The Coaching Practice Launch Playbook
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 7
- Confidence
- —
Simon's answer to "how do I actually become a coach", drawn from how he built his own practice alongside a nine-to-five. The sequence starts with motive: if you're doing it because it looked glamorous or lucrative, you won't survive the setbacks every path contains. Then skill acquisition — a course, a qualification, or shadowing people who've done it for years. Then volume: as with writing or speaking, you learn coaching by coaching, so you coach free at the start. The client-acquisition move is specific — approach trusted people in your network with a six-month free offer explicitly priced in testimonials and feedback. The downside is capped because nobody paid and nothing is public; the upside is referrals and glowing testimonials that produce the first paid clients.
Origin
Extracted from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal
How to run it
- 1
Interrogate your reason for doing it
Before anything else, establish why coaching matters to you. Simon's screen is explicit: if you're only doing it because you saw someone make a lot of money or because the path looks glamorous, you won't survive the challenges, setbacks and failures that come.
- 2
If money is the driver, find the goal behind it
Simon throws the question back: say you've made all the money you ever wanted — what would you do with it. Money is a means goal, fuel, like petrol; you need to know where you're driving before you know how much to put in.
Pro tip Lottery winners who go bankrupt are his illustration of what happens with no purpose for the money.
- 3
Learn the skill properly
Sign up to a coaching course, pursue a qualification, or shadow and learn from people who've done it for years. Simon's own entry was a free two-day event that led to a two-year course completed alongside his job.
Watch out Jumping straight in without this, Simon says, means you'll quickly be found out for lacking relevant experience.
- 4
Coach, free, in volume
If you want to write you write, if you want to speak you speak, if you want to coach you coach. Free reps give you exposure to different backgrounds, life situations and goals — which is where the wisdom for paid work comes from.
- 5
Tap your network with a defined trade
Approach a few trusted friends with a concrete offer: six months of coaching at zero cost, in exchange for a testimonial and feedback. Simon started exactly this way.
Pro tip Naming the exchange up front makes the testimonial an agreed deliverable rather than an awkward later ask.
- 6
Give prospects an experience before the ask
Coaching is very hard to explain to someone who's never had it, so the greatest gift before anyone signs is a powerful conversation they can feel. Simon likens it to the free personal-training session or a thirty-day trial.
- 7
Let results, not credentials, be the proof
Simon got his qualifications a couple of years after starting. His stated view is that someone with few qualifications and incredible results, working with inspiring people and featured in media, is who most people will choose.
Watch out The flip side: the risk is capped early because free work is private — if it goes badly, nobody paid and nothing is public.
In the wild
Simon attended a free two-day event run by a Coaching Academy, sceptical about what could be learned in two days, and went only because the sole cost was his time. He came home and told his wife he wanted to sign up to the course. Two years later, balancing it alongside a nine-to-five, he finished with two qualifications. He then reached out to a few trusted friends offering six months of coaching at zero cost in exchange for a testimonial and feedback, and applied the skills in ordinary conversations until the practice took hold.
→ A coaching practice that led to Sky News and BBC appearances and a book with Penguin.
Ali describes meeting a woman who'd been in medicine fourteen years and was leaving to become a coach. She was mid-qualification and coaching a number of people for free through it. When Ali challenged her on why she wasn't charging, she said she needed to wait six months until the qualification finished. He asked what then — she said she'd need to build her brand, her website, organic and content marketing. Underneath the sequencing, Ali found a set of emotional barriers about charging money at all.
→ An indefinite delay to first revenue, driven by fear of charging rather than by any missing capability.
Common mistakes
Waiting for the qualification to charge
Simon got his own qualifications a couple of years after starting, and argues results matter more than credentials. Treating the certificate as the gate usually masks a belief problem — Simon's diagnosis for selling tension is that you don't yet believe in what you're offering.
Entering because it looks glamorous
Every path carries setbacks and failures. If the motive is someone else's visible success rather than your own reason, you stop at the first challenge.
Building brand and website before reps
Marketing before you have coached anyone means you have nothing to market and no testimonials to point to. Free reps generate both the skill and the social proof.
From the transcript
“the first I would always say is to look at learning the skill of coaching”
“if you want to become a writer you write if you want to speak you speak if you want to coach coach”
“I'm looking for free people who would like to be coached by me for the next six months at zero cost in exchange for a…”
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