How to Become a Life Coach (with State-by-State Guides)
Wondering how to become a life coach? With the coaching industry set to double in just five years, you’re wise to be exploring what the space has to offer. Despite the growth, we’re still in the early innings of coaching as an established industry. That means plenty of rich opportunity for market participants.
In this comprehensive guide on how to become a life coach, CoachRanks breaks down the most important considerations as you begin your journey. We start with the fundamental basics, or the “technical stuff,” eventually making our way to marketing, sales, and state-by-state guides for some of the most popular life coaching locations (including California, Florida, Michigan, New York, and Texas).
Is It a Good Time to Become a Life Coach?
Before getting into the technical considerations for setting up your coaching business, first, some background. Most fundamentally, you may simply be wondering if the timing is right to become a life coach.
Our take at CoachRanks: It depends.
The macro-trends suggest there’s no better time to become a life coach. With the industry growing both in number of coaches and users, there’s reason to believe that life coaching will be here for the long haul. Additionally, the emergence of major coaching platforms like BetterUp, Torch, and a)plan coaching, have added validity to the space. The success of these companies show that major organizations trust coaching as an employee resource, and major venture capitalists see the potential of the space, too.
That all sounds great. So why does it depend?
It depends because becoming a successful life coach is not a walk in the park. The space may be growing, but it’s no Gold Rush. The best coaches are willing and able to dedicate time, care, and money to their small businesses. That’s all to say, if you’re truly committed to learning the ins and outs of the coaching space, then yes, it’s a great time to become a coach. With that, let’s dive into the guide.
Technical Considerations
We designed this guide to begin with some of the most basic and fundamental considerations for anyone exploring how to become a coach. This stuff may be boring, but it’s important!
Life Coaching Business Structures
As with the formation of any business, you’ll want to start by understanding how your business is classified and structured. For most, this will mean choosing between a Sole Proprietorship or a Limited Liability Company (LLC). A Sole Proprietorship is the simplest approach, requiring minimal paperwork and offering an easy start. However, it comes with direct tax obligations and doesn't protect personal assets against business liabilities.
On the other hand, an LLC provides personal liability protection, more tax flexibility, and enhances a coaching business's credibility (albeit with more paperwork and fees). The choice between these structures depends on your preferences for simplicity versus security. Most commonly, coaches start as a Sole Proprietors and graduate to an LLC once there is more of a need.
Coaching Certification Requirements
One of the most popular questions people ask when researching how to become a coach: Do you need a certification? The short answer is that you do not need a certification to be a life coach. In fact, there is no legal requirement or mandated credential to practice as a life coach.
However, just because you can operate as an un-credentialed coach, doesn’t necessarily mean you should. Certification brings a number of key benefits, including:
Credibility: With limited industry regulation, a trusted coaching certification helps coaches earn a coveted degree of credibility and trustworthiness.
Education: Certification programs exist to help standardize the industry, but just as importantly, they educate coaches on today’s best approaches and methods.
Practice: In order to become a certified coach, you’ll be required to complete a certain number of training hours—often with peers in your program. This practice is key for developing your toolkit as a coach.
Hundreds of coaching certifications are available to the public, however, the most trusted ones are accredited by the International Coaching Federation (ICF). For more on this topic, read our guide on some of the best coaching certifications.
Operational Factors for Coaches
Additional considerations as you map out the establishment of your practice include time commitments, methods of delivery, and your go-to-market plan.
Beyond the time commitment of a certification (if you choose to go that route), coaches should understand there’s more to the job than just showing up for sessions. Great coaches also need to learn the tools that support their business, prepare for sessions, and send post-session follow-up materials. Keep this in mind as you consider how much time it will take to set up and run your business.
Another variable to consider is how you’ll deliver your coaching. While most coaches today have gone virtual for at least some portion of their business, others have leaned into the benefits of going local for in-person sessions. Our ultimate recommendation here is to lean into both approaches. Some coaching users today still see it as an in-person resource (a built-in advantage for landing clients in your area), while others will take their search to the internet, with no opinion on their coach’s location.
To put it all together, we recommend our short template covering how to create a simple coaching business plan. We designed this template to help you go-to-market with confidence. Some of the content in the template is also covered here, so read both for the most detailed experience!
Skill Set Considerations
Do you have what it takes to become a great life coach? Beyond the technical considerations, this question also comes down to your skill set and natural strengths as an individual. We recently wrote about some green flags of great life coaches from a client’s perspective—perhaps worth checking out in tandem with the list below.
Top Skills & Qualities Needed for Coaching Success
While great coaching takes many different forms, you’ll find some common denominators among the best coaches in the industry. Here’s our list of top skills and qualities that will serve you well as a coach.
Empathetic: Empathy helps you understand and connect with clients' feelings, facilitating a supportive coaching environment.
Active Listener: Listening let’s you fully concentrate on the client, understanding their needs and goals without judgment.
Effective Communicator: Great communication helps you conveys ideas, feedback, and instructions in a way that inspires and engages clients.
Adaptable: Adaptability helps you adjust techniques to meet the unique needs and learning styles of each client.
Patient: Patient coaches maintain composure and understanding, giving clients the time they need to grow (while also knowing when to nudge).
Confidential: Confidentiality ensures all client conversations and information are kept private, building trust and safety.
Goal-setting: A great coach understands how to define clear, achievable goals, helping clients create targets to work toward.
Motivating: Motivational coaches inspire and encourage clients to overcome obstacles and stay committed to their growth.
Think of a coach as a dedicated swiss-army knife for their clients. Their only agenda is to provide highly personalized support as clients pursue both big and small goals. Such work requires a number of the qualities above (and some additional ones that aren’t listed, too).
Financial Considerations
As you map out how to become a coach, financial considerations are not much different from any other business. You should be aware of the money flowing in and out of your pocket. This includes expectations for both expenses and potential earnings.
How Much You’ll Spend to Become a Coach
Does it cost anything to become a coach? It entirely depends on your route.
By far the biggest expense you’ll incur in the early days of your coaching practice is the cost of a credible coaching certification, should you choose to get one. Top certifications range from a few thousand dollars to upwards of $20,000. Any certification should be researched thoroughly as these are not small investments, and the certification industry is known to have some scammy individuals and companies. Generally, ICF-accredited certifications are the most trustworthy, as they’ve been vetted by professionals aiming to help standardize the industry.
Additional expenses may include the formation of an LLC, hiring professional services for tax advice, and/or business tools to run your practice (think Zoom, Squarespace, Calendly).
If you’re wondering how to become a life coach for free, it can technically be done by skipping the above financial considerations. That said, you’d be wise to set aside a small budget for upstart costs—some of which you may not be able to predict until you start!
How Much You’ll Earn as a Coach
Life coach earnings range widely, especially because only a portion of coaches work full-time. In fact, coaching is a common side hustle, through which you may be able to nicely supplement your full-time income.
That said, estimates from as recent as 2022 reveal the following:
Coaches earn a global average of $52,800.
Coaches in the United States earn an average of $67,800.
These numbers should be taken with a grain of salt. If you’re just starting out, chances are you’ll earn far less. Conversely, if you’ve been a coach for 10+ years, chances are decent that you’re beating these estimates.
Estimating your desired earnings as a coach hinges on a couple of key metrics. We recommend working backward from your end goal. Let’s say you want to earn $75,000/year as a coach, equivalent to $6,250/month. Achieving this run rate would require you to build a book of business of at least 12.5 clients at $500/month or 6.25 clients at $1,000/month.
It may be hard to estimate as you’re just getting started, but metrics like Lifetime Value (LTV), average contract length, average hourly rate, and churn will help you model expectations and aspirations for your earnings as a coach.
Field Work & Training
If you had a goal to reach the executive level of an organization, you’d probably strategize how you’d get the requisite experience to qualify for such a role. Becoming a life coach is no different. Part of the process to become a coach is simply getting hands-on experience. Like anything else, practice makes perfect.
Gaining Early Coaching Experience
Gaining early experience as a coach can feel like a catch-22. You need experience to get hired, but you need to get hired to gain experience.
Some certification programs help to solve this challenge through peer networks. By requiring a certain number of mentor coaching sessions or peer coaching hours, these programs leverage their communities to ensure participants put their newly developed skills to use. In these instances, coaches in training happily exchange their time with each other as a way to reach training requirements.
Another common strategy to gain experience: Offer free coaching sessions to friends, family, and/or your broader network. This approach serves multiple purposes: it allows coaches to practice in a low-pressure environment, build confidence, and gradually compile a portfolio of case studies and testimonials. Offering pro bono services can also lead to word-of-mouth referrals, further expanding a coach’s network and potential client base in the early days.
We recommend taking it slow as you transition from training to accepting paying clients. Ask your training subjects for critical feedback and take it to heart. Confidence is key for any coach—you’ll be seen as an authority figure by anyone who hires you—so be sure you’re fully confident in your ability to provide a great coaching service before taking on real clients!
Marketing & Sales
Wherever you are in your journey to becoming a life coach, marketing will eventually take center stage. As many coaches will tell you, success in this industry is just as much about good marketing as it is about good coaching. This can pose a real challenge for coaches, many of whom have never before ventured into the world of marketing.
CoachRanks is proud to be a leading resource for coaches of all kinds wanting to learn the ins and outs of marketing. Our blog and newsletter are home to dozens of free resources worth checking out. For the sake of this article, we’ll just hit on some marketing highlights.
Reaching Your Audience with Marketing
Fundamentally, marketing is the process of getting your coaching business in front of your target audience. A simple task on paper, but not so easy in practice!
Some of the most common marketing strategies for coaches include building a quality website, posting on social media, hosting free webinars, word-of-mouth referrals, and publishing long-form content. Each of these strategies aims to build a coach’s brand awareness and discoverability. When all goes according to plan, a coach’s audience takes notice of these efforts. Then, in time, a small percentage of those folks become clients. (Note: the CoachRanks blog features in-depth articles on a number of the marketing ideas mentioned here).
For someone just beginning to explore how to become a life coach, perhaps the most effective marketing work is to identify a coaching niche that resonates. Generally, the label of “life coach” is too broad for highly effective marketing, and “niching down” allows coaches to build better marketing materials that more convincingly speak to a select audience.
As we like to say at CoachRanks, a jack-of-all-trades often presents as a master-of-none. Niching down is an effective step to get your marketing efforts underway, as it provides direction for yourself and helps people understand what exactly makes you great.
Building Your Business with Sales
As with marketing, sales presents another “new” challenge for many coaches. But with some preparation and strategy, you’ll have no problem selling what you do to interested leads and prospects.
As a coach, some of the main categories involved in your sales strategy include pricing, packages, and minimum commitments. Some coaches offer month-to-month agreements (sometimes requiring an initial commitment of 2-3 months), while others offer fixed packages of say 3 to 6 months.
The best coaches in the industry have taken the time to map out exactly what their clients are getting when they sign up for a coaching engagement. This may include a certain number of sessions or monthly hours, offline texting availability, post-session notes, assessments, and more. This information should be communicated clearly in any sales process, ensuring complete alignment between coach and client before deciding to move forward.
State-By-State Guides on How to Become a Coach
Do you live in California, Florida, Michigan, New York, or Texas? For a more personalized reading experience, don’t miss our state-focused guides.
These guides cover some of the same information featured in this article, although each state is slightly nuanced, so consider reading the one that’s relevant to you. On behalf of the team at CoachRanks, we wish you the best of luck in getting your coaching business started!
