Make More Money Coaching Online Without Working More Hours: Justin Mihaly
Learn how to make more money coaching online without working more hours by improving your offer, pricing, content, and lead generation.
Most online coaches do not have a marketing problem first. They have a business model problem.
They want more clients, more revenue, and more stability, but the only path they can see is more work. More messages. More check-ins. More sales calls. More content. More pressure. More time spent trying to convince people to buy. That is why growth can feel so unappealing for coaches who actually care about their clients. If making more money means becoming more salesy, less present, and more burned out, then it hardly feels like success.
Justin Mihaly joined the Business of Coaching Workshop to challenge that assumption. His core message was that coaches can make more money coaching online without working more hours, but only if they stop treating their business like a random collection of clients, prices, content ideas, and sales conversations. Growth requires better intent, better offers, better lead generation, and a stronger identity as a business owner.
Why More Clients Is Not Always the Answer
Many coaches assume the path to more income is simply getting more clients. That can work for a while, especially if the coach is underbooked. But eventually, more clients at the wrong price creates a worse business, not a better one.
Justin framed this as the trap of tying time directly to income. If every increase in revenue requires a matching increase in work, then the coach never really builds freedom. They build a harder job. More clients bring more fulfillment, more communication, more emotional load, and more pressure to keep every person happy.
That is why the goal is not simply to grow. The goal is to build a coaching business where income can rise while the amount of time required to deliver the service becomes more controlled, more intentional, and more sustainable. Justin described this as “divorcing your time from your income,” which is one of the most important mindset shifts for coaches who want to grow beyond the early grind.
The Difference Between a $5K Coach and a $20K Coach
One of the most practical parts of the conversation was Justin’s distinction between the coach making around $5,000 per month and the coach making $20,000 per month. The difference is not merely talent. It is not just better content or better sales scripts. It is the level of intent behind the coach’s time, decisions, and daily structure.
A lower-revenue coach often operates randomly. Their schedule is random. Their content is random. Their pricing is random. Their lead generation is random. Their follow-up is random. They may be working hard, but the work is not organized around a clear business system.
A higher-revenue coach makes the next step predictable. Their day has structure. Their offer has structure. Their sales process has structure. Their content points people toward a clear next action. Their clients know what happens next. Their prospects know what happens next. That predictability compounds.
This matters because online coaching is already difficult to sell when the process is vague. If the coach is unclear, the prospect feels unclear. If the coach’s content is scattered, the prospect does not know why they should pay attention. If the offer changes from person to person, the coach never develops confidence in what they are selling.
Better Pricing Starts With Better Value
Many online coaches undercharge because they are uncomfortable asking for money. But that discomfort often reveals a deeper problem: they are not fully confident in the value of their offer.
Justin’s argument was not that every coach should simply raise prices tomorrow. His point was that coaches need to build offers that are actually worth more. If you want to charge more, you need to solve bigger problems, deliver better outcomes, and create a more valuable client experience.
This is where many coaches get stuck. They think of themselves as “just” strength coaches, powerlifting coaches, nutrition coaches, or bodybuilding coaches. But clients do not pay premium prices merely for a label. They pay for meaningful transformation, better outcomes, and a clearer path to solving problems they care about.
For some coaches, that may mean improving their skill set. For others, it may mean packaging their knowledge more effectively. For others, it may mean creating tiers of service that let clients choose the right level of support. The key is that pricing should be connected to value, not insecurity.
Stop Selling Like a Scumbag
A major theme of the workshop was the discomfort many coaches feel around sales. Coaches often hate sales because they have experienced bad sales themselves. They have been baited, switched, pressured, manipulated, or pushed into calls that felt dishonest. So when they start selling their own services, they worry they are doing the same thing.
Justin’s answer was direct: if you feel misaligned selling your offer, something is probably misaligned. It may be the offer. It may be the client. It may be your content. It may be that the version of yourself online does not match who you actually are.
The solution is not to learn a more aggressive closing tactic. The solution is to align the offer, the content, the sales conversation, and the fulfillment. When the coach believes in the service and knows the client is a good fit, selling becomes much cleaner. It becomes an exchange of value rather than a pressure tactic.
That is the difference between sales that feel gross and sales that feel like leadership. Good coaches should be willing to ask for money when they are confident they can help. If the coach would not proudly buy the offer themselves, the problem is not the sales script. The problem is the offer.
Organic Content Still Matters
Justin was clear that his best students are still getting most of their clients organically. Paid ads can work in some contexts, but for many coaches, especially business-to-consumer fitness coaches, ads often bring in low-intent leads, tire kickers, and poor-fit prospects.
Organic content works when it makes the right people problem-aware and establishes the coach as an authority. That does not mean posting generic motivational content or copying whatever is trending. It means understanding the ideal client, knowing what they struggle with, and creating content that speaks directly to those problems.
The best content is not necessarily the loudest. It is the content that makes the right person think, “This coach understands my problem.” That can come through written posts, carousels, short videos, quote posts, long-form thoughts, or platform-specific strategies. The format matters less than the clarity of the message.
Justin also emphasized that authenticity is a moat. Coaches do not need to invent fake controversy or become someone else online. But they do need to say what they actually believe. Contrarian takes work when they are real. They attract the right people and repel the wrong ones, which is exactly what good marketing should do.
Written Content Is Making a Comeback
One of the more interesting tactical points from the workshop was Justin’s emphasis on written content. He argued that written content is performing well again, especially on platforms like Instagram, X, and LinkedIn.
For coaches, this matters because written content often forces clearer thinking. A video can be energetic but vague. A post has to make a point. It has to name the problem, explain the idea, and give the reader something useful. That is especially valuable for coaches trying to establish authority.
Justin recommended coaches get active on X, add valuable commentary to posts in their niche, screenshot those posts, and repurpose them on Instagram with trending audio. He also recommended daily carousel posts that are tightly aligned with the coach’s ideal client. The point is not to spam content. The point is to create repeated proof that the coach knows what they are talking about.
Build a Business, Not Just a Coaching Roster
At some point, the successful coach faces a new problem. They have clients. They have revenue. They may even have a full roster. But they are still the bottleneck.
Justin described this as the identity shift from coach to CEO. The skills that get a coach to a solid income are not always the same skills required to scale beyond it. At first, the coach wins by being great at coaching. Later, they have to build systems, hire people, manage KPIs, create SOPs, and become responsible for attention, brand, and business growth.
This is difficult because many coaches still identify primarily as coaches. They like the work. They like helping clients. They like being the expert. But if the business depends entirely on them forever, there is a ceiling.
That does not mean every coach needs to build a massive company. But every coach who wants more money in less time has to think more like an operator. They need better systems, better structure, and better decisions about where their time is most valuable.
The Real Goal: More Money, Better Clients, Less Burnout
The promise is not easy money. It is not passive income. It is not some shortcut around doing good work.
The real goal is better business design.
Coaches can make more money coaching online without working more hours when they stop underpricing, stop chasing poor-fit leads, stop relying on random content, and stop treating sales like manipulation. They need to build offers they believe in, create content that attracts the right people, and structure their time with the same seriousness they bring to training.
That is the standard Justin laid out in this workshop. Coaches who want to grow need to become more intentional with their schedule, their offer, their content, their pricing, and their identity. When those pieces align, growth no longer has to mean more chaos. It can mean more revenue, better clients, stronger fulfillment, and a business that is actually worth building.
