Never Do Again: My Honest Ranking of Health Coach Income Strategies

I've tried this time and time again, and the result is the same. They do not sell. Uh, that stinks. I know people generally do not need more information that lacks a human connection. Welcome to the Health Coach Power Community Podcast. I'm Michelle Liotta, ex corporate girl, turn certified health coach with over 15 years of.

Experience growing a successful online practice. I started out with no idea what I was getting into and learned a lot of lessons along the way that have given me the freedom to do the work I love and raise two boys as a single mom. I created a health coach power community over a decade ago to make it easier for health coaches to build a career they love and make the world a better place.

Hello there. Health coaches, I ranked every income generating strategy I could think of for health coaches from heck yes to. You've been warned and listen, I've been at this since 2009, so this list I'm sharing with you today is packed with lessons that I've learned the hard way. You know about one-on-one health coaching products.

Courses, you name it. Now, speaking of online courses, if you've been wondering how to create one that actually sells, even if your list is teeny tiny, I got you. My online courses made Simple workshop is gonna walk you through this exact process, the same process I use with my own clients and courses, and you can grab your spot@healthcoachpower.com slash online course.

Alright, let's dive in at the bottom of the list, which is number 10, creating and Selling Evergreen products on your website. Have you done this one? I hear about it a lot in our Facebook group. Here's what happens. You create a video, you create an ebook, you create, I don't know, a set of meal plans. You pop it on your website like your amazon.com, thinking it's gonna sell like hotcakes.

I've tried this time and time again. The result is the same. I hear from health coaches in our community who've tried it. I'm gonna cut to the chase. These products, they do not sell. Eh, that stinks. I know. The truth is that you just probably don't have enough web traffic, and even if you do, people generally do not need more information.

That lacks a human connection. So what you'll find is that maybe you sell one or two of your products, whatever it is, but it's not what you were hoping for. It's never been what I was hoping for, and you spend a bunch of time and energy getting that online store set up in the first place, and then it just does didly squat.

You've been warned. Alright, number nine is similar, but it's different selling products from another company or a brand. I know a lot of you are involved with this in one way, shape, or form. Let's talk about it. Often it's referred to as multilevel marketing or MLMs. Now lots of health coaches become a sales rep for like, let's say an essential oils company or clean beauty products.

If you go this route and you're working with a company, you're already very enthusiastic about the product. Great. More power to you. That is a valid thing to do with your career and with your life. And if you're getting paid, share something that you're probably talking about anyway. That also makes sense.

So what's wrong now, in many cases, you're going to have to spend money upfront to get involved. So that's just something to be aware of or you're going to need to hit monthly minimum. Also something to think about. You're gonna have it upstream. You're gonna have it downstream. You're gonna get pressure to build a team and message everyone you've ever met in your entire life with a dm, that starts with, Hey, sis.

The biggest problem that I see with sales is that you know when it works well. And you're earning money. And so that seems like a very good thing. And it is, but it will begin to monopolize your time and your energy. I mean, it's just a whole other thing. And if that's what you want for your career, I think that's great.

Go for it. I have nothing against this, but if what you're aiming at is becoming a health coach and you wanna be coaching people, then this avenue I have seen to be a huge distraction and rarely. If ever I've seen a coach who is excelling at both. So you've been warned. Alright, moving. We're right along to number eight, is working with a medical practice.

How many times do we hear health coaches in our community asking, how can I get involved working with a doctor? How can I get involved working with some type sort of functional medicine clinic? It sounds so good, especially because clients would like appear in front of you, no marketing effort on your part, and that sounds brilliant.

You'd be part of this practice. You'd be part of this team. You would feel legit. You would feel like a real health practitioner. Now, the truth is these positions while they exist. Sometimes they are few and far between. I wish that weren't the case, but it is, and you probably won't get paid very much. I want you to think like $20 an hour.

The other thing is that you're gonna be forced to coach according to that practice's style, you know, in whatever format they give you, however they want you to do it. And if they ever went out of business, if they ever changed their model. You would be left with zero clients starting completely from scratch.

So these opportunities within medical practices are growing slowly, but there are major trade-offs that I want you to be aware of. So you've been warned. Now if you are watching this live in our Facebook group or even watching the replay later, go ahead and tell me in the chat, have you tried any of these?

Are you thinking about any of these? Which ones have worked for you? And as always, prove me wrong. I'd be very happy for you to say, actually, Michelle, I make $300 an hour working for medical practice. I will applaud you. Okay. Number seven on my list is working with someone else's health coaching practice or team because sometimes companies or even individual coaches, they will hire health coaches to work with them.

Great. So you might be hired to coach clients or to provide some sort of admin support within a health coaching organization. I know in my business, for example, I've hired coaches to do things like copywriting or provide coaching support to paying clients. Having someone like for me to hire someone who's already a health coach themselves and they understand the industry, that's a huge plus.

So you could be very valuable to somebody's team if you have skills in a related area. Consider, you know, what service could you provide to a coaching business that needs your help? You would still be helping make the world a healthier place, and you'll be getting paid. So heck yes to that, but just a little.

But here, keep in mind, you're building somebody else's dream. When you play a supporting role, don't lose sight of your own. You've been warned. Alright. Moving on to number six, which is small group coaching. We get a lot of questions about this too. Health coaches, gosh, we've been offering small group coaching since the beginning of time.

I know I did it in my own health coaching practice. It's good because you can earn more per hour and you're helping more people and each person is paying less than they would for private coaching. And you know what? The dynamic of a small group can take on a life of its own and be very valuable. So it's like a win, win, win, win.

But here's why it's not at the top of my list. First of all, group coaching requires you to find a group of people and they have to all be interested in coaching with you. At the same time. You know, right now they'll all be ready, willing, and.

And here's the kicker. They all have to be available on the same day and time for meetings. Ah, that's tough. So in order for this to work, you have to have a pretty big audience to draw from or else you're gonna have a hard time filling that group. Which brings me to. Some group members are bound to drop off or are gonna not be able to make some of the meetings.

That's just normal. That's life. So you wanna start with no less than maybe six. Eight inch group, something like that. Because even if you really wanted four on any given week, some members can't make it. Oh, this one's sick. Oh, this one had to take the dog to the vet. They're traveling, whatever. So you might be down to like two people or even just one showing up if you started with four.

That's not, is it? So it's tricky. Try it if you have big enough. Let next up is number five, which is corporate wellness, and this is when a corporation hires.

There's good money to be made here because companies often have a budget for wellness and like they have to spend it. They get this money for the year, and the HR team or whatever, they gotta spend that money. They might as well spend it on you, right? Plus, you're gonna have an opportunity to build lots and lots of connections with people who could turn into paying clients, you know, all the individual employees.

But here's the trick. You have to be able to connect with the right company who's interested in doing this thing and have the budget you have to play in the corporate realm, which is something that many of us have tried to escape for life. No, no, thank you. But if you have the connections or if you can create the connections, it can be super worthwhile for you and your practice.

So just think to yourself. Do you know somebody who owns a company? Do you know somebody who works in HR somewhere? Do you know someone who could introduce you to their HR department? People tend to hire people that they already know, like, and trust, so your personal connections will get you there the fastest.

So that's why corporate wellness, it's mostly a heck yes for me, but it's only gonna be accessible to health coaches who have the right connections. Number four is next. Alright, now we are getting to the good stuff. Number four is a combination of workshops, classes, retreats. I want you to think paid events that you host or run.

You could do a single or a multi-part workshop at a gym or a yoga studio, for example, and people will pay for that. It's like a deep dive into a topic that's important to them. You can also hold paid workshops online, of course. And when you do a workshop like these are inexpensive, it's an easy yes kind of event that people can sign up for.

They're probably not gonna pay your mortgage on their own. I mean, you can earn with them, but it's like, you know, it's a lower cost item. The thing is they double as a really great way to meet new people. And those people may go on to work with you in other capacities beyond the workshop, or maybe you're teaching a class.

You could teach a class at a community center or a community college or something like this. The organization in this case is gonna typically pay you directly. And again, it's a very good way to meet people. I know Shannon, who's one of our fast track members, she teaches classes, cooking classes, um, like this.

And she's in front of a. Group of people who are hanging on her every word, every time she holds a class. So maybe someone in that class who knows, maybe they work in HR and can get you into corporate wellness. This is what I mean by like one opportunity leading to another, and you'll get paid for these classes.

And if you love to travel. I've never done it myself, but lots of health coaches do. You can offer retreats, you can do them locally, you can do them worldwide. The sky is the limit there. So get creative, have guests to workshops, classes, retreats, events of any kind that you are charging for. All right.

Number three on my list is affiliate marketing, which I don't want you to confused with. MLMs. We're acting as a sales rep, which is what we talked about in number nine. That's different. Affiliate marketing means referring people to a product or service that you are not selling, you personally are not selling it.

You are just telling people to go to this link just like you would anyway. Oh, a book on Amazon or a product that you.

Somebody purchases, you will get paid a commission, which is typically a percentage of every sale that comes from your referral. So it's all about making referrals and help coaches. We do this all the time with our friends, with our family, with our clients, when we're writing a blog post, you know, it's a practical way for you to increase income.

It doesn't eat into your time because like I said, doing this anyway, we're always services love, so all you have to do is share your tracking link and when you recommend that product like. Maybe you're writing a blog post or um, in an email or in a Facebook group, even in a text message with your friends or family, someone might ask, oh, what's that water filter you use?

Send an affiliate link. And the cool thing is that you can become an affiliate for as many brands as you like. There's no maximum to that. There's also no minimum sales requirements. Pressure. You get that link, you use it once, great. Use it zero times. Who cares if you use it a million times? Good for you.

So it's super flexible and it's a great place for you to start to stack income with other activities that you do. So think about brands that you're already recommending and that you talk about all the time. Uh, maybe you are always suggesting a certain kitchen tool or skincare product. See if they have an affiliate program.

Very unique program. I just should mention, um, that Health Coaches Love is with Full Script and that is specifically for supplements in the US and Canada. They sell over 375 top quality brands, so it's not about aligning yourself with a particular brand and health coaches can earn up to 35% of every sale, and you can get more info about that@healthcoachpower.com slash fullscript info.

I'll put that information in the show notes that you can check it out later. There's really no downside to affiliate marketing, which is why it's number three on this list. But you do need a sizable audience, and you need to continuously use your tracking links over time for the earnings to stack up in any meaningful way.

All right, moving on. My number two rank income stream for health coaches is online courses. Because with online courses, it gives you the opportunity to serve an unlimited audience and create unlimited earning potential. I love it. As a health coach, I started running online courses and programs with clients all around the world way back in 2010, and I do the same now.

Working with health coaches like you from all over the globe when a course is asynchronous. That's my favorite word, asynchronous. Ah. It's given my life so much freedom, and it's my favorite kind of course. What happens is scheduling headaches go away. People can participate in the course whenever, wherever, however it fits into their life and your schedule as the course creator can be endlessly flexible too, like I'm a mom, so that's really important to me.

Online courses. Think about selling them alone. Think about bundling them with private coaching sessions, however you decide to structure your offerings to best suit you and your client's needs. I think again, it's very, very flexible. But you wanna keep in mind, like when I say online course, you might have, you know, a certain thing that pops to mind, but online courses can really range in size, in scope, in price.

So even if you are brand new and you're like, Michelle, I could never do this, but you won't give a teeny tiny mailing list right now. There's a course for every health coach. There's something that can fit your business and your business needs right now. In fact, I think it's a really awesome way to build Buzz and for you to build confidence in yourself when you're even just starting out.

So whether you're new to coaching or you've been coaching for a while, I want you to. Once again, check out online courses made Simple. It's Workshop. How to put an online course together from the content you need tot sign up.

And finally the number one way that health coaches earn is with private coaching. Of course, it's still the ideal place to start regardless of where you wanna go with your health coaching business. Your school should have set you up, start working with private. So get started, that is my best advice. Just start.

And a big benefit of one-on-one coaching is that you can charge a premium for this high touch service, even if. Because the client, they get to schedule calls when it's convenient for them, right? They can't do that. If it's a group, uh, they get your individualized attention. That doesn't happen in a group setting either, at least not at the same, uh, capacity that you're able to give a private client your attention.

So that's super valuable stuff, and when you're working with private clients, you are going to get a very strong understanding of exactly what people need and how they need it. So this is gonna serve you well no matter where you go next in your business. So there you have it, 10 ways to earn as a Health coach ranked based on my 16 years experience in the field.

Please send your questions and ideas for future episodes to me. Health Coach power.com/text. These do come directly to my phone and I can't wait to hear from you. I'll see you next time.

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