5 things to know from this article
- A one-page coaching business plan covers who, problem, offer, price, clients needed, where clients come from, costs and monthly checks.
- The US Small Business Administration says lean plans are typically one page, and the long traditional ones are mainly for lenders and investors.
- The line that does the real work is the sum: income wanted plus costs, divided by your price, gives the number of clients you need.
- Write the problem in your buyers' words, not coaching words.
- This is a made-up example, not financial or tax advice. Check the rules where you live.
A coaching business plan only needs one page. It says who you help, what problem you solve, what your offer is and what it costs, how many clients you need for the income you want, where those clients will come from, what it costs to run, and what you'll check each month. Below is one filled in for a made-up coach, with the sums shown.
You don't need a 30-page document unless a bank or investor is asking for one. For a coach working on their own, a page you'll actually look at is worth far more than a big one sitting in a folder.
Why one page and not thirty?
Because the long version is written for somebody else. The US Small Business Administration describes two kinds of plan. Traditional plans can be dozens of pages long, and lenders and investors commonly ask for them. Lean plans stick to the main points, and the SBA says they're typically only one page.
If you're coaching on your own and not borrowing money, you're the only reader. So write the plan you'll look at on a Monday morning, not the one that impresses a bank manager.
Meet Claire (she's made up)
Claire spent thirty years in HR, retired early, and noticed something. Friends who'd just retired kept ringing her, a bit lost, not sure what to do with themselves. She's trained as a coach and wants to help people get through that first year after work stops.
Claire, her clients and every number below are made up. They're there so you can see how the sums work, not so you copy her prices.
Claire's one-page coaching business plan
Here's the whole thing. Underneath, I'll go through each line and why it's there.
Claire's coaching business plan
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Who I help: People in their first year after retiring from a long career, mostly aged 60 to 67, in the UK, paying for themselves.
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Their problem, in their words: "I don't know what I'm for any more." "The days are really long." "We're under each other's feet all day."
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My offer: "Your first year of retirement". 10 weeks, 6 one-to-one sessions of an hour on video, and a written plan for the year ahead at the end.
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Price: £900, or three monthly payments of £300.
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Income I want: £30,000 a year before tax.
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Costs: about £165 a month, so £1,980 a year.
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Clients I need: (£30,000 + £1,980) ÷ £900 = 36 clients a year. That's 3 a month.
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Calls I need: if 1 in 4 calls turns into a client, that's 12 calls a month, about 3 a week.
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Where clients come from: talks at local community and retirement groups, two Facebook groups where retired people ask questions, people I know from my HR years, and a page on my site answering "what to do when you retire and feel lost".
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What I check each month: conversations had, calls booked, clients signed, money in, where each client came from, and one thing to change next month.
All of that fits on one page. Now let's go through why each line is there.
Who you help and their problem
Claire could have written "people going through life transitions". It's true, but it's no use to her, because she can't find "people going through life transitions" anywhere. She can find retired people. She knows where they meet, what they read and what they moan about.
The problem line is written in their words, from what friends actually said to her on the phone. Not "lack of purpose" or "identity shift". If you write it in coaching words, you'll market in coaching words, and nobody will recognise themselves.
If you're not sure who your person is yet, what an ideal coaching client actually is will help with that first line.
The offer and the price
One offer, with a start and a finish. Claire's clients can picture ten weeks, six sessions and a plan at the end. They can't picture "ongoing support".
Back when I did marketing for driving schools, the schools that did well stopped selling "lessons" and started selling something for each type of pupil, like a package for complete beginners and a different one for people who'd learned before and stopped. Pupils could see which one was theirs. Special offers on the car did the opposite. Pupils couldn't judge one school against another, so they picked on price, and the schools running cheap deals ended up working at a loss. A clear offer at a proper price did far better than a cheap one.
Claire also writes down the payment plan, because a lot of her buyers have just gone from a salary to a pension and £900 in one go feels like a lot. Coaching pricing goes into whether to show your price and how.
How many coaching clients do you need?
This is the line that does the real work in any coaching business plan, and it's the one people skip.
The sum is simple. Take the income you want, add what it costs to run the business, and divide by your price. For Claire that's £30,000 plus £1,980, divided by £900, which comes to 35.5. You can't have half a client, so she rounds up to 36 a year, or 3 a month.
Then she works backwards to calls. She doesn't know her real conversion rate yet, so she uses 1 in 4 as a starting figure and will swap in the real number after a few months. At 1 in 4, three clients a month means about twelve calls a month. Twelve calls means even more conversations before that.
She also checks the hours. 36 clients at 6 sessions each is 216 sessions a year. Over 48 working weeks that's about four and a half sessions a week, plus prep, messages and admin. That's well within what she wants to do, which tells her the price and the target fit together.
If the sum had come out at 15 new clients a month, that would tell her something was wrong before she'd spent a penny. If you're wondering what's realistic for income, how much life coaches make looks at that.
What a coaching business costs to run
Claire's £165 a month is made up, but this is roughly how she gets to it:
- website and hosting, £15
- video call subscription, £12
- booking and taking payments, £10
- accountant, £50
- insurance, £20
- supervision and training, £50
- printing and travel for talks, £8
Your list will be different. Two warnings, though. This isn't financial or tax advice, and the £30,000 is before tax, so she'll pay tax and any national insurance out of it. In the UK, the government says you must register for Self Assessment as a sole trader once you earn more than £1,000 from self-employment in a tax year. Check the rules where you live.
Where coaching clients come from
This line has to be specific enough that Claire could start on it tomorrow. "Social media" isn't specific. "Two Facebook groups where retired people ask questions" is.
Each source here is somewhere her buyers already are. Retired people go to community groups and they ask for help in Facebook groups. Her old HR contacts know people who are about to retire. And the page on her site answers a question people really type into Google when they're feeling lost.
What's not on the list is just as useful. No Instagram, no podcast, no paid ads yet. Ads can work, but they don't reach the right people straight away, and you need a long-term view. If she ever runs them, I'd suggest something small people pay for first that covers the cost of the ad, rather than sending cold traffic straight at a £900 offer.
For putting these in order, a life coach marketing plan picks up where this line stops.
What to check each month in a life coach business plan
A plan you write once and never look at is no use. Claire's last line is her monthly check, and it takes about half an hour.
She counts the conversations she had, the calls that got booked, the clients who signed and the money that came in. Then she writes down where each new client came from. After three months she'll know if the talks are working better than the Facebook groups, and she can do more of the one that brings people in.
The last bit, one thing to change, stops it being a spreadsheet exercise. If calls are fine but nobody's signing, the problem is on the call or in the offer. If nobody's booking calls, the problem is earlier, in what people see before they talk to her.
What if the numbers don't work?
Then you've found out on paper, which is the cheapest place to find out. You've got a few choices. You can raise the price and make the offer worth it. You can make the offer bigger, like a longer programme with more support. You can lower your costs. Or you can give it longer, and treat the first year as part time while you build up.
What I wouldn't do is pretend. If the plan says you need twelve clients a month and you've never had more than two, writing a bigger number on the page won't change anything.
If you haven't started yet, how to start an online coaching business takes you through the steps in order, and this plan fits in at step four. And to see where the plan sits alongside everything else, marketing for coaches lays it all out.
Questions coaches ask about this
What should a coaching business plan include?
Who you help, the problem you solve in their words, your offer, your price, how many clients you need for the income you want, where those clients will come from, what it costs to run, and what you'll check each month. For a coach working alone, that all fits on one page.
Do I need a business plan to start coaching?
You don't need a formal one unless you're borrowing money or someone's asking for it. But a one-page plan with the client sum on it will tell you early if your price and target work together, which saves a lot of wasted months.
How many clients does a life coach need?
It depends on your price, your costs and the income you want. Add the income you want to your yearly costs and divide by your price. In the made-up example above, £30,000 plus £1,980 in costs at £900 a client works out at 36 clients a year.
How long should a coaching business plan be?
One page is enough for a coach working on their own. The US Small Business Administration says lean plans are typically one page, and the long traditional plans are mainly for lenders and investors.
The figures here come from our own corpus of 10,954 scored coaching websites and 918 mapped coaching markets. How we built and scored it.