Create and Set Up Coaching

This article explains how to get started with coaching by creating and managing a coaching product, setting it up in your Teachable site, and creating an intake form.

Overview

In your school, you can create various types of products: courses, coaching products, bundles, and digital downloads. Coaching products allow you to manage one-on-one coaching relationships by scheduling time, scheduling video calls, and sharing assignments with your clients.

Coaching products are made up of milestones. Milestones can be used to schedule meetings, set up video calls, or send messages and files within a coaching product. Milestones indicate what clients can expect next as they progress through the coaching product.

Create a coaching product

To create a coaching product on your school:

1. From the admin of your school, you can go to the Coaching tab and click New Coaching. Alternatively, you can click the plus (+) icon next to Products or click the Create New Product button in the top right corner of the dashboard.
   
2. The Getting Started wizard will launch. First, give your coaching service a name. Click Next.
3. You’ll be asked to set a client intake flow. Intake flows determine how you accept new clients for coaching. You have three options:
   1. No intake form - New clients can go directly to checkout and sign up.
   2. Intake form - New clients fill out an intake form and go immediately to checkout.
   3. Intake form with approval - New clients fill out an intake form and wait for your approval before checkout.
4. Choose your intake type and click Next.
5. Create a pricing plan for your coaching product. You'll be able to create additional pricing plans later in the Pricing tab. Click Next.
6. Select a start date for your first milestone and click Next. You can select:
   1. On the enrollment date - The first milestone is available to the student as soon as they enroll
   2. On a fixed date - The first milestone becomes available to the student on a set date
7. Add details for the first milestone, which will be the same for all clients who enroll, then click Next. You can add:
   1. Title - A heading for the milestone.
   2. Description - A brief description, or welcome message, for the milestone.
   3. Add scheduling - Toggle on if you want to schedule a meeting as a part of the first milestone.
      1. Use calendar - Add a link to a virtual calendar, which the client will use to schedule a meeting with you by selecting an available date and time. (Learn more about adding calendars to milestones).
      2. Set meeting time - Add a meeting/video URL and select a meeting time. (Learn more about adding meetings to milestones).

After completing the above, your coaching product is created!

To preview what the first milestone looks like to enrolled clients, you can click the Preview button in the top right corner of the Template or Clients page.

In order to get ready to start selling your coaching product to clients, we recommend doing the following:

• Ensure your pricing options are set up as desired from the Pricing tab—learn more about pricing your products.
• Create and design your sales page (and post-intake page, if applicable) from the Pages tab—learn more about the page editor.
• Publish your product and make it visible so it displays in your product directory—learn more about product publishing and visibility.

Intake forms

When creating the coaching product, you are prompted to choose an intake form flow:

• No intake form - New clients can go directly to checkout and sign up.
• Intake form - New clients fill out an intake form and go immediately to checkout.
• Intake form with approval - New clients fill out an intake form and wait for your approval before checkout.

If you are using an intake form, you need to add an intake form block to your sales page. To do so:

1. Go to your coaching product's sales page editor from the Pages tab.
   
2. Click Add New Block, and then select the Intake Form block.
3. After you create the block, use the Intake Form buttons to choose whether you want a Intake without approval form (users can go directly to the post intake page with all of your pricing options), or an Intake with approval form (users must be approved within the admin before going to the post intake page).
4. Use the text fields on the left-hand side block editor to customize the intake form for your business. You can customize the heading text, description text, Submit button text (CTA text), as well as the labels for the form (Input 1 and Input 2). You cannot change Email Address as it is required for the intake process. When you are finished making changes, click Update.
   

Whenever a client submits information through an intake form, you can find their submissions in the Prospective tab in your coaching product's Clients page. You'll see the submitted email address, intake date, payment status, and the information submitted through the form. Additionally, if you create an intake form with approval, you will have the option to approve or deny the client:

Once you approve a client, they will be emailed a link to the post intake page. This is typically where they will purchase the product. (If the intake form did not require approval, then the client will be navigated to this page as soon as they submit the intake form on the sales page).

You can customize the post intake from the Pages tab as well. This is where you should add a Pricing block to display the pricing options for your product. This ensures that clients will not purchase until after they submit the intake form.

If the client has enrolled in/purchased the coaching product after submitting the intake form, they’ll show up in the Enrollment tab.

Manage your coaching product

Once you've created a coaching product, you can find it and any others you create in the Coaching index page. Clicking into a coaching product will take you to its Information page. From there, you can change the name, author, and thumbnail image of your product.

Advanced settings

From the Advanced settings section of the Information tab, you can set up a Calendly integration with your coaching product.

The Calendly integration can be useful if you plan on adding calendars to your client milestones so that they can schedule meetings with you. (Learn more about adding calendars to milestones.)

If you use the Calendly integration, and a student schedules a Calendly meeting via a milestone calendar, a new milestone will automatically be created for the date and time the student selected. This integration requires a Professional Calendly account.

To set up the Calendly integration:

1. From your Calendly account, copy your Personal Access Token. Learn more about generating your token with Calendly.
2. In your Teachable school admin, navigate to the Information tab of your coaching product.
3. Paste your Personal Access Token to the Advanced Settings section.
4. Save your changes.

Delete a coaching product

You can delete a coaching product at any time. Deleting a coaching product is permanent and cannot be undone.

To delete a coaching product:

1. Navigate to the Information tab.
2. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Delete Coaching.
3. In the popup window, click Delete to confirm.
   

The client experience

As seen in the above diagram, the client experience will vary depending on how you set up your intake flow.

When a client submits an intake form that does not require approval, they are navigated directly to the post-intake page:

Alternatively, if the intake form does require approval, they see a message that states they will receive an email if they are accepted. 

Once a client is enrolled in the coaching product, they will see the first milestone. This first milestone is universal—any client that enrolls in the coaching product has the same first milestone. (This milestone can be adjusted from the Template tab of the coaching product).

All other milestones are added on an individual client basis—this allows you to customize the coaching experience for each individual user.

Learn more about adding milestones and managing clients.

Email notifications

There are several automatic email notifications, for both school admins and clients, associated with the purchase and managing of a coaching product.

Email notifications sent to owners/authors are:

Type of Email	Description
New enrollment notifications	Sent to primary school owners and authors when a user enrolls in a coaching product. This email template is available to edit in Emails > Template Editor.
Intake form submission notification	Sent to primary school owners when a user submits an intake form. This email will contain the contents of a user’s responses to the intake form.
New Milestone message notification	Sent to primary school owners and authors when a client adds a message on a milestone. This email will display the content of the client’s message, as well as have a link to the client’s coaching and Milestone page. You must be opted-in to receive this notification.

Email notifications sent to clients are:

Type of Email	Description
Copy of intake responses	Sent to a user after they submit an intake form. This confirms the intake form was submitted correctly and contains a copy of the user’s responses.
Intake approval notification	Sent to a user if their intake form is approved. The email contains a link to the post-intake page, where the user can then enroll in the coaching product.
Receipt	Sent to a client after they successfully purchase and enroll in a coaching product. This email template is available to edit in Emails > Template Editor.
New Milestone added notification	Sent to a client when a new Milestone is added to their coaching space. This email contains a link to the client’s coaching page. Clients must be opted-in to emails to receive this notification.
New Milestone message notification	Sent when a school owner or author adds a message on a milestone. This email will display the content of their message, as well as have a link to the client’s coaching and Milestone page. Clients must be opted-in to emails to receive this notification.

Additional resources

• Manage Clients and Schedule Sessions - Learn how to manage clients and schedule sessions for coaching products.
• Product Publishing and Visibility - Learn how to publish your product and adjust its visibility settings.
• Price Your Products - Learn about your product pricing options.
  Student Refunds - Learn about refund policies and how to refund clients.
• Create and Manage Authors - Learn how to set up an author for your coaching product so they can receive a set revenue share.
• School Affiliates - Learn how to add school affiliates, who can promote your products for a set commission rate.
• Order Bumps - Learn how to leverage order bumps to add-on your coaching products to other products in your school.