Why Becoming A Life Coach Can Be A Great Career Change

This is another post directed at my readers who are interested in becoming an entrepreneur.

Becoming a life coach means you have years of experience in a specific field, or you’re so passionate about it that you’ve dedicated quite an amount of time studying it that others may not have invested on. Shifting into the coaching career may be too overwhelming for some. Others encounter a lot of “what ifs” that keep them from starting the process of becoming a life coach.

Life coach defined

A life coach is not a coach about life in its literal and general sense. A coach is someone who has chosen a specific niche to focus on. The person then takes on the necessary studies and certification to become a coach. The fields where people may seek coaching varies from business, lifestyle, career shift, and others. Also, people who may need coaching will come from all walks of life and are of different ages. Some may be executives and others may be youngsters.

To be clear about how to become a life coach and to create a distinction, a life coach is not a therapist or a counselor. A personal life coach helps someone with specific personal, career, or business goals. For instance, a person would like to lose weight, so that person needs a fitness coach.

What are the common tasks of a life coach?

• A life coach interviews a client to assess their coaching needs and goals.
• Documents all interactions, including assessments done by the client.
• Research the training and tools needed by the client for improvement.
• Communicates to the clients what must be done and conducts the necessary series of training.

Reasons why you should become a life coach

For those of you who are considering a career as a life coach, here are some reasons why it might be a good idea:

1. You can do it as a sideline

As someone who’s starting, you don’t have to go full time directly without testing the waters first. Others commit the mistake of leaving their full-time jobs immediately without finding out whether life coaching is something that they can actually do. It’s a myth that you have to plunge into being a life coach immediately. It will likely be more to your benefit if you can take it slow and easy.

Most of those who are contemplating to become a life coach turn out to be baby boomers. If you’re one of them, then it is more likely that you still have a job right now, but you are already nearing retirement. Since you would still want to earn while already enjoying your retirement age, life coaching may be a good fit for you since you can be flexible with your time and have complete control over your schedule.

2. It pays relatively well

For a career that doesn’t need years of formal study and training, life coaching pays relatively well. A beginner coach may charge 100 USD per hour and can increase their rate as months of coaching experience are added on their sleeve. Others who get to coach executives and those high up in the corporate ladder can ask between 300 and 500 USD per hour.

Getting your first few clients may be a challenge, but as you enrich yourself with further studies and gain an additional number of coaching hours, be it from free sessions, you’ll eventually get to a point where clients will come to you on their own. The quality of coaching you give is a critical factor in your success. If you already have the training and experience, but are still struggling to get clients, then there are online training centers that can help you, such as the iNLP Center. Institutions like these will allow you to reevaluate your overall strategy.

3. You will be pursuing your passion

Your current job may or may not be your passion. Getting into the coaching career gives you the freedom to pursue your passion. By this time, you already have a good grasp of which niche you’ll get into, and no one can dictate which specialization you’ll choose. It’s all about your strengths and passions. It is but wise and logical for you to coach others on something that you can really talk about. As it has been known, someone can’t really speak in a profound manner about something that they aren’t passionate about.

For instance, your current career is as a salesperson, and yet you’re also a fitness buff. You’ve been helping friends in their diet and have been giving them suggestions about which fitness routine to take. Now that you’ll be retiring as a salesman, you can start the process of becoming a certified fitness coach. In the long run, what began as a sideline can be your full-time career even in your retirement age. According to the study of the International Coaching Federation in 2012 together with PriceWaterhouseCoopers, approximately 39% of coaches in North America are 55 years old and above.

4. You will touch the lives of others

If you believe that “life isn’t all about you” and if you’re one of those who get a sense of satisfaction in helping others, then being a life coach would fit you as a career. It’s not that you aren’t affecting others in your job now; it’s simply that the way you can affect people as a life coach is on an entirely new level. Coaching is done on a one-on-one basis so you directly see the result of your suggestions on the life of the person you are coaching. You can directly measure if you’ve been an effective coach or not. This is a bit nerve-wracking, yet it’s fulfilling when you see others achieving their goals and succeeding in the aspects where you’re coaching them.

Also, with your experiences, you may save others from undergoing the same pitfalls you once had in your life. They can learn from you, so they don’t have to commit the mistakes you once did. Take, for example, a business executive: they will get a business coach that will teach them some strategies in marketing their business. If you’re a marketing expert offering coaching services, then you’re the person this business executive is looking for. You’ve already tried different marketing strategies, so you have extensive knowledge about which ways work and don’t work for their business.

5. You’ll get to mingle with different people

Coaching isn’t just about you teaching others. Along the way, you’ll learn from the experiences of those you coach, too. This is one of the non-monetary rewards of becoming a life coach. You’ll also grow as an individual not only from your training, but as you listen to the stories of struggles and victories of other people.

Aside from that, being a life coach paves the way for your entry into a new community—the life coaches’ community. You’ll meet like-minded individuals pursuing what they love doing. It will be an exciting experience for you. You’ll exchange ideas with them and learn from them some strategies to make your own coaching techniques even better.

6. You’ll have control over your time

As you transition from doing coaching as a sideline into a full-time career, you’ll eventually have a flexible schedule. You can control as to which day you’d want to meet a client. You’re no longer tied to the 8am-5pm regular office schedule. Coachings happen once a week or bi-monthly depending on what you’ve agreed upon with your client. Both of you can also compromise on the schedule when needed.

With this change in your career, you’ll get to catch up with those missed family gatherings, school events of your grandchildren, and your children’s party celebrating their achievements. You’ll have more time to spend with your loved ones to rekindle important moments in the past.

7. You’ll have the opportunity to travel

Travelling is tied to the fact that you already have control over your time, so those trips that were then only on your bucket list will now become a reality. Aside from the travels you’ve planned for yourself and your family, as you make a name as a coach, you’ll be invited to some out-of-town and out-of-the-country engagements. Those talks outside your city may even be all-expense-paid ones. Work and travel in one, minus the stress of your regular job.

You expand your coaching to small or large-scale speaking engagements

If it’s normal for you to do one-on-one with a person then becoming a life coach gives you the opportunity to talk to a group, whether small or large. This comes with experience and exposure. With hard work and dedication, your name could eventually become famous in the niche you’ve chosen, wherein your clients will likely refer you to their network of friends and family who may also need your coaching services. This then establishes your credibility, which can open doors for you, such as companies asking you to speak in leadership programs or conducting coaching seminars where you will be speaking to a larger group of people to share your knowledge and expertise.

9. You can become an author

Becoming a life coach does not limit you to personal coachings and even speaking engagements. It also opens the opportunity for you to become a book author, too. If you also happen to like writing as much as coaching, you can write a book that can, in turn, expand your reach and network. You’ll help not just those who need your professional help as a coach but, at the same time, those who are aspiring to become coaches themselves. Writing a book means additional profit for you, too, as it can become a source of passive income. Depending on the quality of your book and its reception in the marker, its income potential may be limitless.

10. You can improve your communication skills

It’s a must for a coach to effectively communicate with clients of different backgrounds and definitely different personalities. That said, being a life coach will train you to improve your communication skills along with your coaching techniques.

These are some of the points that a coach must remember when speaking with a client:

• Do not harbor any bias towards your clients’ ideas. Don’t impose your thoughts on them but instead help them figure out the best way to achieve their goals.
• Listen more before you talk. Make sure that you allow your clients to talk and tell you what they want and what they have in mind before you start recommending strategies. You can only be effective in your coaching if you fully understand their needs and concerns.
• Be sincere and honest at all times. If, according to your assessment, the goal of your client is really beyond realistic, then you should let your client know about this by explaining it in a calm and logical manner. You can help your clients achieve success by being honest instead of giving them false hopes.

Steps to becoming a life coach

• Choose a specialization

As it has been said, there is no such thing as a “life” coach, and one must choose a specific niche. It doesn’t just help you in marketing, but also in figuring out which further studies to take.

Below are some fields of specialization:

• Business
• Work-life balance
• Career transition and job search
• General wellness
• Academic issues
• Spirituality
• Romantic relationships
• Weight loss
• Aging
• Enroll in a coach training program

To coach others is not an easy task. You need to be mentally and psychologically ready. As an aspiring coach there are etiquettes that you must learn from a training program. The training effectiveness of the program you choose is very important.  Train with institutions that are accredited by associations like the International Coach Federation.

• Become a certified coach

You need to get certifications in addition to whatever degree you have in relation to your niche to gain the trust of your prospective clients. Certification provided by associations like the International Coach Federation and the International Association of Coaching would tell your clientele that you are an expert and that you uphold high work standards.

• Work on your legal aspect

You may want some protection legally as you’re engaging in a business, so you can either choose to be a Limited Liability Company (LLC) or a corporation. Becoming a life coach is a sensitive career in some way or another. It gives you and your client that peace of mind if you are both interacting with known legal boundaries.

• Obtain business insurance

This isn’t a must, but it aides you somehow. Whatever will happen in your dealings, you have insurance to go to. You just have to pick the coverage that suits your business.

Conclusion

Becoming a life coach isn’t a shift that will happen overnight. But if you think it’s an ideal career, then you might as well start the change as early as now. Again, take it easy and slow. There are many good reasons for you to make life coaching as a career, especially in the age of retirement. Age is just a number, as they say, and as a life coach, you can still earn great even in your retirement days while also letting the younger generation learn from your experiences.