Is Life Coaching a Good Career Choice?

Learn about the booming industry of life coaching: what it is and how it works. Find out if it's the right career choice for you.

Is Life Coaching a Good Career Choice?

The life coaching industry is booming, and there are countless ways to apply coaching in whatever you're passionate about. Whether you want to start your own business, bring coaching concepts to your team at work, or apply coaching with your students, experience and time on the job are the two most important factors affecting a life coach's salary, followed by geographical location. Most life coaches have no benefits; medical or dental insurance, or retirement funds, unless they are personally funded. The majority of life coaches are women and represent 74 percent of all coaching professionals.

Job satisfaction is high, as most life coaches like their jobs, flexible schedules, the opportunity to work with many different clients from all areas of life, etc. Life coaching is a fairly new profession, and those who pursue it come from a variety of backgrounds. They are often successful people with college degrees who have succeeded in another vocation. They can be executives looking for a career change, housewives looking for a satisfying part-time job, or psychologists who want to use training skills in their practice.

Desperation is what drives many people to life coaching. It's an easy label to put on. If you simply call yourself a life coach and don't take the time to position yourself and educate yourself about what a coach you are, it's not good. Even more, people move to life coaching opportunities when they have established a job as a therapist or psychologist.

Good listeners who take incredible notes or have steel-trap memories can thrive juggling clients like a life coach. Whether you pursue a formal education in a field related to life coaching or not, a study conducted by the International Coaching Federation (ICF) reveals that 89% of people within this occupation receive some type of accredited training through the programs they offer. This requires 10 hours of mentor training and 40 hours of continuing education training, as well as resource development. John Kim, LMFT, pioneered an online coaching movement called JRNI Coaching years ago when he began working in an unconventional way. The truth is that you have to learn paid advertising if you want to make a BIG impact and I see many times that coaches hire other “high-end” coaches to help them make 6 figures in 6 months and simple things like a retargeting pixel on facebook will be missing from their sales page.

Becoming a life coach involves continuing education, completing specialized training, and completing certification requirements. The salary of life coaches generally depends on their specialty, type of employment, level of education, certification, and geographical location. After doing more research and talking to her, I thought life coaching used my natural skills such as good communication, albeit in different ways. However, there are agencies that provide such certification, such as the International Coaching Association (IAC) and the International Federation of Coaches (ICF). Life coaches are generally required to have knowledge on a variety of topics and can work in a variety of areas, such as schools, gyms, hospitals, day surgery centers, private practices, long-term care centers, and government agencies. Today it's not uncommon to see life coaches from all types of professionals and professional backgrounds such as teaching, healthcare, human resources, police and military counseling and therapy.

If not set up on your own there are a number of companies and agencies that employ life coaches. That's the smartest thing to do but some life coaches may not or they realize it when they can't help a client.