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How to become a life coach
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PART 2 |
PART 3 |
| PART 4 |
PART 5 |
PART 6 |
| PART 4 Start up costs/Ongoing Costs Welcome to Part 4! I hope you are enjoying the course? In this module we are going to look at the costs involved in setting up on your own. I have taken this list from the very one that I used, so there is no maybes about it!
1. Decide on a name! Is it going to be “Jo Bloggs Life Coaching”? Or are you going to start a brand indentity like “Being A Success”. You can either use your name or a company name – not much in it really. It all depends on your personal style and what you are most comfortable with.
Whether you are starting off on a part time basis or not, I recommend that you form a separate Limited Liability Company (Ltd). That way, everything is separated from your day job and your house and personal effects are kept totally separate from your runnings of your business. It puts your mind at rest that you will not lose the house if someone sues you!!! Don’t go to an accountant to set up your company – they will charge you £300+ for the priviledge! Instead, I recommend that you do what I did! I went through an agent and they did it for me for just £79! My company name was set up within 48 hours! Check this site out, they are very helpful and professional and will set you up in no time at all. After all they did “Being A Success”! www.duport.co.uk 3. Stationery You WILL require business cards and letter headed paper at the least. You might also want to put a brochure together of your services. The cost for stationery is not high and it pays to get professionally designed and printed stationery. I have fallen fowl of the cowboys in the past so I talk from personal experience! Check out www.printing.com Cost? £100 - £500
Seeing as you will be spending a lot of your time on the phone it pays to get an additional line put into your house and to a room where you will work from. Your personal calls can be separated from your business calls. Get a new phone number before you order the stationery remember! Cost? Phone with answer machine - £30-£100 Additional Line – installation charge + £10-£20 per month line rental
You will require an internet presence or at very least be able to pick up emails from clients from your email address on your stationery. A decent computer costs around £700+. You will need a printer also. Shop around for a decent ISP. These can cost anything from FREE to £30 per month if you are using some of the broadband technologies Shop around for some good deals. I get all of my equipment from Dell – in my opinion they offer the best deals. www.dell.com 6. An internet presence – web site A web site will be your shop window that you can direct people to or indeed advertise online about your services. It pays to have a well designed site as the first impressions of the site will be the prospect’s first impression of you! I became so heavily involved in the design of all of my sites that we have actually set up a business that designs websites! But not at the £1000 plus that most companies charge – ours start from as little as £100! When designing your site think: ? What content
do I want to tell the visitor? {Setting up, designing and deciding what to put on a website is covered in the Life Coaching mentoring programs at Being A Success} Total cost for website - £500+ You will also nee to buy your own domain name i.e www.fredbloggscoaching.com The best site to do this is www.qawebhosting.com I use them and their service (especially if you don’t know what you are doing) is second to none. Cost - £15 per year You will also need to host your webpages on the world wide web. QA Webhosting can do this as well. Cost - £35 per year
How are you going to collect money from clients? Cash? Cheques? What about credit cards? Remember that some of your services are going to be in the hundreds of pounds so people may want to slap your fees on their credit card. I offer online secure payments through a company called WORLDPAY (www.worldpay.com) Cost of setting up? £280 Annual fee? £180 Ongoing charges? 4% of all sales made for credit cards and 50p per sale for debit cards. I receive 50% of my revenue through online credit card payments so to me it is just the cost of doing business.
Are you a member of my “BEING A SUCCESS” newsletter? If you are then you receive these weekly through an automated email handler that sends them out automatically to all of my subscribers! Cool hey? All I have to do is write the contents and it does the rest. To start off you may want to send them out manually. But once the figure get past around 50 or so it takes forever to do. Cost of system £12 per month
You must get insurance! You need to get “Home business insurance” which includes equipment, sickness, jury service and theft etc. Cost - £25 per month I also advise that you take out “professional liability insurance” this covers you incase someone sues you for anything you have said, breach of copyright etc etc Cost - £30 per month
I could write a whole book on advertising your service and this is what I cover in great detail in my mentoring programmes. However, as far as costs are concerned, you can advertise on the net using: www.uk.overture.com www.espotting.com Check out these resources to get a flavour of what it is all about. Also, other ways to advertise are: ? Direct mailing
To be honest Accountants are worth their weight in gold. They have not only allowed me to minimise my tax outlays but they are always there on hand to help me when I need some advice. My advice to you is to get one as soon as you start your business. They will tell you all about how to keep your records etc. Cost - £300+ per year
Your task for this time is to take a look over what I have written and start to map out a plan of how and what you would need to do to start up your company. Think about
names? When you are going to do it? Produce a rough plan at this stage and see how you feel. That’s
it! See you next time with the ways to generate income as a Life Coach! Next time: PART 5
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