Online Academy
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Lesson 1. Product
Online Coach Academy
Lesson's transcription

Hello everyone! Today we’re going to talk about creating a product line and how to do it effectively. A well-structured product line practically sells itself, which means that here, as you understand in this course we’re trying to make sure your sales efforts are minimal. Ideally, you invest once, and then it continues to work for you.

So let’s dive into the details of creating a product line. At the initial stage, we work on personal coaching and consultations. Why is this important? Because here, you don’t need a team, complex course recordings, investments in production, or a detailed audience analysis before creating a product.

Imagine you create a course: you record it, hire a cameraman, a designer for the website, an editor, and perhaps a methodologist. Then it turns out that no one needs your course. It would be disappointing to spend time and money on something that no one buys. So, if you're just entering the online space, your personal coaching and guiding clients to results is already a product in itself.

Your consultation is also a product. Don’t complicate things at the initial stage, especially since you haven’t yet worked enough with people online to understand what they need, how to structure a course so they finish it instead of dropping out after two days, what they’re lacking, how to provide feedback, and how to structure interaction so that people actually get results and continue buying your products.

Otherwise, you’ll have to find a new audience and new clients every month, which is hard to scale. If your clients renew, if you have repeat clients, if your products are bought again, you grow every month. But if clients buy from you once and then never again, you’ll have to invest in selling your products every time. And with each passing month, the cost of acquiring a subscriber, lead, or client increases. Eventually, you’ll realize that this becomes too expensive and unprofitable.

Therefore, it’s better to start with personal coaching and consultations. These are your two essential products. You don’t need to invest much in them or record anything. But let me explain how you can simplify working with clients through a product. First and foremost, focus on personal coaching and consultations. The next level includes mentorship or more in-depth personal work with curators, for example, when you can afford to step back a little. When you have so many clients that you can’t handle them all, you raise your rates, keep a few really good clients who are willing to pay more, and pass the rest on to curators. The curators help you with the routine work, communicate with clients in chats, support them, and so on. This is the first stage of scaling.

The second stage of scaling is when you launch courses. These are the products that can be automated, where you don’t have to be personally involved, and where curators can work. When you already have a large flow of audience and a big enough budget to attract new audiences, such as for traffic, you can launch your courses and live off what is seemingly passive income.

What is personal coaching? It’s your one-on-one guidance. Consultations can be about nutrition, breaking down specific issues, but the main personal coaching involves guiding a person to their goal. The key here is that you don’t need to sell, for example, eight training sessions, a meal plan, or lifestyle coaching. Of course, you should have a program and structure for this program, but here we are selling the client’s result. You, as a specialist, as a coach working in a soft niche, need to tailor everything to the client’s request. A person comes with a specific request, and you, as a specialist, see what they need to adjust, what program to create for them, and you do a decomposition. Decomposition is when we break down a big goal into small steps.

For example, someone comes to you wanting to lose weight. If you say, “We’ll work for a year, and you’ll have a great body,” the client might respond, “A year? Where will I be in a year?” It’s important to break the goal down: explain that in the first week they will see certain results, after two weeks they will notice certain changes, after three weeks they will start to feel their body better, after a month they will already see a couple of kilograms lost, and so on.

You should have a basic program, files, and services, but overall, you adjust the program to the specific person. Personal coaching is better than various courses because you guide a person to their goal, understand where they’re struggling, and can adjust the program in real time to lead them to success. This is really cool. Even if you’re new to online coaching, you can adjust the program and lead a person to their goal. Plus, personal coaching and high rates are currently trending. People are willing to pay for personal attention.

How do we sell personal coaching? We still sell through sales funnels and will be creating our own funnel, which we’ll discuss. The sales funnel leads to something. There are two options: either the sales funnel warms up the client for a free diagnostic session, where the person fills out a detailed questionnaire to filter out freeloaders and those who aren’t a good fit for you; or the funnel leads to a free consultation. You must include a questionnaire — I’ll give you an example of a questionnaire for free consultations so that you immediately understand whether you want to work with this person, whether there’s something to talk about, and how to structure the communication.

We sell the first personal coaching through a product interview: we immediately identify the internal motivation, needs, pain points, and emotions of the person, and sell the first personal coaching based on these. Personal coaching is primarily sold to people who are already in your network, your client base. We interact with them, work with them, make the first case studies, and then warm up the people for the consultation. That’s one option. A person enters your funnel, warms up through it for a free consultation, fills out the questionnaire, and you see whether you really want to work with them, whether they are your target audience. If yes, then you have a call during the consultation and sell the personal coaching.

If you want to conduct paid consultations — go ahead, you can warm up the audience through the funnel for paid consultations. You can also make the consultation free if the person signs up for coaching, and its cost is either included in the coaching fee or not. You can decide this yourself. But I recommend starting with a free consultation until you develop your sales skills and set up the funnel to achieve good conversion rates. Conversion is the number of sales from the people you have funneled in. If you funneled in 100 people, how many of them will buy the product? For this, we test, interact with the audience, and get feedback.

Until this process is set up, I recommend holding free diagnostics and consultations because it’s easier to sell during them. If you get too burned out from free consultations, charge a small fee to make yourself more comfortable. Another option is to create a small product called a Tripwire, through which you later sell your main personal coaching. What should this Tripwire be? Don’t make it something low-quality. We put in the same effort to sell both expensive and cheap products, and if the cheap product is bad, you’ll spend a lot of energy selling it, but it won’t lead to sales of your main product because the person will come, see it, and say, “What is this? I’m not buying expensive personal coaching from someone who sold me such a lousy product.”

What kind of product do we create in this Tripwire? It’s not a set of workouts, please don’t sell that, no one will do it, or they’ll postpone it indefinitely. We create a product that is clearly time-bound, for example, for 14 days. You give access and conduct, for example, an intensive. It should be aimed not at providing incredible value, although the person should get results and take the first steps towards achieving the result. The main thing in this intensive is not just to provide value, but to increase the client’s awareness so that they start to understand that working with you is truly beneficial and that they want to continue.
Why Do You Need a Sales Funnel from a Product Line?

Let’s imagine a situation where a completely cold client contacts you directly and asks for the price of your service. Most likely, this client will drop off as soon as you name the price, regardless of whether it's $1 or hundreds of thousands—at that moment, your value to them is zero.

To avoid the sound of crickets after you respond to a client, it's important that the client is already warmed up during their first interaction with you. They should have had the chance to get to know you, your services, and to make an informed decision to engage with you. This is why sales funnels and product lines are essential.

Additionally, a product line is important for attracting an audience to your blog for further nurturing—by offering something valuable in exchange for a subscription, and using a tripwire to reduce the cost of acquiring a subscriber.

But wouldn’t it be great if this entire process were fully automated, so you don’t have to work with each client first for free, then for cheap, and only later for the amount you initially intended?

So let’s break down what a sales funnel consists of and how to automate it.
what a sales funnel consists of
1
Lead-magnet
This is free material that we offer in exchange for either the client's contact information on the website or a follow on Instagram
2
Tripwire
This is an affordable product that the client purchases to get acquainted with us. Through the tripwire, we recover traffic costs and sell our main, more expensive product.
3
Main product
The product that generates our primary profit.
4
Profit Maximizer
The product through which we increase our profit (for example, it could be an additional product that solves another client problem or an upgrade to a longer-term partnership/larger service package). The profit maximizer is sold to the warmest clients.
In the upcoming lessons, you will be creating both a lead magnet and a tripwire. However, at this stage, let's focus on defining what your core product will be, as we will later conduct product interviews and attempt to sell this core product to your most loyal audience.
Lesson's transcription

How should your main product look? Your personal coaching isn’t just an abstract service. We need to build a service: set rates, create service packages, and deliver them correctly. Today, I'll explain how this could look, and you can choose the format that suits you.

The first thing to consider: we’re not selling a single session or even three sessions, even if your product only consists of them. This is not ideal; it’s better if you have a comprehensive product.

Don’t sell sessions one by one. Our goal is to sell not the interaction but the result. What result will a person get from one session? None. Over a month of coaching, they’ll get minimal results. It’s better to sell comprehensive coaching, for example, for 3, 6, or 10 months. Some clients even buy packages for 10 months or a year. If you don't offer such packages, you miss out on potential clients. Many think no one will buy long-term coaching, but in practice, people do. I recommend selling

interactions starting from 3 months but offering a trial month for those hesitant to commit long-term. Let the trial month be more expensive than a month in a 3-month package.

Your first task is to define packages and rates: how much does one month, 3 months, 6 months, 10 months, or a year of coaching cost? Write this down so that during consultations, you won’t get confused and can confidently state the prices and services you offer based on the client’s request.

I also recommend, if you’re coaching on both nutrition and exercise, splitting these services into two packages: one for workouts and another for nutrition and support, as well as a combined package. This creates an entire product line. Clients might come with different needs: some only need workouts, while others only want nutrition guidance. You can sell package services, including additional interactions like breathing exercises, bodywork, or motivational calls. This will significantly increase your revenue.

How do you organize this? Most of the work will take place in a personal chat with the client.

You’ll provide a questionnaire, a brief, and draft the program, giving feedback in the chat. You should call the client weekly to monitor their progress, adjust the program, and support them. This is important to keep the client motivated and continuing their work with you.

Besides the chat, create files for each client where all information is updated in real-time. This is an accessible format, not just a PDF file. The client can always access and see all the necessary information. This will enhance your service and create convenience for the client.

What about workouts? There are several options. You can conduct them live via Zoom. If you need to see the client and correct their form, it’s better to conduct live sessions. However, online sessions lose value compared to offline. If you can record the sessions, it’s better to do so. You can create a workout library, recording techniques and exercises, and assemble a personalized program for the client. Upload the videos to YouTube with a private link and embed them in the client’s file, updating them weekly.

If you work in areas like stretching, yoga, or pilates, it’s better to record "follow-along" sessions.
You can sell your personal coaching and offer these recorded workouts as a bonus. This is an excellent option: if the client wants to use the workouts, they can; if not, they can still follow the program. You can record three levels of training: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. This will keep the client motivated and help extend your coaching relationship.
Recording workouts isn’t difficult and can be done quickly. I recommend uploading them to

YouTube and embedding them in the client’s file on a platform like Notion. This will be convenient for both you and the client: all information in one place, nothing gets lost, and the client is always informed about the program.
Your task now is to define rates, package services, and how you will deliver workouts. When a client asks during a consultation or interview how your coaching works, you’ll be able to confidently explain how it will operate, even if you’ve never done personal coaching before.
Homework Assignment
Define Your Rates, Packages, and Core Product:
  • Rates: Clearly specify the cost of your services for different durations (e.g., one month, three months, six months).
  • Packages: Outline the various packages you will offer, detailing what each package includes (e.g., number of sessions, types of interactions).
  • Core Product: Describe the main product you will offer, including its features, benefits, and how it delivers value to your clients.
Consider Your Tripwire Product (Optional):
  • Think about what kind of tripwire product you could create to attract new clients.
  • What valuable content or service can you offer in this tripwire product that will provide an introduction to your core offering?
Prepare for Product Interviews:
  • Your core product will be sold through product interviews (to be covered in the next lesson). Prepare to discuss and present your product effectively during these interviews.
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