Is starting a business coaching practice actually viable in Australia?

Executive Summary & Verdict

Reconsider — 4/10. Do not resign yet. There is a real business in these answers, closer to the surface than most coaching plans get. But the plan as written spends six months of a six-month runway acquiring a credential in a field with no entry requirement, then starts looking for clients from zero with no savings left. That is the most common way a competent person's coaching practice dies.

Three findings drive the score. First, the absence of regulation is a commercial problem, not a convenience. General coaching is not regulated in Australia — no qualification, no registration, no CPD required to trade [2]. You can be open by Friday, and so can everyone else. The barrier is not a licence; it is being believed by a buyer already pitched by four people with certificates and no crew experience.

Second, the economics need a client count the plan has no mechanism to reach. Rates are public and reasonable — standard retainers around $3,200 a month, expert hourly work up to $380 [3] — but at a realistic $2,200 retainer you need roughly six concurrent clients to replace a $165,000 salary and four to cover the household. Third, the compliance line is narrow: a coach talking a sole trader through his first hire is one sentence from financial product advice, which needs an AFS licence [4], and one sentence from legal advice, a criminal offence without a practising certificate [5].

The pivot is in section 7. Sell four paid engagements while you are still employed, and let signed retainers — not a certificate — be what tells you it is time to resign.

Idea Validation

The premise is sound and unusually well formed: a customer who exists in large numbers, a problem with a date attached to it, and a qualification for solving it that does not come from a course. Most coaching plans fail all three — they describe a service, an audience of "small business owners", and a differentiator that is really a certificate.

The strongest signal is that your customer has already tried and failed. Dave has hired two apprentices and lost them both; he does not need persuading the problem is real, he has paid for it twice in wages and rework. Selling to someone with a scar is a different business from selling to someone with an aspiration.

What is missing is evidence. "Dave" is a composite built from fourteen years inside a commercial contractor, which is not fourteen years inside a one-van business. You have watched people be managed; you have not watched a sole operator decide whether to spend $70,000 a year on a second person. That gap closes with conversations, and conversations cost nothing but evenings — so close it before you resign.

Market & Target Customer

Your market is not "business coaching in Australia", which is a category. It is the solo trade operators within reach of Western Sydney who turn over enough that a second person is arithmetically possible, are actively constrained rather than merely tired, and will pay a stranger for help with something they treat as their business's private problem. That last filter removes most of the first two.

The global market is growing, which is both opportunity and warning. The 2025 ICF study counted 122,974 coach practitioners worldwide, up 15% since 2023, on US$5.34 billion of revenue [1]. Supply growing that fast in a field anyone can enter tomorrow is not a tailwind. It means the scarce resource is trust, not coaching capacity.

What to measure before you resign

• How many operators you can already reach are constrained rather than just busy. That is a list you can write this week.
• Whether the trigger is the first hire or the third, when the pattern is undeniable and the cost of failure is proven.
• What they already spend on advice — you compete with the answer their accountant and supplier rep have already given for free.
• Whether they will talk to you outside work hours. A practice built around 10am video calls will not reach this market.

Do not widen the niche when it feels slow. "Trade owner-operators through their first hire" is narrow enough to be remembered and referred; "small business coaching" makes you indistinguishable from the 122,974.

Competitive Landscape

There is no licence, no register and no protected title here [1], so the competitive set is unbounded and permanently refreshed — everyone made redundant from a management role this quarter is a competitor by the next, at zero capital cost. That does not drive prices to zero, because buyers cannot compare quality. It drives attention to zero, because buyers cannot tell you apart.

The consequence is counter-intuitive. In a regulated profession you compete on service; in an unregulated one you compete on legibility — whether a sceptical buyer can look at you for ten seconds and conclude "this person has done my specific thing". Fourteen years and forty-plus hires are exactly that. A credential every competitor can also buy is exactly not.

• Generalist and franchise coaching networks. Better marketing, broader promise. They lose to you on specificity and only on specificity.
• The client's accountant — already trusted, already paid, already answering "can I afford someone?", usually only in cash-flow terms. Partner with them or lose to them.
• Group training organisations and industry associations, which offer apprentice hiring support, sometimes subsidised. Know what exists locally before you price against free.
• Doing nothing — another year of 60-hour weeks. Free, familiar, and it wins most of the time. Your marketing argues against inaction, not against another coach.

One asymmetry in your favour: almost nobody credible wants this niche. Early starts, unglamorous problems, clients who challenge you to your face. That is why the niche is not crowded while the category is.

Business Model & Monetisation

A one-person practice is a capacity business disguised as a knowledge business. The ceiling is hours you can deliver at full attention, which once selling, admin, preparation and recovery are counted is well under a nominal week. Assume twelve to sixteen billable coaching hours, not thirty-five.

That makes packaging the most consequential decision in the plan. Hourly work caps revenue at your slowest input, invites cancellation, and invites your client to compare your rate to his own. A fixed monthly fee across a six-month engagement is better, and the market supports it — standard one-to-one coaching around $3,200 a month, group programmes around $700 [1], retainers generally $1,000–$5,000 a month and programmes $3,000–$25,000+ [2].

• The core six-month first-hire engagement. One price, one outcome, monthly instalments. This is the business and the only thing to sell in year one.
• A paid diagnostic as the front door — one session plus a written "can you afford a second person, and what would have to be true" answer. It qualifies buyers and puts cash on the table early.
• Small groups of four to six operators later: the only lever that breaks the hours ceiling without hiring, and trade owners talk more honestly in front of peers than a coach.
• Do not build a course in year one. A self-paced product sold to an audience you do not have is the most reliable way to spend six months producing nothing.

Instalments on a six-month commitment are a receivable, not revenue. A client who stops paying in month three when the apprentice search stalls is the normal case. Contract for it.

Finances & Budget

This is the section that produces the verdict. The setup cost of a coaching practice is genuinely low, which is why the field is crowded — and it is also why the budget is the wrong thing to worry about. The table below is what your $18,000 buys in the first twelve months, excluding every dollar of household living cost.

The total exceeds the $18,000 budget by a rounding error, which is not the problem. The problem is the composition: 41% of the budget goes to training and a credential, and 16% to finding clients. In a field with no licensing requirement, that ratio is inverted. Every dollar spent on the certificate buys permission you already have. Every dollar spent on being in front of trade owners buys the only thing you lack.

Now the number that actually decides the year. Six months of savings at roughly $42,000 is about $7,000 a month of household burn. At a $2,200 monthly retainer — deliberately below the $3,200 market standard [4], because you have no track record yet — covering the household needs four concurrent clients. Replacing the $165,000 salary, at $13,750 a month, needs about six concurrent clients, held all year. Six concurrent six-month engagements means roughly twelve signed engagements a year, every year.

Work the acquisition side with pessimistic assumptions, because pessimistic is what first-year numbers are. If one in four paid diagnostics converts, and one in ten real conversations produces a paid diagnostic, each signed client costs about forty genuine conversations with constrained trade owners — so twelve clients is four hundred and eighty conversations a year, roughly ten a week, alongside delivering the coaching. That is the job. It is not unachievable, but it cannot be started in month seven with an empty bank account.

MVP & What to Build First

The pivot. Do not resign, and do not enrol yet. Sell four paid engagements while you are still employed, then resign. The trigger for leaving the $165,000 role is not a certificate and not a date — it is four signed clients at $2,200 a month, the number section 06 shows covers the household. This works precisely because coaching is unregulated [1]: there is nothing you must hold before charging a trade owner for help with his first hire. The credential is a marketing asset, better bought later with revenue than earlier with runway. The plan treats it as a prerequisite because it feels like one, not because it is.

The minimum viable practice, in order

• Three free pilots with people you already know — former subcontractors, suppliers, anyone from fourteen years of contacts who now runs a van. Full six-month structure, no charge, in exchange for a fortnightly debrief and permission to describe the outcome.
• One written outcome document: what "first hire done properly" means, as a checklist a sceptical electrician reads in two minutes — the pricing change, the recruitment steps, the award and pay-run obligations, the first ninety days. This document is your entire marketing.
• A paid diagnostic, priced at a real number. One session plus a written answer, charged from the fourth client onward. Paid front doors qualify buyers; free discovery calls collect tyre-kickers and destroy your evenings.
• Four signed six-month engagements at $2,200 a month, delivered at 6.30am and 6.30pm around a full-time job. A brutal five months, and considerably less brutal than month seven with no clients and no salary.
• Then resign, and then enrol in coach training, paid out of engagement revenue.

Two constraints before you start: check your employment contract for moonlighting, conflict and non-compete clauses, and contract, disclaim and insure the free pilots anyway — unregulated does not mean unaccountable, and the consumer guarantees in section 14 attach whether or not cash changed hands. If four clients do not materialise in five months of honest effort while you still have an income, you will have learned that the lead-flow problem is real for a fraction of the cost, and you will still have the $165,000 job. That asymmetry is the entire argument.

Go-to-Market & Launch Plan

You have an advantage almost no new coach has: fourteen years of contacts inside the exact trade you intend to serve. That is a launch list, and it should not be spent on a generic announcement.

• Start with the forty people you already know — individual conversations, not a broadcast, asking who they know who is turning down work because there is only one of them. Referrals from this layer arrive pre-trusted, the scarce good in an unlicensed market.
• Go through the wholesaler, not around it. A thirty-minute talk on what the first hire actually costs, at a branch trade night, reaches more qualified buyers than a quarter of social media.
• Partner with accountants and bookkeepers serving trades. Keep it a referral relationship, not a commission arrangement you have not taken advice on.
• Lead with the checklist, not the coaching. Your buyer does not want coaching; he wants to stop losing apprentices.
• No free coaching beyond the three pilots, and do not try to build an audience first. A trade owner will not follow you for eighteen months before buying; he will hire you because someone he trusts said you fixed the same problem.

Marketing & Growth

For a practice with a six-client ceiling, most marketing advice is irrelevant. You do not need reach; you need to be the obvious answer to one question among a few hundred people.

Referral, deliberately engineered. In an unregulated field, personal recommendation is the substitute for a licence — the only credential your buyer can verify. Build the request into the engagement at a fixed point, month four, when the apprentice is placed and the relief is fresh.

Proof that survives scepticism. Case studies with real numbers and named businesses, used with written permission, are your highest-value asset and your most legally dangerous one: everything you publish about results must be true, accurate and provable, intent is no defence, and claims about future matters need reasonable grounds when made. Section 14 sets out what that means, and it is the rule coaches breach most often.

One channel, done properly — trade nights plus a maintained Google Business Profile, not a content calendar. If you test ads, use part of the $3,000 from section 06, measure cost per booked diagnostic, and stop when it exceeds a quarter of an engagement. Ignore anything whose real audience is other coaches: in a field this crowded, that feels productive and sells nothing.

Pricing Strategy

Price the outcome, not the hour, and price it inside the published Australian band rather than below it. Business coaching hourly rates run from around $110 entry to $230 standard and $380 expert, Sydney averaging $295 an hour, with one-to-one monthly programmes at $3,200 standard [1]; across the wider market retainers are $1,000–$5,000 a month and defined programmes $3,000–$25,000+ [2].

• Anchor the six-month engagement at $2,200 a month, $13,200 total. Below the $3,200 standard, which is the correct position for a practitioner with domain authority and no coaching track record. Not a discount — an entry position, defensible against the only number your buyer cares about, the cost of losing another apprentice.
• Never price per hour for this buyer. A tradesperson who charges $110 an hour and is quoted $230 will do the comparison out loud. Quote the engagement.
• Charge for the diagnostic — between one standard hour and a small multiple of it. Its job is qualification, not revenue.
• Be explicit about GST in every quote. Published coaching rates are typically stated excluding GST [1], so once you are registered (section 12) a $2,200 fee is $2,420 including GST. Say which, in writing, every time.
• Raise the price once three engagements are complete with results you can prove, moving new clients toward the $3,200 standard and leaving existing ones alone.
• Do not offer a results guarantee. A refund tied to an outcome you do not control is both a cash-flow risk and a representation about a future matter, which requires reasonable grounds at the time it is made [3]. Guarantee your process, not his hire.

One decision that matters more than the number: monthly direct debit against a signed six-month term with a stated cancellation position, not invoice-on-request. A practice with six clients cannot absorb two late payers.

Legal Setup & IP

There is no licence to obtain. General coaching is not a regulated occupation in Australia: no qualification, no registration, no continuing professional development is legally required to trade, and "business coach" is not a protected title [1]. That is the commercial problem described in section 04, and it is also a compliance trap, because the absence of a licence for coaching does not create an exemption from the licensing regimes that sit either side of it. The three lines below are the most important compliance content in this report.

Line one: psychological services

"Psychologist" is a protected title under the Health Practitioner Regulation National Law. Section 113 makes it an offence to knowingly or recklessly take or use a protected title in a way that could reasonably be expected to induce a belief that the person is registered in the profession, with a maximum penalty for an individual of $60,000 or three years imprisonment or both, and $120,000 for a body corporate [2]. AHPRA treats title protection as a public safety measure and has pursued prosecutions; penalties for offences committed after 1 July 2019 include up to three years imprisonment [3]. Endorsed titles such as "organisational psychologist" are similarly restricted [4].

In practice: do not use "psychologist" in any form, do not describe your work as therapy, counselling, psychotherapy or treatment, and do not offer to diagnose or treat anything. The realistic exposure is not vanity titling but the client — a sole operator working 60-hour weeks and failing at hiring is quite often under serious psychological strain, and when that appears the correct move is a referral to a GP or registered practitioner plus a clear statement that coaching is not treatment, written into the agreement beforehand rather than improvised. Coaching that offers modalities such as psychotherapy, hypnotherapy or NLP moves into higher-risk territory requiring appropriate qualifications [1].

Line two: financial advice

ASIC's position is unambiguous: "You must be authorised under an Australian financial services (AFS) licence to provide financial product advice", and the distinction between factual information, general advice and personal advice is set out in ASIC's regulatory guidance [5]. Personal advice to a retail client triggers a best interests duty and a Statement of Advice; general advice requires a warning.

This line is easy to cross in this niche. Helping Dave build a labour-cost model or work out what a second wage does to his pricing is business analysis. Telling him to restructure his superannuation, use a particular insurance product, or borrow against the house to fund the hire is a different activity. If the engagement keeps wanting to go there, the answer is a referral relationship with a licensed adviser and an explicit scope exclusion in your agreement — not a disclaimer at the bottom of an email.

Line three: legal advice

Engaging in legal practice without a current Australian practising certificate is a criminal offence. Victoria's regulator describes the conduct as including "giving legal advice (verbally or in writing) about another person's legal affairs" and drafting contracts, carries up to two years imprisonment in that state, and applies even if the advice is free, given once, or given with a disclosure that you are not qualified [6]. Equivalent provisions apply in the other uniform-law jurisdictions, New South Wales included — confirm the local position before you rely on this summary.

For a coach taking a client through a first hire, this is the line most likely to be crossed casually and in good faith. Explaining that award coverage and minimum rates exist, pointing at the Fair Work Ombudsman's published material and helping the client prepare questions is coaching. Telling him which award classification applies to his apprentice, drafting his employment contract, or advising him on a dismissal is legal advice. Have an employment lawyer and a payroll-capable bookkeeper to refer to, from day one.

Structure, insurance and IP

• Structure. A sole trader carries personal liability for business debts, with assets in your own name available to pay them; a company generally bears its own liability, though directors stay personally exposed for unpaid PAYG withholding and superannuation. Registration is $636 for a proprietary limited company against essentially nothing for a sole trader, records must be kept seven years rather than five, and a company lodges its own return [7]. For a practice giving advice clients act on, take advice on this rather than defaulting to whichever is cheaper.
• Professional indemnity insurance is not legally mandatory for coaches, and that is exactly why it matters. With no licence, no register and no professional body with enforcement power, insurance and a well-drafted agreement are the entire risk-management layer. Australian coach policies offer PI limits from $1m to $10m and public liability of $10m or $20m, covering allegations that an act, error, omission or negligent advice caused financial loss, plus breach of confidentiality and claims of inadequate qualification for work undertaken [8] — worth reading twice in an unregulated occupation. Premiums are quoted on turnover and not published, and PI for coaches can be harder and dearer to place than expected [1]. Get a quote before you fix a budget.
• The coaching agreement is your real protection: scope, express exclusions (psychological, financial and legal advice), confidentiality, fees and instalments, cancellation and termination, limitation of liability, IP ownership. Drafted once, properly, and used for the free pilots too.
• IP. Registering a business name gives you no ownership of it — check the trade marks register before paying for branding. Your frameworks and the first-hire checklist are your only defensible assets; say in the agreement that they remain yours and are licensed to the client for their own use.

Tax, Invoicing & Admin

The GST threshold is the first hard line you will cross. Registration is compulsory once GST turnover reaches $75,000, measured two ways — current turnover across the current month plus the previous eleven, and projected turnover across the current month plus the next eleven — and you must register within 21 days of meeting the threshold. Registering late can mean penalties and GST liability on sales you have already made [1].

For this plan the threshold is not theoretical. Four concurrent engagements at $2,200 a month is $105,600 a year, and even three is $79,200 — so the practice crosses $75,000 at the point it becomes survivable. More importantly, the projected test bites before the money arrives: the month you sign enough business to make the next twelve months exceed $75,000, the clock starts. Model it, and consider registering from the outset so that your pricing never has to move 10% mid-engagement.

• ABN first. Free to register, and clients, insurers and accountants will all ask for it. Without one, business clients may be required to withhold from your payments.
• Decide GST-inclusive or GST-exclusive quoting before you quote anything. Published coaching rates are usually stated excluding GST, and a client who agreed to $2,200 and receives an invoice for $2,420 is a dispute you created yourself.
• PAYG instalments will start. The ATO enters an individual or sole trader into the system when instalment income is $4,000 or more, tax payable on the last return is $1,000 or more and estimated tax is $500 or more — all three. A company is entered on instalment income of $2 million or more, or estimated tax of $500 or more [2]. In practice a profitable second year means quarterly prepayments of tax, and the first one lands as a surprise to most new practitioners. Set aside for it from the first invoice.
• Structure and tax rate. A sole trader is taxed at individual rates and keeps the individual tax-free threshold; a company pays a flat 30%, with different rates for base rate entities, and pays tax on every dollar it earns with no threshold. Both can access small business concessions under the $10 million aggregated turnover test [3]. Company setup is $636 with ASIC against effectively nothing for a sole trader, business name registration is $47 for one year or $108 for three, and a company must keep records seven years and lodge its own return [4].
• Quarterly BAS and clean bookkeeping. A coaching practice has few transactions and no excuse for messy books. Bank feed into accounting software, separate business account from day one, receipts captured as you go.
• Direct debit, not invoices on request. Monthly instalments across six-month engagements are the whole revenue model; a payment system that requires you to chase is a system that will consume the hours you were going to sell.
• If you ever pay anyone. A subcontracted associate coach, a VA, a bookkeeper — check whether they are genuinely a contractor before you treat them as one, and remember that unpaid PAYG withholding and superannuation are the obligations a company structure does not shield a director from [4].

Tech, Hosting & Security

A coaching practice needs very little technology and is sold a great deal of it. What it does need, it needs to take seriously, because the material you hold is sensitive: a client's real revenue, his margins, his cash-flow anxiety, his opinion of his own competence. That is a confidentiality obligation before it is an IT question.

• A one-page site that loads instantly on a phone at a wholesaler counter. What you do, who for, the checklist, how to book, a real phone number. Nothing else in year one.
• Scheduling and video that work at 6.30am from a ute. Test on mobile data before you commit to a platform.
• Session notes in one place, encrypted, with a retention rule written into the agreement and actually honoured. Notes scattered across a notebook, a laptop and three cloud accounts are the realistic breach.
• Recordings only with written consent, and only if needed. Prefer to review client financial documents and not retain them.
• Multi-factor authentication on email, accounting and storage, plus offsite backup of the agreement template, checklist, client list, insurance and registration documents.

Resist the platform trap. A practice management suite, a CRM, a course platform and an email automation stack bought at launch is a monthly cost against zero clients, and a project that will absorb the evenings you needed for the forty conversations in section 08.

Regional Compliance & Privacy

With no licensing regime to comply with, the Australian Consumer Law is the main compliance surface for a coaching practice — and it is the one coaches most reliably breach, usually in their marketing.

Consumer guarantees apply to your service, automatically

Under the ACL, a consumer buying a service is entitled to expect that it is provided with acceptable care and skill, is fit for any specified purpose, and is supplied within a reasonable time where no timeframe is agreed [1]. These are statutory rights: they exist whether or not your agreement mentions them, and a contract term purporting to exclude them does not work. Two practical consequences for this business. First, "fit for a specified purpose" is why loose promises are dangerous — if you tell Dave the engagement will get an apprentice hired and retained, you have specified a purpose. Second, care and skill in an unregulated occupation is measured against what a competent practitioner would do, not against the absence of a licence.

Testimonials, results claims and reviews: the part coaches get wrong

The ACCC's position is that claims must be "true, accurate and based on reasonable grounds", that "a business must be able to prove any claim they advertise", and that "it makes no difference whether a business intends to mislead or not". That rule applies to every communication including testimonials and websites, and a claim about future matters requires reasonable grounds at the time it is made [2]. Separately, it is against the law to create fake or misleading reviews or arrange for others to do so; removing genuine negative reviews is itself a risk; testimonials from employees, family or paid contributors need the relationship disclosed; and incentives for reviews must be disclosed and offered regardless of whether the review is positive or negative [3]. The ACCC points to a $2.9 million penalty against HealthEngine for suppressing negative reviews and $600,000 against Service Seeking for businesses writing their own customer reviews [3].

Translated into this practice: you cannot use an earnings or outcome claim you cannot substantiate. "My clients typically double their revenue in twelve months" is unlawful unless you can prove it across your actual client base, with records, at the moment you publish it. "Trebled his turnover" as a testimonial headline puts the burden on you, not on the client who said it. Curating your website to show only the three engagements that went well, while a fourth client asked for a refund, is the kind of selective presentation that gets characterised as misleading. The maximum penalties are not nominal: for conduct on or after 28 March 2026 the maximum for a corporation is the greatest of $100 million, three times the benefit, or 30% of adjusted turnover during the breach, and $2.5 million for an individual [4]. A one-person practice will not be the ACCC's priority target, but state fair trading complaints and civil claims by a disappointed client are entirely realistic, and both start from the same evidence.

The safe and more persuasive alternative is specific, verifiable and modest: what one named client did, with his permission in writing, stated as what happened rather than as what you cause. It converts better with a sceptical trade owner anyway.

Privacy

The Privacy Act generally applies to organisations with annual turnover over $3 million, so a new solo practice is usually outside the Australian Privacy Principles [5]. Do not read that as permission to be careless. The exemption is lost in several circumstances, including if you buy or sell personal information, if you are a Commonwealth contracted service provider, or if you provide a private sector health service — a category the OAIC describes broadly, extending to complementary therapists, gyms and allied health [5]. A practice that drifts into wellbeing, stress or health coaching can therefore acquire full Privacy Act obligations without noticing, on top of the psychology boundary in section 11. And regardless of the Act, confidentiality to a client who has told you his real numbers is contractual and reputational — and reputation is this business's entire asset.

Risks & Common Pitfalls

• Certify, then wait — the pitfall that ends this plan. Six months of training funded by six months of runway, in an occupation with no entry requirement, leaves you selling on the day the money runs out. This is the dominant failure mode for capable career-changers entering coaching.
• Lead flow, not delivery, is the whole job in year one. Section 06 puts a signed client at roughly forty genuine conversations. People who enjoy the coaching and not the selling fail regardless of how good the coaching is.
• Credibility without a licence. Anyone can trade, so your buyer has no external signal and defaults to scepticism. The countermeasure is named, verifiable proof from people like him — which you have none of on day one.
• Niche drift. The first quiet month tempts you into a life-coaching client, then an executive, then anyone. Within a year you are a generalist and the advantage is gone.
• Crossing a licensing line by being helpful. "Should I borrow against the house to fund this hire?" and "can I just pay him cash for the first month?" are requests for financial and legal advice. The instinct to answer is the risk (section 11).
• Marketing claims you cannot prove — the most common ACL breach in this industry, and intent is no defence (section 14).
• The client who stops paying in month three. With six clients, one non-payer is a sixth of revenue. Direct debit, signed term, stated cancellation position, from client one.
• You are the entire business. No cover for illness, no revenue on holidays, a ceiling of roughly six concurrent clients. An unregulated field also has no mandatory supervision — buy mentor coaching or peer supervision voluntarily, because it is what stops a practitioner quietly getting worse over five years.

Action Plan: 30 / 60 / 90 Days

This plan assumes you accept the pivot in section 7 and stay employed throughout. If you intend to resign and train first regardless, the only honest first action is extending the runway from six months to eighteen.

Days 1–30 — prove the demand exists, spend almost nothing

• Write the list of forty trade contacts and start the conversations — ten a week, asking who is turning down work because there is only one of them.
• Draft the first-hire outcome document, the two-minute checklist. This is the product and the marketing.
• Read your employment contract for moonlighting, conflict and non-compete terms before you speak to a single prospective client.
• Start three free structured pilots under a proper written agreement.
• Get PI and public liability quotes so the section 06 placeholder becomes a real number [1].
• Do not enrol in coach training. Do not register a company. Do not build a website.

Days 31–60 — set up properly, only what is needed

• ABN registered, structure decided with an accountant rather than by default, business name registered if you are using one, separate business bank account [2].
• Coaching agreement drafted once, properly, with explicit exclusions for psychological, financial and legal advice [3][4].
• Insurance bound before the first paid client.
• Model the GST threshold against your signing plan and decide whether to register from the outset — $75,000 on rolling and projected twelve months, 21 days to register [5].
• One-page site live; GST position stated in writing on every quote; diagnostic priced.
• Two referral relationships opened — an accountant or bookkeeper serving trades, and an employment lawyer for the award and contract questions — and one wholesaler trade night booked to speak at.

Days 61–90 — sell, and count

• Convert the pilots into written case material, with permission, stating only what happened and nothing you cannot prove [6].
• Charge for diagnostics from here on, and track conversations, diagnostics booked, diagnostics paid and engagements signed as four separate numbers.
• First paid engagement signed at $2,200 a month on direct debit, with a stated cancellation position.
• At day 90, review the funnel against the section 06 arithmetic. If forty conversations have not produced one paid diagnostic, the problem is the offer or the buyer — far better to learn that on a salary.
• The resignation trigger is four signed engagements, not a date and not a certificate. Write that number on the wall and do not negotiate with it.