A lifestyle coach motivates you to bring overall lifestyle change for the betterment.
Lifestyle coaching is a buzzing niche in the coaching industry. If you are planning to be one but not sure then I can help you with it.
Are you interested in making people a better version of themselves?
Do you want to bring small changes to people’s lives?
Can you help a person quit smoking and improve his or her life?
When I come across such questions all I feel is people need proper lifestyle coaching. If you resonate with what I feel then you can make a mark in the coaching space.
Do you want to find out the major cause of your life coaching clients lifestyle change setbacks? You have to follow a holistic approach to find those.
So, what is this holistic approach?
I can term it as a lifestyle coaching and the one who performs it is a lifestyle coach.
To understand it better, let me take you into depth.
In Brief : How To Become A Lifestyle Coach: The Ultimate Guide
- Be Patient As A Lifestyle Coach – Essential for handling frustrated and self-destructive clients, patience is key to building trust and helping clients overcome challenges.
- Have Empathy Towards Your Clients – Lifestyle coaches should empathize, not sympathize, with clients facing low self-esteem, fostering a caring connection to understand and address their unique challenges.
- Learn To Review And Give Feedback To Your Clients – Coaches must review client progress, providing honest feedback to address issues and ensure clients stay on track with lifestyle changes.
- Develop Strong Listening Skills – Lifestyle coaches need to be patient listeners, understanding clients’ problems and identifying the root causes to provide effective coaching solutions.
- Observe The Problems As A Lifestyle Coach – Observing and understanding clients’ mental, spiritual, physical, and emotional well-being is crucial for offering tailored lifestyle coaching to address specific issues.
- Form Strategies For Your Clients – Lifestyle coaches should develop customized plans and strategies, setting achievable targets to help clients overcome various lifestyle issues.
- Focus On Your Instincts As A Lifestyle Coach – Relying on gut feelings, coaches can develop instincts by thoroughly knowing their clients, enabling them to make informed decisions for effective coaching.
- Create Great Results Through Positive Attitude – A positive attitude is crucial for building trust and encouraging clients, focusing on what they can achieve rather than limitations.
- Be An Energetic Lifestyle Coach – Maintaining high energy levels helps coaches inspire and motivate clients, creating an enthusiastic atmosphere that positively impacts mental, spiritual, and physical well-being.
- Build Good Communication Skills – Effective communication is key to successful coaching, ensuring clients understand guidance and facilitating the achievement of desired targets.
Who is a lifestyle coach?
Have you seen a sculptor or a painter? What do they do?
The one who molds the solid objects into an art form is a sculptor. A painter is someone who gives colors to the canvas.
You must have understood what I want to explain.
A lifestyle coach is one who transforms their clients’ desires into reality. It is not only about improving the health of people but helping them overcome everyday problems.
You as a lifestyle coach need to bring positive changes in your client’s life from the current position.
I would like to give an example of an athlete who gets trained under expert coaches. The athlete gets training in every area including sports, health, emotional level and more.
A lifestyle coach is also a mixture of the trainer, therapist, and nutritionist.
What can you do as a lifestyle coach?
Understand the physical, mental or emotional and spiritual levels of a person
Build synergy between soul, mind, and body
Find out skills and dreams of clients
Focus on goals and overcome the challenges of clients either fitness goals, personal goals or any other specific goals.
I, as a coach focus to balance the physical, mental and spiritual well being of my clients to the next level. You must be thinking why is that required, right?
Imagine a tricycle. Out of three wheels, two are working fine.
But can a person go too far in this case?
No.
Don’t you think if a person is not spiritually fulfilled, can he or she achieve their dreams?
Hence, a lifestyle coach makes a person strong in three areas- physical health, mental strength, and spiritual well-being.
But wait don’t mix this with a health coach.
Do you feel it is the same?
No.
Let me share the difference.
How a lifestyle coach is different from a health coach?
A lifestyle coach makes a change in various areas of a person’s life. Here he focuses on what truly matters to his clients. He motivates clients to make positive lifestyle changes.
A lifestyle coach is more focussed to guide his clients on the overall change in the lifestyle.
For example, if a client is diagnosed with diabetes what kind of lifestyle changes he or she should make to be fit.
On the other hand, a health coach comes from a different specialization. The coach builds strategies for correcting the health of his or her client. He may suggest exercise and diet but not more than that.
The lifestyle coach works on an individual’s life. Have you seen a cheerleader? That is how the lifestyle coach motivates. You can empower your clients when they are demotivated. You can work on their general well-being as a companion.
Health coaches usually expect people to do the task. They do not pay attention to their client’s lifestyle doubts.
Will a client overcome the problem if in doubt?
As a lifestyle coach, you slowly work on these doubts and beliefs. You erase the roadblocks coming in the way of your client’s overall health.
Top skills to be a successful lifestyle coach
I am sure you are ready to be a successful coach and must have chalked out your plan.
I will share a few skills which are very important and will help you go a long way.
These skills will not only help you to grow as a lifestyle coach but also as a human being.
Check out the below skills and in case you miss any of the skills then you can work on it to develop it.
1. Be patient as a lifestyle coach
Have you found people getting frustrated? At times they may become self-destructive. I have clients who get irritated too soon. How to deal with them?
You cannot lose such clients, right? They need your help. What can you do? You need a good amount of patience to handle them. Patience is the key to develop trust in your clients.
2. Have empathy towards your clients
Many clients whom I meet, often have low self-esteem. They lack self-confidence. As a lifestyle coach, you should not sympathize with them.
All you need to do is empathize. I put myself in the shoes of my clients to understand what are their problems. For example, you may have a client who wants to quit smoking but has never succeeded. You need to know if his method was right or not. If you put the efforts to know, they will feel you care about them.
3. Learn to review and give feedback to your clients
Do you find clients not following your instructions? Are you not finding any progress in them?
In such conditions, you need to review what is going wrong. Do not hold back. Instead, give blunt feedback or a reality check.
4. Develop strong listening skills
You as a coach have to develop strong listening skills. You should be patient enough to understand the problems of your clients.
You as a lifestyle coach have to find out the root cause and it’s one of many roles. Hence, without listening to their doubts and beliefs, you cannot coach them. So, be a good listener to your clients. Then you can give the best solution to their problems.
5. Observe the problems as a lifestyle coach
While listening to your client’s problems you need to observe what is bothering your clients. For example, your client is gaining weight even though doing exercise. Find out if the person is in some kind of stress or eating the wrong food. How much amount of calories he or she is consuming? Is the person going to the gym regularly? How is he or she dealing with stress?
You need to find out about the mental, spiritual, physical and emotional well being of your clients.
When you find the answers above, you can give better lifestyle coaching.
6. Form strategies for your clients
Your client may face various lifestyle issues. You need to understand and form plans to overcome those issues. A well-prepared strategy in the form of weekly or monthly targets can help your clients to achieve their set targets.
7. Focus on your instincts as a lifestyle coach
You may have made plans for your clients. But will all of them succeed? No. You sometimes work through your gut feelings. Develop those instincts to heal your clients.
You must be thinking how to develop instincts, right? As a coach, you have to know your clients in and out. Once you know your clients thoroughly you will know what will work for them.
8. Create great results through positive attitude
Your attitude matters the most.
Will your clients trust you, if your approach is negative? Do not tell your clients what they cannot do. Tell them what they can do. For this, you need to first think positively.
9. Be an energetic lifestyle coach
The way I turn my prospective clients into long term clients is due to the energy inside me. Your high energy level can make your clients feel enthusiastic about their goals.
Have you seen how the gym instructor works? The person is full of energy which passes on to others in the gym. The whole atmosphere turns energetic. It improves the ability of a person to deal with mental, spiritual and physical health.
10. Build good communication skills
Do you know what may happen if things are miscommunicated? It will lead to negative results for you and your clients. So, the most important is to communicate well with your clients.
I have many clients whom I try to explain in their style. This way clients understand things well and achieve their desired targets.
Who are your prospective clients as a lifestyle coach?
You can look for clients depending upon your expertise.
Some people want to change their lifestyle or improve their mental health. They can approach a lifestyle coach.
Do you still want to know who to market your lifestyle coaching skills?
Let me list down a few:
Corporates need lifestyle coaches
These days the busy lifestyle of people affects their overall health. You as a lifestyle coach can improve their overall well-being. For instance, you can explain a few ways to take out time.
People living a monotonous or stressful life
In today’s busy world people need a lifestyle change. They always have questions like-
What new can they do? Which activities they should try to remove stress? So, as a lifestyle coach, you can help them explore new things.
Lifestyle coaches can help patients too
Patients suffering from different diseases need someone to guide them for a lifestyle change. You can coach such people to improve their physical, mental and emotional health.
Do you need certification to be a lifestyle coach?
Will people follow you if you do not have a certificate?
They may or they may not.
So do you think a certificate is necessary for a lifestyle coach?
Do you feel a certified coach is trustworthy?
As per my experience, you can be a lifestyle coach if you have an interest and passion for it.
In case you are not confident you can take up a coaching certification program.
Certification Programs for a lifestyle coach
Courses like human resource management and psychology-related programs can provide you certificates along with skills like:
How to motivate people?
Better communication techniques
Listening to people
Logical thinking
For instance, you can join workshops where practical skills are taught. This can give you both knowledge and certificate.
You may think if you have skills why to choose such programs?
It is not mandatory to join certification programs. You can join to increase your clients and earn credibility post such programs.
How much can you earn as a lifestyle coach?
Now before you get inside the shoes of a lifestyle coach, find out how much you can earn.
Does a lifestyle coach earn high bucks?
What is the income of a typical lifestyle coach?
There is no doubt that lifestyle coaching can help you earn a good amount of money. But there is no specific formula for it.
Why?
This is because it requires time and effort. For instance, a lifestyle coach begins his task from the bottom level. He prepares the website and charges $20 for a weekly session of two-hours. But this is not where he stops. He builds his career on it. After a few years, his fees can scale to $2000 per session. This is the way any lifestyle coaching succeeds.
What tricks you can use to earn more?
Based on your success track, you can work with a few high paying clients. These few people can pay you more. How? You need to make them your long-term client.
Hence, when you begin lifestyle coaching, earnings would be $25000 per year. But after a few years, you can earn up to $60000. After proper experience and a good client base, earnings can reach above $80000.
Do you know you can earn through packages also?
Offer packages to the client where you can provide client quick chat support. This can start working with 3 or 4 sessions in a month with a rate of $500. Imagine even if you get 7 to 8 clients, you can create a good income for yourself.
If you know how to become a great coach, then earning is not that tough.
Top marketing strategies to get coaching clients fast as a lifestyle coach
Have you started to dream of earning high income after the above discussion?
Yes?
But you need to chalk out strategies to earn more.
You may fail initially and get confused. However, your patience and hard work can give the results you want.
Now, you must be thinking-
What strategies can you create? How to form them? Will they help in getting new clients? Are those strategies within your budget?
To answer all your doubts, let me list down the tools which can work for you.
1. Start as a lifestyle coach now, do not wait for a thousand followers
The moment you decide to be a lifestyle coach, you have to start working as one. Don’t wait for followers or subscribers for your programs.
Initially, you may have to provide your coaching program for free or at a discounted price. But this will help you to build your brand. Try to make your promotional offer as attractive as possible.
Good offers will attract more prospective clients for you.
Are you convinced?
Great. Now you must be wondering what more you can do.
Let us go much deeper.
2. Address group of people as a successful lifestyle coach
I have done this in various regions. All you have to do is choose a topic, select a proper place and present your coaching program.
Ask them what problems they have. Answer it through your examples.
Are you worried about the budget?
Some resources can help you plan up your event free of cost.
If not your event, then be a part of some other event as a speaker.
As long as you select the right venue, gaining clients is easy.
And what I mean by choosing a proper place for the event?
Does it mean whether the event place falls into your niche area?
Yes, you need to select a place as per your niche. This will help you to connect with your prospective clients.
3. Market yourself as a lifestyle coach on social media
Yes, you read it right. Set up your account on every social media platform. Show your name as a certified lifestyle coach.
Do you need to manage it all at the same time? No.
To begin with, you just need to find out where your ideal clients are. Promote yourself through those two to three places.
Deliver value to your clients.
It is good to engage with them and give advice. Stay visible on social media. Treat it as your offline networking medium.
4. Offer free introductory sessions
Initially, you can offer free introductory sessions for 10 minutes. In those sessions, you can explain to people how they can spend time with their families to achieve a better lifestyle.
Give them direction. Share some thought-provoking experience with your audience. Why?
Don’t you feel people will engage with you more?
Yes, your experiences will help them to connect well.
How will you know your session is creating a buzz?
Check if people are asking more questions. This means you are gaining your clients. Later, you can move to one on one coaching with them.
5. Network with other coaches, who are not lifestyle coach
Why you should approach them?
Well, they are not experts in an area where you are. Maybe they would have clients who may also need a lifestyle coach. Thus, client reference can add more clients to your new business. Both of you will have a win-win situation. What is essential here? It is to build the right connections.
6. Publish guest posts related to lifestyle coaching topics
Will this help you in getting clients?
Yes of course. You can use the strategy to grab new subscribers.
How you can achieve it?
You need to research and make a list of websites where you can publish as a guest post. Once the list is ready, contact the websites and publish your articles as a guest post.
You can find free as well as paid guest posting options online. Select as per your budget and try publishing on different websites with high traffic.
7. Develop your website and publish your blogs
Build your blog and publish interesting content for your website audience. Interesting and engaging content with the right keywords can rank your webpage on top.
The high ranking of your webpage on Google will bring traffic across the globe. This traffic can be further converted into customers.
8. Become the lifestyle coach people would want to hire
I practice what I preach.
What people are looking for in a lifestyle coach?
Find that. Try to develop those qualities in yourself.
I often improve myself to meet the needs of my clients. I have to share the same vision that my client has. How I am working towards my goal? If I know that, it would be easier for me to explain it to my clients. You have to follow the same strategy.
9. Connect to your clients via video conferencing
How to coach when you or your clients are traveling? The best way is to go for videoconferencing. This builds a live connection. It is a much better tool than a telephonic conversation.
When I have less time, I do one on one video conferencing. I can read the facial expression of my client. Also, it is an easy tool for group talks. This way your client may feel that you are always available.
10. Diversify and create new coaching products
What more can you give to the people? Say for example you can create your online courses or coaching products. This can give you clients as well as part-time earning opportunities.
Think about it. Diversify and explore the opportunities as a lifestyle coach.
So now that you have learned the basic guidelines of how to become a lifestyle coach, it is time for you to implement them.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
What is a lifestyle coach?
A lifestyle coach helps you create the life you want to live. They help you identify your goals and develop a plan to achieve them. They can provide support and guidance, as well as accountability, to help you stay on track.
What does a lifestyle coach do?
A lifestyle coach helps you set and achieve your goals. They can help you with everything from developing a routine to changing your habits. They can also provide support and guidance throughout the process.
How much do lifestyle coaches charge?
The cost of working with a lifestyle coach varies depending on the coach and the services they offer. However, most coaches charge between $50 and $200 per hour.
How is a lifestyle coach different from a health coach?
Lifestyle coaching is broader in scope than health coaching. While health coaches may focus on helping clients to manage specific health conditions, lifestyle coaches work with clients to achieve a range of goals, including but not limited to improving their physical health, mental wellbeing, and financial situation.
How to be a lifestyle coach?
The best way to get started is to take some training courses in lifestyle coaching. There are a number of reputable providers of such courses, and many of them offer online and in person training sessions. This will give you the skills and knowledge you need to start helping your clients lead healthier, happier lives.
Good one! This is the best guide for lifestyle coach