Coach Foundation Accelerator Review: Should You Start a Coaching Business?

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Stephanie’s experience with starting a coaching business

As you’ve seen on this blog, we love to look at online business opportunities here, especially opportunities that include my two favorite topics: mindfulness and freedom! Coaching just so happens to be one of those, at least that’s what people say about it. 

Coaching is an amazing business opportunity, as not only that it can be done fully online and completely on your own terms, but you’re also impacting other people’s lives and making a difference in the world. Therefore, it’s (obviously) something much more fulfilling than for example building your online e-commerce store.

However, before you start coaching, it’s important to register your business to ensure legal compliance and build credibility with clients. Consider reading this comparison review article by SmallBusinessHQ of Incfile vs LegalZoom to learn more about these two business formation companies that can help you with business registration.

People say that you can also make quite a nice amount of money with it, too. But are all these things they say about it true? Well, I’ve recently had a friend called Stephanie to take part in a “Start your coaching business” mentorship program called Coach Foundation Accelerator, run by someone called Sai Blackbyrn. 

Today, she has a successful coaching business where he helps corporate leaders deal with their stress using mindfulness and meditation techniques, and she’s been doing it for quite a few months now. In this article, I want to answer for you:

1. What is it like living and working as a coach, every day?
2. How fulfilled is Steph, how is she getting by…, and is coaching freedom a thing?
3. How much did the mentorship program contribute to her success?

I’ll be Stephanie’s translator here.

Coaching and freedom

One of the primary reasons Stephanie became a coach, was because she was sick of working a 9-5 corporate job. (Gosh, who isn’t these days?) Steph wanted more freedom and time to spend with her family and to fulfill her dream of traveling the States in an RV with her husband. But of course, she couldn’t do that while working in a location-dependent job.

Most importantly, however, she wanted to have a word over her own time. She wanted to be able to work as much as she wanted and if she felt like it more, if she felt like it, less. She said she’s fine with working, but she just wants to be her own boss, at least when it comes to her time. 

So did it work out for her? Well, as Steph told me, the first 7 months were rough. In the first three months, she was still working in her corporate job and building her business as a part of the Coach Foundation Accelerator program. Needless to say that sucked up all her free time, but that’s the same for starting any kind of business. 

Then, for the next four months, she was working in a 1-on-1 coaching model, and she didn’t have any “leverage” over her time… She was selling her time which, as we talk about in this blog, is not what you want for freedom and a lifestyle business. Although she was already working less than in the corporate job, making a little less than her old income.

Sai’s team then coached her over those four months to create her “dream coaching program”, record most of it onto videos, and make it into kind of a mixture of online coaching, group coaching, and an online course. 

When Steph launched her program and started to transition clients over from 1-on-1 to her new group course, suddenly she had so much more time. Today she says that she works on average, a total of 2 hours a day every day coaching her clients and talking to new clients, and the rest is done by her well-designed program. She assured me that yes, the freedom aspect is there in the coaching model. Heck, even I want to be a coach now!

Coaching and fulfillment

This is probably the answer that you were expecting… Although I think the question of coaching and fulfillment depends a lot on what kind of coaching you’re doing. For example, a mental health coach probably, (in my opinion) will get a lot more fulfillment out of their work than a fitness or an executive coach. But that’s just my take.

What Stephanie told me is that after switching to coaching, she can’t even look back at the work she did as an accountant in the corporate world anymore. She loves her work, and every day although she doesn’t work a lot, she always looks forward to talking to her clients again and seeing their progress and growth. 

As she told me, she’s making a difference with every hour of work she does in coaching, and she now knows what it’s like for the people who say they love their work. I’m incredibly happy for her:)

Coaching and money

Okay okay… let’s get it out of the way, we’re talking about business after all, aren’t we?? In business, everybody wants to know one question… How much? Now, this will vary a lot for every individual, every niche, and most of all… it will depend on the clients you work with. 

For Steph, working with corporate leaders, she’s working with a more “affluent” group of people, so her income is on the higher end. And even within the months and seasons, there is fluctuation for how much you’ll end up making, for example in the summer months it’s usually less, and in January when everybody decides to change, it’s quite a bit more of course :))

It also differs quite a bit based on where you and your clients are… For example, in Asia, the average yearly coaching income is $33 000, and in Eastern Europe, it’s $19 000. But in Western Europe, it’s $51 000, and in North America, it’s $63 000 per year, according to an ICF study. Sadly, there are massive income differences around the world and we have our privileges here in the US. 

As I said, Steph is on the higher end with her coaching income, and her average monthly nets to $120 000 per year… after taxes! To me, it’s mind-blowing how she can make this much working only 2 hours per day. But she says it’s the power of a well-designed automated program they worked on with Sai and a good target audience which she was also coached on how to find in the program.

So all in all, you can make quite a sexy amount with coaching with very little work, but you have to be smart about it. And perhaps this is why I’d go with a mentor if I were to become a coach. (Maybe I will become now?? Oh, the shiny object syndrome!)

The Coach Foundation Accelerator program

So what did Steph say about the program she joined? Well, in short, she loved it. All the praise she gave them is probably too long to through in this post. But she said she probably wouldn’t have been able to get her business off the ground without the Accelerator mentor team, and she wouldn’t be making as much with as little work as she is today.

She said she was first hesitant about whether she could really succeed in starting her own business and she had impostor’s syndrome, which I think we all face at this point. The Accelerator mentors, however, coached her through these mindset blocks, and they also did a lot more for her.

They built her website, they taught her how to get her name out there and how to be heard, they taught her how to automate the client-getting part of her business as well as how to build a great automated coaching program that her clients love, and they answered all her questions that came up through the journey. 

When she was starting, they also gave her 1000 subscribers to her email list, from which she actually landed her first 16 clients… and when you charge as much as she does, that’s quite a lot of money coming through the door, especially for a new business. Those are some wild numbers! I can say she is pretty much a raving fan of Sai now, she says they were responsible for her success and she recommends working with them 🙂

Should you join a mentorship/mastermind program?

Now, I have to highlight here that I don’t have experience being a coach, nor going through a coach mentorship program. But this is what Steph told me: you absolutely should if you can afford it. In the coaching industry is quite difficult to get good clients in and to get your business off the ground.

It’s not like you can get certified and expect to land well-paying clients instantly. Coaching is not like opening a restaurant in a hot spot of town and people instantly come in to eat. You have to learn to get your voice out there, be heard, and be found by your coaching clients. And a great mentoring program will teach you how to do that.

Steph told me that she’s actually checked out quite a few of these programs before she joined Sai and later since then, and she’s absolutely certain that Accelerator is still the best bang for your buck. 

Because you’re not only being coached by them, they’re also giving you a website and setting up all the tech behind your business, and they’re also teaching you their own unique method of getting clients that nobody really talks about. 

So Steph recommends that if you want to start your coaching journey and you can afford it, get a mentor, and if you want someone who really knows what they’re talking about, work with Sai and his team.

Final words (TLDR!)

Coaching is an amazing opportunity for freedom and freeing up your time. If you automate your program and client-getting (which is tricky but can be done), you can have full control of your time and only have to work 2-3 hours a day.

Coaching is also a great opportunity for money if you can work with people in the US, Canada, or Western Europe. The average income according to the ICF is around $50-60k per year, the top end of coaches earn in the millions, and my friend Step is making $120k per year working only 2 hours a day, and she’s in the upper mid-range of coaches.

If you are to start your coaching business, Steph recommends that if you can afford one, you should definitely get a mentor first, because they will help you to figure out how to get clients and how to automate your coaching business, which are the two most difficult parts of the business.

Steph also recommends that if you do decide to get a mentor, work with Sai Blackbyrn from Coach Foundation, and you can join their Accelerator program at a very reasonable bang-for-your-buck price compared to all the others. You can find him at coachfoundation.com

All in all, if you’re thinking about starting your coaching business, I think it’s safe to say you’re in a good place to start a mindful and fulfilling business. Coaching is totally Balanced CEO approved! And now, let me go check it out in more detail, as I might even consider becoming one… 🙂