Life coaching can be an incredibly fulfilling and satisfying career. Imagine working from the comfort of your home, talking people through their challenges, and helping them lead a better life—that’s what you can achieve when you become a professional life coach.
But what does it take to jumpstart your career? We’re here to walk you through it. Read on to find out how to become a life coach online. Like any business, starting out can be a challenge. The rewards, however, are well worth it. Let’s start with the basics.
What is Online Coaching and How Does it Work?
Life coaching involves helping individuals find solutions to their problems—online life coaching is offering this service online or virtually. As an online life coach, you meet with clients over a phone call or video chat, email with them, or even text message with them.
As an online life coach, your daily work entails helping clients become their own best allies in overcoming challenges. Rather than solving problems for your clients, life coaches help clients understand how to tackle challenges and achieve greatness themselves.
- Working as a life coach online can be extremely fulfilling—find out more about why everyone needs a life coach on our blog.
Online Coaches Are Usually Entrepreneurs
Online life coaches typically run their own businesses rather than coaching as a job working for another company. This means they are able to create their own schedule, determine their own hours, and work whenever suits them best. As a life coach whose business is primarily over the internet, you’ll have the opportunity to work from home—or wherever you want. You can also spend time preparing tools for clients, attending workshops, or researching new methods to help motivate your clients.
Knowing how to become a life coach online takes a few steps that every aspiring entrepreneur should have a handle on. Luckily, they can be mastered, making life coaching a great online business idea for beginners.
Getting Started with Online Life Coaching
The hardest part about many endeavors is often getting started (good advice to remember for your future clients!). However, breaking it down into simpler steps can make it more straightforward. Here’s what starting an online life coach business might entail:
- Think about your niche and clients
While life coaches can be open to accepting clients from all walks of life, it’s often smart to also focus on your niche. For example, you may want to be a career-focused life coach. Or maybe you want to help people in their romantic and dating lives. Others might prefer to coach people on becoming more confident. Think about what your primary value-add is and build your business around that niche.
- Start building a business plan
A life coaching business requires structure and a plan. How much will you charge per session? Will you offer one-on-one meetings, group meetings, texting sessions, or other services? You don’t have to make every decision now, but creating a life coaching package is the key to a successful coaching business.
- Get a business license
Get all your ducks in a row, including researching the city in which you live to find out how to register a business. This is a simple, inexpensive step that just ensures you’re compliant.
- Acquire clients
Start by networking. Reach out to your personal network to see if anyone knows someone who is a good fit for your coaching specialty. It may take time before you acquire enough clients to make your business profitable, so most coaches start part-time in addition to their regular job. The good news is those complicated, expensive marketing tactics are not what works best for coaches! Find out more here.
Useful Tools to Get Your Online Coaching Career Started
It’s also smart to know what resources are available to online life coaches who want to run a more streamlined business. Popular options include:
- Scheduling software like Acuity, Calendly, Appointy, or SetMore
- Virtual Meeting platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, or Doxy.me (for a HIPPA compliant option)
- Client management software(CRM) like MailterLife, Ally, ConvertKit, or Hubspot
- Payment processing, including Square and PayPal
- And general organizational resources like Google Calendar, Asana, or Trello
Knowing how to become a life coach online is important. But before you rush off to build a website or secure a business license, it’s important that you gain the concrete skills necessary to actually be an online life coach. That’s where certifications come in.
Setting Up a Website
There’s probably not much that’s more important than setting up a website when you’re building an online coaching business. After all, your website will be your central hub of business. It’s where clients get to know you, how they find out about your services, and where you get a chance to make a lasting positive first impression.
That means it’s important to invest in creating an engaging, beautiful, and trust-building website that users will enjoy navigating. No web building experience? Not a problem. There are tons of helpful website buildings tools out there that you can use to kickstart your site.
These 5 marketing tools for small businesses make setting up a professional website simple:
- Wix: Wix offers simple tools to get you started without much experience. They also have plenty of great templates to give your website a professional feel.
- WordPress: WordPress is the most customizable option, offering tons of options for plug-ins, design editing, and more. Because it’s so customizable, you may need more experience with web development to feel comfortable using it.
- Squarespace: This is the most design-forward option, with tons of stunning templates and beautiful design motifs. Squarespace is best suited to life coaches who offer visually engaging content.
- Weebly: Weebly is a great option for online transactions, easily incorporating payment methods into your website so clients can purchase services without the hassle of a third-party payment platform.
- Duda: Another great option for life coaches who want to get their site up and running quickly, Duda allows you to customize and build a beautiful site that looks professional.
Most website builders also offer several different payment plans and options, so you can find a price point that makes the most sense for your business. Be sure to shop around, read reviews, and determine the site builder that you feel most confident using.
Decide Your Marketing Strategy & What Content to Share
Marketing is one of the most critical online business ideas for beginners to get a grasp of. In addition to having marketing tools for small businesses, it’s important to know exactly what your marketing strategy will be. Building an online business means making your online presence memorable, engaging, and shareable. And that means crafting high-quality content that your users will be excited to watch or read.
These tips are some of the most important things to keep in mind as you develop your strategy:
- Build your brand: Having an engaging approach to branding is critical for any online business. After all, your clients will first engage with your online presence by reading your website content, seeing your social media posts, or watching your video content. Having a strong identity that users immediately recognize will help them remember you when they are considering who to do business with later. Being approachable, interesting, and authoritative are three values to keep in mind as you build your brand.
- Craft an authentic image: Today’s web users are savvy, and can often tell when someone’s online image is fake. There’s no one that’s better at being you than you, so the easiest way to come off as authentic is to be yourself in all your online posts. Talk about your values, your interests, and what you think you can add to clients’ lives that will be positive and transformational.
- Master your value proposition: All businesses need a value proposition. It’s the value that you can bring to clients that will improve their lives in some way. What’s yours? Do you help people master their habits and develop a healthy work-life balance? Or maybe you coach couples working through difficult times in their relationship. Whatever your value proposition is, it’s important that you make that front and center in your marketing materials, so potential customers know the good that you can bring to their lives. Your value proposition is also highly connected to your audience and niche, which brings us to the next point.
- Find your audience: Finding a coaching niche is a great way to grow your business and become highly profitable in the long run. Clients often look for coaches who have expertise in the areas they need it, and by knowing your niche, you know you can bring it to them. Whether you’re creating an online course or making YouTube content, have a defined audience in mind.
Social Media & Content – Which Platforms to Set Up
The last step is deciding what social media platforms make the most sense for your business. For example, you might want to create motivational YouTube content that demonstrates the value of your business. Or, you might make fun and shareable Instagram graphics, or generate a Twitter following with whom you can share your thoughts with. Social media is one of the most important marketing tools for small businesses.
There’s no one-stop social media marketing for dummies, but there are strategies you can use. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you figure out the vibe for your social media platforms:
- Find the right platforms: First, as mentioned above, it’s important to find the platforms that best match your company’s brand and voice. Depending on how approachable and how much you want to engage with your users, for example, you might choose a discussion-oriented platform like Twitter or Facebook to put in effort.
- Build a following: It’s easier said than done, but highly important. Take time to create high-quality content, engage with users, and follow peers in your niche so that you start to gain followers.
- Gaining influence: Once you have a solid following, it’s important to use that following to build influence. That might mean developing an authoritative voice in your niche, posting explainers that people find helpful, or creating fun and motivational posts that help people see that your life coaching can be value-adding for them.
Using social media is great for getting clients as a life coach, especially if your business is primarily online. If you’re not using socials now, it’s smart to start incorporating them into your business soon.
Google My Business
Lastly, a high-priority aspect of building an online presence is ensuring your business is easily Googleable. Customers want to work with businesses that they won’t have trouble finding when they need to. Ensuring that your name comes up on a Google search is important.
To do that, you can start by making a profile on Google Business. This will help your company pop up in a useful box with your website and phone number.
Next, you’ll want to put some time into SEO. SEO, or search engine optimization, is the practice of making your content pop up higher in Google search results. You can do this by writing content that uses plenty of keywords related to your business, or by creating landing pages that have informative answers to commonly searched questions. SEO is a high-value online business idea for beginners to learn well.
Life Coaching Certifications and Training
Just like any career path, education is an essential part of becoming a successful online life coach. Understanding how to become an online life coach goes beyond knowing how to set up a website and business—you also need to know the skills and tools necessary for helping people improve their lives.
Life coaching is a non-regulated industry, which means there are no laws that govern the field, there exists no accrediting institution in the field of life coaching, and there is no license required to be a life coach.
That being the case, training and certification is a valuable process that provides a strong foundation of industry best practices and the confidence of knowing exactly how to get your clients great results!
There are many organizations that offer certification programs, and there are many types of coaching certifications. Some programs focus on general coaching principles and methodologies, while other programs teach specific processes for coaching clients on niche topics. Many coaches study general methodologies and also complete training in a particular niche, depending on their interests. Some coaching programs are taught in person and others are available online. Some require “contact hours” with mentor coaches and practice hours with clients in order to earn the certification, while others do not. The cost of programs reflects the level of interaction and support.
Jumpstart Your Life Coaching Career with Transformation Academy
Transformation Academy offers over 25 different niche life coach training certifications. No matter what your ideal niche is, we have a program built to help you discover your path to a fulfilling and rewarding career as a life coach.
Choose from our popular life coaching programs, such as:
- Professional Life Coach Certification: Help clients discover the keys to success in their professional lives, from negotiating a raise to finding the career that’s right for them.
- Goal Success Life Coach Certification: Help clients visualize and actualize their goals, whether that’s starting their own business or starting a family.
- Happiness Life Coach Certification: Gain the tools to aid clients in their search for a happy, meaningful life.
- Entrepreneurship and Business Life Coach Certification: Learn the building blocks that help your clients flourish as independent entrepreneurs, coaching them carefully along their journey.
- Life Purpose Coach Certification: Gain insights into your life’s purpose and help clients see what their ultimate goals, ambitions, and drives are.
We offer countless options, ensuring that you have the education, skills, and tools that will help you to stand out as a talented life coach.
Sign Up or Contact Us Today!
No matter where you are on your journey, knowing how to life coach online can set you apart. Browse our selection of Life Coach Certifications to find the course that you connect with best. We are here to help you gain the knowledge that will elevate others and help them live more fulfilling lives.
Check out our full Course Catalog to discover the opportunities available!
