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The 12 Best Business Tools for Coaches
Do you have a heart for helping people?
Do you long to see others succeed?
Do you want to build them up and encourage them on their journey?
Then you have what it takes to be an excellent coach!
Coaching is the best way to serve others while also providing a source of income for your family. But every coach needs a few tools in their tool belt in order to succeed.
I put together a list of the best business tools for coaches so you don’t have to put in hours of research trying all the tools out there. These tools have been crucial in helping my business succeed and I know they will benefit your business as well!
Tools to Manage & Thrive in Your Coaching Business
The following coaching tools will help you manage and thrive in your coaching business. They can help you set goals, schedule appointments, create contracts and documents, and even help you develop an online course to expand the reach of your coaching business.
1. Cultivate What Matters – Goal Setting
Do you want to know how to succeed in your coaching business?
The BEST way to flourish as an entrepreneur is to write down your goals!
When we write down our goals in detail, we are up to 1.4 times more likely to achieve those goals. And a great way to get in the habit of writing down goals for your coaching business is by using the monthly goal-setting guide from Cultivate What Matters.
These planners are designed to help you set realistic goals and lay out the practical steps to take to reach those goals. It’s not your typical daily or hourly planner but rather a goal-setting guide that helps you stay focused on what matters most throughout the year.
As you consistently use the Cultivate What Matters goal planner, you’ll learn how to focus on what’s most important to your progress, stay motivated when the going gets tough, and figure out how to take control of your busy schedule.
On top of all of that, once you’ve used this planner, you can help your clients use it as well. They are a great resource to recommend for your clients’ success too.
2. Calendly – Scheduling Tool
Every coach has to learn how to manage their online coaching business. And having a simple way to schedule appointments makes that a much easier task!
Calendly’s program eliminates the need to send emails back and forth with clients. Instead, you’ll integrate your calendar with Calendly, and the software will show only your free times to clients looking to schedule a meeting with you.
Then share the Calendly link via email or directly embed your Calendly calendar into your website. And once a client sets up an appointment in Calendly, this awesome service automatically adds the event to your Google calendar. Calendly even sends out reminder emails to both you and the client. Easy, right?
Calendly also has time zone detection, which is a fantastic feature! No more googling time zone conversions and hoping you got it right. Calendly is free to try, so what are you waiting for?
3. DocuSign – Contract & Documents
Every coach also needs a way to manage contracts with their clients. With DocuSign you can easily create and send documents digitally to receive and electronic signature. This means you never have to worry about a document getting lost in the mail.
DocuSign’s automation services ensure the whole process runs smoothly for all parties involved. Their high legal and security standards will bring you blessed peace of mind.
4. Kajabi – Course Creation Tool
Online courses both market and supplement your coaching business. e-courses provide a passive revenue stream through which you’ll make money every time someone enrolls–all while you focus on other parts of your business. You’ll gain exposure and establish yourself as an expert in your field.
Even better: if a student liked your e-course, they might decide to keep working with you because they trust your expertise and believe in your ability to help them achieve their goals. These students turn into clients and become part of your active revenue stream!
Kajabi offers an all-in-one program that makes it easy for you to create, promote, and deliver your online course. Bonus – you can also run your coaching website on Kajabi.
Kajabi provides beautiful pre-made templates that can also be edited to accommodate your brand style and your business’s specific needs. And since everything is automated, you can set your website up once and then be done.
Lisa Whittle and I run our awesome Called Creatives community on Kajabi and love it!
Promotional & Marketing Tools for Coaches
Once you have your coaching business all set up and ready to go, you may wonder, “How do I market my coaching business?”
These next business coaching tools and resources will help you promote your business so you can find more people to help and serve.
5. Canva – Graphic Design
Promoting your coaching business is easy with Canva. This graphic design software has an abundance of beautiful templates you can use to create Pinterest pins, social media graphics, printable PDFs, flyers, posters, and so much more.
Canva’s photo library contains thousands of professional stock photos you can use, too. You can add text, graphic elements, filters, and other effects to personalize the image for your specific business needs.
With Canva Pro, you can resize graphics with just one click, create a brand kit so your preferred colors and fonts are readily available for use, and save images with a transparent background.
Who knew graphic design could be so much fun?
6. Tailwind – Pinterest Scheduler
Pinterest is a great way to promote and market your coaching business, but it can also be quite time-consuming. This is where Tailwind comes in. This fantastic marketing tool allows you to schedule out your pins, and then it automatically posts them for you at the best times for your audience.
Tailwind even has a design service so you can create pins right within their platform, which can save you even more valuable time.
Another great feature of Tailwind is their communities. Most groups operate on a 1:1 share ratio, which means that for every pin you ask other entrepreneurs to share, you share someone else’s pin that’s relevant to your audience. There’s an abundance of quality content and it’s kind of like free marketing for you.
It’s a win-win for everyone.
7. Interact – Lead Magnets
Building an email list is essential to the success of any business. And the best way to grow your email list is with an awesome lead magnet such as a quiz.
Everyone loves a good quiz because they enjoy learning more about themselves. And Interact’s program provides pre-made templates, making it easy to create a personality quiz, scored quiz, or even an assessment. (This is the program I used to create my fun Superpower quiz!)
All of the Interact templates can be edited to match your brand style. And once created, Interact makes it simple to embed the quiz into your website or promote it on social media.
Interact is also GDPR compliant, compatible with all devices, and integrates with every major email and marketing automation system. Interact even shares analytics so you can track conversions, too.
It’s a great program to get the word out about all you have to offer!
Continuing Education Tools for Coaches
Successful women in business know that you never stop learning. There are always ways to improve your craft, gain new knowledge, and refresh your memory on things you already learned. These next tools are great ways to continue your education not only as a coach but also as an entrepreneur (and maybe even pick up a new skill or two like makeup artistry).
Find your perfect rate to charge as a coach with our coaching rate quiz.
8. MasterClass – Subscription
Want to learn some awesome new skills straight from the professionals?
Bob Iger taught me business strategy and leadership. Steve Martin taught me comedy. Malcolm Gladwell helped me boost my writing ability. And Bobbi Brown even helped me learn how to apply my makeup perfectly!
And it’s all thanks to MasterClass.
With the MasterClass program, not only do you get to learn from the top performers in their fields, but each class also offers over three hours of high quality video instruction. The classes are designed for students of all skill levels and feature extras like bonus materials and resources.
MasterClass is a great way to learn new skills, stay on top of your game, and continue your education so you can be the best coach and entrepreneur that you can be!
9. Udemy – Pay Per Class
Another great platform to help you advance your personal and professional skills is Udemy. They have over 130,000 self-paced video courses taught by instructors who are at the top of their industry.
Unlike MasterClass where you’re paying for access to all the courses on the platform, you pay only for the classes you want to take from Udemy.
Another nice thing with Udemy is that once you purchase a class, you have lifetime access to it. This way you can easily refresh your memory by reviewing classes you have already taken.
Tools for Coaches With Podcasts
Podcasting is a great way to market your coaching business and connect with future clients because you build relationships and trust while establishing yourself as an expert. But there are some tools you will need to add to your coaching toolkit in order to create a great coaching podcast.
10. Rode Podcasting Mic – Audio Quality
In my opinion, the best mic out there is the Rode Podcasting Mic. I love this dynamic mic because it has broadcast quality recording. The mic does a great job minimizing audio distortions while the internal pop filter helps eliminate unpleasant sounds.
It’s a plug-n-play solution which makes it easy to use. And it even has a headphone output so you know exactly how everything sounds right away.
This mic is a game-changer when it comes to the audio quality of your podcast.
11. Cast – Podcast Recording
For recording, editing, publishing, and hosting a podcast no service can beat Cast. The studio program allows you to record solo episodes or guest interviews. The editor program makes it easy to add sound effects, presets, and drop-in audio. And once you’re all done, the publisher feature makes it simple to get your podcast out to your audience.
Everything is saved automatically to their cloud and all plans include analytics, hosting, and RSS feed. Plus, with high quality synced audio, live text chats, show notes, and podcast tips, Cast has everything you need to help your podcast succeed!
FREE Business Coaching Tools
When you’re first starting out as a coach you may find your budget is a little tight. But that’s okay – everyone has to start somewhere.
And when it comes to free resources for entrepreneurs, no one can beat Google.
12. FREE Resources from Google
You can create handy spreadsheets with Google Sheets to help you keep track of income and expenses. You can easily create word-type documents in Google Docs. And you can keep track of important events and meetings with Google Calendar (with reminders!).
Google Drive allows you to save everything you create so you never have to worry about losing any important information. It’s also an easy way to share documents with others.
If you’re looking for a business email, consider Gmail. It’s comprehensive, intuitive, allows for automation, and can even be integrated with your custom domain. Read this article for more fantastic Gmail tips so you can learn how to get the most out of what Google has to offer.
Another great resource from Google is Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), which is available for a small monthly fee. Through this service, Google provides entrepreneurs with emails with custom domains as well as collaboration tools such as Gmail, Meet, Chat, Slides, Forms, Sites, and so much more.
And Google Analytics helps you keep an eye on your website, which can show you what’s working well and what adjustments may need to be made. You can track data like keywords and click rates so you can keep up with what your audience is looking for and how well your website is serving visitors. And then you can keep improving it!
Your Action Step
Now you know the tools you need to succeed as a coach!
I hope these tools will benefit your business as much as they have for mine. Whether you’ve been in the business for a few years or are just getting started, these tools can help you stay organized, market your business, and see more growth.
And keep in mind, nothing is impossible when you are willing to put in a little work.
Find your perfect rate to charge as a coach with our coaching rate quiz.
