4 Steps to Kickstart Your Lifestyle Coaching Career

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Becoming a lifestyle coach is a fulfilling career path that allows you to help others design a balanced, meaningful life. If you’re passionate about wellness and healthy habits, this guide will show you how to build a successful lifestyle coaching practice from the ground up.

What Is a Lifestyle Coach?

A lifestyle coach is a professional who helps people design a balanced and purposeful life aligned with their goals and values.

Lifestyle coaching has a broad scope and its focus varies depending on which areas of a person’s life need fine-tuning. Its key pillars are:

  • Health and well-being
  • Habits
  • Time and energy management
  • Work-life balance
  • Mindset
personal lifestyle coaching

For example, a lifestyle coach might help a busy professional or parent create a healthier daily routine, optimize their schedule, and decrease stress levels.

Like life or health coaches, professionals in this specialty act as a catalyst for change. They empower clients to identify what’s not working in their lives, develop actionable strategies for lasting improvements, and keep them accountable.

It’s not about telling people how to live but helping them design their lives on their own terms and find greater fulfillment in it.

What Does a Lifestyle Coach Do?

So, as a lifestyle coach, you first help clients identify what areas of their life feel out of balance or unsatisfying. You have coaching conversations with them to take a closer look at their routines, habits, and choices, and how they affect their overall quality of life, well-being, and relationships.

meryl cooper coaching

Here are some specific issues a lifestyle coach may focus on:

  • Time and energy management: Optimizing a schedule that tends to overspill, prioritizing what truly matters, and designing a routine that works for the client’s goals and energy levels.
  • Cultivating healthy habits: Creating small, manageable changes that add up over time to healthy lifestyles. For example, improving sleep, building a consistent exercise routine, and quitting smoking.
  • Creating better work-life balance: If work is taking over the client’s life, a lifestyle coach can help them set boundaries and carve out more space for relationships, hobbies, and downtime.
  • Managing stress and improving mental health: Identifying sources of stress, developing coping strategies, and creating a calmer, more centered approach to daily life.
  • Life transitions: A lifestyle coach can clearly guide clients through big changes like entering a different career, becoming a parent, or starting a business as a digital nomad.

Once the client’s goals, challenges, and motivations are clear, the coach works with them collaboratively to create a plan for change. They help them set actionable objectives for measurable change that align with their vision.

This sets the foundation for a personalized coaching process involving:

  • Prioritizing goals: Defining what’s most important and breaking down lofty goals into attainable action steps.
  • Identifying roadblocks: A coach helps pinpoint what’s holding the client back, such as limiting beliefs, ineffective habits, or external challenges.
  • Adjusting the coaching plan: Pivoting coaching strategies to fit the client’s pace and changing needs.
  • Keeping the client accountable: Through regular check-ins, a coach keeps the client on track and acknowledges their progress at key milestones.

The goal isn’t instant perfection but steady, incremental changes. By working with a lifestyle coach, clients gain clarity, focus, and the tools to make lasting changes that transform their daily lives.

Life Coaching vs. Lifestyle Coaching

While the terms “life coach” and “lifestyle coach” might sound similar, these specialties focus on different areas of personal growth and transformation.

A life coach takes a big-picture approach. They explore the client’s mindset, values, and beliefs to help them create an overall vision for their ideal life and take steps toward it.

Life coaching is a bit of an umbrella term that may cover anything, from setting long-term career goals to building confidence.

On the other hand, a lifestyle coach focuses on the day-to-day aspects of a client’s life. Their work involves helping clients improve their habits, routines, and practical choices to align with their goals and values.

Lifestyle coaching tends to be more focused on creating actionable changes in areas like health, time management, work-life balance, and stress reduction.

A Practical Example

Let’s say a client is feeling unfulfilled in their life. A life coach might help them identify what’s missing, such as a sense of purpose or meaningful connections. Then they guide them to make changes in these areas.

On the other hand, a lifestyle coach would be more likely to look at the practical aspects of the client’s daily life, like an overwhelming schedule or unhealthy habits that undermine their energy. Then, they would work with them to create balance and structure that leads to greater satisfaction.

There’s plenty of overlap between these two types of coaching specialties, but life coaches tend to gear clients toward their “big why,” while lifestyle coaches help them create the “how” in their everyday lives.

The Costs of Lifestyle Coaching

Lifestyle coaches typically charge between $50 and $300 per session, with earnings varying based on experience, location, niche, and client base. Many coaches increase their income by offering package deals, which provide clients with structured, ongoing support over time.

Common coaching packages include:

  • 3-month programs: Weekly or biweekly sessions focused on achieving a specific goal.
  • Intensive packages: A short-term, high-impact option, like a VIP day or a month of frequent coaching.
  • Subscription models: Ongoing support with flexible scheduling for long-term progress.

Packages often include added value, like accountability check-ins, personalized resources, or voice chat support between sessions.

For example, Nina Dapper is a lifestyle coach who offers three different tiers of packages that offer more added value with each upgrade, including more frequent sessions and personalized support.

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Is Lifestyle Coaching Worth It?

Investing in lifestyle coaching can deliver transformative results for clients. While the return on this investment is hard to quantify, clients often report tangible changes, such as improved time management, reduced stress, healthier habits, and enhanced work-life balance.

These changes can ripple into further benefits like increased productivity, more fulfilling relationships, and a higher quality of life.

ROI is personal, but for many clients, the clarity and tools gained from coaching pay off in ways that far exceed the cost. Beyond just solving a problem, it’s about building a life that feels more aligned, intentional, and rewarding.

How to Become a Lifestyle Coach

1. Get Certified

Though certification isn’t required to become a lifestyle coach, it can significantly boost your expertise. Here are three programs you can consider.

Lifestyle and Wellness Coaching Program by Harvard Medical School

This 6-week online program requires a commitment of 4-6 hours per week and is priced at $2,668. You’ll learn evidence-based frameworks and coaching techniques like the Foundational Lifestyle Pyramid, coaching tools for sustainable behavior changes, and the six pillars of lifestyle medicine.

The program is led by Harvard faculty and features guest speakers like renowned clinical psychologist Dr. Robert Brooks. With a focus on developing practical skills and a cutting-edge curriculum, it equips you to deliver personalized coaching tailored to client needs.

Lifestyle Medicine for Coaches by ACLM

This 21.5-hour online course offers an in-depth introduction to lifestyle medicine fundamentals, such as exercise, nutrition, emotional well-being, sleep health, and chronic disease prevention.

It’s a self-paced course that costs $435 and includes video lessons, journaling prompts, and assessments. It’s best for health and wellness coaches who want to integrate lifestyle medicine into their practices.

Holistic Lifestyle Coaching program by CHEK

This three-level course enhances physical health and vitality, reduces stress, and promotes optimal health in clients. It teaches how to assess and address the root causes of disease using a holistic approach that combines proper nutrition, lifestyle management, and exercise.

The cost and duration by level is the following:

  • Level 1: 3-day training for $865
  • Level 2: 5-day training for $2,995
  • Level 3: 6-day training for $3,805

The program includes personalized questionnaires, the application of Paul Chek’s 1-2-3-4 approach, and other key concepts related to nutrition, stress management, and movement. It’s ideal for fitness professionals, healthcare providers, and coaches who want to specialize in lifestyle improvement.

2. Design a Lifestyle Coaching Program

Begin by defining your niche and target audience. Whether you focus on postpartum challenges, fitness, or managing chronic health issues, it’s important you identify the specific needs and goals of the people you want to serve.

Define the outcomes you want to deliver to them and the coaching tools and strategies that will help you create that transformation. Then, structure your program with a specific timeline, session frequency, and other services included.

3. Set up Your Practice

Register your business and consider getting insurance. Create a professional website to showcase your coaching services, bio, and client testimonials. Then, set up your client management workflow and optimize your space for running sessions, whether in-person or online.

If you want to skip technical headaches, we have good news: Paperbell automatically sets up a professional coaching website for you and hooks it up with your entire client management workflow. It handles your bookings, payments, contracts, surveys, and a lot more. Claim your free account to explore all its features.

4. Get Your First Clients

Start by reaching out to your personal network. You can offer free consultations or discounted packages to friends, former colleagues, and professional connections on LinkedIn to test out your program and collect testimonials.

Here are other ways you can get your first clients:

  • Using social media to share valuable tips with your audience
  • Hosting free workshops or webinars to showcase your expertise
  • Partnering with local wellness centers or professionals in related fields, like fitness trainers or nutritionists, to refer clients to you

As you gain more clients, encourage testimonials and referrals to keep your client base growing.

how to become a lifestyle coach

FAQ

What’s the Difference Between a Lifestyle Coach and a Life Coach?

A life coach focuses on big-picture goals like purpose and career, while a lifestyle coach helps improve daily habits and routines to create balance and alignment in everyday life.

How Much Do Lifestyle Coaches Charge?

Rates vary widely but typically range from $50 to $300 per session, depending on experience, location, and services offered. Most coaches offer package deals with a set of sessions for ongoing support.

Do I Need Certification to Become a Lifestyle Coach?

Certification isn’t required to work as a coach. However, specialized programs help you build credibility and develop coaching skills and frameworks to help clients more effectively.

Kickstart Your Lifestyle Coaching Practice With Ease

Starting a coaching practice can be a big undertaking. Paperbell takes a lot off your shoulders by setting up a website for you and handling your bookings, payments, contracts, and other client management needs.

With Paperbell, you can automate your client onboarding, reminders, and surveys, and run your lifestyle coaching program with ease. Try it for free with your first client and see how it can transform your practice.

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By Annamaria Nagy
Annamaria Nagy is a Brand Identity Coach and Copywriter. She's been writing for over 10 years about topics like personal development, coaching, and business. She was previously the Head of SEO at the leading transformational education company, Mindvalley.
January 30, 2025

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