With the pandemic changing lives and disrupting routines everywhere, it’s no surprise that many people are deciding to change up how they work. Remote work has become more accepted and commonplace than ever before, and people are ditching their unpleasant and unrewarding jobs to try to make a better life working from home.
For people with a passion for helping others, the pandemic could have some silver linings to offer.
While not everyone wants to make the effort to better themselves during this strange time (and who can blame them?), others are taking time and energy previously spent on commuting or time at the office to improve their lives in some way.
And that’s where a life coach comes in.
What Does a Life Coach Do?
In simple terms, a life coach is a wellness professional who specializes in helping people make progress or positive changes in their lives — either for personal fulfillment, better health, an improved financial situation, or any number of other reasons.
A life coach works with clients to teach them how to meet challenges, overcome obstacles, and meet their goals, whatever they might be. A life coach helps their client identify their strengths and weaknesses and use that knowledge to empower themselves.
For moms working from home, becoming a life coach could be the perfect answer — it’s a way to use your own experience and expertise to help others one-on-one, while being your own boss and creating your own wellness programs for others.
And one of the best things about being a life coach: anyone can do it!
How to Become a Life Coach
Decide on a Niche
If you want to explore the idea of becoming a life coach, your first consideration should be finding a specific niche. While “general wellness” coaches do exist, there are some benefits to having your own niche:
- You can market more effectively to clients
- You can offer unique services to a specific audience
- Specializing boosts client confidence that you have expertise in that niche.
Examples of life coach niches include career, business, finance, personal development, relationships, health and wellness, and recovery coaching.
Life coaches in the field of business work with everyone from small local businesses to Fortune 500 companies — many executives turn to executive coaches to help them develop relationships, build trust, and boost their employees’ morale.
Choose Your Ideal Client
Although it might seem counterintuitive, you probably don’t want clients from every demographic, regardless of age, gender, or background. If you’ve picked a niche for yourself, you’ve already narrowed your potential clientele down to a certain set of the population.
By narrowing even further, you can aim your energy and marketing efforts more directly at your ideal clients, whether they’re entrepreneurs, families, college students, teenagers, single moms, college students, or any number of others.
Get Certified
As we said before, the good news about becoming a life coach is that anyone can be one. The bad news is, anyone can be one. There are a lot of untrained life coaches out there, and while it’s possible to gain a following and do brisk business as a life coach without any credentials, a certification course can help you add credibility to your title and boost client confidence.
There are a variety of life coaching courses available, with their own prerequisites, prices, and curriculum. Some of them can be studied for and taken online, so moms can get their credentials from home without undue effort.
Choose Your Work Style
Many life coaches do well for themselves working online-only, while others prefer the energy of working in person.
If you do decide to work in person with clients and work from home, it may prove useful to demarcate an area of your home as a consultation room — or, if finances allow, build on a room. Either way, having a space that’s just for client work will further your reputation with clients.
Market Your Business
Not everyone loves marketing, but if you’re going to run your own business and transition to a work-at-home career, there’s not much avoiding it. Set up a website and a social media presence to start promoting your business online.
Many life coaches create videos and other types of content that showcase their services, share useful information, and provide tips and advice.
You can also leave your business card or leaflets at doctors, wellness centers and other healthcare providers and ask them to refer patients to you.
Diversify Your Offerings
One major way to help your work-at-home career take off: passive income! You can write and sell books and offer subscription services for online courses to give people a taste of what you do.
You can also diversify your services by offering group sessions, assembling a corporate program for employers, starting a support group, or organizing monthly, quarterly, or yearly events.
Have you thought about becoming a life coach? What work at home career is most appealing to you?
