They were discouraged because they’d found someone online who’d said that financial coaches don’t typically make much more than $40,000 a year.
This blog post covers my response to that (INSANE) statement!
Are your earnings limited as a financial coach?
Let’s get straight to the point. My response was this - if you become a financial coach and your goal is to make $40,000 a year, you’ll make $40,000. But if you become a coach and your goal is to make $100,000, you’ll make $100,000.
It has NO EFFECT what someone else says you can or can’t make as a financial coach. It’s COMPLETELY irrelevant what anyone else tells you you can or cannot make as an entrepreneur!!
I get worked up about this because I worked as a high school teacher for so many years, and I was told what my time was worth, what my energy was worth, and what my effort was worth. And monetarily, it communicated to me that they were worth nothing.
And that just wasn’t true.
Fast forward three years and I run a 6-figure business. Don’t let ANYONE else tell you what your earning potential is as an entrepreneur!
ANYWAY, it annoyed me enough that I started thinking. “What if other aspiring financial coaches are thinking about taking this plunge and going all-in with this, but the very same doubts are holding them back?"
I say it all the time - being a financial coach is the best job in the world, and I don’t say that just because I get to help people every day. Of course, that’s a massive part of it, BUT it’s also the best job in the world because of the freedom it allows me in my life. And, as I mentioned earlier, the earning potential is limitless.
12 income streams for financial coaches
I immediately came up with 12 different income streams that a financial coach can have inside their business. I’m 100% sure there are even MORE income streams that you could add as well.
I truly believe that all 12 of these income streams are incredibly lucrative and also highly sustainable. They’re all very realistic, and I’ve seen a lot of coaches do these.
#1: 1-1 Coaching
I put 1-1 coaching as the first income stream because it truly is the best FIRST income stream to have.
I see coaches sometimes wanting to start with a $7 ebook or a $20 course or membership, and the truth is that it’s SO MUCH easier to sell a high ticket 1-1 coaching program rather than a low ticket product or membership.
This seems counterintuitive, right?? It SEEMS easier to sell a $7 item over a $2,000 service, but it’s not. Why? Because the $2,000 price tag weeds out the people that aren’t serious about making a huge transformative change in their life.
It draws in the people who are looking for a real-life change and will do whatever it takes to get it. It ensures that they have skin in the game, they care about the outcome, AND it gives YOU, the coach, the energy exchange that you need to get them there.
Have you ever bought something for $7, and it changed your life? It made you work hard and got you the exact results you were looking for? It made you such a loyal customer that you had to tell absolutely everyone about what you found and the transformation that took place. For $7? NO, of course not. But a high ticket 1-1 coaching package has the power to do that. That’s why it’s so much easier because it actually delivers results, and people get the transformation that they’re looking for!
1-1 coaching is THE place to start!
This is why I highly recommend you start with 1-1 coaching. Not only is it so much easier to sell in the beginning, but it‘s also so much better for you to help people achieve really strong results fast.
A lot of aspiring coaches STOP after completing #1. They lack the creativity to develop new offers that solve different problems, and they plateau or burn out with 1-1 coaching.
Once your 1-1 coaching is full, or at your capacity, you have the opportunity to add other non-competing services or products to your financial coaching business to tap into the audience you have built.
This is why it’s so infuriating to me when someone says that financial coaches can only make $X (some completely arbitrary number). They must ONLY be looking at 1-1 coaching, which is essentially trading time for money, and YES, that is finite.
BUT wow, open your mind and get creative!
#2: Group coaching/high-level mastermind
I personally love this income stream. It’s a great transition from 1-1 coaching because you are essentially teaching the same thing, but now that you’re changing the deliverables and how you teach it. You can do so in a scalable way that still transforms lives.
What trips many financial coaches up is this - you cannot start group coaching until your 1-1 coaching is at capacity. When you get to the point of making a waitlist, instead of making a waitlist, you could start transitioning from 1-1 to group coaching instead.
#3: Courses/memberships
Courses and memberships are pretty close to each other, so I’m calling them one income stream in this blog. They are also a natural progression after your 1-1 is at capacity, and you’re ready to scale.
Another effective way to integrate this is to do a hybrid. That’s what I do in my program, “12 Weeks to Wealth." It includes 1-1 sessions with me, but they also have recorded content that’s released each week during the program, going in-depth on important topics.
You can also have a Facebook group or a separate community as a part of your course for added accountability and community.
The key for this stream of income is to create a great course that gets results and ensure you’re driving traffic to it. It will take a lot of social proof and traffic, BUT the pro is it doesn’t take a lot of TIME, so this is very scalable.
I use Kajabi for my courses, and I lOVE it. You can find a full review of the pros and cons in this video here. They also offer a free 30-day trial, and you can use the link in that video summary to try it out!
#4: Small business consulting
I absolutely love this one, and I’m realizing that I’m saying that about all of these up to this point, but it’s TRUE!
Before becoming an entrepreneur, I had a false sense of how well put together businesses are. They are not. I’ve seen the books of about 100 small businesses. The issues I see with personal finances in the general public (such as credit card debt, cash flow issues, living paycheck to paycheck) are LITERALLY ALL THE SAME for small businesses. They have all of the same problems.
A lot of small business owners are visionaries. They’re people that love networking and serving, and they started a business out of a passion. Most of the time they’re not driven by organization, statistics or analytics. They need assistance in these Type A areas.
Helping business owners increase their bottom line, hire more people, and uphold processes or boundaries is all so impactful.
#5: Workshops (seminars, corporate workshops)
Although I’ve never done PAID workshops, I have done them as lead generation, and these are SO FUN. I love the energy of these. The community of people coming together to learn and increase their financial literacy really energizes you as the coach.
One of your services as a coach could be providing corporate workshops for companies. Maybe you approach the HR department of a big company and do paid workshops for the employees, as a part of the company giving back to them.
You could also organize the workshop yourself or do it in collaboration with other industry professionals, like real estate agents or advisors.
#6: Online or in-person conference
An online or in-person conference is similar to a workshop, but on a much larger scale. I worked with a business owner whose entire business was putting on one conference a year. That was her only job. It was amazing.
It was like throwing the biggest party EVER, and then she had many months off. I remember working with her and just thinking… this is SO COOL.
If this interests you, I would start by attending some of the financial conferences that already happen around the United States. Find out what you like about them and what you would do to improve them.
#7: Write a book
Switching gears entirely, number 7 is writing a book. I love this option and hope to do this someday. A huge pro is that, similar to a course, once it's created, it then goes on to make passive income for you in the future.
You still have to spend time creating and THEN promoting and selling it, but the scalability of this is limitless!
Self-publishing is getting more and more popular and accessible for people. PLUS, we have Amazon’s Print On Demand service that makes this not nearly as far fetched of an income stream as it was 30 years ago.
#8: Hosting a retreat
I went on my first financial coaching retreat in January 2020, and it was like a mastermind but all combined into a single weekend. It’s a fun format because, especially as online entrepreneurs, we don’t get to meet our peers or people that we network with very often.
Depending on what niche you work with, this could be a great service for you too. Some ideal clients would be small business owners, healthcare professionals, advertising and marketing professionals, real estate agents, high earners, etc.
To narrow this down and see if it’s feasible for you, I would focus on the question, “Who is going to want to network with other professionals?” Who will want to get away from work, and who needs that energizing break with human interaction? Basically, who are the workaholics that also really value rest and investing in themselves?
Another example that I’ve seen of this is the retreats that the sharks on Shark Tank do each year for the businesses that they invest in. In that scenario, I think the investor pays for everyone to come together, and that wouldn’t be the case for you, BUT it’s still a cool real-life example of what this could look like.
#9: Speaking gigs
Professional speaking is such a valuable skill. For the first several years in my business I used these as lead generation and would only do paid opportunities now.
This doesn’t always mean in-person events either. I know many people who have large audiences and charge when they are invited on podcasts and YouTube collaborations.
Speaking at conferences, corporate events, and other organizations is a great way to utilize this income stream as well.
#10: YouTube/Google AdSense
The process for each of these is very similar. To harness YouTube AdSense, you need 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours before you can have ads. For Google AdSense, you need high-quality content and sufficient traffic.
The YouTubers that I have spoken with took about a year to get monetized. After that, their ads revenue steadily grew to a few hundred dollars a month.
Personally, it took me about 7 months to get monetized and to date I've made over $3,000 from youtube ads alone.
It’s a little bit of a longer game, BUT just because you aren’t earning YouTube ads money doesn’t mean that YouTube isn’t earning you any money at all.
#11: Affiliate marketing/brand deals
Even though I didn’t earn a CENT from YouTube itself for eight months, I still earned over $6,000 passively from affiliate marketing during that time.
In the beginning, I earned $1,404 in my first 60 days on YouTube. It’s not easy, but all things considered, it’s pretty quick! AND I started this at the height of quarantine.
I do a full video here on affiliate marketing and my exact process for how I got started with it and how I've maximized my earnings to make over $40k with it in 2021.
#12: Merch
This could be cash envelopes, charts, shirts, budget planners, etc. There’s so much you can sell! I love this one because it’s so easy now with Facebook marketplace you can really test the market and see what sells.
Facebook marketplace lets you post and sell on their platform for FREE. Once you know something sells, you can join Etsy and eventually Amazon or sell directly to the consumer on your website.
Once you test the market and find something that sells, it’s a double win for you because you get the product’s profit margin and it ALSO helps spread your brand awareness.
As the 12 streams of income illustrate, there are so many options for earning money as a financial coach. So don’t ever let anyone tell you how much you can make as a financial coach! To learn more about my Become a Coach program click here: https://www.financialcoachjess.com/becomeacoach
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