How To Become A Life Coach – Start A Solo Business
If you’re learning about how to become a life coach, you’ve probably come to a point where your experiences can contribute to more than just you.
Most people are often looking for direction.
This is why people drop out of colleges during their last semesters.
This is why people quit their jobs on a whim to start something new.
This is why quarter-life and mid-life crises exist.
Your job as a life coach is to give your clients the mental and emotional clarity they need. There is no one-life coach that fits all.
Therefore, if you’re looking to imbue your unique personality into the profession, this article will coach you in the right direction (get it?).
1. Read Books On Communication
You can have all of the world’s wisdom and still not be able to convince someone if you do not know how to communicate effectively.
This doesn’t just apply to someone learning about how to become a life coach.
Professionals such as film directors read and take courses on communication to better articulate themselves and align their cast crew with their vision.
Similarly, as a life coach, you should know when to listen and what to say, when to say it and how to say it.
Books on communication are an easy and effective first step.
Some of them are:
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- How To Make Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie
- Just Listen: Discover the Secret to Getting Through to Absolutely Anyone by Mark Goulston
- Words That Work by Dr. Frank Luntz
These resources, plus others, will help you communicate better.
2. Choose Your Niche
The typical, comical view of a life coach is not too different from what’s shown in HBO’s Silicon Valley. Gavin Belson’s coach, Denpok, gives him generic, mambo-jumbo advice. That suddenly makes the show’s antagonist feel good.
That’s not how it works in the real world. That is also not what you should be aiming for if you want to learn how to become a life coach.
A real-life coach draws from their experiences and shares those.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- What am I good at?
- Where have I developed myself professionally and personally?
- What self and external advice has helped me succeed in life?
- What coaching can I offer that my clients will want to undertake?
These questions will get you on the right path, but also keep in mind that your strengths don’t just have to be anecdotal.
You can implement physical training, reading and even guided homework (yes!) into your life coaching.
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3. Complete A Life Coach Certification Program
A certification course will help you strengthen your ethos with your clients. This will also put you into the perspective of what a life coach’s full range of responsibilities is.
You can use such a certification program to not only learn about how to become a life coach, but also about whether you want to become one in the first place!
Very Well Mind has a list of the best certification programs in 2021 that you can take up.
4. Begin Marketing Your Brand And Yourself
Your words, actions, and experiences will form your brand as a life coach. You can always learn about how to become a life coach, but won’t actually succeed without clientele.
In order to do that, you need your first client, who needs to generate word of mouth- since this line of work is very individual and bespoke.
But to get those initial clients, you need to market yourself.
Do these things:
Create Visiting/ Business Cards: Always be ready with your information in case someone asks for it.
Get On Social Media: Put up text, video posts with your words of wisdom on social platforms. Make it the ‘lite’ to your full range of services.
Get A Google My Business Page: Even if you don’t have a physical address to your business, use it to increase visibility.
Advertise: Invest in your advertisements. See what works best with your audience. Drop the content elitism and make ‘effective’ ads and not just ‘good’ ads.
Starting an online business? Build it on .Online!
5. Consider Investing In A Paid Video Calling Software
Given the year that 2020 was, people have become very comfortable with the idea of online conversations and video calling software.
This also means that a lot of your business may come via video calls. The Internet can really expand your clientele and remove the limits of geography.
However, to fully take advantage of it, make sure you invest in a good, enterprise video calling software.
Since your work involves talking to your clients, being limited by timed calls, no automatic recordings of the conversation, or software that doesn’t adjust appropriately to spotty internet may become an issue.
You can look at:
- Microsoft Teams
- Google Enterprise
- Zoom (Pro & Above)
6. Consider Learning A Planning And Productivity Software
Calendar and planning software will keep you organized. You can’t learn how to become a life coach if your life is all over the place.
Being late for calls, or having to rush, or not being able to give your clients that extra time that they need can be a make or break. This is where e-calendars and planning software come in.
Additionally, not having your notes in one place may also make succeeding conversations seem fractured.
You can look at:
Airtable: An entire productivity suite. It works best as a combination of a calendar and a planner. You can take notes, shift meetings around and see everything from micro and macro perspectives.
Google Suite: A classic. You can’t go wrong with Google. You can use it individually to collect notes, see dates, and use it as a base to share files with your clients.
Flock: Especially great if your life coaching involves collaborative work/ homework with your clients. Bring them over to the software and they’ll be able to see events, chat with you, etc.
7. Teach New Skills And Add Value To Your Clients
Non-tangible skills and solving issues are great. However, clients will most definitely appreciate it if you add visible skills to their lives as well.
It starts with you learning those skills yourself and implementing those in your day-to-day life coaching sessions.
This can include concepts of physical training, creative skills such as painting, writing, filmmaking, etc. You can even tailor your sessions around these activities.
At the end of the day, you can be the life coach that functions like every other life coach or add to an existing industry.
In Conclusion
Learning how to become a life coach requires you to have great self-awareness. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses will help you focus on those of your clients.
The industry is great to enter into since questions of self-actualization are faced by people of all shapes, sizes, and ages.
The seven points above can set you on the path of becoming a great life coach, but the work starts with you.