Inside The OPEX Method Week 8: From Good Coach To True Professional

What actually turns a knowledgeable coach into a professional coach with a real, sustainable career? That is the focus of Week 8 in the OPEX Method mentorship, and it is a big shift from just learning systems to actually building a life around coaching.

This week moved from sets, reps, and assessments into purpose, value, pricing, operations, and how to wrap a real business and lifestyle around the craft of coaching. It was packed with honest reflection, practical tools, and some needed conversations about money, metrics, and what it means to show up as a pro every single day.

The Three Pillars Of The OPEX Method

The OPEX Method mentorship is structured around three big pillars:

Weeks 1 to 7 live mostly inside the first two pillars. Coaches learn the OPEX Method, how to assess, design, and manage long-term programs, and how to work deeply with individuals.

Week 8 shifts into the third pillar, the professional side. The point is not to turn coaches into classic “business coaches”, but to give them the foundations they need before they worry about funnels, fancy systems, or complex tactics.

The idea is simple: if you skip the “why” and the principles, the business side cracks under pressure, just like a bad training program.

Getting Coaches Set Up In CoachRx

On the practical side, this week also helped coaches get fully set up inside the business tools in CoachRx. That included:

• Automatic payments

• Contracts

• Waivers

• Billing systems

For many coaches, these pieces feel uncomfortable at first. They love the coaching part, but money, contracts, and admin can feel heavy.

Laying this out early helps remove friction. When payments, contracts, and waivers are handled in a clear, repeatable way, it is easier to focus on what matters most, which is coaching and building strong client relationships.

PVMPP: Purpose, Vision, Mission, Values, Principles

A big part of Week 8 was building each coach’s PVMPP:

• Purpose: Why do you want to be a coach at all?

• Vision: Where do you want to be in 3 to 5 years?

• Mission: What are you actually doing day to day to move toward that vision?

• Values: What do you believe as a coach, and what do you stand for?

• Principles: How will you carry those beliefs into your actual coaching practice?

For many coaches, this is the first time they have written any of this down. They know they like helping people, but they have not mapped out where they are going or what “success” really looks like for them.

One cool moment from labs this week came from Melissa, one of the mentors. She walked the group through her own PVMPP and shared that she has probably updated that document around 15 times over the years. That reminder helped relieve the pressure. You do not have to “get it right” the first time. PVMPP is a living document that grows with your experience, but it also keeps you honest about the aim you set.

Knowing Where You Are In Your Coaching Journey

Another key topic this week was simple but powerful: where are you right now as a coach?

Inside this cohort, there are coaches:

• Coaching zero clients

• Coaching 80 clients

That gap affects everything:

• What model you can use

• What systems you need

• How your days look

• What income you can reasonably expect

A coach who is just starting out does not need the same operational complexity as a coach running a large book of clients. Being honest about your current stage stops you from copying models or prices that fit someone else’s situation, not yours.

Your stage shapes your next steps, your capacity, and your expectations, both for income and for workload.

Owning Your Unique Value As A Coach

Value and pricing got a lot of attention this week, especially during office hours. Instead of starting with “what should I charge”, the focus was on a more honest question:

What do you uniquely provide?

Your value is not just:

• How many certs you hold

• How much theory you know

It is also:

• How well you connect with people

• How many times you have helped someone go from point A to point B

• The experience you create for clients

A coach with great knowledge but no coaching experience has a different value than a coach with the same knowledge and years of in-the-trenches practice. That is not a judgment, it is just real.

Many coaches tend to undervalue themselves. Others sometimes overestimate what they offer. The point of this week was to bring more honesty to that question. You look at what you deliver, how you deliver it, and who you deliver it to. Then you ask, “What is this worth in my market?”

From there, pricing is a reflection of value, not a random number or something copied from Instagram.

What Being A Professional Coach Actually Looks Like

The group also spent time on a big question: what does it actually mean to be a professional coach?

That covers a lot:

• Do you get consistent results with your clients?

• Do you build strong, trusting relationships?

• Do your programs line up with the outcomes your clients want?

• Do you have habitual standards for your work, not just “when you feel like it”?

It also includes your lifestyle. You do not need to be the leanest person in the room or look like a fitness model, but clients are watching how you live.

In most coach-client relationships, the coach is an authority figure. Clients often hire a coach because they see something in them that they are striving for. If your habits are sloppy or your actions do not match your words, that can quietly demotivate the very people you want to help.

Professionalism here means alignment: your work ethic, your training, your lifestyle, and your message all point in the same direction.

Facing The “Dirty M Word”: Metrics And Money

Talk of money can feel awkward for coaches who love the “helping” side of the job. Week 8 tackled that head on.

Coaches were asked to get clear on:

• Revenue coming in

• Expense structure

• Average price per client

• Profit as a coach

These numbers are not cold or greedy; they are what allow you to keep coaching long term. If you do not turn a profit, at some point you have to stop coaching and take another job just to pay the bills.

That reality is simple: no profit, no long-term impact.

There was also discussion around contracts, month-to-month options, and predictability. For newer coaches, decisions like “Should I use a contract?” can feel heavy. Hearing other coaches share what worked and what did not helps shorten the learning curve and avoid some common mistakes.

Attracting, Delighting, And Retaining Clients

The week touched lightly on client acquisition, with a plan to go deeper in the coming weeks. The focus here was more on two ideas:

• Attracting strangers in a simple, honest way

• Delighting current clients so they stay longer and refer others

It is not just about chasing the next new client. Retention matters. When you do great work, keep people engaged, and help them progress, you often unlock the easiest growth channel you can have: referrals.

The conversation also tied back to service delivery. If your model is solid and you actually enjoy how you coach, it is much easier to keep clients, not just sign them.

How Coaches Are Applying The OPEX Method In Real Life

Labs this week showed how flexible the OPEX Method can be in real life.

Coaches shared how they apply the model in:

• In-person settings

• Fully remote setups

• Hybrid structures

Two examples stood out:

Austin is mostly an in-person coach who also takes some remote clients. Many of his remote clients come from local connections. He often works from the same coffee shop, is present and friendly there, and people simply get to know him and what he does. When someone in that circle needs a coach, he is the first person they think of.

Sam runs a more fully remote practice. Even so, he and Austin team up regularly to host camps where their clients can meet, train, and bring friends. These events:

• Build trust and familiarity

• Strengthen community

• Act as a simple but powerful acquisition channel

These stories gave the cohort ideas for how to adapt the OPEX model to their own context. It also pushed them to think about lifestyle first. What kind of life do you want, and how do you design a service model that fits that, instead of the other way around?

Looking Ahead: Brand, Content, And Simple Marketing Systems

Week 8 also set the stage for what comes next in the mentorship.

A strong PVMPP, especially clear values, will drive:

• Personal brand development

• Positioning in the market

• Content strategy

These days, even if someone meets you in person, they often go straight to Instagram or Google afterward. Your content becomes a public resume, a live reflection of your value.

The next weeks will help coaches build:

• A content strategy that matches who they are and who they coach

• A simple marketing system that creates a steady lead flow

• A process that fits into their normal weekly rhythm

The goal is not to turn coaches into full-time content creators. The goal is to help them share useful ideas in a way that feels like them, does not copy every other coach in the feed, and does not steal all their coaching time.

Bringing It All Together For Your Coaching Career

Week 8 of the OPEX Method is where coaching skill starts to meet career design. Coaches wrote their PVMPP, got real about their stage in the journey, faced pricing and metrics with honesty, and looked closely at what it means to be a professional in both work and life.

From here, the path leads into brand, content, and simple marketing that supports, not replaces, real coaching. If you want to go deeper into this mentorship and see how the full system works, you can explore the OPEX Method program and follow along with future cohorts.

Your coaching knowledge matters, but how you turn that knowledge into a stable, meaningful career is what keeps you in the game for years to come.

The livestream runs across YouTube, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Questions are welcome during the stream and after. If you have a question, add it in the comments where you watch.

The team reviews them and answers in the next live session. There are no silly questions. If something is blocking you, someone else is likely stuck on the same thing.

Curious about joining a future cohort or want the full curriculum?

Get the overview and next steps inside the OPEX Method mentorship and CCP Level 1.

Next Steps

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