
Now that you’ve [established yourself](/article/how-to-start-coaching-esports) as an esports coach - meaning at least some of your students come to you on their own and people are willing to pay for your coaching - it's time to grow your business.

At the most basic level, you need to expand your reputation and increase the value of your coaching. Building a bigger, stronger reputation helps students find you. Increasing the value of your coaching encourages more repeat lesson purchases and justifies a higher price per lesson.

In this article, we’ll show you how to build your reputation as an esports coach in order to scale your business and offer more perceived value to your students.

## Build your reputation as an esports coach

How do you convince someone who doesn't know you that it's worth the money to get coached by you? Why would a prospective student choose you instead of a different coach?

The answers to these questions all come down to your reputation. Especially if you focus on a specific online community, building a reputation as a considerate and competent coach will bring in new students through recommendations from current students.

**There are many methods to build your reputation:**

- **Hit a high rank in your game.** This is probably the fastest way of building a reputation (though not always the best or easiest). If you hit a really high rank (e.g. Grandmaster or Challenger in League of Legends), that's a lot of credibility with prospective students.

- **Join a well respected platform for esport coaches.** This typically requires a fairly strong list of achievements, however if you can make it through the application process you'll instantly be perceived as more valuable.

- **Build your own community.** This can involve a LOT of work. However, the payoff is extremely high. Providing social proof of your coaching ability goes a long way! Plus, a community can take advantage of network effects that will eventually become your greatest source of new students. While not everyone can build a massive community, every coach should have their own personal Discord and encourage their regular students to join.

- **Use a tool to allow students to review you.** his is similar to building a community, but requires significantly less administrative work. Find a tool that allows students to leave an honest review of their time with you and make it easy for prospective students to browse those reviews. For a tool purpose-built for video game coaches that includes public reviews, [sign up for Coachify](/auth/register?utm_content=article_grow_coaching_business)!

## Increase the value of your coaching

The other half of growing your business is to increase the value of your coaching. This means that students are learning more or in a better way than they would otherwise.

In the very beginning of your career, you need to provide more value than a free video on YouTube. The next step is to provide more value than what the student would get from someone coaching for free (which allows you to start charging). If you continue to grow the value a student receives, you’ll be able to increase your pricing.

**Some ways to increase the value of your coaching:**

- **Increase the perceived value of your coaching.** This isn’t lying about the value of your lessons, but rather ensuring that the student understands the value they received from your lessons. This actually ties into giving a good lesson, because if a student doesn’t notice a change in their results, they are either oblivious to the changes or there were no changes occurring. Point out the progress a student has made as they receive coaching from you or follow up with a student if they aren’t putting your lessons into practice.

- **Provide written feedback and notes after a session.** You can do this via a Discord message, Google document or some other tool (like [Coachify](/auth/register?utm_content=article_grow_coaching_business)!). This written record makes it easy for the student to refer back to your suggestions when they’re playing and demonstrates a professionalism that students will appreciate.

- **Try assigning "homework" for the student.** Create drills or give them mini-goals to work towards that will force them to implement your teachings. It’s much easier to achieve a big audacious goal when it’s broken down into smaller, discrete steps. Even better is a way to show progression that’s not necessarily tied to winning in a game. To use a League of Legends example, if a student has a goal of "Hitting 100 cs by 10 minutes", they can focus on that goal even if their top laner is 0/2/0 at three minutes into the game. The student might not win that game, but if they can improve a skill during a losing game, that improved skill will help them win more games in the future.

- **Create discounts for multiple purchases.** If you know that you can make a huge impact over the course of three lessons, try offering a "Buy 2, Get 1 Free" promotion. This is a purely financial method to increase value and isn’t as strong as improving the lesson itself, but can still help to kickstart more purchases.

Increasing your reputation and the value of your coaching are self-reinforcing — improving one will help the other.

As you naturally get more experienced at coaching, and implement these suggestions, you will see your coaching business grow and expand. Remember that coaching itself is a skill that requires practice and analysis to improve!

For more information about determining the value of your coaching, read [How to Know Your Worth as a Coach](/article/know-your-worth-as-a-coach).


How to Grow Your Coaching Business

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