Do you want to be a life coach? If so, find here an exhaustive beginner’s guide on becoming a life coach and starting a life coaching business from home.
As our lives are becoming more and more complex and competitive, we need life coaches. They guide us and provide a positive vibe. A life coach can change somebody’s life. Becoming a life coach can be a satisfying as well as rewarding job.
At present, more than 55,000 certified life coaches are working all across the globe. And the number is increasing every year. The total life coach industry revenue stands at $1.4 billion in the year 2022. Industry experts predict that the life coach industry will see further growth in the coming years
If you like to inspire and motivate others and people often come to you for advice, you can become a life coach and start working at home. So your decision to become a life coach from home is altogether a good decision, whereby you can help people and give them a good result.
What is a Life Coaching Business?
A life coaching business is a professional practice that focuses on helping individuals achieve personal and professional goals, overcome challenges, and maximize their potential. Life coaches work with clients to identify their values, strengths, and aspirations, and support them in creating action plans to navigate life transitions, improve relationships, enhance career prospects, and foster personal growth.
Life coaching involves a collaborative partnership between the coach and client, where the coach provides guidance, accountability, and encouragement to empower clients to make positive changes and achieve desired outcomes in various aspects of their lives.
Types of Life Coaching Business
There is a wide range of life coaching business ideas depending on specific areas of personal development and achievement. Some common types of life coaching include:
⇒ Career Coaching
Focuses on helping individuals identify career goals, explore job opportunities, develop professional skills, and navigate career transitions such as job changes or promotions.
⇒ Executive Coaching
Geared towards corporate leaders, executives, and business professionals, executive coaching aims to enhance leadership skills, improve decision-making abilities, and drive organizational success.
⇒ Relationship Coaching
Helps individuals improve their interpersonal relationships, including romantic partnerships, family dynamics, friendships, and professional collaborations. Relationship coaches guide communication, conflict resolution, and building healthy connections.
⇒ Health and Wellness Coaching
Focuses on promoting physical, mental, and emotional well-being by supporting clients in adopting healthy lifestyle habits, managing stress, setting fitness goals, and overcoming health challenges.
⇒ Personal Development Coaching
Aims to empower individuals to achieve personal growth, self-discovery, and fulfillment in various areas of life, such as self-confidence, time management, goal setting, and overcoming limiting beliefs.
⇒ Financial Coaching
Helps individuals manage their finances, create budgets, reduce debt, increase savings, and plan for long-term financial stability and prosperity.
⇒ Spiritual Coaching
Focuses on exploring and deepening one’s spiritual beliefs, practices, and connections. Spiritual coaches may guide individuals in finding meaning, purpose, and fulfillment through spiritual exploration and personal growth.
⇒ Parenting Coaching
Supports parents in developing effective parenting strategies, managing challenges with children, fostering positive parent-child relationships, and navigating the complexities of modern parenting.
⇒ Creativity Coaching
Aimed at helping individuals tap into their creative potential, overcome creative blocks, and pursue artistic or creative endeavors. Creativity coaches provide support and inspiration to unleash and nurture creative expression.
⇒ Life Transition Coaching
Assists individuals in navigating major life changes or transitions, such as relocation, divorce, retirement, or empty nesting. Life transition coaches offer guidance, support, and practical strategies to adapt to change and create a fulfilling new chapter in life.
14 Steps to Start a Life-Coaching Business
1. Get Properly Qualified
To become a life coach, having a certificate is not mandatory. Many successful life coaches have no official certifications. However, acquiring certified coaching credentials will be certainly an added advantage.
Furthermore, individuals having a Bachelor´s, Master´s, or Doctorate Degree in counseling will help. Sometimes people from other fields of study like psychologists also become successful life coaches.
For working as a Life Coach you must have a certification that is sometimes essential for certain states. For example, the International Coaching Federation offers a 125-hour ICF training program. The ICF offers three levels of certification, Associate, Professional, and Master.
There are also three types of life coach training available:
- In-person training with classroom lectures.
- Combined learning, which is a blend of the classroom as well as online training.
- Online Training, which is complete virtual training.
There are certain training tools available online. You can download these books and get trained to become a professional coach, get an ICF credential, and become a life coach at home. These kits offer free training by eminent coaches and invite free webinars.
Apart from the qualifications and certifications required to become a life coach, you need to develop certain skills for a successful career as a life coach. Some of them are:
- Good communication skills.
- Good Motivational Skills.
- A patient and a good listener
- The flexibility of working with people from various professions and social backgrounds.
- Critical thinking capacity.
- Sound IT skills
2. Select Your Niche
To become a life coach from home, you have to carefully examine your city, area, and neighborhood and find out the need for life coaching and the highest demand in which field. There are different fields like business, career, sports, health, relationships, etc. So, you may focus your specialization on any one of these.
Don’t worry, this is just the beginning. Once your client base increases and your advertisement and publicity pick up as a life coach from home, you will get clients from different areas.
3. Create a Business Plan
The first step after you finally decide to jump into the life coach business is to draft a business plan document. It works as a roadmap for your present and future activities. Furthermore, if you are looking for funds, this plan document becomes mandatory.
Some of the topics your life coaching business plan must address are the following:
- Initial and recurring costs
- Your target customers
- Pricing plan
- How do you plan to get clients for your life coaching company?
4. Equip Your Office Space at Home
Becoming a life coach from home gives you many advantages like no hassle of commuting, working according to your convenience time and from the comfort of your home, working for long and odd hours, and not being away from your family.
Your life coaching office at home should be well equipped to provide maximum benefit to your client along with becoming furnished with the tools required for life coaching.
For face-to-face life coaching, you need a well-illuminated room with comfortable seating arrangements. Keep provisions for some hot or cold drinks to make your clients feel comfortable.
Apart from tables, chairs, etc, you need a good phone with a headset for coaching over the phone. You can go for a landline with a good cordless set. Or a mobile phone with a good headset and speaker.
For online life coaching, you need a good internet connection. You must have a good laptop and use platforms like Skype, Google Hangout, Google Duo, or Fuze for a small fee. For group coaching, you can go for WebEx or GoToMeeting.
Read: Best Free and Paid Web Conferencing Software
Remember, the equipment and platforms should be up to date and you should always be ready with a Plan B in case your plan fails. The quality of visuals along with audio should be very clear, otherwise, both you and your client may feel uncomfortable and your purpose will get disturbed.
5. Name your Life Coaching Business
Take good care in naming your life coaching center at home. This is required as the name will be remembered by your clients. Think very well, brainstorm ideas, take your close ones’ opinion and then finalize the name.
Read: How to Name Your Business
Take the help of specialized software regarding the availability of the name chosen by you. Try to get the URL in the name you choose for your life coaching business.
6. Select a Business Structure
Before you start your business of life coaching at home, decide the format or structure of your business model. There are several types of business models Sole Proprietorship, Partnership, Cooperative, Limited Liability Company (LLC), Corporation, etc.
Each type has its own tax structure and legal framework. You have to follow them accordingly. Each type has its pros and cons too. So, think carefully.
After registering your life coaching company, get your EIN( Employer’s identification number). You can get it from registered agents or by visiting the IRS website online.
7. Open a Business Bank Account
It is always advised to have a separate business account for your life coaching business. It will help you not only in filing annual taxes easier but also track the financial health of the business much better.
8. Buy Equipment
To become a successful life coach from home, you have to use certain technical facilities, which make your business easier. Enable your website with facilities so that clients can book appointments themselves. There should also be a reminder service for you.
Apart from that, keeping data and records of clients, billing and accounting should also be taken care of, so that the entire procedure becomes hassle-free. You can choose platforms like Life Coach Office, CoachLogix, etc for this purpose.
9. Liability Insurance
As a certified Life Coach, you will need liability insurance depending on the type of your coaching plan and the level of risk you face. Check the premium amount carefully and go for a suitable plan.
10. Accounting and Taxes
Be regular and lawful in paying the required taxes. Take the help of professionals in matters of tax and also accounting and maintaining the books of records. Also, you need to buy proper accounting software to handle daily financial transactions smoothly.
11. Establish Your Brand
Build a strong personal brand as a life coach by showcasing your expertise, credentials, and unique value proposition. Create a professional website and online presence to attract clients and establish credibility in the industry. Develop a compelling brand message that resonates with your target audience and communicates the benefits of your coaching services.
12. Offer Free Consultations
Provide free initial consultations or discovery sessions to prospective clients to introduce them to your coaching approach and assess their needs and goals. Use this opportunity to build rapport, establish trust, and demonstrate the value of your coaching services. Offer insights, provide actionable advice, and showcase your expertise to convert leads into paying clients.
13. Have a Marketing Plan to Get Clients
Unless you have an effective marketing plan to get clients, all the effort to build your life coaching company will go in vain. The most powerful tool to get clients is your networking ability. Initially, reach out to your friends and relatives and tell them about your services.
You may also need marketing experts for successful campaigns and marketing strategies for your life coaching business from home. Use social media platforms and if needed take the help of social media marketing experts.
It is almost mandatory to have a web presence for life coaches. So, you must create a website for your life coaching business. For website designing, carefully choose the design and content of the website and highlight your qualifications, and training and give comments and interviews with your successful clients.
Also, do not forget to make an attractive logo for your business. This logo will be imprinted on your brochures, leaflets, website, and visiting cards.
14. Continue Professional Development
Stay updated on industry trends, best practices, and emerging coaching methodologies through ongoing professional development and continuing education. Participate in advanced training programs, pursue specialized certifications, and seek mentorship from experienced coaches to enhance your skills and expand your coaching repertoire. Continuously seek feedback from clients and peers to refine your coaching approach and deliver exceptional results.
Also Read: How To Start Online Coaching Business
Frequently Asked Questions
How much you can earn as a Life Coach?
According to different studies and surveys, the average annual income of a certified life coach is approximately $60,000+. As a life coach from home, a new coach can charge between $100-200 per hour and an experienced coach can charge $250-500 per hour. So, the choice is yours.
What type of life coach is most in demand?
Various types of life coaching opportunities have good demand. Some of them are listed below:
- Executive Coaching
- Emotional Intelligence(E.I) Coaching.
- Spiritual Life Coaching.
- Stress Management Coaching
- Life Balance Coaching
- Health and Wellness Coaching.
- Relationship Coaching.
What is the difference between Life Coaches and Therapists?
Therapists deal with patients with specific psychological problems and they have special qualifications to do so. A life coach helps in directing his client and helps him in properly achieving life goals.
A life coach has certain training to pursue his career and he directs his clients to get more results. They cannot and don’t handle people with problems of depression, trauma, or other mental illness.
Bottom Line: Finally, there are certain things you should remember when you want to become a life coach from home. Of course, working from home makes you comfortable but you have to keep in mind certain things.
You’ll have to isolate your work from the household. Like children, pets, and regular domestic chores like laundry, cooking, or the sounds of a cooker or microwave.
In our office at home, try to find a separate and quiet place, where these distractions cannot be seen or heard. Also, the place has to be comfortable for both you and your clients.
Working from home will be your added points of benefit and comfort. So, becoming a life coach from home is an ideal business opportunity for you. It is beneficial for others and good and profitable for you.
Editorial Team at 99BusinessIdeas is a team of experts led by Rupak Chakrabarty with over 25 years of experience in starting and running small businesses. Started in 2010, 99BusinessIdeas is now one of the largest free small business resources in the industry.
