How to start a coaching business: 14 Successful coaches shared their best tips

Are you trying to figure out how to start a coaching business?

Starting a coaching business or any other business is a daunting task.

To make it a little easy for you, we have asked the following question to some of the top coaches:

How to start a coaching business: What is your best tip?

All the coaches shared their secrets and experiences generously in their responses, which can be invaluable if you are starting a life coaching business or looking to improve it.

I’m thankful to all the life coaches for their generosity in sharing their secrets for success. 🙏

Here’s to your coaching business success! ✌️

Jo Renshaw is well-known for being a money coach but most importantly, she is a life coach first. She helps coaches and creatives make more money doing work they live on without burning out. Moreover, she brings years of experience with her in the coaching industry.

How to start a life coaching business: What is your best tip?

JUST START! There is no right or wrong way, nothing you need to do first, and you cannot get it wrong. 

I see SO many new coaches worrying and procrastinating over branding, colors, fonts, what to call themselves, how to generate leads, and niche. It’s all very distracting, and whilst they’re busy being distracted, someone somewhere is looking for a coach to hire. So my very best advice would be to start by making offers. Let people know you can help them…because as a coach, you can help.

Laura is a Self-Love Expert & Empowerment Coach for women. Her method uses a holistic approach. She empowers women to step back into their power by rewriting past beliefs to help them gain clarity and confidence in their lives for the most fulfilling, vibrant future!

She is a certified NLP Master Practitioner and Hypnotherapy Master Practitioner, with a diploma in CBT, life & spiritual life coaching, as well as psychology and mindfulness.

How to start a coaching business: What is your best tip?

Really knowing your why, why it is that you want to start a coaching business in the first place. You really need to have a deep understanding of your why and be fully committed to what it is. You also need to know and be clear on WHO it is that you want to coach, who is your ideal client, and the specific area in which you specialize what do they need help with?

Without those 3 things, you’re setting yourself up to fail, you’d be going into it completely blind and would find it very difficult to get anywhere. It’s about having a solid foundation and then building up from there. Without that strong base, it’ll fall to the ground before you know it. Your own mindset around the entire concept is hugely important.

One more thing is, ask for help, you can only get so far on your own, learn from those that have made a success, take inspiration to help you move forwards, and never stop believing in yourself or your mission.

Joshua is a high-level coach with 20+ years of experience in working with those that want to transform their lives. He leverages both his life and business experience to facilitate real change and help manifest the boldest of plans.

He thrives on building relationships and on helping executives to grow their companies and bring balance to their personal lives.

How to start a coaching business: What is your best tip?

Coaching is a craft that is deeply rooted in the art of service. To launch a successful and thriving coaching practice, I suggest that the seeds be steeped in an authentic exploration of one’s purest gift to the world. Once there is an understanding of what you have to offer the world, go out and serve with a fierce conviction to that and hold those you work with to do the same.

The beauty of coaching is that we get to be witness to the blossoming of one’s own gift to the world and hold them accountable to become their truest selves. The magic ingredient is love and care for those I work with and a sincere desire to serve at the highest level to help make the world a better place one client at a time.

A former Apple software engineer turned international intimacy educator turned relationship coach, Ken is in his 20th year helping couples bond, co-create, have great intimate life, thrive, and live happily ever after. His work has garnered mentions in Business Insider, Playboy, Cosmo, Tim Ferriss’s 4-Hour series, and elsewhere. He’s a regular featured contributor to The Good Men Project.

How to start a coaching business: What is your best tip?

Help people for free!

Think of it this way. It would be great if you had a well-crafted, compelling niche statement, like “I help such-and-such people achieve so-and-so results.” But if you’re struggling to come up with yours, you’ll be much clearer on how to sell yourself after your 50th happy client.

It would be great to have others sell you, too, either through referrals, testimonials, or simply a brag-worthy track record of great results. But if you don’t have that kind of social proof right now, you will have a good starting base of fans after your 50th happy client.

It would be great to have outstanding coaching skills, and there are plenty of schools, books, and other educational materials out there to study. But you also need to practice, and you’ll be a much better coach than you are now after your 50th happy client.

(By the way, expect the learning process to continue indefinitely. I’m in my 22nd year of coaching, and I’m a better coach today than I was a year ago. I’m not kidding.)

In other words, a lot of what you need to build your business, you will acquire through the act of coaching.

So treat your clients like they’re helping you. They’re doing you a favor.

They’re helping you gain much needed self-knowledge, business credibility, and coaching skills that established coaches have, and that fuel their businesses.

Your business is a seedling you will be watering, feeding, pruning, and protecting until it’s mature enough to feed you its fruit. And your clients are absolutely necessary for this.

So treat those who allow you the honor of coaching them as if they’re giving you something precious. Serve them the best you know how. Ask for feedback. Follow up with them in the future, to see how things went for them in the wake of your conversation.

Having a hard time finding someone who is a yes to coaching? Find out why, and what needs to change. if you have to, offer to pay them for the practice and the feedback. Why not! Becoming a coach was important enough for you to buy a book, invest your time, hire a teacher, or take a coaching program, right? So treat it as that important. Treat it like something you need to do.

If you already have a domain of expertise and you’re transitioning to coaching people in this area, share your knowledge. Write articles and publish them on Medium.com. Offer to be a guest on podcasts whose audiences you can serve well. Be visible with your expertise by being generous with it. This is another form of helping people for free.

When people are clamoring to work with you and pay you, your fruit tree is ready to start feeding you.

Adrienne is a Mindset and High Performance Coach with over 16 years of experience in the finance industry. She works with driven, successful people who feel burned out or not living up to their potential, get connected to their purpose, performs at their peak, and live with more freedom and joy.

She coaches on the proven program Thinking Into Results from the Proctor Gallagher Institute which has helped thousands of companies and individuals around the world improve their results.

How to start a coaching business: What is your best tip?

I would say my biggest piece of advice for starting a coaching business is to have a big goal and hold that vision.

You must have unwavering faith that you will achieve it and not let fear, doubt, or worry enter your mind.

Stu McLaren helps entrepreneurs generate more recurring revenue with membership sites.  As the former founder of the world’s #1 membership platform for WordPress, WishList Member, and now co-founder of Searchie.io he has had the chance to support over 70,000+ online membership sites. 

Through that experience, he gained a unique insight into the subtle membership nuances that produce massive results and shares them in his signature training called The Membership Experience.

How to start a coaching business: What is your best tip?

1). Become Known For Something Specific 

When you have a knee problem, who would you rather see… a general practitioner or a knee specialist?  A knee specialist, right?

What if you have a flooded basement, who would you rather have helped you… a general contractor or someone who specializes in water restoration and cleanup?

It’s obvious that as a consumer, we’d rather have the specialist helping.  This is precisely why as coaches, we will want to become known for something specific in our coaching business.  Because when you do, it becomes FAR easier to attract clients.  

So, what type of client will you be helping?  All parents or parents of newborns,  all dog owners, or people who own Labradoodles?  All business owners or people who own SaaS companies doing $10M+?

And then, what type of problem will you be helping them solve?

Get specific, and you’ll begin building momentum quickly.

That then leads me to the second tip…

2). Start Helping Someone Today!

When you’re just getting started, THE most powerful marketing asset you can have are the stories of people you have helped experience progress or some type of transformation.  This is precisely why you should look to start helping someone as soon as possible.

“But Stu, I’m just starting, who is going to hire me?”

Help someone for FREE!

When you narrow in who you serve and the transformation you help create, your next goal is to then find someone who fits that description.  And at the very least, look to work with them for free so that you can begin having the experience of refining your coaching style and building your portfolio of results.

Picture this… you’re going into a tattoo studio to get your first-ever tattoo.  Wouldn’t you want to see the tattoo artists’ work before allowing them to put something permanent on your body?

Of course!

The same is true for your coaching business.

People want to see that you’ve been able to do what you say you can do.  That’s why it’s SO important to start building your portfolio of client stories.  Your audience wants to see people just like themselves, who have had similar problems or challenges, and who have now experienced a transformation because of what you shared.

These stories will become your greatest marketing asset.  You will use them everywhere.  But you’ve got to start collecting them asap.  And the best way to start collecting them is to start helping someone like them right away… even if that’s for free.

Maureen Scanlon is the founder and CEO of Maureen Scanlon Life Coaching. She is an Award-winning Author, relationship expert, and professional speaker who helps individuals from young adults to seniors with their soul identity, self-confidence, and limiting beliefs about themselves. Maureen focuses her coaching on helping others discover who they really are when they are alone to expand their mind and experience life with exhilaration. She’s been named a Top 20 Coach by Lifecoach Code and Coaching Federation. Maureen has been featured on 3TV Good Morning Arizona, 3TV Your Life AZ, ABC15 Sonoran Living, Voyage Phoenix Magazine, and numerous podcast guest appearances and radio shows.

Her first book, “My Dog is More Enlightened Than I Am“ has won awards from Author Shout, a Top 12 book pick list from Spirited Woman, and National Indie Excellence Award with a 5 Star rating on Amazon.

Her 2nd book, “My Dog is My Relationship Coach”, has received multiple awards, including New York City Big Book Award, Reader Views, Az Authors Association, and Amazon 5 Star Best Seller.

How to start a coaching business: What is your best tip?

When starting a coaching business, here are some coaching tips to consider and really think about before starting:

1. What is my “why”? Is it something that has nudged me to help people? Have others come for advice and had success from what you’ve given? In coaching, it’s about the Outcome, not the Income. Although you can make a business/career out of it, focusing on becoming a millionaire Life Coach may not be the answer. You must be passionate about it. Consider asking yourself- “Would I do it for free?”

2. Get a Life Coach for yourself- Yes, start by learning what works. Find a mentor coach who can assist with how to be a good coach while also working to focus on healing yourself.

3. Find a NICHE!- I want to emphasize this one, as you will be best at coaching on what you have experienced and overcome in your own life. I believe this is why Life Coaching is more effective since we come from a place of empathy, knowing what our clients feel since we’ve been there.

Gerald is result-driven. He works as a performance coach and is active in advancing core public policy objectives on an international scale for large corporations in the field of energy efficiency. He writes a coaching blog at delve.mt/blog aimed at sharing insights on improving mindset & performance. He completed the Coaching Development Certificate of Professional Coaching Skills – an International Coaching Federation accredited training program in 2020 and is working his way towards the Associate Certified Coach credential.

How to start a coaching business: What is your best tip?

Before you do anything, ask yourself, ‘What do I want to do with this?‘ or ‘What am I doing this for?‘. 

Understand deeply and clearly what issue you want to add value to or are trying to solve. Ask yourself why you want to start a coaching business. If it’s just to make money it’s probably not going to be enough to sustain you, at least initially. 

1. Understand deeply and clearly what issue you want to add value to or are trying to solve. Ask yourself why you want to start a coaching business. If it’s just to make money it’s probably not going to be enough to sustain you, at least initially. 

2. My biggest tip is that there must be passion, purpose, and a personal ‘why‘ that needs to be identified upfront. 

3. Aspects of this ‘why’ will incrementally be satisfied along the coaching pathway you take. As you make progress as a coach, you will undoubtedly book regular wins that contribute to your initial ‘why’ like gradually filling in pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. 

4. Use these to propel you forward providing you with more energy and clarity as you progress. 

5. Don’t forget that YOUR coaching business is an extension of YOU as a person, your values, your reputation, and your personal capital. 

If you plan to start a coaching business, my view is that working on your ‘Why” upfront pays dividends every day!

Daniel Diaz is a speaker and life mastery coach with an acute focus on peak performance, mindset, and habit reform. His proprietary program serves entrepreneurs and purpose-driven individuals looking to excel in both achievement and fulfillment. Educated through Tony Robbins, Daniel has a unique way of helping his clients remove limiting beliefs, create patterns and habit changes, and execute a new set of actions that propel them into their best life. He is on a mission to help millions of people rediscover their inherent worth and step into their limitless possibilities. 

How to start a coaching business: What is your best tip?

Avoid suffering from INFObesity!

INFObesity can occur when you are getting advice from multiple sources and just keep storing the information without taking concise action. You will find yourself fat on suggestions and disconnected from your intuition.

Coaching is a beautiful, sacred practice, and no one can do what you do the way you do it. I urge coaches to lean into their gifts and stand tall in their power, creativity, and imagination. Today, there are thousands of ways to build a program, design a website, create a funnel, produce ads, run launches, start group programs, sell/produce products, and increase your visibility as an amazing 1:1 coach. With all the options and all the experts pointing you towards “what will work best,” a new coach can easily find themselves confused on which direction to go and in fear that a wrong choice will set them back. This is normal; you are exactly where you are supposed to be. Continue to master your craft, consistently put yourself out there and make yourself visible, and don’t be afraid to “fail” at something.

You will learn and grow by continuing to pursue your dream, anchored in the truth that YOU ARE HERE FOR A POWERFUL REASON! Trust your instincts and create what YOU feel best fits your coaching. You got this! 

Stacy S. Crawley is a dynamic and passionate Motivational Speaker and Empowerment Coach who’s adamant about impacting and transforming the lives of purpose-driven women all around the world by sharing her own personal trials and triumphs.

As a mom of four beautiful girls and a domestic violence survivor, Stacy is no stranger to experiencing low self-esteem, low self-confidence, negative self-talk, self-doubt, limiting beliefs, depression, and anxiety.  But that hasn’t kept her from boldly pursuing her purpose or becoming the woman God has called her to be.

Stacy does a great job of providing practical tips, strategies, and relevant personal life experiences to help her audiences and/or clients reclaim their power, ignite their confidence, and fearlessly share their unique gifts with the world.

How to start a coaching business: What is your best tip?

When starting a coaching business, it is important to keep a few things in mind

1. You must know who you are and walk in your power. Now, I totally understand that as coaches, we’re supposed to help guide our clients to discover and overcome things that are keeping them from reaching their goals. However, if you haven’t done the internal work on yourself to ensure that you’re as happy, whole, and healthy as you can be, it’s going to be difficult to acquire clients. Think of it this way, when you don’t know yourself, you lack the ability to see your worth, your value, and/or what transformation you can truly bring to someone else’s life. Yet, knowing who you allow you to develop the confidence and certainty you need to attract those dream clients that you desire to work with.  

2. It’s important to understand that this is not a “get rich quick” type of business. Becoming a coach, serving people, and helping them uncover and walk through the most vulnerable times of their lives should be purpose-driven and passion-filled. I’m a firm believer that we all have gifts, talents, and abilities that allow us to impact the lives of others around us, and coaching is definitely one of those, and it will take time to grow. Remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint. Enjoy the process and the journey. It can be so rewarding.

3. Lastly, don’t be afraid to go “all in.” Yes, it can be scary and most times we tend to overthink everything. However, I want to encourage you to feel the fear and do it anyway! There is someone out there waiting on you to show up as only you can. They’re waiting to hear your voice, your story, and how you can help transform their life. Will it be easy…heck no! But will it be worth it? Absolutely!! Remember, you got this! The world is waiting for you!

Edith Hamilton is an ICF-certified Executive Coach for CFOs. She earned her MBA at Columbia University and her CPCC at Co-Active Training Institute.  Edith has been coaching CFOs since 2016.  She is a Transformation-evoking Certified executive coach with boots-on-the-ground leadership experience in finance, operations, process improvement, growth, and marketing.

How to start a coaching business: What is your best tip?

The most important step in starting a coaching business is to clearly articulate your niche:  your “SMALLEST viable audience”, as marketing guru Seth Godin puts it.  Counter-intuitive, right?  Yet vitally important and powerfully effective.  I found Seth’s podcast series, “Start-Up School” before I created my website back when the only executives I worked with were those referred to me by PE firms, and my only marketing tool was LinkedIn.  Seth’s 15-episode series is transformational: check it out yourself.  

When you truly understand that “scarcity is the only thing worth paying for” (Episode 3), and that your time and unique combination of skills and experience are both limited and much in demand — in my case by CFOs, especially in their First 90 Days — it enables you to create laser-focused messaging.  Once your target audience is crystal-clear, writing content for a website or a blog becomes so much simpler.  Second-guessing simply melts away. Having committed to being the best coach for CFOs, I no longer felt the self-inflicted pressure to appeal to everyone. Each article I write and every social media post has a simple goal: to provide useful tips that can enrich finance leaders’ skills, even if they never hire me.

Once you experience this liberating internal shift yourself — trusting that the right leaders will find you, based on relevant keywords and valuable content on your website and blog posts, for example — you may be as amazed as I was to see how quickly Google can promote your pages to top spots for selected search terms.  You need never pursue business. Just as the CFOs I want to work with find me when they are ready to hire a coach, your tribe will find you also.  (Of course, I was quite strategic in developing my site:  using a research-based method to identify the most relevant words for URLs, titles, headers, meta-descriptions, and images.)   

Now, for you, the right marketing channel may be speaking engagements or direct outreach, or something entirely different.  Yet the same principles apply the more specific your niche, the more magnetic you will be.

Paula is a leadership coach. Her passion for driving performance through empowering teams and individuals has led her to a coaching path. As a coach, She expertly guides people to learn about themselves and the contexts they lead in.

After coaching with her, her clients find that they have more clarity in their partnerships with stakeholders, become more conscious leaders, and incorporate sustainable routines. She partners with ambitious leaders who want to rediscover their passion, activate change, and find solutions that work.

How to start a coaching business: What is your best tip?

These are the learnings of my own journey while setting up my coaching business. Never forget that this is an ongoing learning process.

Find your niche – Even though this might change further on the road, question yourself about who do you want to serve. This will help you to set the tone of communication to engage your future clients. Understand the content that will better resonate with them.
Create your community – People need to know about you. Who you are. How you can help them. Create and share content on social media, by my experience videos are very effective.
Seek support – Being an entrepreneur, especially in the beginning when you are doing it solo, it is crucial that you also have your own community, so you can have support, inspiration, and learning. Surround yourself with people that will help you grow. And help them to grow as well. Allow yourself to give and receive.
Time is needed – Things take time. Not everything happens when we want or expect to. Be gentle with yourself and be aware of this.
Trust the process – Specially on those days that we can’t see much hope, frustrations, and fears come to the surface. Everything will get better. It is your journey and you need to embrace it. I wrote in my journal this: “Things always get better!!! The journey may seem slow and you might lose faith but trust the process! ALWAYS!!! It happens every single time and you always forget.” So I can remember that in the past, everything worked out.

Starting a business is always an adventure. With ups and downs. But consistency is key. Choose to live this adventure with a smile on your face and excitement through each step. You are not alone. And you are a positive change for so many people!

Lindsay Stockley (She/Her) is a certified Business Coach and Consultant for Creative Entrepreneurs and leaders of creative and cultural organizations and has been Effecting positive changes through business and personal development. She is passionate about helping creative entrepreneurs thrive in their businesses and life. 

Before becoming a coach, her career spans 20+ years as a Creative Producer in the arts & entertainment sectors. She has an MA in Cultural Management, Foundation Certificate in Psychotherapy and Counselling, Certificate in Coaching, and a Diploma in Small Business Coaching (Current). 

As a natural problem solver with an empathetic approach, she helps creative entrepreneurs and leaders to expand their businesses whilst maintaining their well-being.  She is creative and intuitive, which helps her support clients to find bespoke solutions to meet their needs. 

She aids creative entrepreneurs and business leaders to expand and manage their businesses, unlock their full potential in their life and business, identify stress points and develop strategies to tackle them, get to the bottom of the causes of stress and burnout, and challenge and remove limiting beliefs enabling the client and their business to thrive, provide tools to develop realistic goals and strategies, provide accountability to achieve strategies and goals and enable them to identify their individual path for personal and business growth.

How to start a coaching business: What is your best tip?

Starting a coaching business can be overwhelming. 

Like any new business venture, there are many things to think about. From registering your business to setting up systems and business planning it’s hard to know where to start. For new coaches starting their business, their focus should be on the quality of their coaching. 

Being an awesome coach will get you far. 

Getting robust training and a recognized accreditation will give you and your prospective clients confidence. You will feel able to support clients with their challenges. 

Having accreditation will enable you to promote your services amongst other well-experienced coaches. 

Your clients will recommend you to other people. 

You will get more clients. 

No matter how good your business plan is, if the product (you and your life coaching service) is not up to scratch, then you’re going to get nowhere fast.

After 2 years of practicing coaching and completing several accredited coaching courses, I had a clearer idea of my coaching niche. I knew who I wanted to coach and how best I could do it. I knew what I wanted to achieve with my coaching so I could write a clearer business plan. My plan informed the systems I needed to make sure my business worked how I wanted. 

Once you have the practice, qualifications, and accreditation your coaching business will develop over time in the way you need it to. 

Make sure your clients are getting the best service by asking yourself: 

1. How can I provide a better service to my clients? 

2. What can I provide clients that sets me apart from other coaches? 

3. How will I know my clients have had a great experience? 

4. How can I make it easier for clients to recommend me to others?

Like all the best things in life building, your coaching business will take time, patience, and perseverance. Confidence in your skills and knowing you really help your clients to thrive will help you stay on track and work towards your vision.  

Marisa Zalabak, CEO & Founder of Open Channel Culture, Educational Psychologist, Adaptive Leadership Coach, Organizational Culture Consultant, Researcher, Author, TEDx & Keynote Speaker, and AI Ethicist.

She has over 3 decades of experience with expertise across sectors and disciplines; in business, education, and organizational culture.

Marisa currently serves as a co-chair of a committee expanding global AI Ethics education with IEEE.org, the world’s largest professional organization advancing technology for humanity. She is a contributing author of IEEE’s recommended Standards for the Ethical Design of Artificial Intelligence as well as a co-author of proposed approaches for transdisciplinary collaboration in the development and mobilization of AI.

A certified member of MIT’s U.Lab at the Presencing Institute, Marisa serves on global leadership teams for the advancement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Peacemaking.

How to start a coaching business: What is your best tip?

First, consider a pre-start. What I mean by this is understanding the foundation of what you’re offering, What are you qualified to do? What is the purpose of others learning or receiving it? How is it aligned with what you really want to do? For example, you may be highly qualified to teach a particular skill but (in your heart) don’t want to do that anymore. Consider what you have to offer that makes you happy while you share it. Remember that a sustainable professional life is personal.

Second, commit yourself to learning every single day. Beginning anything new requires a learning curve. And that’s fantastic! If there are parts of the learning curve that you love, go for it. If not, where and how you can enlist support (e.g. a graphic designer)? Allocate whatever resources you have so that you can spend time improving your own skills —skills, and abilities that feed your mind, your heart, and your purpose.

Third, gather people who will support you in good times and in tough times. No mindset is foolproof protection from feeling worn down or self-doubt. Gather people around you that will help you believe in your value when you hit low moments, be honest with you when you’re off course, and are first to celebrate with you in the good times.

Beyond those foundations, the work is spent networking and reaching out on a regular basis. Not, 100 per day, but 10 per day with genuine conversations learning by listening about what people need.

The last thing. Honesty and responsibility. This includes a willingness to let go of what is not working. We can all spend a lot of time invested in an idea or an old way of thinking. Find a way to reflect on what matters…and yet, also a warning to be careful here. A new mastermind, coach, or consultant is not a guarantee. Check to see if the beliefs of potential clients are aligned with yours…and ask them if their beliefs are aligned with you.

Conclusion

We appreciate all the successful coaches for taking the time and share their best tips for starting a coaching business. We hope these amazing responses will help new coaches to build, launch and grow their coaching businesses.

What is your favourite tip and why?

Feel free to share it in the comments below.