Are you interested in becoming a life coach, but you’re unsure of how much you’ll earn? Click here for everything you need to know about a life coach salary.
Life coaching is a booming industry, generating an estimated $2 billion worldwide each year. And it is likely to keep growing!
It’s not surprising that many people are interested in starting a career as a life coach. It can be an incredibly rewarding career, as you dedicate your time to helping others improve their lives and achieve their goals.
Plus, it is an industry that you can enter on your own terms, and manage your own business. It allows for entrepreneurship without nearly as many start-up costs as other types of businesses.
But you might be wondering, how much could you expect to make as a life coach. This is an essential question before deciding to enter an industry. In this article, we’ll give an introduction to life coaching and talk about a life coach salary.
What Does a Life Coach Do?
It’s a pretty broad term, so before we get into the life coach salary, we will do a quick run through of the role itself.
A life coach is someone who helps someone reach certain goals or make changes in their life. These goals are highly dependent on the individual. The life coach even helps them form these goals, based on their unique values and desires.
These goals can be personal or professional. As a life coach, the most important things you teach are widely applicable skills. You will teach your clients how to approach their problems, how to set useful goals, how to get organized, among other skills, depending on their needs. Instead of just teaching them to solve one problem you teach them skills they can use again and again.
One of the reasons that life coaching is becoming so popular is that it is rewarding. It is great to know that you are helping people better themselves every day!
At present, life coaching is an unregulated industry, which means anyone can technically enter the field without special training or education. However, certification from a life coaching course can give you extra credibility. This gives you an edge over competitors who can’t prove they’ve received valuable training.
If this sounds like the sort of career you would want, great! Read on to learn the skills you need to earn the life coach salary you want.
What Do You Need to Be a Good Life Coach?
Life coaching isn’t for everyone. To be successful at it, you need to have certain qualities and skills. If you feel like you could use some work in any of these areas, there are courses that can help you improve things such as management skills.
Social Skills
An introvert may have a tough time as a life coach. Life coaching includes communicating frequently with clients and having deep, occasionally emotional conversations with them.
It is important to be comfortable talking openly with all sorts of different people. You also need to be an excellent communicator, great at asking the right questions and listening to the answers.
Confidence
You will often be working with people who need some help boosting their own confidence. You need to have enough to spare!
Knowing you’ve got skills and knowledge earned through training can boost your confidence as a life coach. This is because you know you are trained and capable!
Flexibility
As a life coach, you will need to be flexible to meet your client’s needs. This may mean having a changing work schedule.
More important than job flexibility is mental flexibility. You need to be able to see things from your client’s perspective. Remember that their values and goals are the important things. You can’t project your own thoughts onto them.
How Much Is a Life Coach Salary?
If the idea of becoming a life coach appeals to you and you think that you have the right skills — or can learn them in a course — you need to know how much to expect from a life coach salary.
According to the latest research, the average life coach salary in the United States is $50,000 per year.
However, it is important to remember that this is the average. There are many people working as life coaches earning much more, or much less. According to salary research, the salary range for life coaches in the US is $26,884 – $204,981. This means the top earners are making nearly 10 times that of the lowest earners!
So what makes the difference when it comes to the life coach salary you can expect? Here are the main reasons for the wide salary differences.
1. Qualifications
Having some sort of life coaching qualifications can contribute positively to your earnings.
This works in a few ways. First, it can make it easier to find clients. Clients are more likely to trust a life coach who has had training than someone who might be making everything up as they go along.
Qualifications can also help you keep clients once you have started working with them. This is because the skills you learn from your course will help you be a more effective life coach. You can base your coaching off actual research and methodologies from trustworthy sources.
If you have received education in life coaching, you will be more prepared to provide your clients with useful, meaningful guidance. This, in turn, will make them more likely to want to continue working with you.
The skills that we discussed earlier as essential to a life coach will also boost your ability to maintain clients. Strong social skills, confidence, and flexibility will improve your interactions with clients. You will be able to assist them more effectively. These skills are often worked on in life coaching courses.
Being able to get and keep more clients increases your potential earnings. The more clients, especially steady clients, that you have, the higher your salary will be.
2. Experience
The longer you have been working as a life coach, the more valuable experience you will have, and the higher life coach salary you’re likely to earn. After working for years, you will have practiced and improved your skills constantly, which improves the quality of service you are able to provide your clients.
It is unsurprising that life coaches with more years of experience under their belt tend to earn more per hour than life coaches who have just entered the industry.
Just like in any industry, the more time that you have spent honing your skills and gaining experience, the more earnings you can bring in.
3. Specialization
Not all life coaches help clients with the same thing. While many life coaches offer general services, a number decide to specialize.
There are a number of areas life coaches specialize in. Some of these include financial or business coaching, personal development coaching, spiritual coaching, and interpersonal coaching. Of course, there are many other things you could choose to specialize in, depending on your interests and skillset.
The downside to specializing is that it reduces the overall number of clients you can work with. You would only be attractive to clients looking for coaching on a specific issue.
However, the upside is that you are especially skilled in something, instead of being a jack of all trades. This makes you more attractive to potential clients who are serious about working on something specific.
4. Business Skills
Most life coaches are self-employed. This means that you are entirely responsible for your own earnings. This can be frightening or empowering, depending on how you look at it.
You will only earn as much as your clients pay you. Most life coaches tend to work with a maximum of 10 clients. Once you have reached your maximum that you can handle, life coach salary increases will only come by increasing your fees.
You need the business skills to determine what is a fair price for the service you are providing. To determine this, you need to be able to evaluate the worth of your qualifications, experience, and general skills. You also need to be able to communicate this with clients, so they understand that the price you are charging is fair.
If clients don’t think your price is fair, they won’t be clients for long!
Takeaways
So what does this mean if you want to become a life coach? Joining this fast-growing, rewarding industry can be a great decision, as long as you are prepared.
You should now understand that there is no single “life coach salary.” The amount that life coaches earn is dependant on a number of factors. The most important of these are your qualifications, experience, specialization, and business skills.
A life coach skills course can help prepare you with the skills you need to increase your earnings as a successful life coach. And, as you gain more experience and work your way up in the industry, you can continue to grow your salary.
For more help starting your own life coaching business, check out our other courses. Business management and marketing courses can provide your new business with the edge it needs to succeed.
Life coaching can be an amazing career choice, where you can help others meet their goals at the same time that you meet your own. It is most fulfilling when you are well-prepared, so start learning today!