Updated: March 15, 2019
A friend works as a freelance social media manager, and handles the Facebook pages of several restaurants. She’s earning good money and is quite happy with her workload.
Two years ago, she became pregnant and worried that she and her husband might not be able to cope with the new expenses of having a baby. She knew she had to think of a solution before their household costs drastically rise.
Fortunately, she’s been working as a social media manager for more than three years already. She’s good at what she does and I told her that her pregnancy is a sign that she needs to turn her freelancing career into a freelance business.
Fast forward today, she now has a coaching business where she teaches newbie freelancers how to do social media management. Additionally, she’s been able to expand her client list to include beach resorts, which helped increase her income.
How did she do it? Here are the steps she took.
1. Document your work.
After working as a freelance social media manager for several years, she already has a process for doing things, including sales and marketing, up to invoicing and other administrative tasks.
She can do all these from memory. But she knows that if she is to teach these to someone, then it’s necessary to document and write down her process.
2. Design a course.
Once done with documenting her work process, she began designing a 1-month course that’ll serve as guide to teaching others about social media management.
Beyond the technical aspects of the job, she also understood that a proper mindset is needed to become successful at freelancing. Thus, she added modules on this as well.
3. Develop a business plan.
After working out her course details, she then developed a business plan for her coaching business. She’s new to this type of venture, so she took the time to read and learn about teaching and mentoring others.
Moreover, she also did a feasibility study to know if this venture would be profitable, and how many students or mentees she can manage, while still doing her own social media management work.
4. Launch your course.
According to her, one of the best things she learned from me is to “Fail fast and fail forward.” That’s why the moment she’s done with her business plan, she wasted no time implementing it.
She announced her online course and coaching services on her social media accounts. And took in a handful of students as her initial batch of mentees.
5. Hire your course graduates.
The moment she told me about her plans for a coaching business, I immediately knew what she’s trying to accomplish — and that’s to eventually scale up her social media management business.
Once her child is born, she knew she’d have less time to do her social media management. Thus, she created a coaching business so she can duplicate herself, and have a pool of freelancers to whom she can outsource to.
Her plan was a success. And while she’s now busy taking care of her newborn, her social media management business keeps on growing, thanks to her coaching side business.
Final Thoughts
If you have the skills and experience, then a coaching or mentoring business is an income opportunity you can explore. This is good especially for freelancers, who can eventually outsource their own work to their students or mentees.
Moreover, just like a few people I’ve met, you can also expand your coaching business into a paid membership group. This allows you to earn from monthly fees instead of just a one-time enrollment.
Lastly, for your business transactions, you can use PayPal to accept payments because it has features such as invoicing for your coaching business, and subscription billing in case you want to develop a group membership program.
And that’s it! I hope you learned something new today. If you have questions, then feel free to ask them in the comments section. Thanks.
Disclosure: I am a PayPal Philippines freelancer mentor. This post is part of a campaign to engage and grow the Filipino freelance community.
I REALLY APPRECIATE PEOPLE WHO CAN DO BUSINESS OF THEIR OWN. I TRIED TO FILE MY LEAVE FOR ONE YR FROM GV’T SERVICE AND STARTED A MINI- GROCERY BUSINESS. PROFIT WAS NOT THAT BAD. IT WAS DOING QUITE WELL BUT I FOUND MYSELF YEARNING FOR MY PREVIOUS WORK IN THE GOVERNMENT. I CAN NOT GET RID OF MY COMFORT ZONE. SO I AND MY HUSBAND CLOSED THE GROCERY. NOW WE ARE BACK BEING EMPLOYEES. THE MORALE AND PERHAPS SATISFACTION BEING AN EMPLOYEE WERE MEANT FOR US. BUT THROUGH THE HELP OF THIS BLOG WE ARE ABLE TO MANAGE OUR FINANCES BETTER AND IN SOME WAY GOT MY PROMOTION THROUGH THE NETWORKING OF FITZ. TNX FITZ