How To Become A Life Coach

Table of Contents

If you are looking for a career where you are able to make your own hours and help people fulfil their life dreams and ambitions and be their best every day, coaching is a first-class choice.

Coaching is such a rewarding and energising career that really gives you a sense of being part of a bigger purpose.

A lot of people go to their 9-5 jobs and get hooked on the income, that injection of funds regularly supplied into their bank account keeps them coming back, and also keeps them stuck in a role that doesn’t provide any sense of fulfilment or purpose.

Before long you just start going through the motions, doing what someone else asks without getting to see the impact your work has on others, unless it’s lining shareholder pockets. To fill the void you spend your money on stuff you don’t need, don’t want and can’t get rid of, or ‘veg out’ when you get home, locking yourself away with some beers and TV to ease the shittyness of it all.

To feel a sense of personal fulfilment it’s important that you have a positive impact on others as well as get to decide your workload direction and growth. As you learn and develop, your professional role needs to be able to grow with you, to be able to take your growth assets and new abilities into scope and step further up.

Intrinsic goals are essential markers for positive motivation. If what you are doing in your day-to-day life doesn’t match up with what your personal values are, you are going to feel out of touch and disconnected.

Maybe you already notice this and jump from job to job frequently. Maybe you zone out and ‘veg out’ every chance to get thinking that no matter where you go, the results will be the same. It’s not the case.

If you are thinking about making the move, you’re not alone. The International Coach Federation estimates there are well over 53,000 coaches working globally, and growing every day. You get out of the rat race, are able to set your own pay, your own hours and work on the subjects that matter most to you.

Coaching is a win-win situation because in order to be a really amazing coach, you need to have a coach on your staff, guiding you and pushing you to give a new challenge a go. That means it’s an ever-expanding industry with exponential room to take on new coaches.

Why coaching is a rewarding career choice

Make your own hours
Set your own program
Only work with people you want to work with
Use what you teach to also be your life and career lessons to continue to excel in every area of your life
Becoming more mainstream and recognised
Set your own prices
Match it with your hobbies or interest to provide a powerful and rewarding niche for you and your clients
Use social media to be your marketing platform
Presenting opportunities including running your own workshops

Obviously, in order for you to take more serious steps you’ll need to have more information on what’s involved and what steps you need to take to make becoming a coach and working for yourself a reality.

Here’s the outline of how to become a life coach so you can see the steps ahead and know if you are ready to kick the habit of 9-5.

Steps To Becoming A Successful Life Coach

There is no particular personality that is best suited to coaching, because it’s something you work to fit you, no matter what ‘you’ might be. The coaching program you create will be based on your personal values and personality strengths and will be targeted to the clients who are looking to excel in exactly this area.

The one key here is to always see the business first, and build your personal preferences under that. Aside from something you love, your call to coaching needs to also be a legitimate business offering.

When you take on a coaching program that covers what you need from a business point of view, you have a solid base to get creative with and make it your own, while still putting food on the table.

1. Get Professional Training

The only trap with coaching is you don’t have to be certified to be a coach. There is nothing to stop you quitting your job, calling yourself a life coach and opening the door to clients tomorrow. This puts a serious question mark over how genuine and trustworthy the industry is as a whole, because people who don’t have any training or qualification have no ability to actually help.

For me it’s an approach that requires a solid understanding of multiple factors including psychology, the science behind our mental development, beliefs, decision making and motivation, the history of analytical psychology, as well as Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP), which is the effectiveness of our internal and external communication.

I’ve made the continued study of these things my lifelong goal, have built my coaching courses around this valuable information and I really believe a quality coaching training and education program will incorporate these too.

You need to understand how our thinking happens in order to understand why your clients are carrying out the patterns of behaviour that are not getting the results they want. Unless you understand the driving force behind their challenges, you won’t have the tools you need to offer fast and effective solutions.

Here’s the thing, when your clients are getting amazing results, they will come back again, refer and leave raving testimonials that will get you the client numbers you need for the lifestyle you want.

While there were a lot of untrained coaches entering the industry looking for a quick buck when coaching took off initially, these ultimately failed as businesses because they didn’t follow ethical guidelines. No one starts out expecting to fail, which is probably why an International Coach Federation survey revealed that 89% of coach practitioners today choose to receive accredited or approved training through a professional coaching company. Basically, it works to make your business stronger and more trustworthy.

Being certified as a life coach gives you an edge over other coaches who haven’t taken steps to get training or to get certified.

For those who are experts in a particular field and switch to coaching that field, they probably can offer clients something valuable without training, however it pays to get an understanding of how to structure your coaching business model to make it financially rewarding as you start out.

My Coach Now program is certified by the Institute of Behavioural Science, and for me, it shows that extra level of discipline and business mindset when people take the test and get their certification completed. You also have the chance to resit your training to gain more information or reach new heights whenever you like.

2. Find Your Niche

Your niche will set you apart from other coaches and give you a blue ocean to cast your net, rather than crowded waters already full of fishing boats.

It’s not something you really need to stress about as you do your training. Some people know straight off what their niche will be, others take some time to discover it, and both ways are fine.

Usually those that don’t know will discover their niche pretty fast by the clients they attract. There will usually be a type of person or challenge you come across in your early coaching career that will shape the coaching program you will later call your own.

For now, sit back, use my coaching scripts and methods to work your way to more experience and a better understanding of what you have to offer.

It’s important that the niche you choose is one you are really passionate about and something that aligns with your values (finding out your values if you don’t know already is also a really great tool that’s available in my training programs that really help both you, and your clients.

You can also combine your hobby, career or personal interest or struggle you have overcome into your coaching to offer a unique niche to a certain group:

Yoga
Organic health
Teaching
Nurtician
Weight loss
Fertility/pregnancy/birth
Business
Finances
Relationships
Divorce
Goal setting
Hiking
Personal training
Weight lifting
Sales
Dating/matchmaking
Career coaching
Personal confidence
Decision making
Spirituality/spiritual journey
Decluttering/minimising
Death and letting go
Music and dance

The biggest advantage of having a niche is targeted marketing and the ability to attract new clients through clarity and focused direction.

3. Understand That Coaching Is A Business

Even though you are working in an area you love and helping people, which feels great, you are also now a small business. This brings responsibilities and a long list of things you need to have covered in order to make that business profitable.

We cover the business elements in the training program to help you get an understanding of how to go about becoming a legitimate small business owner.

When setting up your life coaching business, you’ll first need to determine your business entity type. When starting out, it is often easiest to open as a sole trader in your personal name, as you can always change it as you expand, so don’t get hung up on this step. Keep moving forward.

When registering your business name, it’s a good time to check out available domain names and start your website – costs don’t need to be high and a self-managed WordPress site is all you’ll need for your Home page, About, Contact, Products and Blogs.

Establish your payment systems

You want to make a variety of payment options that will give you multiple income streams, this really helps cover your bases and give you more confidence, as well as provide some choices your clients can choose from:

Pay an upfront package deal (i.e. 10 sessions upfront for cheaper than pay-as-you-go)
Pay in instalments
Group coaching plans
Hourly rates or session billing

You don’t have to make all those available straight off, but have a plan of how each of these payment systems can work for your coaching business.

You also need an easy way for clients to pay you. Look for Afterpay options, app payments and easy billing arrangements to make transactions safe and easy.

A trap new coaches fall into is charging too much too quickly. Yes, you can set whatever price you want and some people pay thousands of dollars for coaching, but it needs to be based on results. It will take some time to really find your groove and be able to give your clients truly amazing results. While starting out great results are still possible, it’s a learning curve for both clients and coaches so your prices need to reflect this and build to grow as you evolve in your career and get better results faster.

You can work online from any standard computer, just make sure you have a quality internet connection and have set your system up for great audio.

As well as charging a little less starting out, your costs will also be lower because you won’t need a fancy office or top quality IT to get started. I’d advise against putting down big money on anything in your first year and wait until you earn the money you need to buy equipment or expand to a new location, presenting platform or fancy workshops. Focus on building your name and establishing who you are and what you do – crawl, then walk, then run.

Start by coaching part-time and use a paid job to pay the bills will find your way. As you gain confidence and get clients, you will be able to cut back on paid work hours and transition into coaching full time.

Make sure you cover your expenses and pay yourself. Looking after things like your insurance and Super is part of being a business owner so take these essential expenses into account.

Get comfortable with asking for sales and taking payments

It sounds weird if you are still in the planning phase but asking people to invest in your business and taking payments is really uncomfortable for lots of people. Money handling is a life-skill that many of us just don’t have a solid education in.

Understanding maths is one thing, money is something else entirely, especially as it’s directly connected to your beliefs about self worth.

You might need to do some practice with business networking events to get comfortable talking about your business in a businessy way. If you have conflicts coming up about taking payments, getting to the bottom of this early is really essential. Above all else, practice makes perfect so be uncomfortable about it but push through.

The practice sessions designed as part of my Coach Now course are all about getting into the heart of things early and gives you the chance to ask for low prices and see how you feel and where the challenges pop up, including asking for referrals and extended sessions after the program has been completed.

Create a marketing strategy

Social media makes it so easy for you to communicate your coaching offerings and market to your target audience, in a way that really reflects your personal style and unique offer.

If you’re squeamish about self-promotion you’re going to have to bust the beliefs that are holding you back and take a look at the core reasons behind it.

The best referrals come through word of mouth – but you have to ask for them. The referral process is built into my coaching program and gaining self-confidence is what NLP is all about, so we have you covered, as long as you are willing to do the work!

Beyond that, you’ll need a strong social media presence to attract clients. At a minimum, you should have an Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn page, blog, and business website, all of which you’ll update regularly. Sign up for a professional business-branded email account for your life-coaching communications, too.

4. Decide On Your Packages

Every coach is unique, as if every coaching program. As you progress and refine your coaching program and niche, you’ll also develop your own products (aka packages) that reflect what you offer as well as what your clients have been asking for.

What types of services will you offer as a life coach?

Look at your assets. What do you know and what do you have that can make a big impact? Think about ways you can make your own videos, instructions or provide websinares, blogs or activities that give people tangible access to your life coaching services.

A great strategy is to think about your target audience and what their main challenges are. How can you solve their issues? Prove it!

Things to consider in your package design:

Level of service
Areas of focus
Workshops
Presentations
Supporting information
Activities and instructions

When you have NLP training you can also offer incredible habit busting and life changing therapies like

Anchoring positive emotions
Like to dislike
Swish patterns
Time line therapy
Belief busters
Breakthrough sessions

Every coaching program should consider a free consultation session that enables a coach to get to know their clients and discuss the program and what it involves before asking for a sign up and payment.

As well as establishing trust with clients a free introductory session gives them a chance to get to know you, and you can also gauge how ready they are to start your coaching program and whether they will be a good fit.

Remember, being a business owner means you need to be choosy about who you work with, if you can see in advice someone is not willing to put in the work to get results or are better suited to a different coach, refer them on, someone who isn’t going to benefit from your business, isn’t going to benefit you either.

5. Set Up A Support Network

You need to keep moving at a pace that is always ahead of your clients, otherwise you will reach a point where they can’t get results with you, but they can with another coach. You need to stay those few levels above their ability in order to clearly se either situation and provide a solution.

If you have one fast-track client who has completed all your programs then absolutely, refer them on to someone who can assist with their appetite, but overall, you want to be ahead of your main client base. That means you need to stay on the ball.

Have your own coach or mentor you check in with regularly for a boost and to get some clear vision on anything you are sabotaging or overlooking, as well as a network of professional coaches like you, you can meet up with and discuss ideas and troubleshoot issues with.

Ways you can continue your life coach education

Resit the Your Future Now Classes especially Coach Now, Excellence Now and Influence Now
Take Master Coaching classes that cover your chosen niche in detail
Read books from professional and reliable sources
Attend seminars
Go to workshops
Find relevant retreats for your business offering
Join a Master Class
Get a mentor
Go to networking events
Be active in the life coach community
Create your own coaching support group from coaches you know or classmates
Join Facebook support groups that are credible

Continued education is a big one. I find that every time I visit a quality training program I get new information from the same class because I’m at the next level in my experience and understanding, so I can take a different skill set in. That’s why I have a premium package that allows you to sit in all my classes as many times as you want, for one price. And because my classes are in person, face-to-face, I’m always bringing new materials and updates too. It’s not a video seminar that can get outdated, I’m growing and learning at my level too, and you’ll be drawing off your fellow classmates, many of them resits who can provide valuable support, ask questions that can benefit you and become part of that network you need to boost your personal and business results.

It’s just a way to acknowledge the bigger journey you are on and assist you, without penalty.

The more tools you have access to, the better you will be at delivering your services and the faster your clients will see amazing results.

Consider that your education and ongoing training is a business expense and any well run business would be looking to send their employees out to complete more training and enhance their skills and ability, so treat your small business like a well one big one.

One of the things you will learn in the Your Future Now training is that being outside your comfort zone is a sure sign you are on track to incredible growth and discovery, which will motivate you to start loving that feeling of being uncomfortable and pushing through.

What’s involved in Life Coach Training?

Our hands-on in-person training gives you the opportunity to learn about Rapid Change Technologies with the added tools of NLP. You’ll also have access to all the materials including scripts and activities to use with your clients included as part of your training fee.

We’ll take you into the business side of things as well as show you some handy ways to market your new business.

Because we’re in the room with you, you can ask those burning questions and get feedback and advice that’s specific to what you are aiming to achieve.

You’ll also have a room of fellow students working with you and assisting you to role-play as both client, and coach.

Get incredible life coaching information, build your own career with your own hours and make lifelong friends at Coach Now.

If you buy our Platinum Package you also get dedicated NLP training that can broaden your coaching tool kit and give you an incredible service offering as a coach, including hypnotherapy, with our Excellence Now program, learn public speaking and presenting with Influence Now and get into the business side of things in even more detail through Entrepreneur Now. Plus, all these classes come with our lifetime resit policy to help you create mastery!

If you want to become a life coach and you’re looking for a life coaching course in Sydney, Coach Now is a certified coaching program that teaches powerful coaching techniques to take your clients from great to excellent in a way that is personally rewarding and fulfilling.