Do you dream of transitioning out of your current career and becoming a coach?
Maybe you’re clear that you want to start a life coaching business… or perhaps you’ve considered becoming a certified life coach so you can use those skills to support your dreams of becoming a speaker, author or leader.
But when you think about actually making those dreams a reality, you feel completely overwhelmed.
I get it – because I’ve been there!
Several years ago, I successfully transitioned from a career where I was making good money but felt uninspired and burned out by my work, into a thriving coaching business. Since then, I’ve helped many of our clients do the same – leave their current jobs and step into coaching and other world changing careers.
But before I did it successfully, I flopped. (More on that in a moment.)
The good news is, between my embarrassing failure and making my successful “pivot” a year later – I learned a lot of lessons.
So if you’re ready to transition out of your day job and into coaching, follow these tips to help make this exciting life change as stress-free as possible:
Lesson #1: Don’t Quit Your Day Job!
I know quitting your day job is the point, but don’t jump the gun and do it too quickly.
Often people think that the best plan is to save up money, quit their job, and then set out to begin their new venture.
In fact, I fell into this exact trap when I first tried to make my transition. I stopped taking clients in my previous business, announced I was going to begin coaching, and waited for the clients to roll in.
Needless to say, it didn’t work out quite as I’d hoped!
Within a couple of months, I was running out of savings, and had to go back to my marketing business just to pay my bills.
I learned an embarrassing lesson the hard way, and I now teach all of our clients who are wondering how to start a coaching business that for most people – quitting your job and going ALL IN on your business when you’re just getting started is the much more challenging way to do it.
When I finally made the successful transition into coaching, I did it over the course of several months. I got clear on my vision for what I wanted to create, got the support of a coach, and created a step-by-step plan.
Then I started slowly building up my business on the side – growing my confidence and finding clients – until I had enough momentum and income coming in to transition fully out of my previous career.
For most people, we don’t recommend stopping everything and starting over. Instead, start taking baby steps while you have the stability of your current job and transition slowly and sustainably over time.
(If you need support to get clarity and make a plan – check out our free 2-hour masterclass: “Pivot into Purpose: Uncover What You’re Meant to Do + Create a Step-by-Step Plan to Pivot Into Work You LOVE – in as little as 3 months!”)
Lesson #2: Learn The Business of Coaching
People often think all they need to become a coach is a life coaching certification. And while getting certified will absolutely serve you in beginning your coaching practice, most certification programs focus only on coaching skills – and fail to cover the business side of coaching.
If you want to leave your job and start a sustainable coaching practice, learning how to grow your business, market yourself, and find & enroll clients is absolutely essential!
I recently worked with a client who felt passionate and excited about her dream of becoming a life coach, but who was struggling to make enough money at her new venture. She wasn’t getting clients, and she started to doubt whether or not she was really cut out for coaching.
In one of our sessions, we dug in and discovered that while she was in love with coaching, she really didn’t want to do the other things that needed to happen to grow her business. She didn’t feel like putting herself out there online, learning to market her services, or embracing what I call “the art of authentic sales.”
I told her that if she wanted to succeed, she had to fall in love with the business of coaching just as much as she loved coaching itself.
Soon, she made a shift and fully embraced learning the business side of her venture. She followed the step-by-step process I taught her and learned our authentic marketing and transformational sales methods – and her business started to take off!
Today, she runs a thriving coaching practice and she’s learned to be both an incredible coach AND a powerful business woman.
Lesson #3: Develop Coaching Mastery
Just as every coach needs to know about business, they also need coaching skills to work deeply with their clients – and truly transform lives.
Far too many new coaches focus on learning all of the latest online marketing strategies, creating the perfect instagram feed, and building a brand… but they don’t actually develop true mastery as a coach.
If you want to do work that changes lives AND attract and retain exceptional, high-paying clients, you have to become a master of your craft.
You have to develop coaching mastery.
We worked with another client who had a passion for personal development and a background in business. So when she set out to start her coaching practice, she thought it would be a breeze!
She built a marketing funnel, created her packages and started to grow her coaching business on the side. But for some reason, she just wasn’t closing clients.
Through our coaching, we discovered that she lacked the confidence of knowing without a doubt that she could truly create transformational results for her clients – and her prospects could feel her hesitation.
She came into our Aliveness Mastery® certification program ready to develop her coaching skills, and learn frameworks that would allow her to do deep, life-changing work with her clients. As a result, she started closing packages with clients left and right because she was finally able to confidently enroll people into her life changing work.
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Transitioning out of your day job and starting a life coaching business can be overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be! The best way to ensure that you will be successful is to get the right support.
Our Aliveness Mastery® certification program is designed to help people who want to become life coaches (or who want the coaching & communication skills to transform lives as an entrepreneur or leader) develop coaching mastery, learn practical business skills, and create a plan to transition into the life-changing career of their dreams.
Our next group starts in September!
