When I ask new coaches how they set up their practice, a surprising number describe the same first month: they built the business before they had one to run. A CRM, because a course said a real coach needs one. A scheduling tool, an invoicing tool, an all-in-one platform they were still learning the week their first client showed up. A setup sized for fifty clients, run by someone who had two. By the time the client arrived, the coach was tired, and the software was part of why.
You do not need it yet. Starting out, the goal is not a complete business system. It is the smallest, calmest setup that lets you coach a handful of people well: no CRM, no all-in-one to study, no evenings spent being your own IT department.
Most health coach tech stack advice is for a coach further along
Search “health coach tech stack” or “free tools for health coaches” and you will be told to start with a CRM, a funnel, an all-in-one, eight tools, ten. A lot of it is good advice, for a coach with a full calendar, paid ads, and a hundred leads to sort. Handed to a coach with three clients, it is not a setup guide. It is a way to feel behind before you have begun.
You have five clients. Maybe three. At that size the win is not capability, it is calm. The coaches who seemed happiest with their tools had kept the pile small on purpose, and answered a simpler question first.
Not “what does a coaching business need,” but “what does a practice this size actually have to do, and what is the smallest thing that does each job?” Every practice, no matter how small, has the same handful of jobs. The mistake is buying software instead of solving them.
The five jobs (and the $0 tool for each)
A first-five-clients practice has to do five things. That is it. Anything past these is usually a tool solving a problem you do not have yet.
Talk to a client. You need video, and you almost certainly already have it. Google Meet is free and runs in a browser with no install on the client’s side. Zoom is the other obvious choice, with one catch worth knowing: its free Basic plan caps a meeting at 40 minutes, which can cut off a fifty-minute session right at the part that matters. Meet’s free one-on-one calls run much longer, so check that limit against your session length.
A couple of small things make either one feel established. Put the meeting link inside the calendar invite so neither of you is hunting for it at start time, which the scheduler below does for you. And with the client’s okay, record the session, both tools can, so you are present in the conversation instead of scribbling and the notes half write themselves afterward. You do not need a paid video platform to do your first calls.
Let them book. Pick a scheduler with a free plan and stop there. Calendly’s free tier gives a client one link to tap and claim a time without three emails, and it drops the Google Meet or Zoom link onto the booking for you, which is one less thing to do by hand. Most of the paid features are for volume you do not have, with one exception worth naming: branding. The free page carries the tool’s name, and removing Calendly’s branding or adding your own colors sits behind a paid tier. If a booking page that looks like yours and not a vendor’s matters to you early, Cal.com is the better starting point, open-source and white-labelable, with a custom domain much further down the free path.
Remember the person. This is the one that matters most and the one new coaches under-build. You need somewhere the thread carries forward, so this month remembers what a client said last month. Most of the coaches I have interviewed land on the same low-tech version, and if you set up nothing else, set up this: one document per client, a Google Doc or a Notion page, with a three-line template you fill in right after every session. What we worked on. What they said that I do not want to lose. The one next step.
Then reread it in the five minutes before you meet again. Make that automatic instead of hoping you remember: block a short pre-session hold on your calendar right before each session and paste the client’s doc link into that calendar event, so reviewing it is protected, focused time rather than something you scramble for in the hallway. That single habit, the right doc open in front of you before the call starts, is what keeps you from losing the thread. A free notes app holds the words fine. What it will not do is put itself in front of you at the right moment, which is the actual point of remembering.
If you would rather not stitch the doc and the calendar together by hand, this is the exact job Grove is built around: the client’s history surfaces before each session, and Sage, the assistant coach built into Grove, takes the write-up off your plate so you keep the part that needed a human. And you get Sage on the free tier, which covers coaching yourself and up to two clients.
Get paid. A lot of the coaches I talk to just use Zelle or Venmo, and at three clients that is genuinely fine. Zelle ranks first on pure cost: bank to bank, no fee, money in minutes. Venmo is nearly as easy, with two asterisks worth knowing, a business profile takes a small cut and a personal one is not really meant for taking payments. The catch with both is that they hand you a payment but not a record: no invoice, no receipt, and your coaching income mixed into the same app where you split dinner.
Stripe and PayPal also charge only per transaction with no monthly fee, and they give you the invoice and the paper trail you will be glad to have the first time taxes come around. Graduate to one of them before clean records become a year you have to untangle. But to begin, start with whatever gets you paid today.
Stay connected. You do not need marketing automation to keep in touch with five people. The move that actually helps is picking one channel per client and keeping it there, so messages do not scatter across text, email, and three app inboxes you forget to check. For the one-to-one notes, your phone already reaches them; save two or three message templates you reuse so a between-session check-in takes a minute, not a fresh decision each time. When you start sending the same note to a group, a free email tier like MailerLite handles it without a subscription.
That is the whole stack. Five jobs, and every one has a real $0 answer. The coaching itself is what works; a board-certified health coach is paid for the craft, not the software. The tools just have to not get in the way.
Keep it small on purpose
You can run all five jobs on five simple free tools, and plenty of coaches do. You can also fold a few of them into one. Either way, the rule that protects a new coach is the same: add a tool only when a real problem asks for it, never because a list said an established coach has one. Less to manage is not a compromise at this stage. It is the whole point.
None of these choices have to be forever. They are simply the lightest tools that let you spend your first year becoming a better coach instead of a better software administrator.
The day you notice you are spending more time running your tools than coaching your clients, the setup is too big, no matter how many lists called those tools essential. Your first five clients do not need a CRM, an all-in-one, or ten apps. They need you, and the simplest setup that keeps them in view.
Founder of Grove. Twenty years building software for skilled professionals. Currently writes mostly on Tuesdays from a small studio in Austin.