Should You Go To Life Coach School?

You’re starting a Coaching business and you want to know if you need to go to life coach school.

Review this decision-making guide to find out if life coach school is for you.

In order to get the real deal on the decision-making process behind going to life Coaching School and other coaching specialties, I talked to accredited coaches who loved and highly valued their coaching school experience and I spoke with coaches who opted out of coaching school because the return on investment didn’t make sense for their situation.

Use this article as a guide for making an informed decision about whether going to coaching school makes sense for your situation.

I asked a variety of coaches if coaching school was worth it in regard to how it impacted their business and what they found the benefits to be, as well as the reasons why other coaches opted out.

Going To Coaching School Is An Investment

Going to life coaching school is a big decision. It’s both a time and financial investment and it should make sense for your situation.  

Life coaching schools can come in at the four to five-digit range for tuition and before you decide to make the investment, you want to know why you are going and what your money is going to get you.

Where should you start with your decision-making process on whether or not to go to life coaching school?

Begin With Asking The Right Questions:

1: What area will I be coaching my clients with? (What problem will you help them solve?)

2: Who is my audience?

3: What skills do I need to help my clients get results?

4: What skills, experience, and practical training do I already possess?

5: Can I currently help my targeted clients get these results?

Pro Tip: If your answer to number five is yes, then I suggest you start by helping five people as test clients and see what results you get.

#1 Reason To Life Coaching School

To be more confident with your skills: The majority of coaches that I interviewed reported that they went to coaching school to be more confident with coaching skills.

If you’re enrolling because you lack confidence with your skills, then absolutely get more training on how to solve the problem your clients are paying you to help them solve, although that’s not necessarily going to be life coach training unless you’re training your clients to coach or you’re learning how to guide your clients with removing mindset blocks.

Tip: The more people you coach and get results, the more confident you’ll feel.

A big advantage of competing a certified program is that the coaching schools will teach you a variety of coaching models that are valuable in using different approaches and tools with different clients because not everyone learns the same way.

Arden Gillberg, owner of The Next Wave Life Coaching said, “It was absolutely worth the time and money. The guidance, insight, the tools, practice coaching hours, connections, and accountability that I learned were priceless.”  

Cindy Saunders, owner at Leaders Rise Coaching, compared confidence with coaching skills to the art of music. “It’s playing by ear versus having learned to read music. Coach training gave me a broader understanding, a common language, and confidence.” One on one live coaching was the most valuable to Cindy both as a coach and in the role of being coached because of the constructive feedback and insight from the other coaching students and teachers.

It’s also possible to develop skills at coaching school that you might not even know you have. Jenn Crabtree Berger, owner at The Toolbox Life Coach, learned how to trust and notice her intuition. She said, “I also learned the difference between coaching and therapy, these lines can become blurred easily. And for me, getting the ICF certification was extremely important because ICF is the only governing body of coaches and psychologists who are trying to get coaching regulated.”

Choose Your Niche Audience Before Making Your Decision About Life Coaching School

Knowing who you want to work with and what results you want to help your clients with before you get a coaching education can save you a lot of time and money.

For instance, when I spoke with Stephanie Minnick, of Intentional Holistic Healing, she described herself as a “Gotta have the certificate to be taken seriously kind of gal,” but once she researched what coaching schools offered, she realized that nothing offered was even close to what she was looking for that was specific to the problem she would help her clients get results with.

Stephanie is a Trauma Recovery Coach who works with survivors of childhood adversity and sexual trauma. Hence, she acquired additional education on trauma and combined it with her own thirty plus years of trauma experiences instead of enrolling in coaching school.

Stephanie’s advice: “If you know you can help someone move forward and have confidence in yourself, that’s what matters. I have walked my client’s path and come out the other side. No amount of money can buy that experience.”

Cara Mentlein, owner of She Construction , chose not to go to coaching school because she already had a diploma in hypnotherapy and additional counseling skills.  She empowers women to live on their own terms so they can build confidence and follow their own path. Cara said, “I realized that I was basically coaching people anyway a lot of the time and I wasn’t going to really learn any new skills that differed from the ones I already had, as well as life skills and experiences.”

Leslie Limbardo also knew that coaching school was not for her. She told me, “Although it was a hell no from the beginning, once I got into the coaching field, it was intimidating to see so many with coaching certificates behind their name. But I realized while I didn’t have a certificate, I did have twenty years of practical experience in higher education and a master’s degree. After all of my years of practical experience and perfecting my style of listening, I didn’t feel I needed to go to a school. I bring my own thing to the table and that’s worth something to my clients. I equip women with tools to live life in ways that honor their authentic selves.”

Consider If Coaching School Will Be Worth The Investment For Your Situation

Let’s look at some potential scenarios where coaching school may not be needed:

Stress Coach: Let’s say that you want to coach working moms on lowering their stress and you’re a mom of two, have a master’s degree in social work, three years of counseling experience, and lots of client testimonials attesting to the amazing results they’ve achieved with your guidance.

Fitness Coach: You are a fitness trainer with a fitness certification or a former light weight boxing champion like my neighbor down the street who runs fitness bootcamps for kids.

Website Coach: You just graduated from Virgina Tech and you’re awesome at all things technological, except you cringe at the thought of working in the corporate world, so you start setting up tech gigs on Fivver and create websites until your figure out your next move. Before you know it, you’re rolling in clients and testimonials, but you feel like you also want to coach small businesses on how they can set up the best website ever.

Business Consultant who also coaches: In 2005, I set up shop as a management consultant and an executive coach with a master’s of science in industrial-organizational psychology. My super narrow niche was creating high performance teams in a post-merger environment. I operated this business for five years and served clients who were small business owners and corporate clients.

Not one person ever asked me if I had a coaching certification. My education and testimonials were on my website and most people hired me after hearing one of my in person workshops at a local venue because they’d seen me in action and identified with my brand… Like how video works today for coaches.

Tip: My advice to any coach who has a similar situation to the scenarios above, I would say to go ahead and set up shop. And then if you need help, take a coaching class at the local university or online to fill in the gaps where you lack skills. And then if you’re struggling, consider coaching school.

Will You a Teach or Coach?

In the examples above, you are a teaching your clients a skill or providing a done for your service and you don’t need to learn to teach it because you already have your skill set and modalities.

You do, however, need to learn how to package, market, and sell it, and coaching school is not going to teach you how to do that.

Executive Coaching: The one situation that you may absolutely need a coaching certification is if you have very little work experience and you want to work as an external executive coach for corporations.

It was easy for me to bypass coaching school when I worked as an executive coach and consultant back in 2005 because I possessed behavioral science credentials, twenty years of prior work experience, and a website filled with testimonials.

I also had no idea there was even such a thing as coaching school back then. I went full steam ahead with helping people, one client at a time.

Consider if Your Clients Need Help With Mindset Blocks or Clinical Treatment

If you’re going to dabble in mindset and help clients clear mental blocks, you’ll need to be licensed in psychology or social work if you’re treating mental illness or depression.

However, if you’re teaching something and you also want to help with mindset obstacles in order to get your clients results, coaching school is an option to consider. They will teach you the difference or you can look it up online at the American Psychological Association (APA).

Clinical psychologists and physicians who have years of experience in their own practices are also opening their own coaching practices for cash flow purposes instead of relying on insurance contracts to get paid. The freedom of tele-coaching for cash versus in person insurance-based patients is a very attractive lifestyle.

Yashoda Bhaskar, a retired physician turned money mindset coach, said, “Eighteen thousand dollars was not something I was willing to spend, especially because I was not convinced of the ROI. I became certified through the Symbiosis program instead. It taught me excellent coaching skills.

Quick Reference List of Questions To Ask Yourself Before You Decide On A Life Coach Certification

1: What skills do I need & what do they teach in the program?

2: What skills, training, and expertise do I already have?

3: Have I coached before & gotten results?

4: Can I learn any of the skills I need in a seminar or a specific course to brush up on skills that I already have but haven’t used in a while?

5: How long does it take to become certified?

6: How much time will it require on a daily or weekly basis?

7: Can I get a full or partial refund if it’s not for me?

8: How will my skills be validated before I graduate?

9: Are written testimonials included from those who I’ve coached while in school?

10: Do I get paid for coaching that’s part of the school curriculum?

Personal Branding & Marketing Coach For New Coaches Matters As Much As A Coaching Certification

Take me as an example in my coaching business as it is now. I no longer have the desire to work with corporations and these days I help new coaches clarify their niche, audience, and services, though when I set up my business this time around, I was aware of the coaching schools.

I asked the same questions listed above and opted out because once I reviewed what they offered, I already possessed those skills.

In fifteen minutes, I knew it was a no for me.

But that doesn’t mean coaching school is a no for you.

There are a lot of people who really need coaching school and who have greatly benefitted from learning specific skills sets and modalities.

My intention is to make this an easy, simple decision for you based on your goals and your situation.

Keep In Mind That Coaching Is Not a Licensed Profession

Keep in mind that coaching is an unregulated field, and no one is expecting you to be certified as a coach unless you’ve already done the essential market research for your niche and your perspective ideal clients have told you that they expect someone who coaches in this niche to be certified. This is what you need to find out before you make your investment.

What Would You Ask A Coach Before You Hired Them?

If someone is coaching you on social media marketing, weight loss, or fitness, do you want them to flash you their coaching school certification or do you want to know about their education and experience in marketing, nutrition, or exercise science, along with real testimonials about the results they’ve helped their clients achieve?

Here’s some of the coaching schools in no particular order:

Institute of Professional Excellence in Coaching

Coach Training Institute

CoachU

Symbiosis

The Life Coach School

Martha Beck’s Life Coaching Program

I’m not going to breakdown and compare the best schools because there is no best coaching school just as there is no top university. If you decide to go to coaching school, the program you choose should be aligned with your business goals.

Will You Get Certified? Who Certifies The Certifiers?

The International Coaching Federation (ICF) is an accreditation organization that sets standardization for coach training and continuing education to maintain your credentials as a certified coach.

Based on the feedback I received from the coaching field, I discovered there’s an investment to maintain your coaching credentials and three different certification levels.

The ICF FAQ section covers every possible question you could ever have about the credential process on their site, which contains more than 100 questions and answers.

I was unable to determine the price to maintain your credentials and stopped skimming for the answer after I got to the twenty-fourth question.

There are a wide variety of coach training opportunities available to you, but if you decide you want a certification, double check if the coaching program you’re considering is accredited by The International Coaching Federation.

It’s ideal to know the answers your questions before you choose to get certified as a coach.

I also ask the question…. Who has certified the certifiers since the coaching business is unregulated and unlicensed?

I did talk to Lisa Bean, owner of Empowered For Growth, who is an ICF certified coach for more details. She said, “The first distinction I’d make though is that ICF itself isn’t a school but is offers an accreditation where you need a certain amount of hours from an accredited training program or to meet other criteria to ensure you meet the standards of their various accreditation’s.”

I asked Lisa if the work she put in was worth it for her.

“It is a lot of work but in my viewpoint it was the best learning and development I’ve ever done for myself. I learned so much about myself and about the coaching process and that helps me be successful with clients. I equate it to the skill set that a therapist needs to learn (even though it is not therapy, it is coaching) – you need to develop skills in active listening, powerful questioning , partnering, and direct communication just to name a few. On an ongoing basis maintaining my certification is a lot of work, but it forces me to continue to learn, improve and receive mentoring and feedback. It’s valuable for giving me the structure and accountability for doing that.”

Lisa also weighed in on what skills she would have liked to have developed for coaching or for her business that wasn’t offered?

She explained, “That would be more around business building, or even helping clients understand (setting expectations) the benefits of working with a coach, and the benefits and differentiation between a coach and a consultant.

What If You Already Know Coaching School Is Not For You?

Your next step: If you already have the skills and training you need, save your money and apply it to the other costs connected to starting your own coaching business.

One of the best investments you can make early on is to hire your own coach to make sure you have a solid niche, messaging that will attract clients, and services they can’t resist, along with learning how to do the market research that will clarify what your clients want in the form of services.

Where should you start with setting up your business?

Skills You’ll Need in Your Coaching Business To Get Clients Early On:

• How to choose a niche that aligns with your skills, experience, and point of view.

• How to conduct market research on your niche to ensure that your offers are needed.

• How to create a personal brand and message that instantly lets your future clients know what you do.

• How to create a process for your services and how to package them.

• How to test and validate your business offerings to make sure you can get your future clients results.

• How to market your business so that your clients can find you even if you don’t have a following yet.

These critical marketing skills come before building content, a multi-page website, and a social media platform presence because you need to be clear on your marketing foundation first.

What’s A Personal Brand?

Your personal brand as a coach consists of your messaging, niche, specific point of view, and the services you create to attract an audience that wants what you’re selling.

Here’s a complimentary online marketing guide to attracting clients for coaches that will give you an overview of what’s involved with building your coaching business in the beginning.

All of the activities you need to complete are covered in this guide:

Free Resource: The Online Marketing Guide To Attracting Clients in Your Coaching Business

Remember to consider your existing skills, past experience, your niche and future audience, and make sure to ask the right questions before handing a coaching school your hard- earned money for tuition.

If you’ve determined that coaching school is valid real need for you, then do it.

However, if you already have the skills and training but just need the knowledge and the confidence with structuring your business to attract clients, I invite you go through the steps in this marketing guide to get you started.

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