When you decide to become a coach, the focus is usually on learning how to be a good coach, find the right certification and get your clients results. Often, the knowledge and skills of running a business is totally left out of the equation until much later.

It’s no wonder so many of us health and life coaches feel completely overwhelmed when it comes to actually getting clients and making our coaching businesses work!

Once our businesses are up and running, between managing clients, handling admin work, and creating content, amongst many other tasks, it’s easy to feel stretched thin. Many coaches find themselves in a feast and famine cycle because they don’t have the time to market their businesses sustainably.

Something that can be incredibly helpful in overcoming this problem is getting systems in place, and that’s what we’ll be exploring in this blog post.

Listen to this episode on The Wholehearted Business Show Podcast: Listen on Apple Podcasts / Listen on Spotify

What is a system in a coaching business?

A system is a collection of processes put together in a way that is designed to achieve a specific goal or outcome. It’s one of the ways we can make implementing strategies much more doable in our businesses.

I like to think of systems like a machine, something that you can create and then allow to run with less input from you.

Most systems include some automated elements so that the system can run itself which obviously has some big benefits to you as a business owner and coach. Most systems will need some tech elements to make them work.

Why Systems Matter in Your Coaching Business

Creating systems can help you to:

Save Time – creating systems in your business that streamline your processes can help you save a lot of time which you can use to work on other areas of your business, or to simply enjoy your life more!

Save Energy – systems can help take some of the mental load off your plate. With processes that have to be repeated, having a system means you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time you have to carry out that set of tasks.

Help You Be More Productive – as noted above, systems can help you save time and energy which is a big way to be more productive, but in addition to that, systems can also often provide you with data which you can use to refine a process or system so you can actually improve your results.

Less Stress and Overwhelm – streamlining your processes into systems that save you time and energy will also have a very positive impact on your stress levels and how overwhelmed you feel. At its heart, systems are about being organised.

Help You Show up and Take Action – if you sometimes struggle with showing up in certain areas of your business (ahem, marketing!) then having a system in place can really support you to push through resistance and be present in new ways. Just having a clear process, often with some automated elements can help you take action.

Automate Stuff You Don’t Enjoy – many, but not all, systems will include automated elements and those that do can sometimes be a useful way to get stuff done that you don’t actually enjoy!

Enable You to Scale Your Income – of course a huge benefit of having systems in your business is your ability to scale. The right systems can not only support your ability to free up time to be more productive, but can directly support the activities that will bring in more sales.

Examples of Systems You Can Create in Your Coaching Business

I tend to think of systems in two key ways: systems that help you run and systems that help you scale.

Examples of systems that help your business run smoothly:

Client Onboarding / Offboarding and Management – using a CRM that can automate some of the steps can really help here. I love Dubsado and Paperbell for this purpose (affiliate links).

Financial management – whether it’s using a spreadsheet to keep a track of your income and expenses or a fully fledged online accounting system like Xero, putting a system in place to manage your money can help you save a lot of time.

Planning – I have a system that I use to effectively plan for my life and business in mini seasons as I share in this post. I find this simple system really helps to set me up for success!

Examples of systems that help you scale:

Content marketing and content repurposing system – most of us are creating some form of content in order to market our coaching businesses and this can take up a substantial amount of time. Having systems and workflows that help make this process more efficient can help you get far better results with your marketing than having to re-invent the wheel continuously. This is one of the reasons I love the system I have created around the way I create my weekly podcast, YouTube video and blog post.

Sales Funnel – of course a really obvious example of a system that helps us scale is a sales funnel. Sales funnels tend to be based around a sequence of emails with the idea that the system is created to help us generate more leads and sales at the end of it.

Client Attraction System – another system you can create in your business is a one that generates spontaneous client inquiries on autopilot – which is something I’m teaching in my upcoming masterclass:

Client Attraction & Sustainable Sales for Highly Sensitive and Heart Centered Coaches

You’ll learn:

• Practical strategies for booking more 1:1 Coaching Clients without having to hustle in Facebook Groups and send cold DMs (ick)
• How you can still attract clients and customers without using social media
• The essential strategies your coaching business is missing if you’re not booking clients right now and how to fix this without going against your highly sensitive nature
• The three key offers every coaching business needs to have in 2025 to be a success
• My signature 6 part system for a sustainable, joyful and profitable coaching business

Save your seat here.

When it comes to systems, there are so many ways you can systemise processes in your business that will enable you to get better results, and create more time, energy and freedom for yourself. I hope this blog post has given you lots of ideas for how you can get started.

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