Life coach (noun): A friendly navigator for their client’s journey through life, helping them reach personal, professional, wellness, and/or spiritual goals. They’re more than just a guide — they’re a supportive sidekick, offering valuable advice and support while ensuring each client stays on track to achieve their desired outcome.
If that sounds appealing to you, then life coaching might be your ideal career path! Entering this exciting industry takes a lot of hard work and determination, but this guide makes it a bit easier for you. Learn everything you need to know about how to become a life coach, from requirements to what steps to take to make your dream a reality.
Check out more essential resources for new life coaches!
• How to Start a Life Coaching Business in 10 Steps
• Learn What Insurance You’ll Need
• How Much Does Insurance for a Life Coach Cost?
• How Much Do Life Coaches Make?
What Are the Requirements to Become a Life Coach?
Before you start taking steps to become a life coach, it’s crucial to know what’s required of you first. There are certain skills all life coaches need in addition to the formal requirements for professionals in this industry. We’ll explore both of these below.
Soft Skill Requirements for Life Coaches
If you aren’t familiar with this term, a soft skill is a personal characteristic or ability that helps you thrive in your career. You may have heard them referred to as people skills.
As you read through this list, ask yourself if you possess each of these skills. Are there any you don’t have yet, or need to strengthen?
Personal Development
The best life coaches don’t just impart skills and advice to others — they’re perpetual learners themselves. You should be committed to your own ongoing personal development by reading books, taking courses, and attending workshops that help strengthen your soft skills.
This doesn’t just benefit you — it benefits your clients, who get to work with a life coach who is always striving to improve themselves and be the best they can be.
Empathy
Empathy is the quiet force that defines effective coaching. A skilled life coach isn’t a mind-reader, but they do go beyond merely listening to their clients.
Being an empathetic coach means you understand the emotions, triumphs, and struggles your client is dealing with beneath the surface because you can put yourself in their shoes. This builds trust and turns a coaching session into a safe space for authentic, meaningful conversations.
Interpersonal and Communication Skills
Since you’ll be working closely with clients, you must be adept at verbal and nonverbal communication. This means sharing your thoughts and ideas clearly so your advice is easy to follow, and being a good listener who gives clients the space they need to express themselves.
Strong communicators are also mindful of body language. Life coaches need to read their clients’ body language to determine how they really feel during a session, while also making sure their own comes across as supportive and friendly.
Strong Code of Ethics
Easy to overlook yet crucial in coaching, ethics aren’t about creating strict rules but fostering a trustworthy environment. You’ll be dealing with clients’ dreams and vulnerabilities, so adhering to your morals helps ensure confidentiality, healthy boundaries, and integrity.
Your code of ethics should serve as the backbone of trust and respect in your relationship with each client.
Technical Skills for Life Coaches
All of the above soft skills are must-haves for every life coach, but they aren’t everything. There are also some educational and business-oriented requirements that boost your expertise and authority in the industry.
Business Acumen
Being a life coach means wearing multiple hats. Beyond helping clients achieve personal or professional goals, you’re also an entrepreneur managing your own business.
You’ll be responsible for marketing your business to clients, handling your money wisely, and turning your passion into a means of financial stability. It’s about mixing your enthusiasm for helping others with entrepreneurial know-how.
Relevant Education or Experience
While life coaches aren’t restricted to a specific educational background, the most successful coaches all have past experiences that align with their coaching specialty.
For instance, corporate coaches are often former corporate leaders or executives. Small business coaches once owned (or currently own) their own small business. Your expertise can still come from education, though. Certification courses and workshops are great opportunities to learn relevant skills and demonstrate your commitment to your craft.
Accredited Coaching Certification
Accredited certification programs have been independently verified and endorsed by a third party (usually the International Coaching Federation, or ICF). Accredited certifications boost your credibility and set you apart from other life coaches.
It’s worth noting that getting any certification at all — accredited or not — is not legally required. Many choose to skip it because courses can be expensive, often costing thousands of dollars. However, getting certified is still highly recommended because it boosts your legitimacy and helps you hone your skills to be the best.
Practical Experience and Internships
Coaching isn’t just about theory; you need real-world practice. Volunteer for community programs or offer pro bono sessions to friends and family. Ask experienced coaches if you can shadow them for a session.
This helps build confidence by allowing you to apply what you learned in a classroom, workshop, or previous experience to a real-life coaching situation.
Continuing Education
Beyond any initial certifications you get, staying on top of your game means continuous education and professional development.
Picture it like leveling up in a video game. Every workshop, online course, or mentorship program sharpens your coaching skills, keeping you ahead in a rapidly changing industry. This commitment helps you bring the latest and best methods and teaching to your clients.
How to Become a Life Coach in 5 Steps
Life coaches come from many different backgrounds, and there’s no one path to this profession. However, all aspiring life coaches benefit from following these five steps before launching right into it.
1. Do Some Self-Reflection
Before you dive into coaching, take the time to self-reflect by asking yourself the following questions:
- Why do I want to become a life coach?
- Why am I drawn to this profession (passion for helping others, lived experiences, etc.)?
- What do I hope to get out of being a life coach?
- Is it to make a positive difference in people’s lives, to build a fulfilling career for myself, or something else?
- What personal experiences of mine have led me to pursue a life coaching career?
- Can my experiences help others?
- How can I use my experiences to relate to clients?
- What strengths would I bring to coaching?
- Am I empathetic, good at setting realistic and achievable goals, or something else?
- Which skills would I need to develop to be a good coach for my clients?
- Are there any skill areas where I lack confidence and want to develop before I start looking for clients?
- How much time am I willing/able to devote to becoming a life coach?
- Can I commit to this full-time right now, or will it be a side hustle?
Answering these questions honestly will help you get a realistic picture of why you’re pursuing this career, what you might need to work on, and what you’re bringing to the table.
2. Decide If You Want to Become Certified
While not mandatory, training and getting certified from respected coaching organizations can be helpful. However, many life coaches succeed in this industry without official certifications.
Bear in mind that skipping certification means you’ll need to rely more heavily on your personal experience and make that clear in all of your marketing materials. You may also need to rely more heavily on networking events within the industry to form connections and establish your legitimacy.
If you choose to go the certification route, here are some of the skills you might learn and hone while completing coursework:
- Coaching techniques, methodologies, and frameworks (e.g., the GROW model)
- Emotional intelligence
- Ethical standards (setting boundaries, confidentiality, etc.)
- Active listening
- Behavioral psychology
- Various coaching niches (e.g., executive coaching, wellness coaching, etc.)
- Basics of running your life coach business (marketing, setting rates, creating coaching packages, etc.)
Many courses also include practice sessions for students to try their hand at coaching and receive feedback from mentors and peers.
3. Set Up Your Business
Getting the business aspect of your life coaching career sorted is something you’ll want to do early on to set yourself up for success. This involves several components, including:
- Picking your niche: Life coaching niches highlight your specialty, credentials, and personal experience, such as ADHD coaching or business coaching
- Developing a business plan: Outlines your goals, target audience, financial projections, and marketing strategy
- Choosing a legal structure for your business: Your legal structure affects how you’re taxed and may affect what kinds of licenses and permits you need to operate legally
- Establishing your prices: How much you’ll charge for your services and what kinds of coaching packages to offer
- Creating your promotional strategy: What channels and methods you’ll use to market your life coaching services and attract potential clients
- Getting insured: Life coach insurance protects you from the cost of liability claims, like getting sued over what a client claims was poor advice
Pro Tip: Check out our 10-step guide to starting a life coaching business!
4. Practice Coaching
You don’t need to have your first client before you start coaching. The truth is, you can start practicing long before that happens, and it’s a great way to improve your skills by working with real people.
You can practice coaching by:
- Offering free sessions to friends and loved ones: Chances are, someone in your life will be happy to be your client — especially if it’s free! Working with people you already know well takes a lot of the pressure off of you, as they’re more likely to be forgiving if you make a mistake or are a little clumsy in your approach to a problem.
- Volunteer with non-profits or community groups: Mental health organizations and youth programs sometimes work with volunteer life coaches to help support underserved communities. This is a great way to get practice coaching people with varying backgrounds and needs.
- Do role-playing exercises: Find a coaching peer or another trusted person in your life to help you simulate a coaching session. Take turns pretending to be the client and the coach. While this may sound silly at first, it can make you more comfortable asking questions, identifying issues, and responding to different scenarios.
5. Develop Your Coaching Style
There are over 34,000 certified life coaches in the U.S., yet every coach offers something unique. Your life experience, educational background, work history, and personality shape who you are as a coach, which all play into your coaching style.
Developing your style enables you to connect with your clients more authentically because you aren’t trying to be someone you’re not. Refining your coaching style also helps set you apart from the other 34,000 (and counting) life coaches across the country.
While coming up with your coaching style takes a lot of time and practice, here are a few things to keep in mind that can help you develop it:
- Be true to yourself: As corny as it sounds, this is the number one aspect of developing your unique coaching style. Nobody else is exactly like you, so embrace your strengths and create the most authentic coaching experience for your clients.
- Think about your preferred coaching methods: What coaching style resonates most with you? Do you like your sessions to be highly structured or a little more freeform?
- Experiment with different styles: Sometimes it takes a little trial and error to identify what you like. This is especially true when you’re new to coaching and haven’t had much experience in real coaching environments. Don’t be afraid to try something new, especially in a practice session, and see how you feel about it afterwards.
Making It Happen: How Dawn Ledet Found Life Coaching Success
It’s easy to get caught up in the trap of comparing yourself to other life coaches when you’re just starting out. It’s important to remember that every established life coach had to start somewhere, and maybe their journey to a fulfilling career started similarly to yours.
For Dawn Ledet, a life coach focusing on entrepreneurs and executives in service-based industries and the founder of The Self Trust Coach, it was a calling to serve others.
“I have always had a servant’s heart, from volunteering at hospitals to two decades as a leader in the hospitality industry — service is a core value. As I left the hospitality industry burned out and untethered, I knew it was time to start my own business and serve in a new and more personal way, while cultivating a deep self-trust that had been lacking,” Ledet told Insurance Canopy.
“Coaching offered such a beautiful way to blend my existing knowledge, skills, and talents with my deep love of learning and service. So, I got certified and got to work.”
Ledet’s Advice to New Life Coaches
Now, with six years of experience under her belt, Ledet remembers the best piece of advice she received when she was first starting out.
“There is a lot of information and advice out there, but there is a lot more inside as well,” Ledet told Insurance Canopy, emphasizing the value in a life coach’s experience, natural strengths, and intuition.
While Ledet is a certified coach herself, holding a certification from The Life Coach School, she acknowledges that courses and formal training are supplementary to the skills you already have.
“Listen first to what you have and what you need, and then go out there to fill in the gaps.”
As for the advice she wishes she’d received in the early days, Ledet emphasizes embracing the struggle.
“Let it be hard, let it be confusing, and let that be a sign you are on the right path.”
Protect Your New Career With Life Coach Insurance
Before you meet with your first client, you need a life coach insurance policy that can financially shield you from the biggest risks you face, such as:
- A client getting injured during a session with you (e.g., they trip over an extension cord in your office and break their wrist)
- A client accusing you of giving poor advice (e.g., they claim your poor advice caused them personal or financial harm)
- You accidentally damaging or breaking someone else’s property (e.g., during a session in your client’s home, you knock over their expensive vase and it shatters)
Incidents like these can be seriously expensive, and if you don’t have insurance, you may be left to pay tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket to make things right.
Insurance Canopy’s life coach insurance policy can cover these expenses, so you don’t have to, allowing you to keep your practice up and running even if something goes wrong. Plus, being insured adds to your credibility, which can give you a competitive edge when seeking clients.
Don’t skip this essential step on your journey — get life coach insurance for as low as $21.08 per month today!
FAQs About Becoming a Life Coach
How Much Does It Cost to Become a Life Coach?
If you pursue a life coach certification, it can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to over $10,000 to become a life coach.
However, this doesn’t factor in the time it takes you to take the course and become certified. Some people choose to take a hiatus from work to pursue certification, which can be costly in and of itself if you don’t have another dependable source of income.
Do I Need a Certification to Become a Life Coach?
Being certified is not a life coach requirement, but it is highly recommended. Certification courses teach valuable skills you should know before you ever meet with your first client, from goal-setting strategies to the importance of creating healthy boundaries.
Getting certified also shows clients that you’re educated in life coaching techniques and can offer them a high-value service.
How Much Can I Earn as a Life Coach?
According to the ICF’s latest Global Coaching Survey, the average life coach in the U.S. earns $67,800 a year.
It’s important to remember that this is the average salary. Most coaches will make less than this when they first get started, and many others make more after years of hard work and dedication to growing their businesses.
Learn more and get a detailed breakdown of how much life coaches make, including what factors influence how much you can charge for your services.
How Do I Find Clients as a New Life Coach?
Some of the best ways to attract new clients are:
- Offering free consultations so prospective clients can test out your services and life coaching style before committing
- Creating a website that is optimized for search engines (SEO)
- Use email marketing to stay in contact with potential clients via a newsletter
- Stay active on social media and engage with followers by replying to comments and direct messages
For more details, check out our blog post with 15 proven strategies for how to get life coaching clients.
