The Business Of Online Coaching Podcast

Afro Ndiritu & Farah Kariamburi

Charging too little, overworked, frustrated & struggling to show your value? After Farah thought that another certification was the answer to solving our online struggles in 2020. Afro knew there had to be a different way as our client’s results were already getting great results. We needed to focus on the business side. YAC (Yet Another Certification) Syndrome was coined & led us to help others find the cure. That’s why this podcast exists to help you, the Online Coach, charge what you are worth, showcase your value & transform even more lives through your coaching business.

  1. May 25

    AI Agents for Coaches Part 2: What's Working, What's Not, and Where to Start (Part 2) | Episode 190 | The Business Of Online Coaching Podcast

    What happens when you stop asking whether AI can help your coaching business and start asking which parts of your workflow it can simply take over? Afro and Farah open this second instalment mid-experiment. Afro has already used Claude to pull a transcript from a Zoom recording, extract the key points from an hour long client call, and generate a pitch deck, all in a single session. The design was rough, he admits, but the content was 100% accurate. His fix: pipe Claude's output into Canva instead of using Claude Design directly. The bigger story is the podcast workflow they are building right now. Afro walks through the chain: upload the episode to Descript, trigger the agent, it pulls the transcript, drafts the summary and ten quotes, pauses for approval, schedules to Spotify and all major platforms, then surfaces ten short clips edited with preset captions via Opus, pauses again, and schedules those clips to social media. He puts the completion at 80%. The only human step left is pressing record and saying "kick it off." Farah's content pipeline is close behind. She records a short video, drops it into a folder, and the agent adds a thumbnail, captions, and queues it for the next available window: 7 AM, 3 PM, or 7 PM. Videos longer than four minutes get chopped automatically, with the original and the clips both distributed. Afro's diagnosis of why this matters is blunt: coaches can create content, but they cannot distribute it fast enough. If you record in the morning and it goes out in the afternoon, the bottleneck disappears. They are also running 31 active workflows, enough that Afro built a morning report just to track what is working and what has failed overnight. He is on the $100 a month Claude Max plan and was at 92% of his usage limit with five hours left in the billing cycle. He made it. For coaches who have never opened Claude, Afro's advice is direct: start with the free plan, be curious, and play. He recommends Claude over ChatGPT right now, specifically because it connects to Canva and other assets more cleanly, which matters for coaches building before and after photo content or curriculum slides. One student was building a course one slide at a time, a process Afro estimated could take six months. Claude stores it as a project, lets her update it by talking to it, and cuts that timeline sharply. His one firm boundary: if you have never coached a client and are starting from scratch, skip the agent work entirely. Agents replace and accelerate things that already exist. They do not build something from nothing. Get clients first, then automate the machine that serves them. Farah's line on household robots ("Does it cook dinners? Not yet. Wash dishes? Not yet.") is the only thing the technology cannot yet handle. Everything else, it seems, is already in the queue. This episode is for coaches who are already operating but feel buried in distribution, admin, and content logistics. The tools are here, the cost is $20 to $100 a month, and the barrier, as Afro puts it, is lower than it has ever been. Quick test for online coaches. Can you explain your coaching offer in one clear sentence? If that feels harder than it should be, you're not alone. Most coaches don't struggle because they're bad at coaching, they struggle because their offer is vague, hard to explain, or under-positioned. That's exactly why we created The Offer Room. It's a free community where online coaches come to clarify their coaching offer, sharpen their messaging, and structure premium offers they can confidently charge $2k+ for. You can join us here: https://www.skool.com/the-offer-room

    19 min
  2. May 18

    AI Agents for Coaches: From Zero to 31 Workflows in 6 Weeks (Part 1) | Episode 189 | The Business Of Online Coaching Podcast

    What happens when a lunch conversation about a pin-activated curriculum sends you down a rabbit hole so deep you are refreshing an Amazon tracking page during flash floods in Sharjah, desperate for a Mac Mini you had never heard of a week earlier? That is where this episode begins. Afro Ndiritu sits down with his wife and business partner Farah to document, in real time, what six weeks of obsessive AI learning looks like from the inside. Not a polished retrospective. A live debrief, mid-build. The trigger was a meal at Dubai Creek with Ryan, a mentor they have known for six years. Ryan was showing Afro what he had built using Claude Code: a course with pin activation instead of a username and password, and agents that people could talk to via WhatsApp. Afro went home and started YouTubing. He posted a photo of his N8n screen to Instagram Stories. Lloyd from the gym spotted it, they met for coffee on Saturday, and by the following week a Mac Mini was on its way from a warehouse in Sharjah. The Mac Mini matters because OpenClaude agents need access to a machine. Running the agent on a separate, dedicated device means you control exactly what it can touch. If anything goes wrong, you unplug it. Afro named his agent J.A.R.V.I.S, because he cares about Iron Man and does not care that everyone else did the same thing. The cost was honest and instructive. Total spend so far: roughly $800 to $900. Afro estimates 70% of that was what Lloyd calls school fees: the mistakes made while learning. Early on, Jarvis was being asked to do tasks directly through the Anthropic back end, which charges per token. Some days that hit $40 to $50. Once Afro switched to a fixed $200 per month Claude subscription and used Claude Code to write the instructions rather than burning tokens on trial and error, daily costs dropped to $5 or less. The result after six weeks: 31 workflows running, and both their VA and content editor reduced to five hours each per week. While recording this episode, a reminder with a Zoom link and session details went out automatically to attendees of Farah's pitching club. Nobody sent it. Jarvis did. Farah's own experience grounds the episode for coaches who are not technical. She sat down on a Friday evening, opened Claude, gave it her brand colours from Canva, her Google Drive, and the framework behind her Seven to Thrive programme. Twenty-five to thirty minutes later she had a complete lead magnet guide, a landing page with a URL, an embedded Loom video, a pop-up form, and 14 follow-up emails ready for her ActiveCampaign sequence. A process that previously took close to two weeks through a VA now took one evening. Farah also raises the human question that many coaches will feel: what happens to the team? Her first instinct was discomfort. Afro's answer was direct: the world is moving this way, and the choice is to move with it or be left behind. They told their team honestly, and encouraged them to learn the tools so they could offer this skill to others. This episode is for coaches who have heard the noise around AI and still feel it is either too technical or too distant to act on. The numbers here are specific, the mistakes are named, and the workflows are already running. Quick test for online coaches. Can you explain your coaching offer in one clear sentence? If that feels harder than it should be, you're not alone. Most coaches don't struggle because they're bad at coaching, they struggle because their offer is vague, hard to explain, or under-positioned. That's exactly why we created The Offer Room. It's a free community where online coaches come to clarify their coaching offer, sharpen their messaging, and structure premium offers they can confidently charge $2k+ for. You can join us here: https://www.skool.com/the-offer-room

    23 min
  3. May 11

    Why Emotional Intelligence Can’t Be Learned (And What Actually Can) | Episode 188 | The Business Of Online Coaching Podcast

    What if the reason you cannot stop an argument, close a resistant client, or get through to someone you love has nothing to do with what you are saying, and everything to do with the fact that you are saying anything at all? Doug Noll arrives at this conversation carrying an unusual biography. He pushed through a difficult childhood, earned a place at Dartmouth, and spent 22 years as a civil trial lawyer in central California: including a seven-month, $36 million securities fraud case in federal court. By any measure, he had made it. Then, on a whitewater rafting trip in Idaho, he counted the people he had genuinely served across his entire career. He reached five. He came back, enrolled in a master's degree in peacemaking at Fresno Pacific University, walked into his firm and quit, and left 22 years of practice and $10 million on the table. The year was 2000. What he built next is the subject of this conversation. The central argument Noll makes is precise and uncomfortable: emotional intelligence, as most people discuss it, cannot be learned. The term was coined by Salovey and Mayer in 1989, then popularised by Daniel Goleman's 1995 book. But Noll's critique is surgical. Every company, every leadership book, every TED talk that references emotional intelligence tells you what it is. None of them tell you how to develop it, because they do not know. "They never take the time to analyse what it is that they're doing, so they can't teach it." What can be learned, Noll argues, are the three underlying competencies that emotional intelligence actually measures: emotional self-awareness, emotional self-regulation, and cognitive empathy. Master the third, and the first two follow automatically. The mechanism for doing so is a skill called affect labelling: ignoring the words someone is saying, reading their emotional state, and reflecting those emotions back using direct "you" statements. Not "I think you might be feeling frustrated." Rather: "You're pissed off. You feel completely disrespected. You feel invisible. And at the very bottom, you feel abandoned and alone." The neuroscience behind this is not motivational language. A 2007 fMRI study from Matthew Lieberman's lab at UCLA showed that affect labelling inhibits the emotional centres of the brain and simultaneously activates the right ventral lateral prefrontal cortex, calming the brain in 90 seconds or less. It works on any human brain on the planet, because all human brains are hardwired for it. Noll has tested this in the most demanding environments imaginable. In 2010, he co-founded the Prison of Peace project, taking the skill into the largest, most violent women's prison in the world, then into men's prisons from 2013. One of his first male students, Daniel Henson, had murdered four family members at age 14 or 15 after years of severe abuse. In a letter Noll reads aloud, Daniel reports graduating summa cum laude from Fresno State in May 2024, and being accepted into a master's programme. He credits Noll with giving him "fundamental life skills, communication skills, emotional management skills." This episode is for coaches who want to close more clients without pressure, leaders who keep losing the same arguments, and anyone who has read every book on listening and still cannot do it. The how is here. Quick test for online coaches. Can you explain your coaching offer in one clear sentence? If that feels harder than it should be, you're not alone. Most coaches don't struggle because they're bad at coaching, they struggle because their offer is vague, hard to explain, or under-positioned. That's exactly why we created The Offer Room. It's a free community where online coaches come to clarify their coaching offer, sharpen their messaging, and structure premium offers they can confidently charge $2k+ for. You can join us here: https://www.skool.com/the-offer-room

    51 min
  4. May 4

    She Walked Away With Nothing… Then Made £20K ($26K) in 5 Weeks | #0187 | The Business Of Online Coaching Podcast

    What does it actually take to build a successful coaching business? Most coaches assume the answer is more qualifications, more content, more visibility, or simply waiting for the right moment when life settles down. Adele's story destroys that assumption completely. Adele is a therapeutic coach, trauma specialist, somatic healer, hypnotherapist, and founder of the Feminine Leadership Academy. She had been collecting certifications for nearly 30 years. She had run retreats. She had trained under world-class practitioners. She had everything — except clarity on what she actually offered and who it was for. When she first described herself, she used the phrase "infinite potential alchemist." People had no idea what she did. And in the background, her life was falling apart. After years of narcissistic abuse inside what looked like a picture-perfect life — a retreat centre, a swimming pool, a thriving-looking business — Adele finally walked away. With nothing. Literally nothing. Her belongings were left on the street outside her home by her ex-partner. Her bank accounts were frozen. She moved back to her parents and then eventually to Spain to rebuild. She showed up to one of her Thursday coaching calls right after her dad and brother had helped her collect her things from the pavement. And in the five weeks that followed, she made over £20,000 ($26,000) in sales. 100% close rate on every call. Every single client chose the top package. This episode is a masterclass in what actually moves the needle. It is not more time, more credentials, or more favourable circumstances. It is clarity on your message, your client, and your offer — structured in a way you can deliver in 30 minutes with complete confidence. Adele explains how removing the complexity from her pitch made sales calls feel like conversations she looked forward to rather than dreaded. She shares how the clarity she found in her business mirrored the clarity she was finding in her personal life — and how both reinforced each other. She also opens up about the profound connection between unhealed relationships and suppressed income, and why she now teaches her own clients that financial growth and emotional healing are inseparable. If you have ever told yourself the timing is not right, life is too messy, or you need to wait until things calm down before you push forward in your business — this episode is for you. Quick test for online coaches. Can you explain your coaching offer in one clear sentence? If that feels harder than it should be, you're not alone. Most coaches don't struggle because they're bad at coaching, they struggle because their offer is vague, hard to explain, or under-positioned. That's exactly why we created The Offer Room. It's a free community where online coaches come to clarify their coaching offer, sharpen their messaging, and structure premium offers they can confidently charge $2k+ for. You can join us here: https://www.skool.com/the-offer-room

    30 min
  5. Apr 27

    Why Prospects Misunderstand Your Offer (Even When You Explain It Well) | #0186 | The Business of Online Coaching Podcast

    Want to clarify your coaching offer, sharpen your messaging, and structure premium offers you can confidently charge $2k+ for. You can join us here: https://www.skool.com/the-offer-room Have you ever explained your coaching offer clearly — and the prospect still didn't get it? You're not alone. And the uncomfortable truth is: if they don't understand it, that's on you. In this episode, Afro and Farah break down exactly why prospects misunderstand coaching offers even when coaches think they've explained everything. The answer might surprise you — it's not about clarity of words, it's about the difference between features and meaning. Most coaches list what's included in their programme: two calls a week, 24/7 access, a curriculum, a group community. These are features. And features, on their own, are forgettable. Every other coach has the same list. What makes a prospect say "I'm in" isn't the feature — it's the meaning behind it. Afro uses the classic drill example from Jim Edwards: nobody buys a drill because of the voltage specs. They buy it because their wife will stop nagging them about putting the shelf up. That's meaning. That's emotion. And people buy with emotion — they just justify with logic. Farah brings it to life from her own practice. A client came to her wanting to get control of her sugar addiction. Farah didn't walk her through the features of her programme. She spoke directly to the three problems that were stopping her client from living her best life — and addressed those. That's how you sell with meaning. The episode also covers what else coaches need to communicate: actions, behaviours, and expectations. These aren't just nice to include — they signal what kind of coach you are. If you're an assertive, structured coach, say that. The right clients will come towards you. The wrong ones will filter themselves out. And there's one more piece: clarity about what your coaching doesn't include. Telling prospects what they won't have to do (count macros, swipe through 200 dating profiles, build landing pages from scratch) is just as powerful as telling them what they will get. It repels the wrong people and attracts the right ones. All of this starts in your marketing — not on the sales call. By the time someone gets on a call with you, they should already understand what you're about. If your sales call feels like a surprise to them, something went wrong earlier. This is a short, punchy episode packed with practical insight for any coach who's ever felt frustrated that prospects "just don't get it." --- Quick test for online coaches. Can you explain your coaching offer in one clear sentence? If that feels harder than it should be, you're not alone. Most coaches don't struggle because they're bad at coaching, they struggle because their offer is vague, hard to explain, or under-positioned. That's exactly why we created The Offer Room. It's a free community where online coaches come to clarify their coaching offer, sharpen their messaging, and structure premium offers they can confidently charge $2k+ for. You can join us here: https://www.skool.com/the-offer-room

    14 min
  6. Apr 20

    The Missing Timeline That Makes Clients Say "This Feels Right" | #0185 | The Business Of Online Coaching Podcast

    Want to clarify your coaching offer, sharpen your messaging, and structure premium offers you can confidently charge $2k+ for. You can join us here: https://www.skool.com/the-offer-room --- What does it actually take to get a client to say "this feels right"? In this episode, Afro and Farah break down one of the most overlooked elements of a coaching program: the timeline. Not just how long your program runs, but how clearly you define what happens — and when — so clients feel confident enough to commit and stay committed throughout. Most coaches either skip the timeline entirely or make it so vague it gives clients no real reason to act. The result? Hesitation on sales calls, drop-off midway through the program, and clients who drift away without ever getting the result they came for. Afro and Farah share exactly how to fix this — using real examples from therapy, fitness, property, and divorce coaching — and explain why timelines aren't just a delivery detail. They're a sales tool, a retention tool, and a signal to your client that you actually know what you're doing. In this episode you'll learn: - Why "let's see how it goes" kills client confidence before the program even starts - The right program length depending on whether you're a new or established coach - How to use mini-milestones to keep clients focused, motivated, and on track - Why clients evolve — and how to build a community that gives them somewhere to go next - The real reason open-ended coaching feels unresolved (and how a clear timeline fixes it) Whether you're building your first offer or refining a program you've been running for years, this episode gives you a simple framework for using timelines to close more clients and deliver better results. --- Quick test for online coaches. Can you explain your coaching offer in one clear sentence? If that feels harder than it should be, you're not alone. Most coaches don't struggle because they're bad at coaching, they struggle because their offer is vague, hard to explain, or under-positioned. That's exactly why we created The Offer Room. It's a free community where online coaches come to clarify their coaching offer, sharpen their messaging, and structure premium offers they can confidently charge $2k+ for. You can join us here: https://www.skool.com/the-offer-room

    18 min
  7. Apr 13

    Sales Is the Oxygen of Your Coaching Business (Why Most Coaches Struggle to Charge What They’re Worth) with Joe Marcoux | #0184 | The Business Of Online Coaching Podcast

    If your coaching offer feels vague, difficult to explain, or harder to sell than it should be, join The Offer Room. It’s a free community for coaches who already work with clients and want to clarify their messaging, sharpen their positioning, and structure a premium coaching offer. Join here: https://www.skool.com/the-offer-room In this episode, I’m bringing back a conversation that was simply too valuable not to share again. I sat down with Joe Marcoux, a man who has had a huge influence on both our business and personal life over the past few years, and we went deep into one of the biggest topics most coaches avoid for far too long: sales.  Not the pushy, awkward version of sales people fear, but the kind that gives you the confidence to communicate your value, charge premium prices, and build a business that actually gives you freedom. Joe shares his journey from the fitness industry to coaching people all over the world to become stronger communicators, better coaches, and more effective at converting conversations into clients.  What stood out most in this conversation is how clearly he explains that sales is not something separate from your business.  It is the oxygen of your business.  Without it, even the best coach in the world will struggle. We talk about why so many coaches undercharge, why they hide behind more certifications instead of developing the skill of selling, and what really needs to shift if you want to stop doubting your prices and start leading with confidence.  Joe also breaks down the mindset, emotional control, communication skills, and repetition required to improve your sales ability in a way that feels authentic rather than forced. This episode is not just about closing more clients.  It is about becoming the kind of person who can confidently own their expertise, hold their value, and stop building a business that drains them.  There are powerful lessons in here around fear, self-belief, personal growth, relationships, and what it really takes to create a business that supports your life rather than consumes it. If you are a coach who knows you are good at what you do but still finds yourself hesitating when it comes to sales, pricing, or asking people to move forward, this is an episode you need to hear.  Click play and listen in, because this conversation could completely change the way you think about selling, serving, and growing your business. For more practical guidance on clarifying and positioning your coaching offer, join our free community The Offer Room. Inside we help coaches turn vague coaching offers into clear, structured premium offers that are easier to explain and sell. Join here: https://www.skool.com/the-offer-room

    1h 20m
  8. Apr 6

    Why Small Promises Attract Low-Paying Clients | #0183 | The Business Of Online Coaching Podcast

    If your coaching offer feels vague, difficult to explain, or harder to sell than it should be, join The Offer Room. It’s a free community for coaches who already work with clients and want to clarify their messaging, sharpen their positioning, and structure a premium coaching offer. Join here: https://www.skool.com/the-offer-room Most online coaches don’t struggle because they’re bad at coaching. They struggle because their offer is built around solving problems that are simply too small. In this episode, I break down a pattern I see almost every day when reviewing coaching offers: talented coaches making tiny promises… and then wondering why they attract low-paying clients. When the promise is small, the perceived value is small. And when the perceived value is small, people naturally expect to pay less. But when your offer solves a big, meaningful, life-changing problem, everything changes.  The value becomes obvious, the transformation becomes exciting, and suddenly the conversation around pricing looks completely different. Inside this episode, I share a simple exercise that can completely shift how you think about your coaching offer.  Instead of focusing on the small surface-level problems many coaches describe, I show you how to expand the problem, highlight the real consequences, and position your offer around a transformation that truly matters. Because the reality is this: people don’t pay premium prices for minor improvements.  They pay for outcomes that change their life, business, health, relationships, or future. If you’ve ever found yourself under-charging, struggling to explain your offer clearly, or attracting clients who hesitate around price, this conversation will challenge the way you think about the problem you solve and the promise you make. And once you start thinking bigger about the transformation you deliver, you may realise your coaching is far more valuable than you’ve been positioning it. Press play to hear the full discussion and discover how reframing the problem you solve can completely transform the way your coaching offer is perceived. For more practical guidance on clarifying and positioning your coaching offer, join our free community The Offer Room. Inside we help coaches turn vague coaching offers into clear, structured premium offers that are easier to explain and sell. Join here: https://www.skool.com/the-offer-room

    10 min
5
out of 5
2 Ratings

About

Charging too little, overworked, frustrated & struggling to show your value? After Farah thought that another certification was the answer to solving our online struggles in 2020. Afro knew there had to be a different way as our client’s results were already getting great results. We needed to focus on the business side. YAC (Yet Another Certification) Syndrome was coined & led us to help others find the cure. That’s why this podcast exists to help you, the Online Coach, charge what you are worth, showcase your value & transform even more lives through your coaching business.