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 also 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 to make an informed decision about whether going to coaching school makes sense for your situation.

I asked a variety of coaches who had completed coaching school if it 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.

Is Going To Coaching School Worth The Investment?

Going to life coaching school is an investment and a big decision. It’s both time commitment 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’ll want to know why you are going and what your money is going to get you.

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

Start With Asking The Right Questions:

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

2: Who is your audience?

3: What skills do you need to help your clients get results?

4: What skills, experience, and practical training do you already have?

5: Can you currently help your targeted clients get these results?

Tip: If your answer to number five is yes, then start by helping five people as test clients and measure the results you get.

#1 Reason To Go 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 future clients will pay 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 help your clients with removing mindset blocks.

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

Advantages To Becoming Certified As A Coach

A big advantage of completing 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.

Jenn 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 Coaching Niche 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 and help you make an informed decision about whether or not you need to go to coaching school.

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’ve 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

Take look at some coaching scenarios where coaching school may not be needed:

Stress Management 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 boot camps for kids.

Website Coach: You’ve 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: Although I’m an intuition coach now, in 2005, I personally 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 & served clients who were small business owners and corporate clients.

While I operated my consulting business, not one person ever asked me if I had a coaching certification. My education and testimonials were on my website and most business owners or directors 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 online coaches.

Tip: My advice to any coach who’s in a similar situation to the scenarios above is 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 deeper training with a specialized coaching school.

Will You Teach or Coach?

In the examples above, you’re 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 life coaching school is not going to teach you how to do that.

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

With my situation, it was easy 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. The answer to question five at the beginning of this article was a resounding “yes” for me and now that I’m a mom, the traveling involved with being a management consultant makes no sense, hence my transition to helping coaches start and flourish in their online businesses after many years in the coaching field.

Seeing what new coaches go through with struggling when starting their business also prompted me to write this decision-making guide as a way to lay it all out in front of you with what to expect and how to decide where to invest when starting your coaching business.

Will Your Clients Need Help With Mindset Blocks or Clinical Treatment?

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

However, if you’re teaching something and you also want to help with common mindset obstacles such as perfectionism in order to get your clients results, coaching school will teach you the difference or you can review it here 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 positive cash-flow instead of relying on insurance contracts to get paid. The freedom of online coaching 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.

10 Questions To Ask Yourself Before You Decide On Life Coach School & Certification

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

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

3: Have you taught or coached before & gotten results?

4: Can you learn any of the skills you need in a specific course to brush up on skills that you 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 a weekly and can it be balanced with your life?

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

8: How will your skills be measured and validated before you graduate?

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

10: Do you get paid for coaching that you’ve completed as part of the required school curriculum?

Personal Branding & Marketing Your Business Matters as Much as a Coaching Certification

Take me as an example: 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 and I asked the same questions listed above and opted out because once I reviewed what they offered, I already possessed those skills. In thirty minutes, I knew it was a no for me.

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

A lot of people who need coaching school have greatly benefited from learning specific skills sets and modalities.

Your own decision will be based on your goals and your situation.

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 setting up your marketing strategy, 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 main 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 the goals for your coaching business.

This is also why I haven’t mentioned in detail what school those who I’ve interviewed attended. Because you must make the best decision for you not follow what others have done.

Will You Get Certified As A Coach? 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.

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.

I talked to Lisa Bean, owner of Empowered For Growth, 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 to coaching school 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) and 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 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 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.

Can You Fit Coaching School Into Your Life?

Going to a university requires a major time commitment and coaching school is no different. A lot of programs offer weekend options but make sure you know the details and the schedule in advance before you commit and pay your tuition.

If you’re working or raising kids, how do you fit in coaching school?

Jen Crabtree Berger went through coaching school while raising kids and homeschooling. Her school consisted of live zoom classes that she worked into her schedule.

Jenn told me, “Honestly, going to coaching school while raising kids changed the way I talked to my kids. Mine are older so it was probably easier but I wouldn’t trade that awareness for anything! I would tell someone in this position to talk to people that went through that school to see how family friendly they are while taking classes and doing homework, etc.”

I dug a deeper to find out what kind of time commitment is required with Angela Meyberg of Belladonna Career Coaching, who offers career coaching for corporate chicks. Angela said, “I was fortunate to go through my program during a time when I could focus on it one hundred percent. After a corporate layoff during a global pandemic, I had an ample amount of time to dedicate to a program that required a sizable time-investment.”

If you’re wondering what the exact breakdown looked like for Angela’s executive coaching program, here it is:

She said, “I would say 15-20 hours a week. Maybe that’s not a lot to other people, but it seemed intense.”

What exactly did the work required look like?

As per Angela, “Peer coaching 2 hours a week, group peer coaching 1 hour, webinars most weeks two hours, 3 seminars over weekends at 30 hours each over the course of six months, mentor coaching hours, plus tons of online work and watching more videos and reading. Then there are voluntary additional qualifications, but they are all around 20-40 hours.”

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

Your next step: If you already have the skills and training you need, then invest in 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 and need in the form of services. This is your marketing foundation and you don’t want to skip these important steps or you’ll end up creating vague content and the clients you want to attract won’t understand what you do.

Where Should You Start With Setting Up Your Coaching Business?

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

You’ll need to know how to:

• Choose a niche that aligns with your skills, experience, and point of view.

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

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

• Create a process for your services and learn how to package them.

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

• Market your business with a strategic plan 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.

TIP: Don’t shortcut your marketing foundation or you’ll end up putting out a vague message and content which will only confuse potential clients about what you do.

What’s A Personal Coaching 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.

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 ahead and get started.

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