How to Choose a Business Model as a Coach (Without Copying Someone Else's Playbook)

Oct 8

8 min read

Key takeaways

When you're working out how to choose a business model as a coach, remember someone else's model worked because of their skills, personality and path. Copying the model doesn't copy those.
Your energy is useful information. If you're procrastinating and dreading delivery, the model's probably wrong for you, even when the idea is sound.
Group coaching isn't automatically more lucrative than a self-paced product. The better model is the one you'll happily keep delivering.
Coaching often gets poor results when clients haven't done the foundation work first. Packaging that work lets coaching go further.
You can't get clear on the right model while you're flat out on the hamster wheel. You have to stop long enough to do the thinking.

We'd written the sales page. We'd set up the pre-launch. The Engine Room, our group program, was ready to go. It was built to give business owners 90 minutes every fortnight to work on their business, with us there to help.

Then we came home from running a retreat in Bali completely wiped out. And we pulled the pin.

“Absolutely nothing wrong with the concept, the design, any of that. The only part that was wrong with it was we weren't feeling it. I didn't want to deliver it.” — Sam Morris

That decision is the reason for this episode. If you're a coach, consultant or expert and you're wondering how to choose a business model as a coach, this is for you. We've both fallen into the trap of copying what's worked for someone else. Here's what we've learned about getting out of it.

We're Dr Kate De Jong, a PhD engineer turned business strategist, and Sam Morris, a Navy veteran who's spent 20 years in business working out what makes businesses tick and what makes them stall.

Why doesn't copying another coach's business model work?

Their results came from their ingredients, not the template.

Because the model you can see is only the visible part. What made it work was that person's skills, personality and journey, and you're not bringing the same ingredients to it.

It's easy to get pulled in. Scroll Instagram for five minutes and someone's selling the program that made them a fortune. Kate looked one up: a coach who'd made $162,000 in sales from a single $37 product. The natural reaction is “right, I need a $37 product.”

“Following someone else's playbook doesn't always work for you. There's not a one size fits all.” — Dr Kate De Jong

“One person's success is precursored by a very specific journey, by a very specific personality type with specific skills and experiences behind it. And when we try to do the same thing, we are not coming from the same place.” — Sam Morris

There's research behind this too. In Vicarious Learning, Undersampling of Failure, and the Myths of Management (Organization Science, 2003), Stanford's Jerker Denrell showed why learning from visible winners misleads us. The businesses that failed doing the same thing drop out of sight, so risky practices can look like the cause of success. You see the coach with the $37 product. You don't see everyone who tried it and didn't make a cent.

That doesn't mean ignoring what's proven. Some things do work, like giving people a free taste of what you do so they can build trust with you. The skill is telling the difference between a principle that holds up and a template that only fits its owner.

How do you know if a business model is right for you?

Your energy tells you before your bank account does.

Pay attention to how you feel about delivering it. If it feels heavy and you keep putting it off, that's a sign the model isn't for you, however good it looks on paper.

“Whether something feels heavy and you're procrastinating a lot, that's probably a clear sign that you don't really enjoy that thing and it's not something you should focus on.” — Dr Kate De Jong

That's exactly what happened to us with The Engine Room. We'd done the sales page and the pre-launch, but we kept procrastinating. Coming back from Bali drained, when retreats are meant to leave you inspired, was the final signal. Kate's view is that if you're going to dread doing something, you've got to be brutally honest with yourself and pull the pin. We wrote more about that moment in Good at It but Drained by It? Why We Pulled the Pin on Our Own Program.

Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy make a similar case in Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time (Harvard Business Review, 2007). They argue energy, unlike time, can be renewed, and one of the ways it gets renewed is doing work that feels meaningful. For us, reading our own energy is a big part of how we make business decisions. A model that drains you every week isn't one you'll sustain.

It's also normal to take a few goes to get this right. Kate rarely sees anyone nail their business model first time. We've both tried plenty of models over the years, and each one taught us something.

Is group coaching more profitable than an online course?

Not by default. It depends on what you'll happily keep delivering.

Neither is automatically more lucrative. We believed group coaching was the better earner for coaches, until we admitted we didn't enjoy running it.

The big insight from Bali was that we don't get our energy from holding people's hands. We get it from building tools, systems and frameworks that people can take away and use. Our AI Setup Workbook showed us that. Kate describes the prompts Sam engineered for it as little coaches, walking people through a process to get the clarity they need. Some people spent four hours on a single prompt and loved what came out of it.

A self-paced product also changes the maths on your time. You invest the time once to build it, then you can put advertising behind it to reach more people, and the revenue isn't tied to your hours. When everything you sell needs you in the room, you hit a ceiling fast.

“There are too many coaches that are burning out because their entire customer journey is them.” — Sam Morris

Jim Collins' Hedgehog Concept from Good to Great (2001) is a useful check here. He describes it as the overlap of three circles: what you're deeply passionate about, what you can be the best in the world at, and what best drives your economic engine. The Engine Room ticked the skills circle. It didn't tick the passion circle, and that was enough to sink it.

Why do some coaching clients get poor results?

Often the foundation work hasn't been done yet.

When clients haven't done the groundwork on their why, vision, values and ideal customer, paid coaching time gets spent on that instead of on what's next. That's frustrating for everyone.

“This is probably where people don't get the ROI on investing in coaching that they think they're going to get.” — Sam Morris

Kate used to run a six-week course just on business identity. The prompts now let people work through it in their own time, and plenty of people prefer that. Sam's noticed that when a new client sits across from a person, the trust hasn't been built yet, so they tend to edit what they share. Working privately, people are often more forthright. And some of us, Kate included, just think better when we're not put on the spot.

Before she coached business owners, Kate ran a career course called Pathfinding. She'd been teaching the same things over and over, got bored of it, and packaged it into a self-paced course with videos and worksheets. The coaching conversations that followed were richer, because people had already done the hard thinking.

“What do you find that you're teaching over and over again? What are the key concepts that you spend most of your time coaching?” — Dr Kate De Jong

That's the thinking behind the Thriving Business Launchpad, a self-study product we're building so people can work through the Thriving Business Wheel with AI prompts before they ever need to book a coaching call.

So how do you choose a business model as a coach?

Stop running long enough to think.

You have to step off the hamster wheel and do the thinking about who you are and what you want. When we skip that work, we look outside ourselves for answers and end up following someone else's recipe.

Sam described it as the scene in the movies where someone's running beside a speeding train, and a person on board keeps calling out to them to reach out their hand. That's how a lot of people run their business. The hard part isn't knowing you need to stop. It's actually stopping, carving out the time and getting the clarity to use it well.

It does take time. The business identity work takes most people a couple of hours for the first prompt alone. Sam's view is that the time it takes is evidence of how much it's doing, not a reason to skip it.

What can you do this week?

List every offer or program you're running or planning. For each one, ask: would I still want to deliver this on a flat Tuesday afternoon? Note which ones feel heavy.
Write down the three things you find yourself teaching over and over. Could any of them become a workbook, course or set of prompts?
Block 90 minutes off the hamster wheel to answer one question in writing: what do I actually want my business to look like in two years, and does my current model get me there?

“It's invested time. It's not time that you're burning on something that may or may not work.” — Dr Kate De Jong

Listen to the full episode

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the best business model for a coach?

There isn't one best model. The right one fits your skills, your personality and the kind of work that gives you energy. Group programs, one-to-one coaching and self-paced products can all work. What matters is whether you'll keep delivering it well.

Is group coaching more profitable than one-to-one coaching or courses?

Not automatically. Group coaching still needs you there, live, every session. A self-paced course takes time to build, then can be sold with advertising without more of your hours.

How do I know if I should drop a program I've already started selling?

Look at your energy and your behaviour. If you keep procrastinating and you're dreading delivery, that's a strong signal. It's better to be honest early than to deliver something you resent.

Can AI prompts replace a business coach?

In our experience, AI prompts are very good at the foundation work: your why, values, ideal customer and brand voice. That frees coaching time for bigger questions. They don't replace a good coach, but they make coaching more valuable.

Ready to Work Through the Whole Thriving Business Wheel?

The Thriving Business Launchpad takes you through every quadrant of the Thriving Business Wheel with AI prompts you can work through in your own time, at your own pace. Earn. Keep. Grow. Lead.

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