(people chattering)
(bell dinging)
- [Announcer] Last call for passenger.
Elise Darma, please proceed urgently to gate.
(dramatic music)
- Do you dream of running a successful business
as an online coach,
but have no idea where to start?
You're in the right spot.
I started and grew my online business,
starting back in 2013
so that I could, honestly, travel
and not be capped by a paycheck.
So in today's video,
I'm gonna walk you through exactly how I did that
and how you can too.
And be sure to stay into the end,
where I'm gonna share with you
how to generate hundreds of ideas
on how you can generate clients
through my favorite tool, social media.
First things first,
you're gonna have to pick a niche.
Now, I know you've heard this information before,
and it could feel overwhelming,
especially if you don't know which niche to pick.
So let's take a step back,
and I'm gonna help you figure out
what could be your niche.
The very first thing you wanna do
is look at your interests, your hobbies,
your background, and your education.
With that, I also want you to look at
what are the things that people
already come to you for
when your friends ask you for advice?
- All right, what do you think?
- In what ways do people
already see you as an expert?
I'm serious, go ahead and write a list.
Make a list right now of all those things
that come up for you,
because your niche is hidden somewhere
in what you already have.
It's not something that you have to recreate.
You already have your expertise,
now we just need to package it
so that you can be a successful online coach.
So once you have a couple ideas percolating
of what your niche could be,
I want you to go a layer deeper
and get more specific.
No, you can't just be a coach to everyone,
you need to be a coach to someone specific.
Who is that specific person who has a problem
that you could help them solve?
For me, when I started my online business,
I chose to target eCommerce brands,
because I was already in that space
and I was already working
as a social media marketer.
So when I launched my online business,
I decided to offer content marketing services
specifically for product brands.
Now, I got lucky.
I kinda fell into this niche.
In fact, my very first client
was a fashion brand.
And so that set the path
for me to work with eCommerce brands.
And that's okay.
Sometimes you get lucky,
sometimes you fall into things.
Sometimes you fall into an industry
where you know literally nothing about it,
but you learn as you grow,
and that's totally okay.
The one trap that most people fall into
is that they're afraid to niche down.
They actually want to appeal to everyone
'cause they don't wanna turn
anyone away from their business.
But this will be the fastest way
for you to end up with zero clients.
And when I say this to you,
I'm speaking from experience.
When I decided to pivot my agency brand,
the one that I started
to help e-commerce businesses,
I wanted to go more broad,
and I wanted to help people in general.
At that time, I was a digital nomad,
so I was speaking to wannabe digital nomads.
I had my eCommerce clients,
and I was starting to teach
Instagram marketing more and more.
I hadn't chosen a niche.
I was trying to appeal
to multiple groups of people.
And honestly, it wasn't working for me.
It wasn't until 2018,
when I went to a couple business conferences
and I noticed,
when my friends at the conferences
would introduce me
to other people that they knew,
they would say this.
"So-and-so, this is Elise,
and she's an Instagram queen."
(record scratching)
- Queen, Instagram queen?
I never called myself that once,
but I realized it didn't matter
because my friends were only remembering me
for that one thing, for Instagram.
They weren't introducing me
as an agency owner or a digital nomad.
That's not what was sticking out to them.
They were remembering me
for Instagram marketing services.
And guess what?
After that experience, I went all-in
on being an Instagram marketer and educator.
And wanna know what happened after that?
Once I went all-in as an Instagram marketer,
our revenue doubled in 2019,
and then we became a seven-figure business in 2020.
So there's gold in doing one thing
and doing it really well.
So when you're in that moment like me,
when you have all these options ahead of you
and you need to choose a niche,
I want you to think about what area
where you can help people get results.
How can you help facilitate
a transformation for someone,
or how can you help them
solve one of their major problems?
Something that's keeping them up at night.
They're literally laying awake in bed,
worried about this one thing,
and you have the solution to it.
When you land on that answer
of what that one thing is
that you can help people overcome...
- Oh, that thing, that thing.
- That is your niche.
Now that you have an idea
of what your niche is going to be,
and keep in mind, it's not a permanent thing,
you can always evolve as you go,
but to become an online business coach,
you gotta start building a personal brand.
Especially as a coach,
this is really important,
because when people hire you to be their coach,
it's kind of a personal, intimate experience.
You're gonna be spending
a lot of time with that person and vice versa.
So the more you can put out content
that allows a viewer on the internet like me
to get to know you as a coach,
the more likely someone is going to wanna
book a discovery call with you
and then sign up for your services.
I know there's probably hesitation and fear
about putting your face and your name out there.
In fact, that was something
that held me back for years.
I built my original agency company
to not be about me.
I created a name called "Canopy,"
and I did not splash my face all over the website
because I wanted the agency to speak for itself.
That worked fine for me, but really,
my agency didn't grow beyond my warm network.
It wasn't until 2016,
when I built my Instagram account
for me personally, Elise Dharma,
that's when I started to see
real traction and real growth.
So speaking from experience,
business changed a whole lot more
when I decided to show up as a person
instead of hiding behind a brand.
So here's a really key piece of advice.
When you're choosing your platforms, choose two.
The first one is gonna be
a relationship-based platform.
So where can you really engage with
and have conversations with your target audience?
It could be LinkedIn, it could be Instagram.
My personal opinion is Instagram
is the best relationship platform we have today.
The second platform you're gonna wanna choose
is a search-based platform.
So in my mind, that's Google or YouTube.
You want to be publishing content
that's searchable.
So when someone has a question
or problem related to your field of expertise,
they can go into Google or YouTube,
find your piece of content and voila,
they've just been introduced to you as a coach.
Now that you've chosen your niche
and you have your social platforms
where you are building your community,
the next thing you need,
and the very key thing you need is an offer.
Most likely, it's gonna be a coaching package
that someone can sign up for
so that you can start coaching them.
As a new online business coach,
your fastest way to making four figures
or five figures online is by selling your time.
One on one time with you.
But I don't want you to just offer one call here
and one call there,
I want you to put together a package of calls
the client can purchase from you.
So for most people,
that might be six calls every week
or every two weeks, maybe even eight calls.
It depends on what transformation
you're gonna help your client get.
And that's a key message to keep in mind
when you're putting
your coaching package together.
Focus on the transformation
that you help your clients.
Focus on the benefits of your coaching package,
not the features.
So at the end of the day,
your client ultimately doesn't care
that they get eight phone calls with you.
But what they really care about
is by the end of those eight weeks,
they're gonna be booked out
in their own client business.
Niche, check.
Personal brand, check.
Offer, check.
What's next in terms of becoming
an online business coach?
The next piece of this puzzle is finding
and attracting your target clients on social media,
bringing them into your business as leads
and then booking them in as clients.
Now, this topic as a whole
is exactly what I cover on my channel,
so literally choose any other video,
and you're gonna find more information
on how to attract clients through social media.
But I'm gonna leave you with this gem,
if I do say so myself.
There's a lot of strategy out there
when it comes to social media,
but for Instagram specifically,
if that's the platform you chose
to build relationships
with your potential customers,
here's what I recommend.
Number one, create reels to get visibility
over onto your profile.
Right now, reels are the best way
to get on the explore page, in front of people
who don't currently know who you are.
So make targeted content
in the form of 10 or 15-second videos
and keep posting them.
Number two, the best way to engage
with your followers is through your stories.
So while you're posting reels for visibility,
use your stories for engagement.
Be sure to share behind the scenes
of who you are, what you do,
and don't forget to use
things like engagement stickers in your stories.
What I mean are things like the poll sticker,
the quiz sticker, the question sticker.
There are so many ways for people
to quickly engage with your stories,
and the more that people do engage,
the more the Instagram algorithm
is gonna share your stories
with even more of your followers.
And number three,
you want to use the direct messages
to close sales.
Now that your reels have generated new followers,
your stories have generated engagement,
you don't wanna neglect your DM's.
This is where sales happen,
especially if you're already using
your stories strategically
and people are replying,
which then creates a private DM thread,
you want to reply to them.
So spend the time to go through your DM's,
send voice notes, send videos if you'd like
for that extra personal touch,
and make sure to cultivate relationships there
because that's where the sales happen.
If you're liking where I'm going with this,
to use Instagram to build your brand
as an online coach and meet your clients there
and actually close sales there,
go ahead and check out this next video,
where I go even more in-depth
on how you can build that personal brand,
all on Instagram.