Specializing can help coaches deepen their expertise in a particular area. However, it can also limit their ability to help clients.
Many coachees seek a holistic approach and prefer working with the same person in their personal lives and businesses.
This is where a life and business coach can step in.
They can offer a blend of personal development and strategic business insights to bridge the gap between different facets of a person’s life. With this comprehensive approach to growth, achievements in one area can fuel progress in the other.
Let’s explore how life and business coaches combine methodologies to help clients and how you can do the same.
What is a Life and Business Coach?
A life and business coach is a professional who integrates personal development and business strategies to guide clients in their personal and professional lives.
These hybrid coaches assess their client’s needs and goals holistically. They examine their overall well-being, mindset, work-life balance, and business objectives. Then, they combine different methodologies accordingly to create the right coaching plan for them.
Some coaches working in multiple specialties separate their business and life coaching services. Others see the client’s personal and professional lives as interconnected and dynamically tailor the focus of their sessions to what needs attention.
In this holistic approach, improvements in one aspect usually positively impact the other. For example, if you coach executives on communication skills, they will see positive ripple effects in their day-to-day work and family life.
Life Coach vs. Life and Business Coach: What’s the Difference?
Life coaches generally don’t focus on business-specific areas. Instead, they concentrate on personal development, well-being, and achieving a balanced and fulfilling life.
They help clients improve their relationships, manage stress, build self-confidence, and enhance overall life satisfaction. They consider how a person’s work affects their personal lives, but they don’t discuss business objectives. They don’t even necessarily work with business owners.
In contrast, a life and business coach addresses the professional and personal goals of the client. They incorporate elements of life coaching with business-specific areas such as decision-making, emotional intelligence, strategy, and performance.
The main difference is that, beyond foundational coaching skills, hybrid coaches normally have qualifications in multiple specialties. This allows them to serve clients with various individual needs and issues.
5 Successful Life and Business Coaches
Here are five coaches with multiple specialties making strides in the coaching industry.
Christine Hassler
Christine Hassler is a master coach and facilitator specializing in helping people and organizations overcome personal and professional challenges.
She offers life and business coaching with a holistic approach. Her transformative coaching programs and retreats aim to guide clients toward lasting success and fulfillment.
Shanda Sumpter
Shanda Sumpter, founder of HeartCore Business, is a renowned coach dedicated to helping entrepreneurs achieve balanced growth.
Her services empower clients to scale their businesses while maintaining personal well-being and to achieve their financial and lifestyle goals.
Nicole Roberts Jones
Nicole Roberts Jones is a dynamic life and business coach who helps women unleash their true potential and turn their passions into profits.
With a corporate training and entrepreneurship background, Nicole empowers her clients to create meaningful, impactful careers.
Angie Wisdom
Angie Wisdom is an ICF-certified master coach with over 25 years of business experience. She helps burned-out business owners elevate their companies and master leadership skills.
She’s been recognized for her thoughtful, result-oriented approach and hosts the podcast Sharing Wisdom.
Melissa Dawn
Melissa Dawn, a Master Certified Coach and former VP, blends two decades of corporate experience with coaching to help leaders connect with their inner selves and achieve holistic success.
As the founder of CEO of Your Life, she empowers clients to lead authentically and transform their professional and personal lives.
How to Create a Life and Business Coaching Package
Here’s how to combine life and business coaching services in a single package.
Understand Your Client’s Needs
The most important thing is to understand your target client’s needs and aspirations. These might include strategic business planning, work-life balance, or overall personal growth.
A solid understanding of your client avatar is the foundation for a transformative coaching experience. Even if you coach holistically, make sure you serve a specific niche.
Define the Outcomes of Your Package
Map out the overarching objectives and outcomes you want to achieve with your coaching program. You can blend different aspects of the life and business coaching tools you’re trained on into a cohesive framework.
For instance, you can help clients set and achieve career goals while tackling habits and limiting beliefs that impede their success. The idea is to design a package that seamlessly integrates both and offers a well-rounded approach to growth.
Put a Structure Behind It
Choose a combination of formats and methods to deliver the promised results to your clients. For example, you might offer a mix of one-on-one coaching sessions, accountability, and online resources supporting the same end goal.
The different elements of your package should complement each other to make your process more effective and suit clients with various learning preferences.
Alternatively, you can create separate coaching journeys for life coaching clients, business coaching clients, and those who want to work on both areas simultaneously.
Define Your Pricing
Your pricing structure should reflect the value of your packages while staying competitive.
Tiered pricing options with varying levels of personalized support can suit various segments of your target market. It allows clients to choose the package that best fits their needs, budget, and commitment level.
Share Your Packages
The easiest way to promote and manage your life and business coaching services is to add them to your Paperbell account.
This all-in-one client management platform lets you create custom packages with various payment options, such as limited-time offers, installments, or memberships and automatically generates landing pages for them.
Once your clients sign up, they can finalize their contract with you digitally, pay you, and book their first session independently. You can access all their information neatly stored in your Paperbell account.
How to Balance Life and Business Coaching
Working in multiple coaching niches simultaneously can complicate your practice. Here are some tips on how to stay on top of it all.
- Segment your client base: You don’t need to separate your life and business coaching clients, but it helps to define coaching journeys for the various types of people you’re working with.
- Schedule wisely: Dedicate certain days or time slots to business-oriented and life coaching sessions and schedule sufficient breaks in between them.
- Follow an integrated approach: If you integrate life and business coaching in your services, use holistic methods like the Wheel of Life that address personal and professional growth.
How to Run a Life and Business Coaching Practice
Running a successful coaching business is more than just working with clients. Here’s how you can do it sustainably.
1. Craft a Clear Vision
As a coach, you work toward clear life goals with your clients—now, you need to do the same for your own business.
What’s your why for coaching? What impact do you want to create with your services on an individual and macro level?
A clear vision and a business plan will guide your decisions and keep you focused. Set both short-term and long-term goals, monetary and otherwise. Revisit them regularly to track progress and make adjustments as needed.
2. Set up a Business
To legally offer services, you need to register your life coaching business. You can either decide to run it as a sole proprietorship or an LLC.
A sole proprietorship is simpler, and you can give it a business name different from your own (“doing business as”), but it comes with personal liability. An LLC, on the other hand, provides legal protection and allows you to hire employees, but it comes at a higher cost.
Next, create a coaching contract with your payment terms, refund policies, and liability waivers. Using Paperbell, you can easily store it and have it signed digitally for each client. You might also want to consider insuring your business to be safe.
3. Take Care of the Admin
We all wish being a coach would just be about showing up at our sessions. However, having clients means scheduling appointments, collecting payments, managing group cohorts, and keeping track of questionnaires and homework assignments, to name a few.
That’s why we love Paperbell; it handles all of this for you in one simple system. Automating your entire admin workflow with a single tool frees up so much time you can spend on client work rather than being bogged down in logistics.
4. Establish an Online Presence
Your brand is important for attracting the right clients. It needs to make it clear who you are, whom you’re serving, and what you offer to them.
A professional website is a great tool for introducing yourself, listing your services, and featuring client testimonials. Alternatively, you can generate a landing page for your packages with Paperbell that you can then promote on your social media channels and through ads.
Sharing content regularly will help position you as an expert in both life and business coaching and build trust with your potential clients.