Free PDF: How to build your dream coaching business that frees you from the 9-5

How to Become a Coach in 2025

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Dreaming of becoming a coach, but not sure where to start? 

I remember feeling the same way. I wanted to start a coaching career, help people with my unique gifts and skills, and have a bigger impact. But I felt stuck in my unfulfilling corporate job. But four months later, I found myself handing in my resignation letter with a 6-figure coaching business.

Want to know how I did it and you can, too? Here’s how to become a coach in 2025. 

How to become a coach – checklist:

🚀 Before we jump in, want to learn the steps not just how to become a coach…but build a profitable coaching business that lets you quit your 9-5? Here’s how I grew a seven-figure coaching business in less than a year.

What is coaching? 

Coaching is a professional relationship between a coach and an individual or a team that helps people achieve specific goals or improve skills, performance, or personal development. Coaches offer guidance, accountability, and structured feedback.

And coaching can have a big impact. 

The market is expected to grow to a $11.7 billion market by 2032 and currently, the estimated global revenue from coaching is $4.56 billion. Coaches also help their clients get results; most coaching clients want to repeat the process of working with a coach, while coaching clients improve their skills and organizations that work with coaches report higher revenue. Business leaders like CEOs for Apple and Google work with coaches

Take a look at this short video where I share more about what coaching is:

But who can coach? Let’s find out. 

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6-Figure Coaching Business so you can achieve more freedom!

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What qualifications do you need to be a coach?

Coaching is an unregulated industry and you don’t need any specific qualifications to qualify as a coach. So you don’t need licenses or coaching certifications. 

(There are exceptions to this rule. Some coaching niches mainly in the health coaching space require you to fulfill certain criteria.)

It’s MUCH more important that you help your clients get results. You need relevant experience to coach. Take a therapist or a matchmaker who decides to become a relationship coach or an executive who starts a leadership coaching business. 

Or myself – I don’t have an MBA or a business coaching certification, but I’ve built businesses for the past decade. To this date, I’ve helped thousands of people start their coaching businesses and a certification wouldn’t have helped me deliver a better service. 

Instead, my experience did, so that my clients get these types of results:  

Client testimonial (Carol)

Being a great coach is something you learn along the way. As a coach, you can ALWAYS become better. A certification won’t do that for you.

Quote by Luisa Zhou

However, if you know you want to become certified, I recommend that you take a look at what the International Coach Federation (ICF) is offering.

I talk more about qualifications here: 

What skills do you need to be a coach? 

Great coaches have a mix of skills that help them support their clients, while building their own business. While these are skills I see the most successful coaches have, they are learnable. You can learn them as you build your business – and the sooner you start, the faster you’ll get there. 

  • Experience: You need experience in what you’re coaching on, whether those are skills you’ve picked up at work or outside of work. 
  • Integrity: One of the core characteristics of a good coach is to be in integrity, do what you say you will do, and always have your clients’ best interest in mind. 
  • Resilience: Becoming a coach takes work, so you need to have a mindset that helps you overcome challenges and failures. 
  • Communication: The best coaches are great listeners, ask insightful questions, and are skilled communicators, who say what clients need to hear – not what they want to hear. 

Decide on the type of coach you want to be

Every coach needs a niche to start selling their services. If you offer a solution to a specific problem and audience, you’ll be far more successful than if you try to offer a solution to everyone. 

Quote by Luisa

There are plenty of coaching niches out there. Decide on what niche you want to focus on by looking at your experience and skills. For instance, you’re already getting paid to use your skills in your job – those are skills you could potentially use to start your own coaching business. 

That’s what I did. When I started my first coaching business, I used skills I had acquired in my day job (paid advertising) to help small business owners grow their businesses. By using a skill I already had, I was able to quickly establish my reputation and grow my business to six figures in four months. 

Need more ideas? Here are some of the most common types of coaches

Become a life coach 

A life coach helps people improve their lives in different ways. But life coaching as a niche is too broad and general. Not that many will pay a premium price for someone to coach them without having any specific goal in mind. 

That’s why you should define a life coaching niche you want to start. For instance, life design coaching or empowerment coaching are two very specific niches.  

Want to learn more? Read this in-depth guide on how to become a life coach.

Get the Ultimate Guide

for building a
6-Figure Coaching Business so you can achieve more freedom!

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Become a career coach 

Career coaching is booming. And if you’re passionate about helping people advance in their careers, this can be the coaching niche for you. Take my client Emily, who used her recruiting career to pivot into a career coaching career. Or Anna, who was a top manager and now helps others climb the corporate ladder.

Want to start your own career coaching business? Read this in-depth guide. 

Become a mindset coach

If you love helping others improve their mindset and confidence, mindset coaching could be something for you. A mindset coach helps people break their old thought-patterns and reinstate new and transformative beliefs. People might be stuck in their relationships, money, jobs… And a mindset coach helps them overcome those blocks. 

My client Spencer used the same skills she had used in her 9-5 to transition into a mindset coaching business – while earning 3X more in the process.

Here’s how to become a mindset coach. 

Become a business coach

Have you started your own successful business and want to help others do the same? In that case, becoming a business coach is a possibility. To build a coaching practice in this coaching field, you need to have experience building other businesses successfully in the past. After all, you can’t really make a real difference without having done it yourself.

Use this guide to become a business coach.

Become an executive coach 

An executive coach helps senior managers, executives, and CEOs become better leaders and achieve their goals. Executive coaches have often been in leadership positions themselves, something that is required for this type of coaching.  

Here’s more on how to become an executive coach.

Become a health and wellness coach 

Health coaching is one of the fastest growing coaching industries. As a health and wellness coach, you help your clients stay health. There are plenty of sub-niches in this niche, including coaches who help their clients relieve stress, stop smoking, eat healthier, lose weight, or become more toned. 

For instance, my client David uses herbs to help people get healthy. Or Adrianne, who is a registered nutritionist and helps people eat better.

Want to learn more about starting a health coaching business? Read my guide here. 

Become a sports coach 

A sports coach helps athletes to improve their fitness, performance, mindset, and skills. Sports coaches are often employed by schools, universities, fitness centers, and sports clubs to work with individuals or teams. Sports coaches often need to have a license or fulfill educational requirements, especially if they work for the government. 

To learn how to find YOUR niche with just one sentence, take a look at this short video:

Get coaching education

There is no education or training requirement for most coaches. You need relevant experience, though. 

However, you can get a certification. Many coaches work with business coaches or take other training programs, such as business training courses for coaches. My own program Employee to Entrepreneur, ETE, helps coaches build their own businesses from scratch. 

And if you want to get certified, then join a certification program that’s accredited by the ICF or another credible accreditation organ. Health coach certifications are often accredited by the National Board for Health and Wellness Coaching (NBHWC).

The ICF offers three certification levels: 

  • Associate Certified Coach (ACC): 60 hours of education and 100 hours of coaching 
  • Professional Certified Coach (PCC): 125 hours of education and 500 hours of coaching 
  • Master Certified Coach (MCC): PCC credential and 200 hours of education and 2,500 hours of coaching 

Gain coaching experience 

You learn how to coach by coaching others. Many certification programs include requirements for coaching hours. However, if you don’t get certified, you can start coaching on your own.

The best way to do so is to offer a lower-paid package so that it becomes a win-win for you and your client. You get to practice your coaching skills, help your clients get results, and ultimately get testimonials from them that help you reach new clients.

Your clients get to work with you at a lower rate, while getting a lot of support from you. Learn how to coach here.

While there are different coaching styles (positive psychology, transformational, autocratic coaching, and so on), I’m a fan of a coaching philosophy I call “coach-sulting” – a mix of coaching and consulting. 

Traditional, socratic coaching focuses on asking open-ended questions, coach-sultants ask those questions and help clients using their own experience. This approach helps your clients get results faster and teach them how to get those results on their own.

Market your coaching business 

You need to get the word out about your coaching business. Marketing your coaching business doesn’t have to be complicated – and it shouldn’t. Pick one or two marketing strategies and focus on those until you’ve found your first few clients.

I started out in Facebook groups and then added on my own Facebook group, as well as Facebook ads. Your strategies depend on where your clients hang out. 

A few options are: 

  • Referrals: Ask your network if anyone needs or knows of someone who needs your services. When I first started coaching, I got a few clients by asking people I had previously helped if they needed more support. 
  • Social media: Use a platform where your clients hang out, whether that’s Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Reddit. Read more about getting coaching clients on social media here
  • Podcasts: Leverage other people’s audiences and get interviewed on podcasts in your niche.

There are plenty of other marketing strategies, like speaking, attending events, or doing joint partnerships. In this video I talk you through the steps:

FAQ: How to become a coach

Can coaches make good money?

Yes, coaching can be highly profitable. The average coach makes $67,800, according to ICF. However, your income depends on you and there are plenty of coaches who make six figures and beyond.

You can start charging $1,500-$2,000 for your first package and work yourself up to $5,000-$10,000. And as you have low overhead, most of your income is profit. You can then scale your business with group coaching and online courses. 

What do you need to do to be a coach?

To be a coach, you don’t need anything else than experience in what you coach. You can get certified, but in most niches that’s not a requirement. You also don’t need a website or advanced marketing strategies, like paid advertising. Instead, find your clients organically, through referrals or social media. 

How do you start a career in coaching? 

The easiest way to start a career in coaching is to research your niche based on your unique skills and gifts. Offer coaching at a lower rate and build up your skills. Once you earn double what you’re earning at your day job, you can go full time with your coaching business. 

🚀 Want a FULL guide on the exact steps I took to build my coaching business in less than a year? Read it here!

What’s next? 

Now you know how to become a coach and build a truly fulfilling career. You can connect your work with your purpose, make an impact, and help others live their best lives. 

However, there’s only so much I can include in an article about growing a coaching business. After all, it took me years of trial and error to figure it out on my own.

But once I did figure it out, I grew my business to six figures in four months. It wasn’t luck – I had created a proven process that can be replicated again and again.

Get the Ultimate Guide

for building a
6-Figure Coaching Business so you can achieve more freedom!

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I packaged it up into my own coaching training program, Employee to Entrepreneur, to create a roadmap so that others wouldn’t have to waste time and figure it out on their own. 

And in my FREE PDF, I share the first steps to building your own coaching business from scratch, even if you are incredibly busy. 

Get it now!

Read more: 

About Luisa Zhou

Luisa Zhou has helped thousands of students build and scale their own profitable online coaching business. Fun Fact: She used to work as an engineer for the Space Station and holds a B.S.E. from Princeton. Click here to learn more about Luisa.

Hope you enjoy this blog post.

Want to know how to build a profitable, meaningful business to replace your 9-5?

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7 Responses

  1. Thanks for your comprehensive list of different type of coaching.

    However, I don’t see a niche for travel coaching mentioned here.

    Specifically, I’m talking about travel hacking, which is the practice of earning points from credit card spendings and booking award flights using those points.

    It can also be extended to include loyalty programs (hotels, airlines), and personal finance to know which credit cards to open, what type of points are valuable, and maintain and raise credit scores

  2. Coaching seems to be a great business nowadays. It doesn’t require much of an investment and the returns are amazing.

  3. Hello!

    I am a musician. I am a singing and performance coach who has had a 100% conversion rate and client success rate in my online business so far. However, my business is much less lucrative than I would like for it to be.

    I am young -23 years of age, and I find that I am scared to promote myself into a lucrative, coaching-package style of business for my online voice coaching. I get scared that I will be seen as a fraud, a.k.a imposter syndrome. Yet, I have been in the music industry as a singer and performer since I was a small child. I have over 19 years of experience, I have a bachelors degree in vocal performance, and, as I mentioned above, my students GET RESULTS (quickly, too.)

    Also, most of my mentors DO NOT charge well for their work. So, I feel ashamed at the prospect of turning a new leaf into higher prices. But the brain drain of playing small has been eating at me. I want more. I want it as soon as is possible for myself, my family, and my friends.

    Thus, in spite of this concern/shame, I am constantly asking myself HOW to create the business and lifestyle that I desire- for myself and for my clients. I want clients who take themselves seriously. I want clients who take their own goals seriously. I want to generate power-packed results in my students. I want to be specific about what I offer.

    Since I do not see any singing/music coaches above, I am curious about HOW to create something that works for me as a singing coach/musician?

    A drained giver,
    Gracie

    1. Hi Gracie,

      Your experiences sounds incredible and it’s obvious you bring a lot to the table. I have a lot of articles here on my blog and videos on my youtube channel (youtube.com/c/luisazhou about the details of building your own coaching business.)

      I don’t think I listed an example here but I have also worked w/ students in the music/creative industry — The principles are the same no matter the industry.

      You might find this article on mindset helpful: https://luisazhou.com/blog/entrepreneurial-mindset/ Especially the stuff on money mindset to help you start reframing charging prices higher than you’ve seen those around you charge.

  4. I’m currently sitting on the fence in relation to spending 8k on getting a coaching certification, mind you that I’ve already spent 9k on business coaching for myself..your advise on scheduling out your day and blocking time to work on the business even when you aren’t up to it – is key. I have a website, but it’s generating – very minimal traffic. I love your approach, and thank you for your great tips! Very helpful!

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How to build a 6-figure online business that frees you from the 9-to-5

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