How To Become A Life Coach

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Teachers are dedicated to helping people progress in their lives. If you want to help people to live a better life and attain greater fulfillment, life coaching may be an alternative career path for you.

Life coach training can be short or comprehensive. You can get started right away using online self-study programs or formal certification programs which can be completed in as little as 22 weeks, and you can work while you are completing your certification. The field of life coaching is well established, but there are many different ideas out there about what it is; so, if you’re not sure what a life coach is, you’re not alone.

What is a Life Coach?

Put simply, a life coach is dedicated to helping their clients improve their relationships, careers, and day-to-day lives. Life coaches partner with clients in a thought-provoking process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.

A life coach’s main goal is to support their clients and to move towards the change they see for themselves rather than spending time focusing on past problems. Life coaching is all about clarifying a vision, deeply exploring possibilities, generating insights, creating a strategy and working towards the change they see for themselves. Many different types of people hire life coaches, from c-level executives working in billion-dollar companies to authors and small business owners. If you are dedicated to helping others do more than they would have on their own, then becoming a life coach may be the ideal career path for you.

What Does a Life Coach Do?

Whether you are considering becoming a life coach or considering hiring one, it’s important to know what life coaches do. Life coaching is a well-established field, but there is a lot of misconceptions surrounding it. If you’re not entirely sure what life coaches do, you are certainly not the only one.

Life coaches are not therapists, and they do not solve people’s problems for them. They partner with their clients to create a space of openness that encourages clients to think deeper within themselves and maximize their personal and professional potential.

Life coaches support their clients and help them move towards the changes they want to see in themselves. They do this by assisting the client with clarifying their vision and exploring all the possibilities. This thought-provoking process helps the client create strategies to work towards long-lasting change.

No matter if it’s business owners, authors, or high-earning executives, many people hire life coaches to assist them with improving their natural abilities.

Is Life Coaching a Viable Career for me?

Life coaching is a rewarding career field because you get to help clients every day. Even though these clients will be from various walks of life, they will all be coming to you to help them discover more about themselves and make a plan to reach their goals, whatever they may be. If you are on the fence about becoming a life coach, the first step is to take this free life coaching quiz to see if this career is for you. The quiz asks you a series of questions about yourself and how you relate to others to see if life coaching is the right career path for you.

How Much do Life Coaches Make?

Life coaching is a booming industry with lots of opportunities for growth and development. It is an industry where you can set your own hours, pick your expertise, and have complete control over how much you work. With all these benefits, the life coaching industry can be intimidating, and you may be wondering how much you can make as a life coach.

A life coach’s salary can vary greatly, and a lot of it depends on how you decide to launch your career. Some life coaches work independently as solo entrepreneurs, while others integrate their coaching skills with their existing roles or work exclusively within the HR department of a company. The income of someone who works for themselves can be very different from someone working in the non-profit sector or in conjunction with another business.

Solo entrepreneurs just starting out are encouraged to consider the lifestyle they want and design their practice to support that vision. For some, it may require taking on a few, highly profitable clients; for others, it may require several lower paying clients or supplementing their practice with speaking engagements or book sales.

Realistically, a life coach can make anywhere from nothing to over $200,000 a year. The average income of a life coach is around $61,000 a year, which can break down in many different ways. $61,000 a year can look like one client a month for executive life coaches, or three to four clients a month for other life coaching niches.

When deciding how to price your services, you should charge what you feel is right for you. If you are launching your coaching business as a hobby or non-profit, then you may not have to consider your finances. However, if your goal is to turn coaching into a full-time job, then your fee schedule should be compatible with the income you desire. While your practice grows, you may need to consider having other streams of income.

No matter how you decide to offer your coaching skills, there is a lot of money to be made in the coaching industry. Once you develop a marketing plan that brings customers to the door, so to speak, you will have no trouble making a livable income from your passion.

Can I Become a Life Coach?

Technically, anyone can become a life coach because no official requirements or credentials are needed to practice in this field. In fact, you don’t even have to have a certification to call yourself a coach. Teachers in particular can easily become life coaches due to the nature of their job.

While you can become a life coach with no credentials or certification, many people get coaching certification anyway. Life coaching certification cannot make you a life coach if you do not have the raw ingredients already. If you are passionate about helping people unlock their true potential, a life coaching certification program can help you add tools and resources to your practice.

Coach Training Alliance offers several different coaching courses that are designed to create positive change, regardless of the types of goals, and their Certified Coach Program offers a six-month (22 week) program to obtain your coaching certification. With small class sizes and a learning system based on the four pillars of wisdom, this course will have you ready to start taking clients as soon as you graduate from it.

Do you Need a Certification to Become a Life Coach?

Once you have committed to becoming a life coach, you should seek out certification. While the life coaching industry is unregulated, it doesn’t mean that you should not hone your skills with a certified coach program.

Unlike other professional fields, life coaching is a non-regulated industry, meaning there are no laws governing the field. You do not require a degree to become a life coach, and life coach training organizations do not need to be accredited by a governing body.

Does this mean you need a certification to work as a life coach?

The short answer to this question is no. At the current moment, becoming a life coach doesn’t require certification. However, this may not last forever, and it doesn’t mean you should not get a certification.

While you can become a life coach with no certification at all, you shouldn’t. A life coaching certification program gives you many benefits when it comes to your life coaching practice. It will provide you with a plethora of coaching tools, peer group sessions, and even one-on-one coaching from an experienced life coach in the industry.

It’s not uncommon to see people with no certification working as a life coach. This doesn’t mean they are bad coaches, but it can mean that they haven’t spent time to expand their knowledge on coaching or looked into becoming a certified coach through the International Coach Federation (ICF). A certified coaching program will give you a solid knowledge base of coaching techniques, prepare you for ICF certification, and give you the tools you need to succeed in business.

How to Become a Life Coach Online

If you are one of the unique and talented individuals who possess the special traits needed to become a great life coach, then you can start your certification process and become a certified coach in just six months. Coach Training Alliance offers several online resources that can help you become a certified life coach.

If coaching is the ideal career path for you, then the next step is to decide what kind of coaching program you need to hit your long-term goals. Whether you want to be an executive coach, an organizational coach, or an individual life coach, there is a program out there to help you transform your vision into reality.

Coach certification programs, such as Coach Training Alliance’s Certified Coach Program, offer small class sizes with experienced life coaches who can guide you along the way. If you prefer to learn at your own pace, Self-Study programs provide all the information you need to get started as a coach. If you prefer a more traditional classroom-like setting, there are live classes that meet remotely (via conference call), and you can earn your life coaching certification in as little as six months.

Aside from the initial training, the learning doesn’t stop there. If you want to become an organizational coach or an executive coach, you can go deeper in your training with specialized coach training programs. Coach Training Alliance offers continuing education courses that range from five hours to four months long that can further develop and hone your coaching skills.

Being a life coach can be a rewarding career choice. You don’t have to be certified to be a coach, but it helps. With a certified life coaching program, you can become a life coach in as little as six months, and you can also continue improving your life coaching skills with different programs that are more specific to your long-term goals.

How Long Does it Take to Become a Life Coach?

If you’re committed to becoming a life coach, you can become a certified coach with a growing practice in just six months. Coach Training Alliance’s Certified Coach Program offers intimate training programs with a maximum of 12 participants each. The course is 22 weeks long, and you will know exactly when you will finish the program. With no delays or waiting for classes to open up, you can start on your path to becoming a life coach immediately.

Coach Training Alliance utilizes the LearnMore System™, and incorporates the Four Pillars of Wisdom™ approach and the Circle of Learning™ methodology. This allows you to fully experience your knowledge because learning does not take place only in the classroom. We learn more, better, and faster by doing and being actively involved.

If you’re interested in a rewarding career path that allows you to help others achieve their goals and reach their highest selves, then you may be interested in becoming a life coach. In just six short months, you can become a certified coach with a growing practice through our life coaching program.

How to Get Clients as a Life Coach

As with any new business, getting clients as a life coach can be a struggle if you’re just starting out. Once you’ve completed a life coach certification program and completed any legal work to start your business, your next step is to bring clients to your door.

The best way to get clients initially is to offer sample sessions. Sample sessions are great in many ways. Not only do they allow prospective clients to experience what it is like to work with you, but they can also show the benefits you bring to them. It is much easier to obtain your first client by demonstrating how you can help them achieve the changes they want to see, rather than simply telling them.

The second step to building a clientele is to continually provide value to your clients. Growing a steady business is not about having a huge advertising budget, a massive social media presence, or an expensive website. Client referrals are the best way to bring new people to your practice, and the best way to ensure that your client promotes your coaching skills is for your clients to experience the benefits of your coaching practice and share that with others. As long as you coach your clients in a professional co-creative manner, the value you bring to your clients will speak for your practice.

Your Professional Coaching Fees

Fees are often one of the most challenging aspects of practice for professional coaches. Issues can include inexperience in setting and collecting professional fees, fear of rejection, and low perceived value of the services.

Value is both monetary and intrinsic. If we devalue our services, we devalue the results obtained with clients.

Some of the most common mistakes in setting your life coach fees:

• Stating your fee without clarity and confidence. The Wharton School of Business found that for professional services, confidence was a greater factor in signing on clients than expertise, credentials, experience, and amount of the fee.
• Setting life coach fees based on your peers. Most coaches have fees that are too low or outdated, may have different expertise, may not be as good as you, or may be in a different niche.
• Setting fees based on not seeing yourself as an expert. We are experts at change, and specialize in choice architecture.
• Determining your fee based on where you live. If you work by telephone, you have an international venue. If you have a website, a blog, or an article, then you attract clients from all over the world.
• Believing that you will not be able to help those in need if your fees are too high. Affordability is your projection onto a client. You won’t be able to help clients as much if your fees are too low.
• Keeping your fees low until you have more expertise, or a bestseller, or have a sufficient number of clients.
• Deciding in advance that clients won’t pay. This is the coach’s money story projected onto the client. If someone says that they can’t afford you, that’s the person who most needs your services.
• Over-delivering: Sessions run over; over-availability to clients; afraid to raise fees; compensating for self-doubt about value or fee.

Each of these mistakes has its own set of beliefs and behaviors. You can change any of them.

Working as a life coach can be challenging, especially as you start looking for your first client. The best way to attract that first client is by offering sample sessions, so they can get a feel for how it is to work with you. As you help them trust their own instincts and improve their lives, they will refer you to their friends and family, and you will have plenty of people eager for your services.

Coach Training Alliance has a plethora of resources for your life coaching journey. There are also guided apprenticeships to help you start your business and advanced training, so you can continuously improve your coaching skills.