Transform your offline expertise into online coaching

Sir: You may be wondering, “Can my expertise really be transformed into online coaching programme, which people will pay for?”The answer is “YES!” If you’re a trainer, a subject-matter expert or an experienced professional, you can transform your existing knowledge into an online course. If you’re a business owner, you can turn your business processes and systems into an online curriculum to help new entrepreneurs shorten their learning curve.

I’ve done this firsthand, and will share with you how to turn your offline knowledge and experience into online coaching programme, in seven steps. First, you need to have a level of expertise in your field, or some years of experience behind you, in order to handle whatever field questions your students might throw at you, and successfully coach online. So ask yourself: what level of knowledge do you want to impact on your audience; and what level of qualification and experience do you have to create this kind of learning opportunities for your clients? Second, you need to have a passion for teaching, and an enthusiasm to help others to succeed.

Online coaching, like life and business, is like a rollercoaster – with uptimes and downtimes! To be sure, there will be times when your website will be down, there will be times of weak internet connectivity, or indeed loss of lesson documents owing to system crash (recently, the hard disk of my lap top crashed, I lost over a decade of data!) Under such situations, your passion will help you to keep things going, with no particular sense of stress or strain.

With the first two steps out of the way, the third step is to determine the topic you want to teach online. One way to find this is to look at the base of knowledge and experience that you have, that most other coaches do not have. Another is to think of the problems you want to solve for people, and then choose your course topic. Now that you are clear about the topic you want to teach, the next thing is to find your target market. This means finding your ideal clients; their pains, their desires, and their troubles. You can get clues from reading conversations on social media, and customer reviews on platforms your audience is active on. You may also talk to people, friends or relatives who fit the profile of your target audience; then observe their moves and choices. By this, you will get a good sense of what your audience want; and the kind of content that would produce results for them.

Next is to create your online coaching course. This is where your firsthand knowledge and experience comes into full play. By this, all you require is to create your content from your existing offline knowledge and experience. Then host it in an online school or online coaching delivery platform. In all this, let your brand expertise and personality shine through your course content and your hosting platform, so no one can readily replicate your specific personality and quirks. Lastly, with your online course ready, you can start driving clients to your site, to enrol for your online programme. Strategies to help you launch and sell your online course are readily available in the market. And that’s how people pay for your course, and you get rewarded.
• Mike Hunder.