I recently was asked the question on how to be a life coach and how to make money as a life coach. It's a great question and it's something that I feel can easily talk about as I've been able to build a successful coaching business over the last few years.
When I was 21 years old, I started a dating coaching company in Vancouver that existed for 5 years. During those 5 years I put on over 100 seminars and personally coached over 100+ people 1-on-1, and hundreds more in our workshops and programs. Before that, I worked as an assistant coach with another company doing coaching for a few years also.
I recently made the transition into Life Coaching about 3 years ago and it's been even more enjoyable and very profitable . Below I answer the question that I received on how to be a life coach, be sure to check it out.
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How I Became A Life Coach
Before I go into some practical tips on how you can get started as a life coach, I want to share with you my story of how I became a life coach. I think my story might inspire you if this is the path you want to go down, as well as help you understand more of how I became who I am today.
I changed my life when I was 17 years old. Before then, I was extremely shy, introverted, and had a very negative attitude. In high school, I was what most would consider a … err … “looooser!” I didn't have many friends back then (except for my computer), and I was extremely depressed. I skipped a lot of school, I scraped by year after year on my exams and still don't even know how I graduated from high school.
But at 17 years old, everything changed. I made a decision to change my life forever. I discovered Tony Robbins and he made me BELIEVE that I could change. He gave me hope and confidence that anything was possible. He became my mentor.
Now, if you're wanting to be a life coach, then I'm sure you know who Tony Robbins is. If you don't, look him up, you won't regret it. Tony has a very unique way of connecting with people with his audio programs and everything he said really had an impact on me. I consumed and devoured everything he taught and my entire attitude changed. This led me down the path of self-development and a new life that I was going to create for myself.
The first area of my life that I really began to change was my social skills and confidence. I hated that I felt so uncomfortable in social situations and was so shy. I hated feeling like the wallflower. And more than that, I hated not having the confidence to be able to talk to a girl that I was attracted to.
And so, I ended up spending my late teens and early 20's really transforming my social skills and confidence. I got my ass off the computer and out of the house almost everyday, and I went out and TALKED to people. I met up with a community here in Vancouver and started learning from them how to approach women and develop confidence. It scared the hell out of me, but I did it anyways. Every time I faced my fears, I became more confident as a result. I began to learn what to say to people, how to talk to people, and I became more confident. I started to actually go on dates with girls and I had a successful dating life after that which I was proud of. I eventually got a girlfriend, which was a big success for me.
My transformation in a few short years was massive. People didn't even recognize me from before. I carried myself a different way. I spoke differently. I even looked differently. Others saw the changes I made and wanted to know how I did it. It was cool to get that kind of recognition.
At 19, while on the journey to transforming myself, I started working with a local dating coaching company in Vancouver. I volunteered to help out with his seminars and workshops for free. As a result, I got to travel to places like Toronto and New York for free and gain some valuable coaching experience during that time.
At 21, I became well-known amongst this “dating community” in Vancouver and people knew me as someone that was inspirational that had changed himself. I had people that would come to me asking me for advice. I had my first “client” that offered to pay me $300 to take him out during the weekend and help him talk to girls and become more confident. “Cool!”, I thought. $300 was good cash to make on the side and I thought it'd be a fun experience.
Soon after that, I started a company called Lifestyle Transformations with 2 friends that were also on the same journey as me. We were going to offer seminars, 1-on-1 coaching and bootcamps to help people transform their social skills and become more confident with women and dating. While the company had many ups and downs, overall it was one of the best experiences of my life as it made me who I am today. While it wasn't the most profitable business and we made many amateur business mistakes, it was successful in the sense that we were able to help thousands of people for the better. As mentioned earlier, I personally spoke at over 100 seminars during those 5 years and coached hundreds of people through 1-on-1 and through our programs.
The dating coaching business came to an end after 5 years, simply because myself and my two business partners lost interest in it. Our business model sucked and there wasn't a big enough demand for us to really grow it locally in Vancouver. Many mistakes were made during that time… but I've now learned the right way to run a coaching business.
In January of 2012, I started Project Life Mastery. I created it as a hobby and passion project at first, not really thinking about any potential for making money from it. I wanted to use a blog as a way to share ideas and things that I was learning, as I'd figured it would help ME learn those things better. I also wanted to use a blog to hold myself accountable during a fitness modelling competition that I committed to enter.
In Project Life Mastery, I started creating content. High quality content. I published a blog post on my blog and uploaded a new video to my YouTube channel nearly every week. At first, nobody would read or watch my videos. My blog was DEAD. While it had great quality content on it, nobody was finding out about it. But I didn't care… I wasn't doing this to “make money”, I was doing it for fun and I wasn't expecting anything to come from it.
Eventually some of my videos and blog posts started to get attention. My morning ritual video and my life plan video went viral and THOUSANDS of people started watching them. My blog also started to rank well in Google and the search engines and started getting a ton of traffic. People started to share my videos and blog posts through social media. Things just started to snowball and my blog became popular and gained a following.
At this point, people started contacting me. I had people that would add me Facebook and message me just to thank me for what I was doing. I would get tons of e-mails from people, asking me for advice or for help in their lives. This was exciting for me and I happily answered every e-mail and question that I received. It felt good knowing that I was making a difference and adding value to others. It was really cool!
Along with the e-mails and messages were requests for coaching. People saw my fitness transformation and the shape I was in, and they wanted me to help them lose weight or get in shape. I decided to offer coaching to these people over Skype and created a variety of packages that would allow me to work with them weekly or bi-weekly over a 3-month period of time.
Eventually, people started asking me for coaching to just be accountable in their lives and achieve their goals. After that, once people started to notice that I was making money online, they wanted to know how I did it and wanted my help to create an online business. There was a BIG DEMAND that was growing and that's why I decided to create a coaching section on my website and offer it officially.
As the demand increased, I simply didn't have time to coach every person that e-mailed me. I had to become more selective with my coaching and decided that I'd only commit to taking on a handful of people at a time that would fit in with my schedule. I also raised my rates and only took on people that I felt were actually committed to it. I made people fill out an application process (a strategy I use to weed out the tire kickers and those that aren't committed) and it'd also help me learn about the person and their goals.
To cut this story short, I've been blessed to have coached dozens of people 1-on-1 through Project Life Mastery and help people achieve some extraordinary results. I've helped people in virtually every area of life and seen some amazing transformations and results achieved that continue to blow my mind. I've also met a lot of great new friends and people that I've built long-lasting relationships with, and we've had a lot of fun together in the process.
Coaching is by far the most pleasurable and fulfilling part of my business, as I get to interact with people 1-on-1 and build real relationships. With my other online businesses, people simply buy my products and I don't ever really get to meet them personally, so you lose that “human” element to it. But with coaching, I get to spend time with people and genuinely help them on a personal level, which is where I've seen the biggest changes made.
How YOU Can Become A Life Coach
Okay, I've rambled on about my story and how I became a life coach. Hopefully my story helps you. Now I want to talk about how you can get started as a life coach and build a successful business coaching. These are some of the lessons that I've learned that have helped me get to where I am today as a coach.
1. Forget Local Coaching, You Need To Use The Internet!
Forget the idea of branding yourself as a life coach in your local city. The demand isn't going to be big enough and you're likely going to have to compete with too many people. You also don't want to be limited to working with ONLY people in your local city, you want to expand and use the internet.
The internet is what will give you the opportunity to reach THOUSANDS of people easily and also make more money from coaching. You're not limited to one city, you're able to now reach the entire world. With Project Life Mastery, I reach people literally all over the world and I've coached people from everywhere. The most common locations I've coached people from are USA, Canada, Europe and Australia.
2. Start A Blog And Create High Quality Content
You absolutely need a blog and need to create high quality content. Forget just a “website” with a picture of yourself and your biography. Who cares? Nobody does. Why would anyone want coaching from you? People just want RESULTS and the only way they will know that you can produce results for them is based on your credibility.
A blog allows you to show people your expertise. It allows people to connect with you and learn about you. They get to see whether or not you're the REAL DEAL – if you walk your talk. When people sign-up for coaching from you, they aren't buying your coaching… they are buying YOU. There's tons of people out there that offer coaching. The only reason they will sign-up with you is because they believe in you and trust you. They want to be like you and have results that you have.
If you can start a YouTube channel and offer videos, then even better. You can do a podcast also. This helps people connect with you and build a relationship with you even more.
3. Stop Trying To Promote Yourself, Let Them Come To You
I've never tried to actively get coaching clients or market myself as a coach. I simply don't have the time to take on many clients anyways and only prefer to work with a few people that I actually want to work with.
One of the biggest mistakes life coaches make is they try to go after clients and try to sell them on their coaching. This reeks desperation and why would this person who's successful have to try to convince people to hire them as their coach? It doesn't make any sense. A coach needs to be someone that is SUCCESSFUL already, and someone that is successful isn't desperate to get clients to work with them. The truth is, most life coaches are struggling to get clients and also usually struggling in their lives. Most life coaches are BROKE.
My advice is to get your life together first before you consider offering life coaching. When that happens, continue putting out blog posts and videos. If your advice and content is good, people will COME TO YOU FOR COACHING. That's right… gone are the days of having to convince people or pursuing clients. They will literally come flooding your inbox asking for more advice and help, in which case you can offer your coaching to them.
You need to create the DEMAND for your coaching first, which is done through high quality content over the internet.
4. Get Your Life Together
I already mentioned this briefly above, but it's worth mentioning again. Before you consider coaching, get your life together. You need to have RESULTS in your life first before you consider giving advice to others. If you want to be teaching people how to make money online, you damn well better be making a ton of money online already first. If you want to be teaching people how to get in great shape, then you better be in amazing shape. The same goes with ANY OTHER AREA OF LIFE. I can't stand going to the gym and seeing these personal trainers supposedly helping people get in shape, when they aren't even in shape themselves. You need to be a living, breathing, walking example of what is possible for them. You need to be their INSPIRATION and by having the results, you will be credible.
5. Help People For Free Or Inexpensively
When you're first starting out, you should just start by helping people for free or inexpensively. Your goal at the beginning is to just get some exposure and some experience coaching. This will help build your confidence. It will also help you get some great testimonials that you can use on your website or blog later. Testimonials can be extremely important.
As you get busier and get more in demand, then try raising your rates. If you raise your rates and you're still extremely busy, then raise them again. The more in demand you are, the more valuable you become. Your time becomes worth more and more.
Tony Robbins can charge a lot more for coaching than I can, simply because he is more in-demand than me. He has people that are WILLING to pay him millions of dollars to work with him and be coached by him. He has the reputation, the credibility, and he gets results. In your case, the more valuable and in-demand you become, then the more you can justify charging higher rates. You'll also have a following that is willing to pay higher rates, because they want to work with YOU over anyone else.
6. Always Be Growing And Improving Yourself
Over the last 10 years, I've devoured hundreds of books. I've been to dozens of seminars around the world. I've hired and worked with dozens of coaches and mentors as well. I've probably invested more than $50,000 into myself over the last 10 years in self-improvement materials alone. Everything that I consumed, I did my best to apply into my life. All of this self-development… it is a big part of who I am today. Everything that I teach and share is really just information that I've learned from OTHERS that has changed my life for the better.
To be a really great coach, you always need to be growing and improving yourself. Everyday. You also need to be achieving bigger results in your life. This is what is going to enhance your coaching skills and make you a really great coach. The more successful you become in all areas of your life the more you have to teach and share. You also become even more credible and people will look up to you even more.
7. You Better Have A Life Coach
If you want to be a life coach, then you BETTER have a life coach yourself. How can you expect to sell anyone on life coaching if you don't even have a coach yourself? You need to BELIEVE in the process of coaching. You need to be working with a coach, so that you can learn how THEY coach and become a better coach yourself. It's extremely incongruent if you are wanting to be a coach but don't even have one yourself.
I have coaches in a variety areas of my life because I BELIEVE in coaching. Coaching has enhanced my life and that's why I'm so passionate about it. I can tell people that coaching will change their life, because it has for me. I've experienced it. I know what it's like to fork over a lot of money and hire a coach too, so I can relate to people when they want to hire and work with me.
Also, working with a coach is what allowed me to learn how to be a coach today. I copied and used some of their coaching strategies and how they run their coaching business, which has allowed me to offer my own coaching service. So please, make sure you get a coach first before you consider being one.
My Concluding Thoughts
To conclude, I want to make one final point.
A great coach is a caring coach. If you really want to impact someone and really add the most value to them possible, then you really need to care about them. You need to see them as a friend, not just as a “client”. You need to care about their needs, wants and desires. You need to work hard to really understand them and do whatever it takes to help them succeed. You need to see their greatness within them. You need to see their potential, and more importantly BELIEVE in their potential… even thought they may not even believe in it themselves.
If you can take on that attitude, then you'll be a great coach. Coaching isn't easy and sometimes can be challenging, but I relish the challenge as it always forces me to step up and be resourceful to help someone. Life coaching for me isn't the most profitable thing I do, but it is the most fulfilling thing. I make much more money with my internet businesses and they all generate me passive income, whereas life coaching is active income and requires a lot of time – but I do it because it is enjoyable and very rewarding.
If you want to be a life coach, you have my full support. I encourage you to take the leap and hopefully you consider some of my advice listed here. I can only share from my own experience and my own journey to being a life coach. Good luck!
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