Becoming a Certified Coach: 5 Steps to Follow

Being a coach is a great responsibility. People come to you with their hopes and dreams, fears and frustrations, and expect you to help them make a change or improvement in a specific aspect of their lives.

So let’s see how you can become a successful, professional coach, step by step.

#1 Ask Questions

The first step to becoming a successful coach is to ask questions to yourself and as part of your research and get informed about coaching. These questions include:

• What are the different types of coaching? Which is the right one for me? (Among the most popular niches are life, relationship, business, executive, career, spiritual, health & wellness, and mental health coaching).

• Am I really passionate about helping others?

• What skills do I need to become a successful coach? Do I have them?

• How do I set up and run a coaching business?

• Can I make a living out of coaching? Which are the most profitable niches?

• Do I need to get training, and where?

Finding the answers to these questions will help you realize whether coaching is the right option for you and how you should proceed.

#2 Find Coaching Education

Receiving proper training and becoming a certified coach is key to success. 99% of coaches confirm they have received relevant training. During your training, you’ll learn the best coaching models and approaches that apply to your coaching niche to offer quality services. Getting a certification also increases your trustworthiness and how clients perceive you. Naturally, you’ll be able to win their trust much easier once you’re certified.

Find a coaching organization accredited by ICF (International Coaching Federation) to ensure that its curriculum aligns with ICF’s core competencies and code of ethics. Receiving at least 60 hours of coach training from an ICF-accredited coaching organization is also a prerequisite to becoming a member of ICF and enjoying the benefits that come with it.

#3 Join ICF

After you have completed your training, join the world’s largest community of professionally trained coaches by becoming a member of ICF. An ICF membership will further increase your credibility and give you access to resources, networking opportunities, and additional business development and marketing education.

#4 Earn an ICF Credential

The ICF Credential is the only globally recognized professional coaching certification. Earning one of the three available ICF Credentials – (Associate (ACC), Professional (PCC), and Master Certified Coach (MCC) – showcases your commitment to providing excellent service and is the best proof of your rigorous training.

#5 Get Involved

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to join events and conferences organized by ICF to connect with other professional coaches and stay informed. ICF also encourages volunteerism by enabling coaches to offer their services for free under the ICF Coaches for Good Initiative. Other initiatives you can join are the ICF Thought Leadership Institute and ICF Coaching in Organizations.

How to Take Your Coaching Business Online

This step might come further down the road, or you can start offering a coaching program online right away. Selling coaching online can increase your income and your reach, even if you’re new in the business.

1. Choose an Online Platform

You want the platform that hosts your coaching program to allow you to provide a holistic coaching experience – one that is tailor-made to your client's needs – while allowing your business to shine.

Among the most important features you should look for in the platform you choose are:

White labeling

A big part of taking your business online is to build your brand and reputation. Any platform you choose should tick this box and support you all the way to grow your coaching business distinctly. With LearnWorlds, not only can you have a 100% fully branded website, but you can also create your own URL and hide the LearnWorlds logo from your website design. Settle for nothing less than your business excellence!

Customizable website builder

An image is worth a thousand words. So look for a platform that enables you to build a top-notch professional website for your coaching business. For example, LearnWorlds offers a variety of 50+ industry-leading templates, including templates specifically designed for coaching websites according to the latest web design trends. The templates are fully customizable and designed to allow you to create user journeys with popups and signup forms while building an intuitive user interface. Or, you can start from scratch and build your own template.

Built-in community

Keep the conversation going, bring your clients together, and skyrocket engagement via a vibrant built-in community. Build a blog, create groups, and start discussions. Look for a platform that allows clients to contribute with comments and content! It’s like having your own social media platform within your coaching academy – minus the distractions from social media ads and newsfeeds.

One-to-one and group sessions

Now, this is a no-brainer. You should be able to integrate your academy with a calendar planning software, like Calendly, to schedule your clients' one-to-one and group sessions. Besides, you should be able to record sessions and receive them in your email and add notes to help you keep track of your client’s progress.

Self-assessments

Choose among different types of questions that range from multiple-choice to text and video submissions to enable your clients to reflect on their transformation journey. A motivating activity that shouldn’t miss from a coaching program.

Rich, interactive content

As you build and grow your coaching business, the platform you choose should enable you to engage your clients after your coaching sessions with interactive material. For example, LearnWorlds supports video and audio resources from YouTube and SoundCloud, eBooks, quizzes for self-assessment, and badges for rewarding clients on important milestones. This variety of resources in your arsenal enables you to sell entirely self-paced coaching programs or use resources as lead magnets to promote your online coaching academy.

Selling and promotional tools

The platform you will choose to build and grow your coaching business should allow you to offer your clients different options to buy your services, so they choose how they learn and connect with you. You should be able to sell courses separately for those just getting to know you, create bundles for more comprehensive, all-around coaching, or offer memberships and subscriptions with exclusive content to maximize engagement and loyalty. To boost sales, you should also be able to create coupons and limited-time offers.

Marketing tools

You know how important it is to market your coaching business, right? So look for a platform that integrates with the most popular marketing tools. Connect your MailChimp, Active Campaign, AWeber, or ConvertKit account and create automated email communication sequences with clients and prospects. Never lose touch and never lose a client again!

Payment options

Ensure that the platform you will collaborate with integrates with multiple payment gateways, provides Buy Now Pay Later options, and allows you to use digital wallets for a frictionless checkout for your clients.

Extensive reporting

Reporting is a huge deal when owning a business. For example. LearnWorlds covers you on every front to make data-driven decisions for your coaching business. Look for a Report Center that offers in-depth insights regarding every aspect of your coaching business and client progress.

Data protection

You need your client’s data to be in good hands. Look for isolated databases, regular backups, and encrypted data storage, and ensure that data is safe from prying eyes and that your academy is safe from cyber-attacks.

Integrations

Do you need more tools and functionalities? Supercharge your academy and organize your business any way you want. Make sure the platform you choose integrates with popular tools for total customization on every level.

LearnWorlds checks all the above boxes providing you the ease and power you need to create a personalized coaching path for each and every one of your clients.

2. Plan Your Coaching Curriculum

You’ve got a bunch of ideas about your coaching program, but they’re all over the place? How about putting them together by building a coaching curriculum? Here’s how you should go about it:

Understand your audience: The first step is to think about who your target audience is. What are their needs? Why are they joining the program? Are they busy? What’s their educational level? Creating a learner persona will help you build a program that will suit their needs and resonate with them.

Write down the learning objectives: Even though coaching isn’t strictly “educational,” setting specific learning goals will help you create your program’s selling proposition and also choose the activities that will help your client reach those goals. You don’t need more than 4 to 5 learning objectives, but you must make sure they’re specific and measurable.

Create a course syllabus: Now that you have a better understanding of your clients and the desired goals, map out your course. Decide how you’ll start the program (maybe with a one-to-one evaluation, or you could skip this altogether), whether it’s going to be entirely self-paced or include private coaching, and which types of activities and resources will reinforce your coaching sessions. Try to include a variety of resources, from eBooks and infographics to videos and podcasts, to cover every learning preference.

Plan for assessment and evaluation: You don’t need to go too hard and scare clients away with exams and assessments. Still, you can create some quiz quizzes so clients can see whether they’ve grasped key ideas that may apply to your coaching. Like self-regulation techniques, if you’re offering mental health coaching, for instance. You can also organize a role-play exercise to see how they would react and handle real-life situations. It’s best to do these sorts of evaluation activities throughout your program, so you can keep track of their progress and give clients regular feedback.

3. Measure Your Performance

It goes without saying that you must know where you stand at any given time when you run a business. So look for a platform that provides you with rich and accurate analytics. A complete Report Center preferably. Make sure you can track and measure the following:

• User analytics: analytics that will help you identify your most popular courses, how clients interact with your content, success rates, and more. These metrics will help you understand whether your program appeals to clients overall, especially the material they consume asynchronously. You should be able to schedule and customize these reports as you like.

• Activity history: This report will give you insights regarding engagement with the online community and on new signups, cancellations, failed purchases, etc.

• Sales: An overview of your ordered products (ranging from subscriptions to courses and eBooks), revenue generated from different sources, coupon sales, and canceled sales.

💡 Bonus Step: Create Your Own Branded Mobile App

This is an optional step, yet essential if you want to give that extra spark to your coaching program and make it stand out to your audience. You can imagine that your clients are as busy as you are. They often check their phones to learn the news, read about topics they love, or chat. Just like you do! If you’ve built a coaching program with resources and a built-in community, it would really be amiss not to build a mobile app, so your clients can enjoy all these benefits on the go.

Moreover, with push notifications and learning reminders, your clients will stay on track with their program and learn about new releases and offers in real time. Offline video viewing is another significant convenience a mobile app provides.

Not feeling tech-savvy? Good news then – LearnWorlds’ native mobile app for iOS and Android is incredibly easy to set up and manage as it requires just about…zero coding knowledge and maintenance.

The Time to Become a Coach is Now

Coaching is a profitable and rewarding occupation. Follow the steps we described to become a certified coach and build an online coaching business, and you’ll soon become part of this exciting community!

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