From personal development to career development, life coaching has quickly become one of the most popular ways for creator educators and infopreneurs, alike, to monetize their knowledge and expertise. Looking to join in and earning money as a life coach? Then you’ve come to the right place.
In this article, we’re walking you through the process of becoming a life coach, from finding your coaching niche to pricing your coaching programs.
Oh, and we’re also offering you a handy template bundle that helps you create and implement 12 different life coaching programs in just a few minutes. Each template includes fillable tables and helpful writing prompts to ensure your life coaching programs are as comprehensive and effective (i.e. profitable) as possible.
Want to launch your life coaching business today? Download our Life Coaching Templates Bundle now — for free.
What is life coaching?
A life coach is a wellness expert who draws on their unique knowledge and experience to help people overcome personal and professional challenges so they can achieve their goals. You can also think of a life coach as a guide or a mentor who supports people as they make progress through their lives.
In order to help clients achieve their aspirations, life coaches also help people identify their strengths, weaknesses, and areas of life imbalance, as well as the obstacles holding them back.
Life coaching is actually an umbrella term that encompasses a number of different coaching niches, from personal development to stress management. Because it’s such a broad-ranging category, life coaching can target pretty much any aspect of a client’s life, including their individual goals, their interpersonal relationships (family, friends, or romantic), their career and professional lives, and more.
What’s the difference between life coaches and therapists?
It’s important to understand that life coaches are not the same as therapists, and the services that a life coach offers are not meant to emulate or replace the advice of psychologists or psychiatrists.
The main difference between the two vocations is that therapists help individuals with mental health issues, while life coaches focus on helping others achieve their goals. Therapists are medical professionals with advanced degrees and a license to practice therapy, while life coaches aren’t certified to offer mental health advice.
These are important distinctions to understand both for clients seeking life coaching services and for those looking to become life coaches, themselves.
6 steps to becoming a life coach
- Identify your niche
- Become certified — or don’t!
- Set up your website
- Create your life coaching programs
- Price your life coaching programs
- Market your life coaching business
Now that you know what a life coach is, you probably want to know how to become one. Lucky for you, it only takes 7 steps. Let’s dive in.
Step 1: Identify your niche
The first order of business in becoming a life coach? Finding your coaching niche.
What is a coaching niche?
Your coaching niche is the topic of area of expertise that you’ll focus on in your coaching practice. Your niche (i.e. your specialization) will determine your target audience and the types of services you’ll offer in your practice.
As we mentioned above, life coaching is a catch-all term that covers a variety of different kinds of coaching. In reality, there are many, many different life coaching niches out there. We’re talking self-discovery, productivity, creativity, work-life balance — you name it.
While there are tons of niches out there, it’s important to note that some are more profitable than others. So, if one of your goals as a coach is to make a living (and, let’s be real, who isn’t?), then you’ll want to choose a profitable life coaching niche.
How to find your coaching niche
The first step in finding your coaching niche is pinpointing your expertise and passion. Growing your life coaching business from your strengths and passions enables you to deliver more effective programs and makes your business a lot more sustainable in the long run. In other words, if you don’t have the expertise needed to address your clients’ issues or the drive to keep doing what you’re doing, your business can easily run out of steam — and you can easily burn out.
After you’ve identified your areas of expertise, you’ll need to do a little market research to figure out which coaching niches within your wheelhouse are the most profitable. Here, you’ll want to conduct keyword research to see which niches are the most in-demand (i.e. have the most search engine inquiries) and are the least competitive (i.e. have the fewest search engine results). To put it differently, a niche with high-demand and low-competitiveness will be your best bet in terms of earning the most as a life coach.
The benefits of finding your coaching niche
So, why find your coaching niche? To state it plainly, niching down helps you serve your audience more effectively, so you can charge more for your services. If we want to dive into the nitty-gritty, there are a number of different benefits to defining your coaching niche (or sub-niche), including:
- Better serving your clients by creating more targeted solutions to their unique challenges.
- Better reaching your target audience with more specialized marketing campaigns and promotion tactics.
- Clarifying your purpose as a coach so you can build and grow your business more effectively.
- Earning more money by delivering more effective (a.k.a. more profitable) services
- Standing out from the competition by determining your unique value proposition (aka your secret sauce).
Psst: Want to find your coaching niche today? We have a template for that.
Our easy-to-use Coaching Niche Finder template provides you with in-depth information on 12 of today’s most profitable coaching niches (and sub-niches), so you can niche down faster.
Interested? Download our Coaching Niche Finder now — for free.
Step 2: Become certified — or don’t!
One of the common questions aspiring life coaches ask is, “Do I need to become certified to become a life coach?” And for good reason. Getting certified for any vocation is a huge commitment. And, for some, the potential time, money, and effort that goes into obtaining a certification can be a major blocker to launching a coaching business.
Luckily, you don’t need a life coach certification to become or be recognized as a life coach. (Although some coaching industries — mainly the ones related to mental health — do require that you complete a coaching certification program.)
Why you don’t need to become certified as a life coach
So, why don’t life coaches need to get certified? Because, as a life coach, you aren’t claiming to be a mental health expert (like a therapist or psychologist) and aren’t offering mental health advice. Instead, you’re helping clients overcome challenges and reach their goals — and this kind of expertise doesn’t require certification.
What’s most important when it comes to being a reputable life coach is whether you can help your clients achieve results — and this comes down to your expertise and experience. If you have a track record of helping others achieve specific goals or even achieving those goals yourself, then you have a solid foundation to launch your life coaching business and begin coaching clients.
The benefits of getting certified
That being said, there are currently 34,200 certified life coaches in the United States alone (and over 109,200 worldwide). So, if you want to get a leg up on the competition (and you don’t mind putting in the time and money), it doesn’t hurt to get certified.
If you do want to get a life coach certification, we suggest enrolling in a program from a reputable company, like the International Coaching Federation. While doing your research, look for accredited programs so that you know you’re getting your certification from a trustworthy institution.
Step 3: Set up your website
Now that you know your niche (and you’ve been certified — or not!), it’s time to get your life coaching business online. Because wow else are you going to start selling your digital services?
The first step in getting your coaching business online is creating your website. At this point, you might be wondering, “Why, in the age of social media, do I need to create a website for my coaching business?” While YouTube and TikTok might be tops when it comes to content marketing, the tried-and-true website is still crucial for any online business — and for a few good reasons.
First of all, a website serves as a hub for all things related to your business. This is where potential clients can learn all about you, your expertise, and your practice, discover your social media channels, view your content, and browse your offering of digital products and services via your online storefront.
A website also lends your online business extra credibility and shows potential clients that you’re a professional who takes your work seriously. And as if that’s not enough of an incentive, having a website gives your coaching business a better SEO foothold on search engines like Google, so that more potential clients can find you and your services organically.
Step 4: Create your life coaching programs
Now that you’ve set up your website and online storefront, it’s time to stock those (digital) shelves. The next step in becoming a life coach is creating your digital products. And that means building out your offering of life coaching programs.
Before you can start building your first coaching program, you’ll need to determine the topic it will address. When deciding on a topic, look to your coaching niche (or sub-niche) to guide you. Your niche will dictate the range of topics you can rightfully tackle through your program.
For example, if your niche is personal development coaching, then you definitely won’t be creating a program about budgets (leave that to the financial coaches). Instead, you’ll want to zone in on specific topics within that niche’s wheelhouse, which might include improving self-awareness, confidence, communication skills, and overall personal growth.
Once you’ve chosen your coaching program’s specific topic, you’ll need to define its purpose. During this step, it might be helpful to think of your program’s purpose in terms of its objectives and intended outcome. In other words, what is your coaching program trying to help clients achieve? To answer that question, however, you’ll first need to get clear on what your clients actually want to achieve. And that requires conducting some market research to identify your target audience and pinpoint their pain points.
Identify your coaching strategy
Now that you’ve identified the “what” and “who” of your program, it’s time to dive into the “how.” In other words, you’ll need to determine exactly how you’ll help your clients achieve your coaching plan’s intended outcome.
This step includes deciding on the specific tactics and activities you’ll be using throughout your program, in addition to developing the assessment tools you’ll use to measure and track your client’s progress and success over the course of the program.
Build out your coaching plan session-by-session
Now that you have all the nuts-and-bolts hammered out, it’s finally time to start building out your program, week-by-week. While creating your coaching plan, it’s important to keep your client’s growth journey top-of-mind. Each session should bring your client one step closer to the program’s intended goal. In other words, each session should be distinct, with its own clear-cut topic, objectives, activities, and client homework.
The breadth of material you need to cover during your program will determine its length (aka the total number of sessions). Your coaching program can be as long as you see fit. If you want a ballpark, however, your typical life coaching program usually runs from 8 weeks to 12 weeks in length.
Pro tip: Want to create your first life coaching plan today? Or looking to build out your life coaching offering fast? We’ve got you.
Our Life Coaching Templates Bundle helps you build out a broad mindset coaching offering quickly. Each of the twelve templates provides you with the step-by-step framework and writing prompts you need to create unique life coaching plans across a variety of topics, from developing healthy habits to overcoming adversity, in a few minutes.
The best part? It’s totally free.
Ready to create your first life coaching plan today? Download our free Life Coaching Templates Bundle for free now.
Step 5: Price your life coaching programs
Now you’ve built your first life coaching program (or, perhaps, built out an entire offering of programs). Congrats! The hard part’s over.
Before you can start selling your life coaching programs — and, ahem, making that bread — you’ll need to price them.
For this step, you’ll need to do a little more market research. (We know, we know…) Of course, you worked hard to create your offering and your expertise is valuable, so you want to earn your fair share for them. However, you’ll also want to price your program’s competitively so that they’ll sell well.
To price your programs competitively, you’ll need to, well, check out the competition. Find other life coaches within your niche (or sub-niche) and look at how they’re pricing similar offerings.
Typically, life coaching plans are given package pricing. This just means that each life coaching program is given one lump-sum price, rather than individual prices per session. You can also think of it as plan pricing.
Once you’ve priced your life coaching program, it’s up to you whether you want your clients to pay the entire cost up front or in weekly installments as they progress through the program.
Step 6: Market your life coaching business
Now that you’ve built and priced your coaching programs, it’s time to let your audience know they’re for sale. And that means promoting your life coaching business.
From social media posts to email newsletters, there are quite a few ways to market your life coaching services online:
Promote your services with content
The most intuitive way to market your coaching services as a content creator is with, well, content!
If you have a social media following of any size, you already have a built-in pool of potential clients for your program — all you need to do is get it in front of them.
Don’t yet have a following? Then you’ll definitely want to start creating content on the social media platform of your choice in order to start growing your following.
No matter your platform of choice, there are a few things that all creators should keep in mind when marketing their coaching services with content. The first is the importance of authenticity. That’s to say that it’s important that your promotional content doesn’t feel like an ad. Keep in mind that your audience follows you for your unique value proposition (i.e. your unique expertise and perspective), so you’ll want to ensure that your marketing content is just as compelling and educational as your regular posts.
To keep things authentic, we suggest creating content that’s similar in topic to the services you’re promoting, and inserting a subtle CTA that tells your audience they can access more of the same expertise by purchasing your program. Your marketing content should give your audience a small taste of what your latest life coaching program has to offer, while encouraging them to enroll to reap the full benefits.
Build an email list
Even with the rise of Instagram and TikTok as massive creator platforms, the humble newsletter remains one of the most effective digital marketing strategy out there.
Don’t believe us? The numbers don’t lie! Email marketing generates a ROI of $36 for every dollar spent. In addition to being a great way to build an audience for your services, email marketing is a powerful way to convert your leads into real, paying customers and, ultimately, earn more money. With that in mind, email marketing is definitely a tactic you won’t want to miss out on when building out your coaching business’s marketing strategy.
Before you can start writing and sending out newsletters, however, you’ll need to build your email list. Your email list is the list of subscribers who receive your promotional newsletters. There are a few different methods you can use to capture your followers’ email addresses, including adding opt-in forms to your online storefront or link-in-bio landing page, or creating lead magnets.
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Offer free taster sessions
As a life coach, you can also market your business with free “taster” sessions.
A taster session is a short coaching call that gives prospective clients a “taste” of your coaching expertise and offerings. The idea is that, once your client has finished their taster session and discovered the value your coaching can bring to their lives, they’ll want to enroll in your paid programs in order to keep accessing your expertise.
Because they deliver immediate value, taster sessions are powerful conversion tools that help you transform your followers into paying customers.
Launch your life coaching business today
And that’s it! Now you know how to become a successful life coach, from finding your niche to marketing your services. Plus you have a set of handy templates at your disposal to help build out your coaching offering fast and start earning sooner.
From here, it’s all up to you to start building your life coaching business — and raking it in.
Life coaching FAQ
How much can you make as a life coach?
There’s no cap on how much you can earn as a life coach. While life coaching pro Luisa Zhou cites that the average pay for coaches is $62,500 per year in the U.S., your coaching income depends on just how much work you’re willing to put into your business, including how many billable hours you work, how much effort you put into creating your programs, and how much time you spend into your marketing initiatives.
How much does it cost to become a life coach?
The cost of becoming a life coach ranges (from free to thousands of dollars) depending on a few factors, including whether you decide to get certified.
While a coaching certification isn’t necessary to qualify as a coach, many aspiring life coaches decide to obtain certifications. Most life coaching certifications cost anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000 depending on the institution and program you choose.
Follow The Leap on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube for more monetization tips for creators. We also make a newsletter.
Further reading
- How To Become a Mindset Coach (Tips + Free Templates)
- How To Create a Coaching Contract (+ Free Template)
- How To Create a Life Coaching Business Plan (+ Free Templates)
- Your Guide to Creating an 8-Week Coaching Program (+ Free Template)
- Your Guide to Creating a 12-Week Coaching Program (+ Free Template)
- How To Find Your Coaching Niche (Tips + Free Templates)
- How To Use the Wheel of Life in Coaching (+ Free Template)
- What Is a Lead Magnet and How To Create One (10 Ideas and Examples)
- How To Sell Digital Products Online: A 6-Step Launch Checklist
- What Is an Infopreneur? Here’s How To Become One