How much do you really know on how to increase the salary of a life coach?  After working with hundreds of coaches in the last decade, what I’ve found is that what most coaches think when it comes to the salary of a life coach is very limited.  Knowing what to expect in the future from the salary of a life coach disciplines us to know how to deal with our finances on our journey to become a coach.

Running The Numbers as a Coach Disciplines us for Our Business Plan

You’ve got to run the numbers once you get started in your coaching business.  The salary of a life coach can be predicted and if you factor in how many coaching clients you are going to get and the type of coaching and income you are going to produce, then you’ll know what to expect.  No coach’s business plan is complete without a good prediction of what the income numbers are going to look like.

Why bother?

In order to live your dream of becoming a life coach, you may need to take on a part time job for a while to meet your expenses.  Perhaps you need to cut your number of times you eat out every week?  What if you are planning on spending money on marketing?  You’ll need to know the income you make.  You can’t know for sure what it’s going to take to become a life coach until you run the numbers on the salary of a life coach.  If you are really committed to becoming a life coach, then it only makes sense that you’ll do what it takes to be successful as a life coach, and that means becoming aware of the income and expenses.  Remember that knowing what these numbers are as a coach disciplines us to get our heads out of the sand and make the business work out in the end.

Different Scenarios for The Salary of a Life Coach

Here are some possible streams of income as you are planning our your salary of a life coach:

If you are doing 1 on 1 coaching, and you feel confident that you can get 10 consistent clients to get coaching with you over the next 6 months (@ $250 / month) then here’s how you would run those numbers:

One on One Coaching Salary:

10 clients

x $250.00

= $2,500 / month 1 on 1 coaching income

= $30,000.00 / year revenue

Knowing these numbers as a coach disciplines you to now set your expenses around the $30,000 / year income level (i.e. knowing these numbers as a coach disciplines us to save $3,000 – $5,000 for taxes and keep our personal expenses really low.

Now, the good news is that even if you have 10 clients @ $250.00 / month, that’s only a part time job as a coach (working perhaps only 1 day per week), so what would happen to that salary if you added a few coaching groups to it?  Let’s find out:

Group Coaching Salary:

2 groups

x 10 clients per group

= 20 clients total

x $150 / month per client

= $3,000.00 / month group coaching income

= $36,000.00 / year revenue

Now you’re only working one morning per week in order to produce another $36,000 per year!  Not bad!  (of course remember that you’ll need to work hard to get those clients into your groups, so that will take time and possibly even a marketing expenditure, but with that ‘return’ on your marketing expense, you can plan out how you can afford to spend it.)

Now let’s look at what kind of income you could add by creating one product and adding it to your coaching mix:

Coaching Product Salary:

$150 for the product

x 5 sales per month

= $750.00 / month coaching product income

= $9,000.00 / year coaching product income

Now let’s tally up your first year’s coaching income:

One on One Coaching Salary: = $30,000.00 / year revenue

Group Coaching Salary: = $36,000.00 / year revenue

Coaching Product Salary: = $9,000.00 / year coaching product income

– – – – – – – – – –

= $75,000.00

Assuming you spent about $10,000 on marketing (quite a big budget for marketing on the internet), then you can expect to make $65,000 your first year of coaching.  That will include 1.5 days per week (or so) of coaching, probably 1 day per week of prospecting, 1 day of marketing, and 1 day of administration.  That’s a full time job, but now you’re getting paid the salary of a life coach in return for making a difference in the world!

Don’t Forget That in Order to Make The Salary of a Life Coach a Reality for You, You’ll Need a Coach

A coach disciplines us to follow through on that 1 day of prospecting that you don’t want to do every week, and a coach disciplines us to stay the course when we only get 3 sign ups for our group coaching program and we can’t seem to eak enough leads out of our marketing.

The reality is that this plan of income will not be easy, but it is possible.

Jeffrey T. Sooey

CEO, JTS Advisors

Founder, Coaches Training Blog community