How to Become a Business Coach in 2021
To say that business is booming for the coaching industry would be the understatement of the year—the business coaching industry is currently valued at over 2.4 billion with a yearly growth average of 6%.
According to a large scale study done by the ICF and PwC, business coaching is the second-fastest-growing industry in the United States.
With the boom of business coaching, there is a rising demand for coaches. A skilled and qualified professional's opportunity to satisfy this demand and become a business coach themselves is a no-brainer.
It’s crystal clear that the business coaching industry's consistent growth is a testament to the value that they can bring into anyone’s personal and professional life.
More and more people—small business owners, entrepreneurs, young professionals, business executives—are using business coaches to unlock their untapped potential.
With their business coaches' help, individuals can break through the invisible barriers in their lives, grow their business, or reach their previously unattainable goals.
A business coach acts as an accountability partner and sounding board to push their clients one step closer to their goals.
So, we know why people hire business coaches—self-development, insightful advice, accountability, overcoming obstacles—but...
Why do People Become Business Coaches?
Most successful business coaches have similar stories when they talk about the reasons they became coaches. They all agree that your motives for becoming a coach can determine whether you will become a successful coach.
The most impactful reasons for becoming a business coach are:
Fulfillment and Meaning
Many coaches seem to have started their coaching business to add more meaning to their lives and feel more fulfilled by their careers.
There are few greater feelings than to reach your goals, but to share that success and help others find it is a next-level feeling of fulfillment.
Positively Impacting Their World/Community
Many successful coaches want to add their grain of salt in improving the world or even just their local communities. When they figure out a way to do things differently—better—they want to share that information with whomever they can and enact positive change.
If you’re thinking of offering business coaching services, it's important to ask yourself: "Why do I want to become a business coach?"
Do you think it’s the next plausible step for your career? Do you have more time on your hands that you would like to monetize? Do you want to get more out of your degree to help others? Do you want to improve your community with your skills?
Whatever your reasons may be, when deciding to become a business coach, it’s important to outline your underlying motivations to figure out what kind of coach you’re going to be.
Many people think that anyone can become a business coach because of the lack of regulation around coach training and coaching experience, which is not necessarily true.
It takes a very particular kind of person with specific qualities to become a good business coach, for example:
Background
You need to have the concrete experience, education, and qualifications within your profession; have mastery within a certain area of your career, or have a particular set of skills to offer your clients.
Many successful coaches were already accomplished professionals in their respective industries. And many coaches do both: they coach individuals clients AND have some corporate clients leftover from their previous work experience.
Thus, experience is key to become a successful business coach (see section below for more in-depth analysis).
Think about it: would you hire someone who has never run a mile in their lives to train you to run a full marathon?
People Skills
As a coach, your job description has everything to do with communicating with your clients in a meaningful way.
A good coach should have exceptional communication skills and a personality that allows others to trust them.
A coach’s emotional intelligence will help them connect and empathize with their clients, which results in more effective guidance.
Behind the scenes role
A coach should go into the profession knowing that they won't be the stars of the show—their clients will be.
A coach isn’t the one making the decisions, giving the answers, and calling the shots. A coach nudges and shines a light on possible routes, but the client has to find their own answers.
If you’ve made it this far down the article, you’re probably very sure that you have the necessary coaching skills and have made the decision to start your coaching journey.
Here’s a comprehensive guide listing the 3 main steps on how to become a business coach:
1. Choose Your Coaching Path—Find Your Niche.
Just like a doctor has to choose a medical specialty to devote their practice to, and a lawyer has to choose an area of the law to pursue, you have to decide what type of coach you will become and what your client base will look like.
Coaching can cover a wide range of subjects, businesses, and people, so there are different types of coaches—life coaches, small business coaches, executive coaches, etc.
Your experiences, skills, educational and professional background, strengths, and weaknesses should help you determine what type of coach you will be and what type of client base would most benefit from your services.
Here are a few questions you should ask yourself to figure out what your coaching niche may be:
What are my educational background and work experiences?
Ask yourself where your expertise and skills lie. What do you consider yourself good at? What degree did you receive as a student? What training have you gone through in your career? Your answers will begin to paint the picture of the coaching areas in which you will be an asset to your future clients.
Some people have many different skills and concrete experience in various professional areas whose coaching niches can spill over into other niches—these people can expertly coach and advise on a wide variety of clients. Of course, this comes with more advanced coaching skills and experience.
For example, if you have a history of being in leadership positions in your life and are a previous business owner, you might consider becoming a small business coach whose niche sometimes spills over into executive coaching.
Or maybe you don’t have a lot of work experience, but have a bachelor’s degree in psychology and have taken some mindfulness seminars in the past. These experiences could be a good starting point for life coaching.
Your experience with a certain subject or business area directly correlates with who will hire you for your services.
A 2018 study done by the American Management Association asked business owners, entrepreneurs, students, and other individuals what their criteria were when hiring a business coach.
These were the most important qualifications from most critical to least:
Experience-68%
Recommendations from a trusted source-59%
Interview with a prospective coach-54%
Consulting experience-52%
Validated client results-48%
Coaching credential-33%
Accreditation-29%
University degree in field-28%
Counseling or therapy experience-24%
PhD-10%
When selecting a coach, 68% of people revealed that they rely most heavily on the candidate’s personal and professional experience.
What coaching area/niches are you most drawn to?
Your passions and interests should also guide your choice. Think about a certain coaching area that inspires you, or if helping people with a particular issue awakens a passion within you.
Take note of that feeling when deciding what type of coach you want to be and what kind of clients you want to help.
Coaching requires a passion for the issues at hand. If you can’t convey passion for helping your client, it will be difficult for them to see your services' value.
If you’re going into a coaching area without inspiration—solely for the money involved—the passion will fade quickly, and it will affect your and your client’s success.
What competitive advantage can you bring to your branch of coaching?
To make yourself stand out as a coach, it’s good to think about what points of difference or new angles you can bring into your niche.
There are branches and sub-branches to every coaching area.
Some coaches use their business experience and life experience, such as being parents and working it into their coaching niche. For example, there is an area of coaching dedicated to mom entrepreneurs, which usually falls under small business coaching.
Rosetta Thurman built her multi-million-dollar women’s empowerment brand by only offering life and business coaching to Black women. She built her niche by focusing her coaching techniques on empowering Black women—worldwide.
Think about different client demographics that resonate with you and what professional and life experiences can help define your coaching practice.
2. Advance and Enhance your Skills
A business coach’s job is to maximize their client’s abilities. But how can you expect to bring the best out of your clients if you haven’t maximized your own abilities and training as a coach?
It’s imperative to get some proper training and constantly push towards self-improvement to be the best coach you can be to your clients.
Here are some tips on how to become a top-rated coach:
Emulate top coach qualities
Fake it till you make it? Top coaches worldwide seem to possess similar qualities that have helped them become such successful coaches; aiming at developing these qualities can help shape you into a next-level coach.
Simplicity — find ways to explain your business coaching philosophy in simple terms and concisely market yourself to clients.
Greater purpose — everybody wants to increase their profits, but it’s advisable you also find an underlying motivation beyond money.
Accountability — accept that whatever has happened and will happen in your life was your own doing, not of some outside force.
Courage — embrace challenges and always try to do what you previously thought impossible.
Serving others — becoming a business coach means serving others and fulfilling your own goals and dreams.
Self-confidence — believe that you can achieve whatever you set your mind to, even if it takes years.
To transform your career, develop qualities that will make you an effective and successful coach.
Upskill Yourself
Whether you’re a seasoned business coach or just starting out as a life coach, you should always be focused on continuously learning new information about your industry and consistently improving your coaching skills.
Immerse yourself in coach training—invest in seminars, courses, or coach training programs relevant to your coaching branch.
You can never know too much information about your subject. The world is constantly changing, which is why you should invest in training or courses that keep you up to date on the advancements in your field.
Whether it’s a yearly conference on the real estate market, a training on intuitive mentoring, or an online course in social media marketing—it’s training that will go a long way for you and your clients.
Training programs usually offer certificates of completion, which are also great ways to offer tangible evidence of how well-equipped you are in certain areas.
Certifications
There is no universal consensus within the business coaching community on what certifications a coach should possess. However, certifications—whether given by universities or coaching organizations—are a great investment to make you a well-rounded coach.
The world’s most respected coaching organization, the International Coaching Federation (ICF), offers three business coaching programs:
ACC — Associate Certified Coach, requiring 60 hours of training and 100 hours of experience
PCC — Professional Certified Coach, requiring 125 hours of training and 500 hours of experience
MCC — Master Certified Coach, requiring 200 hours of training and 2,500 hours of experience
These programs give their students enhanced coaching experience and invaluable information on becoming successful coaches in the long-run.
By June 2020, there was a combined total of 30,000 ICF-credentialed business coaches worldwide.
You can also go with The World Coach Institute, where students can work through self-study, online study, or telephone contact to get their BCC (Business Coaching Certificate).
Colleges and universities in the United States and worldwide also offer excellent business coaching programs and allow you to participate either part-time or full-time to get your degree. Always check to see if the business coaching program is certified by ICF.
Becoming a certified business coach is always an effective way of proving to your clients (and yourself) that you have dedicated time and money to become the best coach for their needs.
3. Develop Your Coaching System
It’s critical to develop a business plan to present to your prospective clients—how you will take them from point A to point B.
Coaching services are intangible, so an effective coach must develop their own tangible system to show clients how their services will help them.
Your job is to build a coaching program that will break down all of the details and strategies that specify how you will help guide them through every level of difficulty to reach success.
Your business coaching plan should include these specifications:
How you will communicate—Decide how often you and your client will meet face-to-face, virtually, or through messaging. Consider using pre-recorded lessons, training webinars, or even create your own e-learning courses online; these programs are beneficial when you are short on time and have more clients to tend to.
Create tentative outlines on what will be covered in meetings—Questions to ask and topics to breach. Think about what kinds of questions you need to ask to better understand your client's needs and goals at any given time.
Personalize your plans—Each client will have different needs, and you may need to adjust your plan to accommodate each client's goals.
Start with:
Defining your client's goals
Outline the necessary steps that need to be taken to reach said goals.
Decide what learning strategies will work best for your client.
Your ability to create and implement a clear and organized coaching system will set you apart from the competition and give your clients more reason to put their trust in you.
How to Become a Business Coach—Final Note
I want to reference the study done by the ICF and PwC one more time because I think it’s an incredible revelation that all current and future coaches need to be aware of.
The study claims that 45% of clients and businesses are more likely to report a successful coaching program based on their coach’s complementary personality.
This suggests that a great deal of your success will come from within you—your passion, positive attitude, and ability to connect with your client.
Do any experienced coaches out there have any other tips on how to become a business coach? Leave your comments below and share your experience with other fellow or soon-to-be coaches!
