Starting a coaching business can be a thrilling yet challenging journey. Many aspiring coaches, fueled by their passion for helping others and their newfound coaching skills, leap into the business expecting quick success. However, the reality is often more complex.
There’s no single path to building a coaching practice. Your timeline will largely depend on your expectations and circumstances.
On the other hand, being clear on those expectations and what a coaching business demands will save you time and reduce trial and error.
So, if you want to know how long it will take to build a coaching business, let’s start at the beginning.
How to Start a Coaching Business From Scratch
You simply can’t skip specific steps when building a coaching business. Here’s a checklist to help you plan this process better.
1. Reflect and Research
Identify what you’re most passionate about helping people with and what you have expertise in. Reflect on what’s unique about your skills, experiences, and interests to determine what type of coaching you are qualified to offer.
Consider what additional training and certifications you’ll need to pick up to serve your audience.
Researching the market will give you a better idea about what services you can offer and how to position them. Dig deeper into your selected coaching niches to see what strategies you want to (or don’t want to) adopt from your competitors.
2. Specialize
Choose a specific area of coaching that addresses a clear and tangible problem. For example, as a business coach, you can help executives double their revenue or help single moms build profitable online businesses from home.
[ Read: How to Find Your Coaching Niche: A Coach’s Guide ]
Narrowing down your focus helps attract clients who need your specific expertise. Define who your ideal client is and understand their needs, challenges, and goals. The more specific your niche, the easier it will be to market your services—and choose the training most relevant to your goals.
3. Get Trained
While formal certifications aren’t obligatory in coaching, it’s important to invest in your education so you can serve your clients effectively. Acquiring expertise in your niche builds credibility and enables you to address specific client needs. Credentials from organizations like the International Coach Federation (ICF) can also help you market yourself in the future.
Define your budget and time available to complete your training requirements. Coaching certification programs range from a few hundred dollars to over $10,000 and last anywhere from a few days to a year. More expensive doesn’t necessarily mean better, but comprehensive programs usually have more practical application and mentorship opportunities.
4. Develop a Business Plan
Establish your short-term and long-term goals for your coaching business. Consider the services you want to offer, such as one-on-one sessions, group coaching programs, or workshops. If you want to publish books and courses or speak on stages, include that in your plan as well.
Define how much you want to make in a year and break it down into quarterly or monthly revenue goals. List your larger potential expenses, such as hiring freelancers, working with your own coach, or spending on advertising. This will help you have clearer expectations of your cash flow.
5. Create Your Offer
Design one or more coaching packages that can meet the needs of your various clients. Structure them on various levels of your clients’ typical growth journey, each with increasing levels of support, and set clear outcomes for them. Price your packages based on the value they provide and current market rates.
[ Read: The 4 Pillars of Sold-Out Life Coaching Packages ]
To set up your packages easily, you can use Paperbell. It’s an all-in-one client management tool that lets you customize your offers and automatically generate landing pages for them. Then, those pages will be tied to your payment system, digital contract signing, and session bookings.
6. Set up Your Business
To legally establish your coaching practice, choose a business structure. As a sole proprietor, you can usually complete the paperwork in a day, while registering an LLC may take a few weeks.
Implement a solid accounting cadence or hire a professional to track your income, expenses, and taxes accurately. Consider getting life coach insurance to protect yourself from potential disputes or accidents in the future.
Consider whether you need to rent an office space for your sessions or if you want to run an online coaching business from a dedicated workspace.
7. Establish Your Brand
Building your brand as a coach starts with creating a brand identity that relates to your target audience. Create a catchy name for your business and packages and a tagline that encapsulates how you want to position yourself.
Set up a professional website that does the following:
- Communicates the benefits of your coaching services clearly
- Tells your story and credentials through your bio
- Features your client testimonials
- Any helpful resources related to your specialty
If you need a cheat sheet, download our free template pack for coaching websites and packages.
Successful coaches consider social media interactions their number one strategy for nurturing relationships with potential clients. You can use the platforms most relevant to your niche to share valuable advice and your story and connect with your audience.
8. Market Your Packages
Creating and sharing valuable content through a podcast, blog, or YouTube channel can showcase your expertise and help sell your packages. You can also build an email list to send your potential clients regular newsletters with tips, updates, and special offers.
Networking is crucial too, such as attending industry events, joining professional organizations, and connecting with other coaches and potential clients. These strategies will help you establish your reputation, attract clients, and grow your life coaching business.
8 Strategies to Build a Successful Coaching Business
Everyone’s journey is different. However, keeping these strategies in mind will help you significantly speed up your process of building a profitable coaching business.
- Get hyper-specific about your niche: Many new coaches make the mistake of offering vague, intangible results. This makes it challenging to attract and retain clients. However, the reality is that people don’t hire life coaches; they hire people who can solve their problems.
- Learn how to articulate your brand: Ditch the jargon and use everyday language that speaks to your client’s experience. Coaching skills aren’t enough to build a business; you must also get good at, or outsource, selling your practice.
- Think in packages, not sessions: Avoid offering coaching sessions without a clear goal. Instead, design packages that provide measurable outcomes to a specific problem for a defined audience.
- Leverage your experience: You can’t be good at everything. Build your coaching practice on your past professional and personal experiences that help you rise above being a generic coach.
- Build a sustainable client base: Start with a few clients, gather testimonials, and build your reputation for delivering results. Then, gradually build a sustainable client generation system with no more than one or a handful of strategies to keep it manageable.
- Invest in your education: Learning doesn’t stop with one course or training. You must continuously look for ways to improve your ability to transform your clients, businesses, and marketing strategies.
- Ask for help: Hire your coach or mentor or join a coach community for support. Don’t be afraid to seek help and guidance from those who have successfully built their coaching businesses.
- Maintain financial stability: If you have a stable job, don’t quit once your first potential client shows up. This immediately reduces the pressure of making a full-time income from coaching and allows you to focus on growth.
How Profitable is a Coaching Business?
The coaching industry is estimated to be worth $6.25 billion in 2024, generated by around 145,500 active coaches worldwide. This would mean close to $43,000 yearly in revenue for an average coach. However, estimating the profitability of coaching is not that simple.
Most coaches surveyed are certified by major organizations like the ICF. However, most of them stay under the radar. For instance, this statistic wouldn’t consider someone like Tony Robbins with a coaching empire worth $600 million.
Even if we look at the coaches who make up these numbers, it’s difficult to tell how much they make individually. Some may work full-time and only coach on the side, while others make six figures from various business activities beyond coaching, like publishing, teaching, or speaking.
Anecdotally, many successful coaches report to reach stable revenue in 1-4 years.
For example, Tim Brownson transitioned from a corporate job to coaching and took about three years to achieve sustainable income, eventually reaching over $100,000 annually through coaching, teaching, and selling products.
Karyn Greenstreet switched to coaching-consulting and mastermind groups to achieve a $100,000+ income within a year. Heather Thorkelson, on the other hand, built her business steadily over two years, generating between $50,000 and $100,000 through consistent client engagement and content creation.
As relationship coach Jill Jerabek says, there’s no set timeline to reach your ideal income as a coach. It all depends on your strategies and preferences.
How Long Does It Take to Build a Coaching Business? Factors That Will Affect Your Timeline
You can set up a landing page with your services and drive ads to it in a day. However, getting to a point where you’re profitable can take years and depends on several factors.
If you have substantial resources set aside to run campaigns and hire people to promote your business, you’ll fill up your calendar with high-ticket clients much faster. Recommendations from an extensive network can also get you more sign-ups with less effort. Getting the right mentorship can give you shortcuts but may take a larger initial investment.
Some aspiring coaches take their first clients on the side while working full-time. Their employer might even sponsor their training and certification if it’s related to their current position, usually as a manager or HR representative.
Prior experience can also make a big difference. Coming from a financial background will make you a more credible money coach, and spending time in ashrams can add to your perspective as a spiritual coach.
Last but not least, your location and personal lifestyle will affect your living costs and, in turn, impact your revenue targets. In the same way, the spending capacity of your target audience will affect how much you can charge them.
Is it Hard to Start a Coaching Business?
Starting a life coaching business isn’t easy—and it’s certainly not an overnight process. It requires dedication, time, and strategic planning.
By focusing on a specific niche, leveraging your unique skills, and continuously learning, you can transform your passion for coaching into a profitable business.
Even if the journey is challenging sometimes, persistence and the right approach will help you create a thriving practice that aligns with your values and expectations.
