The health and wellness market is absolutely exploding, now estimated at $4.2 trillion as of 2019. It wasn’t that long ago when being “healthy” meant hitting the gym and getting an occasional massage. Today, however, the wellness mindset is permeating the global consumer consciousness, so it’s no surprise that right along with it has come the explosive growth of health and wellness coaches for hire.
If you’ve jumped into the health coaching game with gusto, then finding the best tools for your health coaching business is just as important as finding your first clients. That’s not only good for business, it’s great for your soon to be clients because once you get going, it’s easy to quickly get lost in the weeds. The good news is that there are some useful coaching tools to help you get organized while streamlining critical aspects of the business such as communicating with clients, scheduling, promoting, and tracking client progress.
So you don’t get bogged down in tool reviews, here’s the low-down on the best we’ve tools we’ve found to fast-track your way to productivity, so you can spend more time focused on helping clients and less time in the admin details.
Scheduling, Organizing & Communication Tools for Health Coaches
Evernote is a note-taking and task management app that gives you an easy way to take notes, share with clients, and keep an organized to-do list. One of the best features is the sync across devices, so you always have access, even when on the go.
Cost: Free version; PRO upgrade option for added features
Acuity Scheduling. We’d probably all love it if email disappeared from our work lives, and although that may not quite be the case yet, Acuity Scheduling software lets your clients book appointments with you directly instead of doing the back and forth dance through email or SMS.
Cost: Free version for solo use; plans start at $15/month for added features.
Bookly is an appointment and scheduling plugin for WordPress websites which creates a form that you can easily add to your site to handle booking, cancellations, and re-scheduling, so it’s all automated. The system also handles online payments, notifications, and syncs with your Google calendar.
Cost: $89 regular license with 6 months support included; WooCommerce integration; 12 languages
Practice Better is online coaching software specifically designed to help manage a variety of aspects of a health coaching business, including managing 1-on-1’s with clients and managing your online coaching. The free version lets you manage up to 3 clients, storage space, HIPAA and PIPEDA compliance, scheduling, billing and a client portal.
Cost: Free version up to 3 clients, storage, compliant iOS and Android apps and more; upgrade for additional features.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the number of tools you need to manage a coaching business, not to mention the costs, then consider The Coaches Console, an all-in-one platform for managing nearly every aspect of your new coaching business.
Cost: Core system is $147/month; upgraded system is $247 per month.
Meeting with your clients regularly is obviously vital, but staying in touch with them via a video conferencing tool is a great way to stay connected more frequently without the travel time. Zoom is a user-friendly video conferencing tool that lets you and clients host and attend web conferencing easily on any device, including tablets and smartphones.
Cost: Free version for 1-on-1 calls for up to 40 minutes; upgrade plan options starting at $14.99/month.
Marketing & Social Media Tools for Health Coaches
Social media is essential for promoting your new business and being easily found, but it can take a lot of admin time. Tools like Buffer let you create posts and custom images and schedule them out over time, so you can crank out social media content like a pro, and look like you’re posting all week, even when you’ve spent just 30 minutes on it the week before.
Cost: $15/month basic plan; upgrade plans available for more users, posts and social accounts.
Another social media automation tool, Edgar lets you create and schedule evergreen posts, as well as update your status in an automated way so you can control your brand reputation while looking like you’re on top of regular status updates.
Cost: One month free; plans starting at $25/month.
Smart marketers and entrepreneurs understand the power of growing your email database over time. SumoMe is a free email capture tool for adding simple pop up forms to a website. Ideally you offer your web visitors something of educational value or an ‘opt-in’ offer, and they ‘trade’ you their email for the offer. That gives you a captive audience of prospects to stay in contact with over time.
Cost: Free basic plan; upgrade options to remove Sumo branding and customize more on your web forms.
Marketing automation is another important way to stay in front of clients and prospects, so once you’ve grown your email database with a tool like SumoMe, you can stay in touch regularly with contacts through newsletters, special offers, and more.
Cost: Free plan; upgraded plans start at $9.99/month as your database and automation needs evolve.
Canva is an online design tool that expedites the custom image creation process with a do-it-yourself way to create custom images for everything from brochures and business cards to YouTube thumbnails, Facebook page graphics, social media ads, and more. Templates for every type of graphic are provided along with access to free stock images you can use.
Cost: Free plan for individual users; Pro plan starts at $12.95/month for added features.
Yes, we all wish email was a thing of the past, but frankly, it’s just not yet. So, this cool little tool for Gmail helps you better manage your inbox with read receipts, email scheduling, email reminders, and prompts. You can set follow up reminders so you never forget to circle back when you need to again.
Cost: Free basic version includes up to 10 email credits; upgrade plans available for unlimited starting at $4.99/month.
Client Progress Tracking & Measurement Tools for Health Coaches
As a new health coach, tracking client progress is mission-critical to demonstrating your value over time, and therefore, to maintaining a healthy pipeline of recurring revenue and a solid way to gain word-of-mouth referrals. Using the above-mentioned Coaches Console is certainly one way to do that all in one system, and there are a lot of health coaching practice apps on the market too.
Practice management apps have important features to streamline the business admin side of your practice, such as processing client intake forms, logging and sharing goals and meal plans, keeping client charts (securely), sending and processing invoices, email marketing and client scheduling. Take a look at several well-balanced tools that offer such features including Healthie, SimplePractice, MindBody, Trainerize and Cliniko.
And yes, all that’s required to build a successful coaching business, but what about tracking client’s health metrics so clients also have a clear view of how your efforts are helping them reach their goals? You could do everything else right, but if you’re clients don’t see real, measurable results from your work with them, it will be challenging to retain them over the long haul. Arguably, keeping tracking of their health metrics is the #1 thing you can and should be doing.
Try Heads Up (free for 30 days), a health metrics dashboard app designed to help users optimize their health. The system integrates with a wide variety of other niche health tracker apps and wearable devices so you can see all of your client’s health metrics in one place, via the web dashboard, or for quick views from the mobile app (for iOS and Android) that’s synced across devices.
Ready to Go?
Your new health coaching career will be off to the races with the right tools in place to help you more easily manage the day to day aspects of the business, and a few key tools to track client progress. All of that will be well worth it so you can clearly demonstrate your value over the short and long haul… which is precisely how you retain clients and secure positive referrals.
The key to success will be finding ways to simplify and streamline your daily to-do list, and most importantly, finding ways that work with your style and comfort level with just how ‘teched-up’ you want and need to be.
Health coaches can grab a 30-day free trial of Heads Up, and trials and/or free versions of many of the tools listed above.
Happy Coaching My Friends, and Namaste!
?? Dave
