Would you like to develop a life coaching business of your own? Professional life coaches guide clients through positive personal transformations and help them achieve their goals. Life coaches who own their own businesses have the freedom and autonomy to use these skills to the fullest.
Top training institutes like Rhodes College offer courses dedicated to helping students develop their own life coaching business or practice. Along with the practical skills necessary for navigating the business world, these programs help people like you to develop the professionalism, confidence, and personal coaching experience it takes to succeed in this fulfilling industry.
Prospective life coaches can optimize their chances for lasting business success by following the advice outlined below.
1. Play to Your Strengths by Choosing a Niche for Your Coaching Business
The International Coach Federation (ICF), an international organization for life coaching professionals, advises that those building coaching businesses consider designing them to address specific branches of the industry.
“Your business success lies in your difference to other coaches, not in your similarity,” explains ICF’s Sue Vizard. She encourages life coaches to focus their business offerings on their own personal coaching specialties, or “niches.” (ICF, 2014)
Streamlining your services to suit a particular coaching niche, like life skills coaching, couples counselling, or career coaching can help you establish yourself as the go-to professional for those experiencing a specific set of problems. It also ensures you work with clients who have the particular challenges and interests you’re most motivated to tackle and best equipped to handle.
2. Build a Business Structure that Best Suits Your Life Coach Career Goals
After life coach school, graduates can find their businesses running via clinics or community centre spaces, their own homes or offices, and even being hosted by offices run by other businesses.
By marketing yourself as a life coach for hire, your business can come from visiting offices
“A lot of people right now are moving into corporate counselling and coaching,” shares Chad Verigin, coaching instructor at Rhodes Wellness College. “The larger companies like Google and Microsoft are all bringing in people to help them develop a new model of business, and coaches and counsellors can really help facilitate that change.”
Consider whether you would prefer to work from home, invest in an office space, or build your business in partnership with other companies. Whether graduates’ businesses grow to serve major corporate clients, individuals, couples, or otherwise, a clear business structure and space can help them effectively manage their clientele from the start.
3. Invest in a Strong Online Presence for Your Coaching Business
For modern coaching and counselling professionals, a strong web presence is not only an asset—it’s essential. After you complete your life coach training, purchasing a professional web domain and investing in the development of a customized website for your business can give it the professional polish it deserves.
Professional websites and social media accounts can work wonders for attracting the attention of potential clients and directing their interest directly to your business’ inbox or phone line. Even fun options like Facebook help businesses magnify their strengths and stand out from their competitors. (Wilson, 2010)
A life coach responds to client interest via her business’ website and social media accounts
4. Persevere with Passion and Confidence After Life Coach Training
As students learn in experiential training programs like those at Rhodes College, reaching goals and making lasting change can take both effort and patience. When building a successful coaching business, tough decisions and new challenges are simply part of the learning process.
The steps listed above are all best approached with a willingness to persevere. It’s passion for the work at hand that helps life coaches withstand the various minor setbacks involved in any new business owner’s early days, and passion that helps coaching businesses enjoy lasting success.
“Check how comfortably your business fits in to your dream,” adds Vizard. “And if it does not, then adjust your business, not your dream.” (ICF, 2014)
Are you interested in building a successful life coach career of your own?
Visit Rhodes Wellness College to get started with our support.
Sources:
Vizard, Sue. International Coaching Federation. (2014). How to Start a Coaching Business. Retrieved from CoachFederation.org/blog/index.php/3058/
Walsh, L. (Interviewer) and Verigin, C. (Interviewee). (2016). July 22 Phone Interview [Interview transcript].
Wilson, Stephen. (2010). Social Media and Small Business Marketing. Scott’s Valley, CA: CreateSpace.
