Wendy (00:01.902)
Hello, coach. Welcome back to The Coaching Edge. I'm your host, Wendy McCallum. I'm so happy you're here to listen to today's episode, which is a must for every coach, because what I'm going to be talking about today are the fundamental foundational pieces that you're going to want to make sure you have in place in your business. Whether you've been coaching for a while now or you're just at the very early stages of building a business, I really encourage you to listen to this episode and make sure that you have all of these things covered off.
These are what I consider sort of the launch fundamentals. And this checklist that I'm going to go through today is the checklist that I provide all of my BBB members. So that is my business building bootcamp for coaches. It's a one year membership program and every coach that comes in gets access to a very comprehensive content library. The module that I get coaches to start with is the launch module. And in the launch module, there is a checklist.
Now there are also lots of little video lessons in there and other templates that help you to get each of these steps checked off in your launch checklist. But what I thought might be helpful to the listeners on this podcast is if I actually provided that checklist to you. So if you go to the show notes with this podcast, you will see the link that will allow you to download this checklist for yourself post listening to this episode. So I encourage you to do both of those things. Listen to me sort of go through the checklist and explain to you.
why these things are important and what it is I'm referring to and then go and download your own version of the checklist and work through it at your own pace or just go back and do a little bit of a check on your existing business. Have you got all of these things in place? So again that Launch Fundamentals checklist is available through the link in the show notes to this podcast. Now before I get into it
I just wanted to let you know that there is an open house coming up soon. So if you're listening to this podcast, when it airs in March, there is a open house happening in the BBB, which is really an opportunity for you to join a live office hours call with some of my existing coach members, get to know a little bit about them and what happens in the BBB, get a sense of the vibe of the community. It's such a cool space. Absolutely love coaching.
Wendy (02:17.866)
my coaches in the BBB and also learn a little bit more about me and how I coach and just see for yourself whether it might be like the perfect fit for you this year that will help to fill in the gaps for you and provide you with the strategy and the support and the accountability to really create that resonant profitable business of your dreams this year.
So that open house is coming up soon. The link to join that is also in the show notes, but you can always register for the next upcoming house, open house, even if you're not listening to this in March, maybe you're listening to it, you know, a year later as part of the archives. There are always more open houses happening and the link to register for whatever the next open house is, is always available on my website at wendymcallum.com forward slash BBB.
I would love to meet you at the open house. It is a no strings event. I am not a high pressure sales person. That's just not how I roll. But I do think that when it comes to investing in your business, there are so many options out there and it can feel really, really overwhelming. The best way to know whether something is the right fit for you is to actually experience it for yourself. And the best way to do that is to join in an actual live office hours call. So that is what is happening at the next open house and I would love to see you there.
I also, every time I run an open house, give away a really crazy valuable bonus to anybody who joins the BBB as a result of coming to that open house. And that is something that you don't want to miss if you are considering joining in the near future, because there will be a really, really crazy, amazing bonus that will be offered at the open house as well. Okay, let's get into Launch Fundamentals. So again, these are the pieces that you're gonna want to...
put in place in your business in the early days. Now, if you already have an existing business and you hear something today in this episode and you think to yourself, I don't have that yet, that's okay. Go back and fill in that gap. Not all of these things need to be in place before you start taking money from clients, but most of them should be in place. And the others are things that it's really important to keep working on while you are growing your practice in the early days. So the first thing,
Wendy (04:38.082)
And this is one of the pitfalls I find for the coaches that I work with. One of the things that keeps people stuck for the longest, drags them down, is the biggest reason for spinning wheels and for inefficiency when it comes to launching a business is choosing a business name. I have some really simple things to say about business names. First of all,
Wendy (05:01.422)
The thing you have to remember always as a small business owner is that you are the face of your business and you are your brand. So what I see people do, the pitfall of this business name thing is that people start really, are really trying to create something super clever and super unique. And they spend a lot of time noodling around like cute, clever names for their businesses. I'm gonna strongly recommend that you don't do that.
And the reason for that is that you are your brand. And so your name is your brand. People will literally be Googling your name. They'll be Googling like they do for me, Wendy McCallum Coach. And so if your business name is connected to your actual name, which is again, your brand, you are the face of your business, you're going to be more easy to find. Also, these cute and clever names often come at a price and the price is clarity. So
the more clever you try to be, the cuter you try to be, the less clear it usually is as to what you actually do, what your business is actually all about, which is what you want to avoid as a business person. You want to be always choosing clarity over cleverness and creativity, right? You want it to be really, really clear. So for all of those reasons, if you haven't chosen your business name yet, I strongly recommend you think about just choosing yourname.com, yourname.
coaching. So for example, I am Wendy McCallum coaching. used to have a really cute, clever name, but I ran into problems with it. One of the problems I ran into is that my niche changed, which will probably happen for you. So newer coaches very often start off in one area and then realize as they get more hours under their belt that they're actually really good at or really love coaching people around some other area of transformation or some other problem and their niche shifts.
If you have a cute, clever name that reflects your current niche when you were starting your business, launching your business, chances are it's not going to fit anymore after a few years. And that's what happened to me with my business name. It wasn't really clear and it didn't fit when my niche started to shift. Under the umbrella of Wendy McCallum coaching, I have so much flexibility. I can do whatever I want. I can be a business coach for coaches in the first five years of their business, like I am, but I can also still do some of the personal coaching stuff that I love around burnout and alcohol support for professional women.
Wendy (07:17.058)
Right? So Wendy McCallum coaching doesn't say anything about my niche. It just says my name's Wendy McCallum and I'm a coach. And that is actually a really great place to start. So don't spend too much time getting fussed on the business name. There is lots of room for, you know, you to create really, excuse me, clever, creative, fun names for programs underneath the umbrella of your business name. So I create really cool.
cool programs. just had a coaching program last year that I created called Change Your F-ing Life, which is a really fun transition coaching program for professional women. And I loved coming up with the name for that. I've had lots of clever names for programs over the years, but I keep it really simple when it comes to my business name. And I recommend if you're starting out, you just go that route. If you have already come up with a business name that is more reflective of your niche, and it's working for you, great.
But if it's not, remember you can always change it. And it's a pretty easy switch to go back to your actual name. So first thing is business name, you gotta figure that out. Then you have to get the domain to go with that, the URL to go with that. So you go to a place like GoDaddy or some other search engine place that sells URLs and you check to see whether your business name has been taken. Let's say you're going with your name, look for wendymcallum.com.
Is that available? And if it's not available, is Wendy McCallum coaching available or wendymccallumcoach.com? You want to look for something that is really directly connected with the name of your business as your URL and you want to purchase that domain. You want to nail that down because if you don't, somebody else can grab it and that can really cause problems for you down the line. You really want a URL that is in a perfect world, exactly the same as your business name, just to keep it really easy for people. And you don't want to...
to get a URL that you have to put hyphens, dashes, or periods, or dots, or slashes, or any other things in them. You wanna keep it really, really simple, really straightforward, make it as difficult as possible for people to get it wrong, right? So use traditional spellings, don't use word punctuations, but get that domain purchased so that you own it. Now, depending on the jurisdiction that you're in, you may or may not need to register your business. And this is where I wanna just...
Wendy (09:38.786)
give a general disclaimer, which is many of you know that I spent 12 years practicing law before I became a coach. I am not giving legal advice on this podcast and I don't give legal advice as a business coach and I'm not giving legal advice right now. I cannot. I cannot give legal advice and I am not giving you legal advice. If you are unclear as to the legal requirements in your jurisdiction for you as a small business owner, please consult somebody there in your jurisdiction who can help you with that.
get legal advice or go do the research in your jurisdiction because requirements are very different depending on where you live when it comes to what you need to have in place legally in terms of registering businesses. So most areas that are going to require you to register your business somehow which might involve for you setting up a corporation and I personally have always set up a company when I have
put a small business together, and that's generally speaking, the general recommendation out there is to do that. And the reason for that is that that provides you with more protection personally. So if you don't separate your business from your personal, you run the risk if something goes wrong in the business and you end up getting sued, you run the risk that your personal assets are at risk. So somebody could potentially come and seize, for example, my house or my personal savings. I don't want that to happen.
I have always had a company structure in place to keep my business separate from my personal. And then in my jurisdiction, I need to register that. So there's a little process that needs to happen there to register it. The other thing that people often don't do that's really simple, but it's just a step that gets skipped a lot in the early days is actually open a separate business bank account.
There are so many reasons why this is a good idea. mean, first of all, it gets super confusing fast. you've got personal money and business money going into the same account, getting mixed up, it's hard to keep track of that. It's hard for you to keep track of it. It's hard for a bookkeeper to keep track of that. And you wanna make sure that you've got a really good paper trail always around money, because you're have to file taxes as a business owner. And you also, as a business owner, need to know where you stand at all times. And it can be really difficult to do that when money is all mixed.
Wendy (12:03.788)
So that's one reason. Also, it's more professional. You are then receiving payments into a business bank account and you're also paying invoices from your business bank account. So for all of the reasons, you should have a separate business bank account and that's a fairly easy thing to do, but go and get to that done.
What you're gonna talk about insurance for a second, remember I can't give you any legal advice, but insurance is something that you need to think long and hard about. I recommend that you consult with an insurance broker around the type of business that you are running, the type of coaching practice that you have to discuss what your needs might be in terms of insurance. Obviously insurance is there in case something goes wrong to protect you.
We talk a lot about insurance in the BBB. We have a list of insurance providers for coaches. We've sort of put together from all of the people who've gone through the BBB and something that, you know, it's fairly easy to find a broker and an insurance provider for coaching just by asking other coaches who they use. And again, depends on where you're located. A business email address.
Also something that people sometimes skip in the early days, but it's a fairly straightforward steps. You set up like a Gmail account that is specifically your business name as opposed to your personal name so that you're, again, keeping things separate. This is like a key thing to be doing from the very beginning. It makes everything easier. Also more professional to be responding from a business account than from a personal account. So I always recommend that people set up a separate...
business email address so that they can keep their work emails in one place. And it's easy to see whether you have new emails. It makes it easier to ensure that you don't miss important things if everything is not getting commingled. creating your brand is another thing on the launch checklist, a basic brand emphasis on basic here. In the early days, again, this is connected to what I was talking about with the business name, getting to
Wendy (14:12.032)
specific getting to jiggy with it, doing what a lot of people do, which is spending a lot of money on fancy logos and getting really sophisticated brand palettes put together and all that. It's oftentimes a complete waste of money because again, your focus, your niche, your services, it's probably all gonna shift. So what I encourage my coaches to do is not to spend money here. I don't think this is the place to spend money in the early days. I don't think logos matter.
coaches. really don't. Some people might fight me on that. But my personal opinion is logos don't matter. My logo I made on Canva myself. Nobody knows what it did. Nobody cares. So spending a lot of money on getting a fancy logo done. I don't see the point in that. And I think you can create a very basic template of
a palette for colors for your website, for example, and some basic fonts that you're going to use just for consistency sake. You can do that yourself. There are lots of different apps that help you to do that. Those are all things we talk about in the BBB, but this is an easy thing to do yourself. Just want to make sure that whatever you choose is reflective of what you know to be true about your brand now. And in a perfect world, what you know will always be true about your brand. So for me, I know I stand for simplicity, for I'm practical.
I am direct and to the point and efficient, but I'm also kind and I also work mostly with women. And so my brand palette reflects that. It's professional, but it's also a little bit feminine and very simple and a little maybe a little bit even classic. But that's about as much as I need in terms of my brand palette and same thing with logos. I try to keep them really clean, a little bit more modern.
because I think that that's part of my brand as well. One of the biggest mistakes that I see coaches make is using really scripty, scrolly fonts on websites and in other places online. It's really hard to read and I think it's just distracting. So I generally would suggest people kind of stay away from super scrolly fonts on their website and in their presence online in other places.
Wendy (16:31.47)
So really creating your basic brand, I mean like a day or less guys, spend some time playing around with color palettes, figure out, know, just three or four colors. And again, there are lots of apps that help you do this. So you have nice complimentary palette that looks lovely together. And that's about all you got to do there.
Choose a website hosting platform. Again, you can go out and do some research around website hosting platforms. There are lots of different platforms out there. You might want to build your website yourself in the early days, in which case you might want to use something like Wix or Squarespace or maybe WordPress, although that's maybe a little more challenging. But if you know already, or maybe you're further along in your business and you already have some online programming or you want to run a membership or you have a community that you host and you want a more comprehensive...
platform for your website, then you might want to go with something like Kajabi, for example, but you've got to choose a platform to host your website. And then when it comes to building your actual website, I really recommend, and this is part of the launch checklist, because you do, people need to be able to find you and you need to have something you can give people. And usually nowadays that's a URL. It's like, here's my website, all my info is there.
and you could do that via QR code. You could go old school with it and have a business card, but you need to be able to direct people somewhere to get information about you. What I recommend is that in the early days, slash months, years even, of your coaching business, you can get away with just a simple one-page website. It does not need to be complicated. What I mean by one-page website is everything lives on the same page and the person who lands on your page just scrolls down to see the information. It's not...
It's not a really long page, but it has all the basic stuff there. What you don't have is a website that has a whole bunch of tabs across the top, know, an about page, a services page, a contact me page, a speaking page, you know, free resources page. You don't need all of that to start. You just need a one page website to get going. And that one page website needs to have some information about who you are, who you serve, what problem you help them solve. And, you know,
Wendy (18:48.622)
how they can get in touch with you basically. And so that requires a booking button. Now, in order to have a booking button that works on that homepage, you need to set up an online booking calendar. So this is another step in launching. There are lots of different options out there. The two big ones that I see coaches using are Acuity and Calendly, but you pick a booking calendar, you pay for that, you get that set up, that's gonna cost you...
something every year to have a booking calendar, but as a coach, you need one, an electronic online way for people to book sessions with you and for you to manage your schedule. And then once you have set up your online booking calendar, you're going to create an appointment type. And the appointment type is going to be a discovery call or a sales call or initial call, whatever the words are that you use for that very first call that you get on with somebody to tell them about, you find out a little bit about them.
tell them what it is you do and what you have to offer them that would be a good fit and book them in as a client. So you first choose your online booking calendar and set that up. Then you create an appointment type that is for that very, very first call. And that's really all you need in the early stages to get out there and start trying to get clients. need a place to be able to book a call with you. The other thing that you're going to need to do
as part of your launch process is choose and set up your payment provider. So this is how you're going to actually collect money. Now, many coaches will have a couple of different options for for collection of money. So for example, I use PayPal, but I mainly collect almost I collect almost all of my money through Kajabi, which is my website platform. everybody clicks through a link on Kajabi to buy anything that I have to offer. But Kajabi is hooked up.
to for me to Stripe. So Stripe is my payment provider and Stripe, like all payment providers, charges me a fee for every dollar it collects kind of thing. So there is a percentage fee associated with having them collect money for me, make sure that credit cards are valid and that payments don't bounce, and then transfer my revenue into my business bank account. So you will need a payment provider.
Wendy (21:14.944)
Okay, here are some other things that I think are really helpful to have in the early days. I think most of these things are things that you don't need necessarily right out of the gate, but that you should be making sure you get in place very soon after you start taking paying clients. So I do think this one, in a perfect world, you've got this in place before you take on your first client, and that is a client contract for one-on-one coaching.
This is something that is included in the Launch Fundamentals module in the BBB. It's a, I give a template that my coaches can use. They can modify it edit it to suit their purposes. But I do think it's important to cover off the basic terms and conditions of the coaching engagement, including things like payment, cancellation policy, refunds.
and what your expectations are of your clients and also what they can expect of you. So having all of that set out so that and in a form that can actually be signed at the time of payment. Now in order for someone to sign a contract online, you need to get set up with an electronic signature processor. So this is another little thing. You can use a platform like HelloSign. There are a number of these out there so you can do research, but something that allows you to send
the contract to your client and have them sign it electronically and send it back to you so that you're not having to scan a PDF, send it to them, then they have to print it, sign it, scan it, send it back to you. You make this as easy and efficient as possible. And the way to do that is with an electronic signature processor. Again, I use HelloSign, but there are other ones out there. In terms of your website, one other thing that you need to be getting on there in early days is,
some terms of use and disclaimer language and privacy policy language. So there are lots of things that are on all websites and usually it's a link at the bottom that you click and it takes you to the terms and conditions of using the website. You're going to want to have those for your website. That's something that I can't really give you advice on specifically. It's going to vary depending on what you do, what your website's all about, where you are.
Wendy (23:31.308)
all of those things, but you can go and do some research and you will see that there are actually websites that sell standard language for terms and conditions for websites. And so there are different ways to do this. You could also obviously hire a lawyer to help you with this, although that may or may not be necessary. But you do need to have those terms and conditions. You need to protect yourself on your website and make sure it's clear what the purpose of the website is and isn't and what you are and are not doing on the website.
including things like giving medical and health advice, right? You want to be really clear about those things because presumably as a coach you are not giving that because you are not qualified to do that. Okay, I also think in the early days that it's important to start building a social media presence as early as possible. Social media is not everything. You guys have heard me talk about this before. In fact, I am
fan of working on building marketing assets that you actually own and you don't own your social media, but social media is helpful and it's where people are. But I do recommend so that you don't get overwhelmed as a coach that you just pick one or two platforms. So maybe it's like Instagram and LinkedIn or it's Facebook and Instagram, but it's not all of the things. Pick one or two and get started on there and just...
you know, in the beginning, it's just about consistency and consistency at City. Honestly, it might be posting twice a week in the first few months of coaching. Just get accustomed to posting. And then over time, you can start building up the frequency of your posts and the quality of your posts and, you know, playing around with all of the things that there are to play around with with social media. But I would start, I would get started on that.
start trying to build your audience there. And that's like a whole other topic, but I do mention that in the launch checklist, because I think it's important in the early days to at least open up those accounts. Because people will ask you, can I find you? Are you on Instagram? Can I find you? You want to at least have the ability to direct people to your social media. Let's say you're guest on a podcast or you're doing a presentation or you're getting interviewed on the radio or TV. You want to be able to direct people to your social media platforms. And obviously, in order to do that, you need to have them set up.
Wendy (25:46.146)
Gathering testimonials is also something you want to start doing early on. So I put it on the launch checklist just to remind coaches not to forget to do it. So every single client that you have, you should be getting feedback from them. You should be trying to get feedback from them. Now there are easier ways to do this. In fact, there's a whole section in the BBB where I talk about my system for gathering testimonials, how I do it. I have a really, really great little system that basically gets me a pretty phenomenal testimonial every single time.
But here are just a couple little tips I can give you for the sake of brevity on this podcast. Make it as easy as possible for your client. So an open-ended request for feedback or a testimonial, hey, would you mind sending me a testimonial now that we're finished coaching? It's probably going to lead to nothing. That's really overwhelming for people because there's no structure or direction in that. And people are often like, my gosh, what should I say? I don't even know what a testimonial looks like. Or they just forget. So you want to make it as simple as possible. So one of my...
is if someone gives you a compliment or good feedback on their experience with you as a coach, ask them on the spot if you can use their words. my gosh, thank you so much for saying that. It means so much to me that you've had a good experience with me and that you found really great value in it. Would you be all right if I used those words in future marketing and attributed them to you? And if the answer is yes, you can say great.
I'm just going to send you an email with what I heard you say and you can absolutely edit it as you see fit and send it back to me or you can just send me note back and say that's fine, you can use that language. Again, it's like making it super easy for them. Let me do the work instead of asking you to do the work and you've already said the cool thing so let me just note that right now. And often those are the best testimonials too, the things that people just say, you know, just off the top of their tongue.
I was just in an office hour session and one of the coaches was like, this is gold, Wendy. She was so excited about the strategy support that I was giving her around this new program she's trying to develop. She was like, this is gold. And I said, can I use that? Can you send me that? Like, I would love to use that. So I captured it right away. So gathering testimonials, just a great habit to get into in the early stages of building your coaching business.
Wendy (28:03.724)
You're also going to want to set up an online filing system and it can be really simple. So this is just a system of files on your hard drive or in Google Drive or in Dropbox, wherever you organize your stuff so that you can start putting things in places where you can find them later. I know this sounds really basic, but it's also something that a lot of coaches don't do. I really encourage you to do it right out of the gate. So there's a folder that is email templates. I have a really great
folder full of all of the language that I regularly send out in response to the questions I get. So, you know, in a question like, how do I work with you? I have templated language that I just copy and paste and I say, hey, you know, hey Sherry. And then I paste in the language that I send everybody about the process for booking a call with me to see whether we're a good fit or filling out an application or whatever it is, right? So I keep that all in a file and there are, there's language in there for everything and it's really easy for me to go and grab it.
and it makes everything so much more efficient. I also keep my client files in, you know, I've got a file for current one-on-one clients that are active right now. I've got a file for archived clients. I've got a file for discovery call notes, and I move things around. So if I have a discovery call with someone and they're a good fit for a client and they sign up for a program, then I move them to active clients. And then once I'm finished with active clients, I move their file into the archived area. So...
I am keeping things organized. Just start thinking about that. I do the same thing with all my financial stuff. I've got it organized by year and by month, and I just drop things into files so that everything is easier to find. It's amazing how much you build up as a coach, how much stuff you create. And so an organized system is just incredibly helpful in terms of your files, keeping your files properly.
Kind of along those lines, you're gonna wanna choose a bookkeeping tool or maybe hire somebody to do your books, depending on how much you bookkeeping. Ever since I've been able to afford to pay someone, I've always paid someone to do my books, because I really strongly dislike it. But again, I do have this really good system in place now where I just drop receipts, drop invoices into a folder that is...
Wendy (30:22.158)
just a monthly folder and then I just upload those folders into Google Drive for my bookkeeper. this is connected. There are also some really great bookkeeping tools that you can use to do this yourself. So you can go and research like some software and see if there's something that might be like the right tool for you right now. Fairly inexpensive simple tool probably is all you need in the early days, but you do need to track this stuff. You're going to need it for for taxes at the end of the year and you're going to need it. You're going to need it to be able to get
a picture of where you are in your business at any given time and you want to be able to do that. You want to be able to look at your business and say at the end of this first quarter this is how much I earned and this is how much I spent so therefore this is how much I profit. You're going to want to know that and be able to see that and you won't be able to see that if you're not organizing your receipts and your payments in one place. So some kind of a bookkeeping tool or a bookkeeper is
really important in the early days. And then the last thing that I have on the Launch Fundamentals checklist, which is actually its own workshop, is you're going to want to leverage your existing contacts, your existing network to get your first paying clients. So there are so many components of this, but basically what I'm talking about here is looking at who already...
knows, likes and trusts you. So who are the people in your life? Professional contacts, personal contacts, family members. Who are the people who already know, like and trust you, who you can leverage to get the word out about your business and to get some paying work, either through referrals, or maybe they're going to hire you to do presentations at their offices, whatever it is. You want to be leveraging those people right out of the gate because it's really difficult to get paying clients right away from things like social media. It just, takes a long time.
coaches to build that presence up. So in the beginning days when you need to make money, this is the way to start making money faster. Again, like I said, there's a whole free workshop on this that you can get at wendymcallum.com and I'll put the link in the show notes for it. It's called How to Get Clients Now Without a Big Social Media Following or Email List.
Wendy (32:31.47)
And it's exactly that. I go through about 10 different ways that you can do this leverage your existing network. So I'm going to recommend you go and watch that if you haven't watched it yet. Again, link will be in the show notes. But those really are all the things that are on that Launch Fundamentals checklist. And again, the checklist is also available to you as a listener of The Coaching Edge. You can go down to the show notes and click on the link to download your fundamentals checklist and go through that.
as you are setting up your business or if you already have an existing business, use it as a way to just double check and make sure you've got everything in place that you need to have in place. Lastly, one last reminder of the fact that there is an open house happening in my BBB very soon and I would love to meet you there. I love to get to know new coaches. It is really, again, just a place to get to know me a little, give me a chance to put a face to the name, get to know a little bit about your business.
and for you to learn a little bit about the BBB so that you can figure out whether it's the right fit for you in terms of business support this year. And also to join in a live office hours call with my existing BBB community so that you can get a sense of what the vibe is and what the BBB is all about because it's really about all of the coaches working together. it's about that community. I love coaching and you'll get to see me in action as a business coach.
But I really love those coaches and I love the way that they all support each other in a way that love the way they all show up with such positivity every week. So you get a chance to jump right into an office hours call. You don't have to interact if you don't want to, but you can. You can ask me questions about your business and get some free coaching. You can also just sit back and enjoy it and learn. So I hope to see you there. Again, the link to sign up for the next open house is also in the show notes. You can go grab it there.
Thank you so much as always for listening and if you loved this podcast episode, please share it with other coaches that you know. Please let them know that this resource is out there for them and I'll see you next time on The Coaching Edge.
