Helping Helps: How to Become a Life Coach
Do you spend your days dreaming about making a serious change but aren’t sure how to do it? Do you know that your life path is leading you down the road of becoming a life coach but you don’t know where to start?
A life coach is someone who cultivates a plan to help their clients on a professional and personal basis. They’re there to help guide and direct their clients to make the decisions that will help guide them to their goals.
But before you can help others, you have to take a minute and help yourself! Read on to learn more about how to become a life coach!
Cultivate Your Unique Coaching Plan
The first thing you want to do is sit down and decide what will set you apart from the others who are in the life coach field.
What’s your vision? What dreams do you have for your life coaching business? Who are you going to help and how are you going to do it?
When you’re spending the time and emotional energy cultivating your unique coaching plan, you’re going to come across some obstacles. You might feel like you’re not good enough, or that you don’t have enough experience. Just remember that you don’t have to be perfect!
You just have to want to help people.
Learn the Business Side of Things
In a perfect world, you wouldn’t have to worry about the business side of life coaching. But clients aren’t going to find you unless you learn to market yourself.
In order to run a successful life coaching business, you have to know the ins and outs of marketing. Don’t stress too much about it this early in the game, but it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with the steps you’ll have to take.
Another thing you’ll need to get good at is selling yourself. And if you’re anything like the majority of life coaches out there, the idea of selling anything makes you uncomfortable.
But it doesn’t have to feel like a constant sales pitch. With a little practice, your sales meeting with feel like just another consultation.
Make a Solid Plan to Transition to a Life Coaching Career
The next thing you have to do is figure out how to make the jump.
In order to be successful as a life coach, you have to know how to responsibly make the change from your current position to where you want to be. And the first thing you need to look at is what kind of money you’ll be making.
Successful life coaches, the ones who have been in the business for a long time and have a healthy clientele base, can expect to make a nice salary. But that takes a lot of work. And newbie life coaches often underestimate just how much work goes into it.
You’re going to have to take time to learn the ins and outs of marketing, locking down clients, and money management.
It can take up to three years of solid work for a beginning life coach before you can expect to live off of the money you make there.
Training and Credentials Matter
Assuming that you already have all of the tools you need to be a life coach is a surefire way to get blindsided by your own hubris. This is a complicated profession and you’ll meet people who have problems you’ve never encountered. It’s important that you take the time to seek out additional education.
There are plenty of options when it comes to continuing your education as a life coach. You can take online classes, which have the benefit of being less expensive and accessible. Or you could spend a little more money on in-person training and gain the added benefit of having someone there in person to guide you.
Finding the right class can be difficult, so getting more information about coaching certification is essential.
The Technical Side of Life Coaching
There are a ton of small tasks that you’ll have to complete before your business will be above board and official.
Here’s a quick list of what you’ll have to do:
- Register your business
- Build a website
- Create a cohesive program explanation
- Research your demographics
- Set up social media
- Get an email list
- Create your promotional materials
- Get liability insurance
This is just a general list of things that you should consider before officially opening your business. The specifics will vary depending on your individual needs.
Know Your Clients
The point of being a life coach is to help people figure out the solutions to their problems. At the end of the day, this is what your clients will want from you.
You need to be able to show that you understand what they’re going through and that you can help them find a way out.
That’s why you have to make sure that you fill your website up with effective, informational blog posts that are designed to draw your clientele in.
Make Your Offerings Specific
Most people who seek out life coaches aren’t sure what they want from them, or they’re not sure how the process works.
To combat this, create a package designed to offer the solution to the problem that your demographic is dealing with. Be clear about what issues you want to help them figure out and let them know how you plan to help them get there.
Market Yourself
We mentioned marketing for a second earlier, but now’s the time to get started. Marketing is an entire business all to itself, so it would be impossible to give you the ins and outs of how to do it here.
What we can tell you is that it’s important that you learn a few of the basic aspects of marketing in order to ensure that you’ll get the exposure you need.
Maintain an active social media presence, start a blog and write valuable content, and build that mailing list.
Marketing as a life coach means marketing yourself in person too. Consider a referral program to get your happy customers to recommend you to your friends.
How to Become a Life Coach
We hope this guide for how to become a life coach has helped you to lay out the concrete plans you need to succeed. It takes a lot more effort to become a life coach than what people think, and it certainly takes more than just coaching skills.
It’s important to maintain realistic expectations when it comes to starting a new business. But if you need help conquering self-doubt, check out this blog next!