A Beginner's Guide To Starting A Life Coaching Business
/An ever-increasing number of people are becoming self-aware of making a positive change in their lifestyle so they can enjoy a fulfilling life. By becoming a successful life coach, you can make a living while helping others make a positive change in their lives. Today, life coaching is a respected and established occupation.
Starting a life coaching business gives you an incredible opportunity to make a profitable career while making a difference in the lives of others.
If you want to become a life coach, here is a beginner's guide to starting a life coaching business that tells you how you can become a life coach to make a difference in the lives of others while making money from your life coaching business.
Photo by Joshua Mcknight from Pexels
What is a life coach?
As a life coach, you will be helping people reach their future goals by providing them with services that are specifically designed for them based on what they want to achieve. You will inspire them to maximize their personal and professional potential.
It is important to remember that you do not define goals for your clients. Rather you set goals based on what they want to achieve from life. You will guide and motivate them to become the best they can be, at home or at work.
How can you become a life coach?
Before you start a life coaching business, you need to ask yourself a few important questions. Are you passionate about helping people become the best they can to be in their personal or professional life? Do you have the skills or experiences to become a life coach? Do you enjoy spending time talking to people to learn about them? Are you good at motivating people to make a positive change in their lives?
If your answer is a "Yes" to each of these questions, then starting a life coaching business could be an ideal career choice for you.
Get certified
If you want to be a good life coach, it is highly recommended that you become certified in a program that aligns with your values. If you are a certified life coach, it will be easier to build a successful life coaching business because your potential clients will see you as an expert in your field and more willing to work with you.
Getting a certification in life coaching will allow your target clients to see you as an expert. Be sure to choose a life coaching certification course that will give you the life coaching training and insights on how to build the coaching business.
Keep in mind, that similar to higher education, a certification will only go so far. There are many people who do not have a degree in psychology, for instance, but their life experiences have gifted them with real-life situations to better understand the human psyche. The same applies to life coaching. A certification means that you understand the concepts of human performance from an intellectual perspective, but it will require hands-on experience to deeply understand how to guide another human being to their highest level of performance.
Practice your coaching skills
Once you have become a certified life coach, it is very important for you to practice your coaching skills to build your confidence. If you are more confident in your coaching skills, you get better results and have more clients. So, if you want to become a great life coach, practice on yourself, practice with others, and practice with other coaching students.
Practice on yourself to improve something in your own life. This will help you to build trust with your potential clients. If you practice techniques you learned in your life coaching course with other coaching students, you can hone your skills.
One of the best ways to practice your skills as a life coach is to practice with your friends, family or potential clients.
Practicing your life coaching skills will mentally and emotionally prepare you to become a life coach.
Practice your coaching skills to build up your own confidence in the techniques and the results you can achieve for people.
Find your niche
Once you have become a certified life coach, the next step is to determine what type of life coach you would like to be. If you focus on a specific niche, you will be seen as an expert in one area. Focusing on one area allows you to market your services to a specific group of people. I always say the “riches are in the niches”. In other words, the more you focus on one market, the more money you will make. Money loves focus and it loves clarity.
Choosing a niche allows you to create valuable services because they are tailored to a specific group. When you pick a niche, it will be easy for you to know who you work with and where to market your services. By focusing on one area, you can also determine what to write about on your website. If you specialize in a particular area, your potential clients will see you as an expert in that area.
But you do not have to commit to a niche forever, so do not worry about getting this perfect. You can reassess your niche if it does not get you the results after a few months.
To start, decide the type of life coaching business you want to get into. Choose an area you have had experience in or an area you have helped others achieve success in. This is the most important decision you need to make before starting your life coaching business.
Here are some of the most profitable niches for a life coaching business:
Health coaching
Mindset coaching
Leadership coaching
Productivity coaching
Peak performance coaching
Business coaching
Results coaching
Career coaching
Financial coaching
Wealth coaching
Fitness coaching
Nutrition coaching
Weight loss coaching
Healing coaching
Relationship coaching
Dating coaching
Spiritual coaching
For example, if you choose to become a health coach, you will help people achieve their general health and wellness goals. A wealth coach helps people manage their finances in a disciplined and organized way.
Create your business name
You will need to choose a name for your life coaching business. You can use your name for now, or do some research to find a name that feels good for your business. In fact, I encourage you to write down a few names that appeal to you.
Once you have brainstormed a few possible names for your business, make sure to check whether the domain name of your first choice name is available. If the domain name of your first name choice is not available, then try your second name choice.
The name of your life coaching business and that of your domain name should be the same so people can easily remember your brand. It also demonstrates a level of professionalism to your existing and potential clients.
Create a website
Once you have identified your niche and chosen a name for your business, create a website. It is easy and inexpensive to create a website these days even if you are not tech-savvy. Personally, I use Squarespace.
When it comes to choosing a domain name, i.e. the URL of your website, I recommend using your business's name for your website. Here are the basic steps to take to set up a website for your life coaching business:
Buy a domain name for your website from a domain registrar like Namecheap or GoDaddy
Buy a web hosting package from a reliable web hosting company such as Squarespace or Bluehost
If you choose Bluehost, most folks then install WordPress to set up their website on the WordPress.org platform
Start creating content
You can buy your domain name from your chosen web hosting company too. Most web hosts will walk their customers through the setup process which is easy to follow so you can have your website up and running under half an hour.
Make sure to include important pages such as home page, about page, services page, and contact page on your website. You will need to add a blog section to your website and write engaging blog posts regularly to attract your target audience from search engines to your website. Moreover, you need to consider SEO if you want to boost your online visibility, build your credibility, and gain more traffic. There are a lot of companies that offer SEO services, such as Platform Creator, that can assist you with an entire marketing campaign or tweaking your website and social media
Set up an email list to build a mailing list. If people like your content, they will likely subscribe to your email list. A great way to grow your email list is to offer a freebie to people who will sign up to your email list. Your freebie can be an eBook, video tutorial or a mini course. If they like your freebie, they will be more likely to work with you.
Create your life coaching packages
Once you have identified your life coaching niche, you need to create your coaching packages for potential clients. This will involve defining the problem you help your clients solve and the specific results they can expect to achieve.
For example, if your life coaching niche is women’s empowerment, make sure you define the problem you help your clients solve and the outcome(s) you can help them achieve. Can you deliver specific results, e.g. help your clients achieve success in their career or achieve a personal goal way out of their comfort zone? You will need to deliver desirable results your clients expect to achieve.
Once you have defined the problem you help your clients solve and the specific results you deliver, you will need to determine the value of your coaching package. Simply select a price that is consistent with the outcome of your services. You can increase the value of your coaching offer by offering add-ons that will make your clients' experience exceptional.
Finally, you will need to decide how much coaching will help your clients achieve their desirable results. Highly successful life coaches define the duration, number, and length of sessions each of their coaching packages covers.
Get insurance for your life coaching business
Before you start your life coaching business, it is highly recommended that you protect your business and reputation by getting professional liability insurance. This only costs a few hundred dollars a year and covers most types of life coaches. Obtaining business insurance will also give your potential clients peace of mind.
Market yourself
Now that you have created your coaching packages, it is now time to market yourself to find your first paying clients. Marketing makes you money so the more you love doing marketing, the better. There are many ways to market your life coaching business. You can attract potential clients from the following online and offline strategies:
Networking
Discovery calls
Facebook ads
Google Ads
Your website
Social media (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.)
Content marketing
Conducting webinars or other free trainings
Networking - online and offline- is the best way to find your first paying clients. Many life coaches find their first clients by mining their existing network. People in your network already know and trust you so they are most likely to become your clients or refer you to others through word of mouth and personal recommendations. So developing your existing network will help your business grow. Networking is the base of a successful life coaching business.
Today, social media has become one of the most powerful mediums to reach your target clients. You can use your social media pages to share informative content and helpful information about your business. This will help you position yourself as a life coach and attract clients. I recommend building your LinkedIn network to attract higher-paying clients.
One of the best ways to market yourself is by offering discovery calls. These calls are where you offer free coaching to prospective clients to demonstrate your expertise. If the potential client feels a connection with you and can see that your approach will help them achieve their goals, they will be willing to invest in paid coaching.
Conducting free webinars and workshops can be a great way to attract local clients. You can offer free trainings that provides very good value to potential clients to entice them to become paid clients.
If you want to advertise your life coaching business to a wider audience and grow your business quickly, then you can place Google Ads on Google and Facebook Ads on Facebook. These are paid advertising programs that will advertise your services to your ideal potential clients.
Your website could be the best source of getting life coaching clients. But it is a long term game. You will need to post quality content to your website on a regular basis to get targeted traffic to your site. Your website's page speed, user-friendliness and overall design are important SEO factors to determine your website's ranking in search results pages of Google and other search engines. If you create and post high quality content that provides reliable information, then people that come to your website will be willing to work with you.
In conclusion
Life coaching is a challenging career, but if you are up for the challenge, then starting a life coaching business can be a highly rewarding experience. As a life coach, you can make a lot of money helping people achieve their life goals and express their highest gifts.
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Disclaimer: the content presented in this article is for informational purposes only, and is not, and must not be considered tax, investment, legal, accounting or financial planning advice, nor a recommendation as to a specific course of action. Investors should consult all available information, and consult with appropriate tax, investment, accounting, legal, and accounting professionals, as appropriate, before making any investment or utilizing any financial planning strategy.
