I’m a busy mum of three kids under nine, but also a successful coach. Last year I created over $580,000. I don’t say this to brag. I’m just a normal business coach, but I found a way to package up my expertise in a way that enabled me to create an income whilst out spending the day with my children. When I found how well it worked for me, I decided to offer the same solution to other coaches to help them achieve a better work-life balance and so my company JigsawBox was born.
For me, coaching was the perfect choice of career. It meant I could work around my children and pick and choose the times I wanted to work. This is the motivation for many mums I know who are professional coaches. The danger is that most of us at some point fall into the trap of working too much and suddenly, all the reasons we started coaching in the first place seem to be the very things we now miss out on.
That is why I’m not surprised at recent research which suggests many working mothers are overworked, exhausted and tired. It can be difficult juggling all the different ‘hats’ that working mothers have to wear and do everything to the best of our ability. Ultimately, we can’t juggle everything and so things start to go wrong. If the thing that crumbles is your business, it can be the start of downward spiral of financial and emotional stress. It can even jeopardize your relationship and your health.
Luckily, things never reached that point for me, however, my business only really started to take off when I started to explore how I could utilise technology to help me spend less time in my business and more time doing the things I loved. I created programmes which included webinars, audio downloads and online coaching questions and found that people wanted to buy them…lots of them.
I really believe that social media is opening the door for working women to gain the income they really strive for whilst also having the family life they want too. If you are already a coach, or offer any kind of service that could potentially be sold online, my advice is to really think about how you can productise your expertise into products that people will buy. Whether that’s ‘How to stop smoking’ or ‘How to become a great business leader’, the secret is to focus on topics that you are really good at or passionate about, as the material will be stronger and will help you stand out and sell more.
There are many different online tools out there to help you get started with developing online coaching content and many offer free trials, so you can have a look around and see what works for you. I used a couple when I started out and then decided to invest in building my own coaching platform JigsawBox, which is now available to any coach or trainer wanting to offer web-based coaching products and services.
I’m sure you are reading this thinking, it can’t be that easy. It does take some thought to work out how to package up what you do into products your clients actually want to buy, but once you’ve made that first online sale, you can do over and over again. I didn’t want to work face to face all the time and couldn’t attend networking meetings as the timings just didn’t fit in with looking after children. So, social media was by far the best way to get in front of my audience. I currently have 27,000 twitter followers and a Facebook fan page which generates a load of interest in what I do without me actually having to be there all the time.
It means I’m able to make money literally whilst going out for the afternoon swimming with my children. I’m no longer the, stressed, exhausted working mum that I used to be and that’s all down to putting technology and social media at the core of my business offering.
