Should you invest in online courses and business coaches?
I’ve made a LOT of mistakes in my business over the past decade, but do you want to know the biggest one? Not investing in learning how to run a business sooner. I knew tons about nutrition and the human body, but how to run a successful business? No clue. When I realized that I needed to know more, I had no idea where to start, that is, until I learned about online courses and business coaches. However, when you find out that there are courses that will cost you upwards of $5,000, and some coaches charge tens of thousands of dollars, how much should you invest in online courses and business coaches … and how do you know if it will be worth it?
Just because a popular course, well-known coach, or huge social media influencer charges a huge amount doesn’t mean they’re going to teach you anything more than a lesser known, affordable option. How do I know that?
Over the last 10+ years, I’ve invested over $45,000 in online courses and business coaches. That is not a typo.
From small inheritances that could have been spent on vacations, all the way to putting things on a credit card when I didn’t really have the money, investing to learn from people who know more than me has always been a priority.
I’ve invested anywhere from $100 for a short online course all the way up to $10,000 US (about $13,000 Canadian after the exchange rate) for a year-long mastermind, and in total have worked one-on-one with 5 business coaches and taken more than 15 online courses in everything from growing your business with Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest (6 separate courses), to branding (3 courses), web design (1 course), copywriting (1 course), podcasting (1 course), and how to launch and evergreen an online course (3 courses + mastermind).
I consider that $45,000 the best money I ever spent, even more so than my Geophysics degree from one of the top Universities in Canada, and I’d happily spend it again.
Wait, WHAT?! I’m actually happy that I spent $45,000 of my own money on something as intangible as business coaching and online courses? You bet, and there’s one huge reason why:
Since I’ve spent $45,000 on knowledge and skills to run my business, I’ve generated over $570,000 in revenue ($571,983.71 to be exact).
Would I have made some of that revenue if I didn’t invest in those coaches and courses? Absolutely, yes, especially because I have a network marketing business.
But would that network marketing business have taken off so quickly if I didn’t already have an email list of 2,000 interested people that I grew from blogging, webinars, and online challenges, plus a local community that I’d been pouring myself into for 8 years at that point? Would it have been as successful if I didn’t already know how to market myself online? Would my essential oil classes have been as successful if I hadn’t already spent 8 years giving free nutrition talks, honing my presentation and public speaking skills? Would my upline have kept me in an important spot in her organization if I didn’t have a super professional website and branding that made me look more successful than I was? Probably not.
Would I have made over $75,000 in online course sales? Not even close.
I also wouldn’t have made almost $60,000 in one-on-one nutrition clients, because I wouldn’t have known how to design, sell, or price packages (which I learned from my very first business coach who only cost me $2,000 or so - by the way, I share the entire process here).
My life would be very different today if I hadn’t invested in a huge way to learn real skills in my business that helped me make a full time income, and I guarantee that I’d either be working at my old, soul sucking job at a bank and hating every minute of it, or I’d probably be making close to minimum wage working at a local health food store.
Here’s the thing that most health and wellness entrepreneurs don’t understand: it costs money to run a business. So. much. money.
I almost bought a local health food store a few years ago, and they carried over $100,000 of stock on their shelves, with no guarantee that it would sell before the expiry date. And guess what banks don’t give business loans for? Inventory. Guess where that $100,000 to buy the inventory came from? The owners pocket.
A traditional business that most health practitioners easily understand, like a health clinic, or that same health food store, costs thousands of dollars a month in overhead. You have to pay for rent, monthly utilities, insurance, cleaners (unless you want to scrub the toilets yourself), and front reception staff. You probably want a phone line and the internet. There’s thousands of dollars in furniture to fill offices and waiting rooms, paint for the walls, a computer and printer to be able to process payments from customers and patients, and probably a stock of supplements. Your carrying costs each month, depending on where you live, could be upwards of $5,000 or $10,000 … and that’s before you even get to pay yourself.
This overhead doesn’t even grow or market a business, it’s just makes sure you can open the doors.
So when I hear health and wellness entrepreneurs afraid to spend a few hundred dollars on an online course to learn a real skill that they can use for years to come in their business, it drives me nuts! But I get it.
You don’t know what you don’t know, and sometimes you have to listen to those more experienced, and then try it for yourself, to see if it’s really going to work for you.
But I want you to think about this: I don’t know if I’ve met even one successful health and wellness entrepreneur who didn’t have any training in business. All the high level health business owners that I know invested in online courses, business coaches, and masterminds to teach them all the things they didn’t learn in school … which was how to run their business.
However, it’s not about throwing money away and investing in just anyone or anything. With the rise of the internet, it’s super easy for anyone to put up an online course or charge thousands as a business coach. I’ve personally invested in a few things that were definitely NOT worth what I paid for them, so over time I’ve come up with a few tests to ask myself before I push that “sign up now!” button.
Here are 4 things to ask yourself to figure out if an online course or business coach is worth investing in:
#1 Will it save you time?
In this day and age, you can learn about literally ANYTHING using Google and YouTube. However, if the amount of time you’ll spend trying to learn that skill on your own is too much, you might be further behind in lost sales and business because you took too long, not to mention you can never get those hours back that could have been used for paying customers.
For example, let’s say you have an idea for an online course, but don’t know what the next step is. You Google and look on Pinterest, and it takes you months to figure out how to actually do it.
You have to learn how to structure the course, how to deliver it (video, audio, handouts, all of the above?), what platform to host it on, how to write a sales page, what checkout software to use, and how to launch it. Believe it or not, that’s just a short list.
You stop seeing a few one-on-one clients because you need more time to figure it out, so you’re not only losing your time doing all the research, you’re actually losing income.
You get frustrated, lose momentum, drag your heels, and end up finishing and launching your course a year later … or never.
Or you could have invested $2,000 and launched a course within 6 weeks, which might make you $5,000, then launched again 6 months later to make another $7,000. You could even launch a course 3 times in one year, making another few thousand on top of that.
Your $2,000 investment might turn into $10,000+ within one year, because the investment not only forced you to get your course built much faster (because you spent the money, you better make it worth it!), plus it caused you much less stress and frustration (because you knew exactly what steps to do and what NOT to do), but you have now built an asset that could be launched again and again.
In my experience, investing in something that is an uncomfortable amount to pay incentivizes you to actually do the work and get the result done faster so you can make your investment back.
If you love math like I do, think of it like this:
If the amount of time the course/coach will save you multiplied by your hourly rate you could charge a paying customer = less than the investment, then it’s worth it!
#2 Will it save you money?
This one sounds counterintuitive, because you have to spend money to save money, but I’ll share one huge lesson I’ve learned in the past few years especially:
Mistakes are really expensive, and paying to not make those mistakes almost always saves you money. This is where I find business coaching invaluable.
You don’t know what you don’t know, and Googling won’t help if you don’t know what to search. But someone who is a little bit further down the road you’re already on can tell you where the potholes or detours are so you can avoid them.
I tell this to my network marketing team all the time: my job as your mentor is to know what your business is going to look like 6 months or a year down the road, and to help you get there faster. I can see what your business is going to look like before you even understand it. I’ve been there, I’ve made the mistakes (plus seen countless other people make the same mistakes, too!), so let me save your sanity by coaching you through it.
Coaches are for sure a bigger investment than online courses, but having that one-on-one time to talk yourself through big decisions and major blocks is invaluable.
I’ve hired business coaches to:
teach me how to set up and start my nutrition business
how to niche down and focus on a new ideal client
learn how to get my business online and launch my first digital product
get clarity on a huge re-brand that brought both sides of my business together in one place
hiring the right assistant
Some business coaches are better with mindset and some are better with strategy. Depending on what you need, ask other entrepreneurial friends for referrals or put up a post in a Facebook group. Be specific, do NOT just put up “my business is struggling and I need help”. That’s where you’re going to fall prey to business coaches who talk a good game but aren’t really specialized in any specific topic.
Really think about what you need help in, and then ask for it. Is it marketing? Learning social media better? Staying focused? Talking through a big problem? Making a big pivot in your business? Changing niches or industries? Finding clients? Designing an online program?
Then find someone who has done the work and shows it publicly. Do they have proof on their blog, podcast, or social media that they know what they’re talking about? Or have you just found out about them and watched one really slick webinar that put you through an intense, pressure-filled funnel?
The biggest question of all to ask yourself before you work with a one-on-one business coach: is what they’re asking you to spend make sense with how much one-on-one time you get with them?
I once paid $5,000 to get one, 15 minute time slot every month for 6 months (totalling 1.5 hours = $3,333.33/hour) with a “high level coach” … that was a huge waste of money. I told myself never again would I pay that much for that little time with someone, no matter how much they knew or who else they had coached.
The coach after that I paid the same amount, $5,000, but got a 60 minute session bi-weekly for 6 months, plus an in-person one day intensive (totalling 20 hours = $250/hour). Granted this was back in 2014 and the price would probably be higher now, but even though it was the same total amount I had invested previously (and said I never would again), the value was absolutely there after that coach helped me launch my first digital product, which led to my first online course 6 months later that made me $10,000.
Do as much research beforehand so you don’t have any regrets, including exactly what’s included in the price and what experience that person has.
#3 Will it make you money?
Sometimes you have to spend money to save time or save money, but sometimes an online course or business coach will help you make more money.
How? They’re going to teach you something you never knew how to do before, which will help you charge more or work with more people at once.
This is what I learned with my first business coach, the one who taught me how to design and package my signature 3 and 6 month nutrition programs. I had no idea how to “work with clients” before her, and after it made so much sense
I also got all her protocols and meal plans, which saved me even more time so I could find more clients.
At the end of the day, I made just shy of $60,000 working with nutrition clients, and I’m sure I wouldn’t have made anywhere near that amount had I not invested in that business coach.
Same thing when I took a course to learn how to design and launch online programs. I had already had success with one-on-one clients, and I realized I was giving them all similar protocols for similar health issues. I was repeating myself over and over again, 90% of the time, so why not just make it available to the masses so I could do the work once and make more money?
I took an online course on how to launch online courses ($2,000), and made about $18,000 from that nutrition program, and another almost $60,000 from my current business course. I can use those skills to launch even more online courses OR I could coach others how to launch their own and make income that way, too.
An easy way to think about this is how many new clients or customers would you have to find to make this investment worth it?
For example, if you take my Brand, Build, Blog program and pay $697 Canadian for it (the current price as I write this), how many new clients would you have to find from a website that you build in my program to pay for it? I used to charge $1,800 for my 6 month program, so I’d only have to find one paying customer to make up for that investment.
If you do network marketing, how many new customers would you have to find to make it worth it? 3? 5? That’s SO DOABLE within a reasonable timeframe (let’s say a year), and again, you’ve built an asset that lives on forever and will keep growing and snowballing from there.
Every successful business is built on small skills you layer on top of each other, until all the systems and trust that you’ve built start to work on autopilot … but you won’t get there if you don’t start!
#4 Are you going to learn a skill?
For some of the examples above, it was really easy to measure a Return on Investment (or ROI), because I learned how to do X, and it directly made me Y amount of money.
However, some online courses or coaches will teach you a skill that, while you can’t easily or directly measure ROI, it has a huge impact on results in your business.
I call this learning skills, like copywriting, branding, or web design.
There’s not really any way to tell if someone bought something from you because of the way you wrote a social media post, blog post, or sales page, or how those things looked, but subconsciously your customers are using all that information to decide if they trust you, and ultimately, if they want to buy from you.
You can tell what these sorts of “skills” are if you can hire someone to do them for you, and the more valuable the skill, the more it will cost you to hire those experts!
A good copywriter, brand expert, or web designer can cost thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars, and their expertise will set you apart from the crowd and help you make more sales. However, if you had to pay someone each time you had to write something or make it look good, you’d be broke!
By learning these skills, you’ll save yourself so much money down the road, plus, if you’re good at it, you have a skill to fall back on if your current business never becomes successful (hey, it happens in 80% of businesses!).
Heck, you might be like me and fall into a passion you never knew you had (branding and web design) because you thought you’d just take a course in it to save yourself money.
At the end of the day, investing in skills will never be a waste of money. There are so many creative ways to use those skills to create an income.
There you have it, my tried and tested ways to figure out if it’s time to invest in an online course or business coach. It’s not a perfect system, but it will hopefully help you avoid a mistake that could cost you hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Have you invested in a bad course or coach before? Share in the comments below (not naming names, of course!) so we can all laugh at our collective wisdom and teachable moments ;)
