A career as a life coach is incredibly rewarding and equally challenging. Here are some things you should know before starting life coach training.
Personal coaching is a $1 billion a year industry. Not only can it be a lucrative career choice, but helping others be their best selves is also incredibly rewarding.
While life coaching was once considered to be obscure, it’s now made it to the mainstream. People from all walks of life are finding life coaches to help them with a variety of issues and decisions.
Not only is this type of coaching more mainstream, but it’s also now a legitimate profession. These days, life coaches are highly qualified, full-time professionals. If you’re thinking about completing some life coach training, we’ve got the 7 things you need to know before you begin.
Ready? Let’s get started.
Why Work as a Life Coach?
Life coaches are professionals who help their clients make a change or reach a goal in their lives. They help people get out of their heads and take action in the parts of their lives that they want to change.
In a world where the barrier between life and work continues to get murkier, life coaches have never been more relevant. Life coaching is an immensely rewarding job since it allows you to help people unlock their full potential.
Coaching allows you to give back and pass on the lessons you’ve learned in your own life. You’ll be able to use reflective and perspective challenging techniques and questioning to help clients create action plans for their next steps.
Since clients range from stay-at-home moms to corporate executives, no two days will be the same. You’ll get to know your clients and share their success. Coaching can be done full-time or part-time, and it’s a flexible career since you can choose your own hours.
Know These Things Before Starting Life Coach Training
Ready to jump into life coach training? Before you do, it’s important that you’re completely prepared for what life will actually be like as a life coach. Here are 7 things to consider before you start your training:
1. Life Coaching is a Skill
Working as a life coach isn’t only about wanting to help others. You also need to be able to run your own business and pay your bills from it. This is especially true if you’re considering leaving your old job to focus entirely on coaching.
Life coaching isn’t just a business. You’re selling a service, not a product, which means you need to put in the work. That means studying, enrolling in life coach training, and earning a certificate.
Just like any skill, life coaching is learned through training and learning. And it’s important to understand that you’ll need to keep working at it so you can continuously improve.
Earning a certification is the best way to become an expert in life coaching. Before you choose a life coach training program, it’s important that you understand the industry inside and out.
There are a number of free resources available online, and you can even complete your life coach training online.
2. Passion is not Everything
Just because you love being a life coach doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be earning lots of profits. Often, we’re led to believe that simply being passionate about something and turning it into a business will make it work out for us. But in reality, this doesn’t always happen.
Remember: In order to have a successful business as a life coach, you need clients. And your level of success will depend on the number of clients you have and how many of those clients are long-term.
Many life coaches earn between $300 and $500 every month. That would mean that if you get seven to nine clients you’d be doing pretty well financially.
In reality, it’s not that easy to get this many clients who will stick with you for the entire month. Some will keep canceling, others will drop out, and some will just disappear. While passion is important, you also need to be continually hustling to keep your current clients and attract new clients.
Just like any other business, you’ll need to prioritize marketing. Since coaching isn’t a tangible product, it’s harder to sell. You’ll need to become an expert at explaining to potential clients why they need life coaching. You also need to be able to explain why those people should choose you to be their coach.
That means that in order to market your coaching business, you need to be able to market yourself. Because life coaching revolves around your skills and personality.
3. Coaches Help, They Don’t Tell
You may have completed life coach training, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be commandeering your clients’ lives. Keep in mind that your expertise is simply a tool that your clients will use to answer problems or achieve solutions. You’re not the answer.
It’s important to recognize that life coaches use their skill sets to help their clients. They don’t use their expertise to control their lives. The earlier on that you understand this, the more open-minded you’ll be when it comes to tackling different issues with your clients.
Another thing to remember is that each client is different. What works for one client, may be the opposite of what another client needs. You’ll need to be able to truly understand each individual situation and find the best solution based on that situation.
Ideally, you should spend most of your coaching time listening. Your job is to guide clients to the best solution based on their lives. If you find yourself talking more than listening, it’s a good idea to step back and reevaluate.
4. Personality is Key
Before you begin life coach training, you need to evaluate your personality. You need to be approachable, sociable and relatable. Your personality is influenced by various experiences and interests.
Are you interested in health and nutrition? Maybe this is something that you can bring to your coaching business. Have you overcome a particular struggle? That experience can help when relating to clients going through the same thing.
Clients who choose you as their life coach will be interested in your past successe and your coaching experience. But ultimately, many of them will make their decision based on your personality and if they feel comfortable with you.
5. Life Coaches Are Not Therapists
Many people tend to assume that life coaches and therapists are one and the same. But there are some key distinctions separating them.
Life coaches don’t treat anxiety, depression, or mental issues. Life coaches also focus on looking toward the future. Therapists deal primarily with the past and explore how the past impacts their clients.
Therapists will tend to focus on a particular problem that their clients are dealing with, and how they ended up with this problem. Life coaches are more focused on solutions that get clients from one place to another. Client’s would book a session with a life coach if they want to figure out how to achieve something in particular or figure out what to do in life.
6. Life Coaching is Increasing in Popularity
If you’re still on the fence about life coach training, it may help you to learn that coaching is continually becoming more and more popular.
Life coaching is incredibly versatile since coaches can help businesses and people with a variety of things. You can choose to specialize in certain areas if your clients want to reach certain goals, but you can also use tactics and methods that work well in many different situations.
When people are struggling to find direction or focus in their personal life or workplace, life coaches them re-evaluate and re-think about where they’re heading.
In the United States, there are almost 16,000 life coaches, charging an average of $214. If you’re prepared to work hard to attract clients, you can build up a long-term client list and enjoy a lucrative career.
7. Love What You Do
While passion isn’t everything, if you’re thinking about working as a life coach, you need to love what you do. This job requires an emotional investment, and clients deserve attention and love from you.
Your clients will be telling you their worries and fears and will be pouring out their hearts. They’re putting all their trust in you. Life coaches need to be motivated, inspiring, and encouraging for every coaching session. You’ll only be able to do this if you truly love what you’re doing.
Life coaching is incredibly fulfilling but in order to give them the best experience, you need to be 100% committed to your craft.
Is Life Coach Training For You?
The above points are just a few things you’ll need to think about before choosing life coach training. If you’re willing to put in the hard work, market your business, and tailor your coaching to each individual, coaching could be a great career choice for you.
Still wondering if life coach training is for you? Get in touch today and let’s talk.