Life Coaching Business : The Real Costs + Next Steps
As of 2022, there are 71,000 life coaching businesses based in 161 countries worldwide.
Life coaching is the second-fastest-growing sector of coaching practitioners in North America. If you’re thinking about becoming a life coach and curious about the associated costs to start, this post is for you! With so many people searching for life coaches and as the industry continues to grow at a fast pace (worth more than $2 billion), there are plenty of opportunities for coaches to find success.
So, you finally decided on becoming a life coach and creating a freedom based business from your passion. Congratulations on choosing a fast growing industry. Starting a life coaching business is one thing but understanding your coaching superpower that sets you apart as a highly stand out coach is another. What’s your coaching superpower?
Now that you already know your niche, where to find potential clients, and your coaching superpower, you’re probably thinking about the big question: how much does it cost to start a life coaching business?
There are certain costs associated with starting a life coaching business, but not all costs are required to start.
In this blog post, you’ll learn
what costs are necessary,
what costs are recommended
The average total costs of starting a life coaching business
How to scale your business after launch
The Necessary Costs Of Starting A Life Coaching Business
1. Registering Your Business
Once you have a name for your life coaching brand, and yes it could be just yours, you’ll want to register your business. The costs of registering and filing your business will vary state by state as well as by the type of business structure you choose.
Registering your life coaching business is considered a necessary cost because let’s say someone decides to sue you (fingers crossed they don’t!), they will only have access to your registered business’s assets, not your personal assets.
On average, the cost of starting your life coaching business as an LLC can run you around $150-$300 (includes registration and filing fees)
2. Marketing Your Brand
Now, once you register your business, the clients don’t magically appear. You’ll have to market your life coaching business towards your dream clients. But how exactly do you go about attracting your dream clients?
Well, there are some free ways to start marketing your brand. Set up social media accounts on platforms where your target audience exists and search for a business like yours. Use these platforms to educate and show off your uniqueness.
Attending networking events is another great way to market your life coaching business and sometimes these events are free. You can also build your audience of potential leads by offering free webinars or participating in coaching conferences.
So you’re probably wondering where does the marketing costs come in?
Well, in the beginning of starting your life coaching business you can invest in running ads to your website to gain some visibility and leads. Depending on your ad budget, ad platform, and how long you run the ad, beginning costs can be anywhere between $300-$1500.
While some people might not see running ads as a necessary cost for increasing the visibility of their brand online, it is a way to attract an audience faster than doing it organically.
3. Creating a Business Website
A mistake that many new life coaches make is not owning their brand online. Meaning, your social media accounts are not owned by you and they can be taken away from you at any moment. Having a website gives you the freedom to run your business under your rules. A website also makes your brand look more professional and gives you a space to dive deep into your
educational content
services
freebies
courses + webinars
and more! With a website, you can take advantage of organic traffic with SEO marketing and use your website to build your email list (which unlike your followers on social media you will own your email list). Having a website helps:
Build Credibility
Increase Authority
Grow Deeper Connections
Meet Business Goals
Scale Your Business
Increases Your Audience Size
Website startup costs vary depending on your domain name, hosting fee, website platform, website theme, etc. Starting a website for your life coaching business can run you anywhere between $50-$150 with monthly fees between $3-$40 a month (on average)
4. Business Systems and Automation Tools
Investing in software and automation tools are going to be a life changer for your life coaching business as it grows. Being able to:
streamline client on boarding and off boarding
schedule social media posts in advanced
tracking business expenses
Sending emails to your email list
organizing email communication between your team or clients
etc, can ALL be helpful in eliminating the stress of starting your life coaching business. The truth is, you may not be ready to hire a team jus starting off but, that doesn’t mean you can’t get help in certain areas of your business with systems and automation tools.
Take advantage of free trials to see which automation systems work best for you. These tools, on average, depending on what you use and how many you use can vary around $30-$100 a month.
The Recommended Costs to Starting A Coaching Business
Now that we’ve covered the basic start up costs of starting your life coaching business, here are the recommended extra costs to consider either before or after you launch.
1. Certifications
Even though certification for life coaches isn’t required within the industry when running your life coaching business, it can certainly help make you and your brand unique. In fact, as the life coaching industry continues to grow, becoming licensed could make the difference between landing top clients or losing your dream clients to your competitors with a certification.
Professional life coach certifications (on average) can run between $3,000 and $15,000 USD depending on the program and the number of modalities you’re becoming certified in.
2. Continued Education
As you start to work with more clients, you’ll want to continue learning how to use the best tools to efficiently lead the best coaching sessions. Just like with any profession, you should never stop learning and always keep an eye on upcoming trends and tools in your industry. There are many ways to self educate yourself further when running a life coaching business like
Investing in webinars by experts in your field
Learning a new field of study
Taking courses to dive deeper in on a subject you have beginner knowledge of
Joining workshops
Participating in retreats
Continuing your education can set you apart as a highly sought after course because you have knowledge that many other life coaches may not have but clients seek. Depending on your continued education needs, programs can cost anywhere from $100-$2400 on average.
3. Hiring a Mentor or Business Coach
Who said coaches don’t need coaches? Your own life coaching business depends on making other people hire you as their life coach to improve areas of their lives. You help clients focus on their habits and bring out what they didn’t think they could achieve before.
Now, if we follow this reasoning, shouldn’t life coaches also hire a coach for themselves either to improve their own business, mindset, or health? No matter how good of a life coach you are, there’s always going to be someone who’s been in the industry longer and has already achieved what you also desire.
So, if you want to gain some invaluable skills from successful life coaches, investing in a mentor or business coach is a great way to take your business to the next level.
Other recommended costs includes:
trademarks
small business insurance
office space expenses
employee and/or freelancing expenses
Website designer cost (if outsourcing)
What Is The Total Cost Of Starting A Life Coaching Business?
Drum roll please!
Now that you are aware of the average necessary and recommended costs of starting a life coaching business, what’s the total amount to expect? The total amount for starting a life coaching business is anywhere between $62 to $23,000.
That’s a huge gap right? Well it honestly comes down to your preferences and priorities. You can always invest little as needed and add on more as your business grows.
With a home office, a computer, and a smartphone, you can set up your own schedule and achieve the right work-life balance as a new life coach. Along with a solid business plan and marketing plan, you can launch your business on an affordable budget. Don’t forget, the earning potential of a life coach is great to and there’s no cap to your income.
A life coach’s annual salary ranges from $27,019 to $210,933. However, the average annual salary of life coaches is $61,900.
Next Steps: How to SCALE Your Business
After you’ve defined your niche, the type of life coaching business you want to create, set up your online presence, registered your business and at least created your first offer, it’s time to focus on scaling your business. To scale your business, you’ll constantly want to work on your business's
Outreach strategy
Service expansions/ passive income
Building case studies / working with more clients
Your outreach strategy should change as your business becomes more visible. This can mean narrowing down to fewer platforms, creating more funnels with your email, creating more long form content, focusing on organic search traffic and more.
Keep in mind your signature offers as well. Creating profitable offers will help you to continue to scale your business. Check out this FREE workshop to help you Create Your Profitable Signature Offers
When it comes to scaling your business, you’ll want to start to think about how you can either increase your prices, increase the amount of clients you have per month, or increase the amount of passive income you offer through courses, trainings, etc. After every 3-10 clients, you’ll start to see the value in what you offer represented in the results you give your clients.
Start creating case studies to use as testimonials for potential leads. As your experience and credibility grow, so will the transformation you offer your clients. This increase in value should be reflected in how much you should charge.
Eventually, you will hit a price ceiling beyond which your target market will not pay. If you’re happy with your income, then you can stay working with one-on-one clients. But if you’d like to keep scaling your business, you will need to expand your offerings. Some common ways to do this are by creating:
A group program or mastermind
Online courses
Membership program
Be ready to experiment and find the best fit for you and your ideal clients! Good luck with starting your life coaching business.
Frequently Asked Questions | Life Coaching Business
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The E.L.E.V.A.T.E Method is the best life coaching certification program. Get certified today
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How much can I make as a life coach?
YES if you’re passionate, being a life coach is profitable! If a life coach is your career path, you’ll be joining a 2 billion dollar industry (and growing). On average, life coaches make around $65,000 a year but there’s also no cap! With having strong coaching offers and passive income, some life coaches make around $214,000 a year!
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By having a good outreach marketing strategy! Understand what platforms your dream clients use. Understand their problems and think of ways your services and content are the best for them. Position yourself as a highly sought after coach with certifications and tools that help you lead powerful coaching sessions.
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Here are the steps to start a life coaching business:
-Have a computer and good WIFI.
-Pick a niche.
-Research what type of coaching business you want to do.
-Legalize your business.
-Develop your online presence on social media.
-Craft your first offer.
-Create an outreach plan.
-Land your first paying client.
-Create client case studies as testimonials.
-Scale your business by offering courses, trainings, workshops, etc.
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Here are the top 5 coaching industries
-Life coaching.
-Mindset coaching.
-Financial coaching.
-Relationship coaching.
-Weight loss/Nutrition coaching.
