Best Software and Services for Coaches

If you’re running a business of your own, you’re going to want to use tools that your make life easier, help you reach new clients, and/or help you serve your clients more effectively.

I’m asked all the time what tools I use to run my business. Below you’ll find a list of products and services that I use – in some cases I mention similar alternatives.  The tools I use are all investments for me. They pay back way more than I end up spending on them.

Disclaimer: Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means I may make a commission or get a few free months of usage. This doesn’t affect the price of the product for you at all. I’m a regular user of most of these products I recommend. Purchasing through my affiliate links is a way you can help support me and my business. However, if you would rather not, feel free to google the companies yourself and buy them that way. Whatever is most comfortable to you. My hope is these tools or ones like them help you grow your business.

Finding Clients

Drip

Seriously, look past Mailchimp for your email marketing needs. I know a lot of people start with Mailchimp because it’s free and well known. But as soon as they want to do any kind of email automation, they find it doesn’t meet their needs and/or it’s too confusing to setup. Drip is powerful but easy-to-use email marketing software that allows you to smartly segment our your leads and clients, automatically send relevant emails to them, and quickly create email courses and nurturing campaigns that will qualify, condition, and even pitch your prospects. I use Drip for all my email marketing and to help me win clients. Getting started is free if you have under 100 subscribers.

Other options include ConvertKit and Active Campaign.

Leadpages

The easiest way to create high-quality landing pages for your business. You can use LeadPages to create seminar / webinar registration pages, squeeze pages for your lead magnets that you can drive paid traffic to (eg. using FaceBook ads), and much more. If you’re looking to automate how you acquire client leads, this is a great option.

Sumo

A suite of free apps to grow your traffic, get more email subscribers, and more. It’s 100% free to get started, works on all sites, and doesn’t matter if your site is WordPress, Squarespace or something else. It takes under a minute to install.

Look Like a Pro

Squarespace

Launching a website is a big task. DIY options like Squarespace make it relatively easy to get a basic site up and running. Studiopress Sites for WordPress users or Wix are similar options. Of course if have the budget available, hiring a developer will save you a lot of time and frustration depending on your technical ability. Honestly, it’s not easy to build a website yourself and have it look professional. If you decide to do it yourself, ask for feedback from a few strangers or friends that you know won’t sugarcoat their feedback.

Namecheap

If you need to register a domain, there are plenty of options. I’ve tried a lot of domain providers over the years and Namecheap is my preferred option for great value and service.

G Suite

Once you’ve sorted out your business name and domain, you’ll want to get your email address to match. It’s more professional than using coachsam@gmail.com. For only $5 per month you get an email address, online calendar, cloud storage and Google Docs.

Moo

You need business cards and this is the place to get them.

Canva

Simple online design tool to create social media graphics, posters and more. Plus it’s free if you use your own images and don’t need the more advanced features.

Iconfinder

High quality icons from a community of professional designers. Easily search for icons to use on your website or in presentations. You can even edit them on the site before downloading to save time.

Getting Paid

Stripe

You need a way to accept payments online and Stripe makes it easy. Of course PayPal is another option. Here is a good review of the differences between these services.

Moonclerk

If you need to setup recurring payments with an end date on Stripe you’ll need a service like Moonclerk. Without it, you will need to manually stop the subscription for each client in your Stripe dashboard.

Supporting Clients

Paperform

There are numerous online form building tools available to you. Typeform is the leader for good reason. You can make beautiful forms easily but it’s expensive. You need the Pro version ($30/month) to get advanced features like hidden fields (I use hidden fields to pass information to Drip.) I get all the features I need at half that cost with Paperform. I can create incredibly simple OR complex forms and surveys that I all over my business. If you use WordPress you may want to use Gravity Forms along with a plug-in called Lastform that makes your Gravity Forms look like Typeform.

Zapier

Consider Zapier your new secret weapon. It’s an easy way to link numerous services together based on an input trigger and an output action. For instance, let’s say you want to be notified whenever your Google Sheet gets a new row added to it. You could use Zapier to do that, along with any number of other integrations — and with zero code needed. Just think of any repetitive task you do and odds are there is a way to automate at least part of it with Zapier.

Zoom

If you’re a virtual coach, you may want to have video calls with clients from time to time. The days of Skype being your only option are long gone. Zoom provides great quality of service and it’s free if you only need calls under 40 minutes with less than 100 participants.