How Much Does A Life Coach Make? Around $5k+ A Month

Are you new to coaching, or perhaps you’re thinking about becoming a life coach? But, then you hear a voice in your head start to ask you questions like: 

How much does a life coach make? What is the life coach salary? Is this a lucrative field? Will this be feasible for me & my lifestyle? Maybe you even start to wonder how you would charge your clients. Per hour? Per session? Per coaching packages?

These are all great questions, and ones you should consider regardless of what career path or career change you are looking to pursue. Life coaches focus on helping their clients succeed & work on life skills to make them a better person both for themselves & the world. 

If you want to be among the ranks of the most successful coaches and get paying clients through private coaching, group coaching, or online courses, keep reading. 

If this sounds like you, and you are exploring life coaching as an option for the right career path for you, my hope is that by the end of this post, you will leave with the knowledge to answer most, if not all, of these questions above. 🥳

What Determines a Life Coach Salary?

How much do life coaches make? Let’s get into what is considered for your salary. If you are looking to add life coaching to supplement your yoga income, here are some things to consider:

☀️ Location

☀️ Level of education

☀️ Workplace

☀️ Experience

☀️ Area of Expertise/ Specialty

The top three metro areas for a budding life coaching business with the highest success rate for life coaches are (in order): Los Angeles, Denver, & Boston. There is a strong demand for coaches in these areas. 

It is important to note here that this is the general life coach need without specific niches & specialties.

While there are no formal education requirements, having certifications & narrowing down WHO it is you want to work with will vastly influence your life coach salary. Whether you charge on an hourly basis, a program basis, etc. 

Life coaches who earn a higher salary are very well versed & certified in their areas for their ideal client. The more skills you have both learned & inherited, the more you will be able to achieve in this growing field.

Where you are choosing to offer your coaching services is also a factor for your life coach salary. Will you be conducting your own business from the comfort of your own home via web chat services, or are you more into serving your local community & wanting to physically meet with people in a designated space? Many coaches operate online to better serve a bigger number of potential clients.

Your experience as a life coach drastically influences your salary as well. As you gain experience, you gain more credibility and opportunities. Testimonials of current & past clients can lead to you getting more clients due to your merit as a coach. 

The more credibility you have, the more there will be a high demand for you specifically as a life coach (get your waitlist ready 😉)… thus more money.

At the bare minimum, you will need a life coach certification. Learn more about how to become a life coach.

Your area of expertise, or your specialty, is the last area to address. These are the 7 most profitable niches in the life coaching industry:

🌺 Mindset & Accountability Coaches

🌺 Health & Fitness Coaches

🌺 Small Business Coaches

🌺 Relationship Coaches

🌺 Career Coaches

🌺 Parenting & Family Coaches

🌺 Executive Coaches

Some of these niches may come more naturally, as being a yogi already puts us at an advantage when it comes to mental health. But, perhaps you also are more into helping those in the corporate arena that need more professional development & meeting goals at work is important to them. 

Either way, if you want to make a career out of life coaching, and want to make more money, there is a need for you. 🎉

How Much Do Life Coaches Make in the United States?

According to an article on the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics website written by Kathleen Green, The national average salary for a life coach is $61,900 with the mid- range of that salary being $36,200 in the United States. View the chart below for a list of life coach salaries by state. 

As well as the hourly rate including cost of living to determine if your location would be a good fit to start your own life coaching business. Please note these are merely averages for a life coach’s salary. (Information for this chart came from Zip Recruiter and this Cost of Living Data—FYI: the lower the number, the less expensive it is to live in that state)

State	Hourly Rate	Salary	Cost of Living Index
Alabama	$13.82	$28,748	88.8
Alaska	$19.20	$39,943	124.4
Arizona	$16.36	$34,018	107.2
Arkansas	$14.98	$31,150	90.3
California	$18.03	$37,492	134.5
Colorado	$17.13	$35,628	105.5
Connecticut	$18.91	$39,336	113.1
Delaware	$17.13	$35,627	102.6
Florida	$13.81	$28,719	102.3
Georgia	$16.08	$33,441	91
Hawaii	$19.66	$40,892	179
Idaho	$15.52	$32,287	106.1
Illinois	$17.81	$37,050	90.8
Indiana	$16.36	$34,029	91.5
Iowa	$19.31	$40,174	89.7
Kansas	$16.78	$34,893	87.7
Kentucky	$15.26	$31,747	93.8
Louisiana	$16.84	$35,030	92
Maine	$16.49	$34,294	111.5
Maryland	$17.38	$36,142	119.5
Massachusetts	$20.16	$41,930	148.4
Michigan	$16.38	$34,073	92.7
Minnesota	$20.20	$42,015	94.1
Mississippi	$17.46	$36,308	85.3
Missouri	$16.25	$33,797	88.4
Montana	$15.69	$32,636	103.7
Nebraska	$15.75	$32,750	90.1
Nevada	$20.30	$42,230	101.3
New Hampshire	$16.01	$33,299	115
New Jersey	$17.30	$35,978	114.1
New Mexico	$19.12	$39,777	94.2
New York	$19.20	$39,932	125.1
North Carolina	$15.07	$31,342	96.1
North Dakota	$18.78	$30,054	94.6
Ohio	$18.86	$39,222	94
Oklahoma	$16.51	$34,338	86
Oregon	$19.96	$41,521	115.1
Pennsylvania	$16.06	$33,413	99
Rhode Island	$18.86	$39,218	110.5
South Carolina	$16.50	$34,328	96.5
South Dakota	$18.79	$39,083	93.8
Tennessee	$18.46	$38,392	90.4
Texas	$16.00	$33,286	93
Utah	$18.33	$38,136	101.5
Vermont	$17.17	$35,714	114.9
Virginia	$17.38	$36,142	103.1
Washington	$19.35	$40,238	115.1
West Virginia	$13.84	$28,791	90.3
Wisconsin	$21.20	$43,888	95
Wyoming	$16.44	$34,186	92.8

As you can see from the data in the chart, life coaches are present in every state, and there is a need for life coaches across the U.S., thus making a coaching business full time or part time hustle a worthwhile consideration to add in addition to your yoga coaching.

How To Evaluate Demand for This Career

New clients are looking for coaches that can help them achieve goals, participate in goal setting, be provided with support, and get guidance about life. The top aspects of life that a client is looking to improve are in spiritual, personal, & professional. More often than not, your client will be looking for a combination of these life aspects.

According to Grand View Research, being a new coach would not keep you from booking coaching sessions. The outlook for the demand for life coaches is on the up & up. There is a projection that life coaching is expected to have a compound annual growth rate of 4.85% from now until 2030.

Here is more good news, according to this same research listed above, it has been reported that many people that have used life coaches are both highly satisfied with & trust their coaches.

The International Coaching Federation also conducted a study that found that 22% of people who have never used a life coach in the past will likely use one in the future, and an astounding 43% of people have already used life coaching in the past.

If you are considering life coaching, but do not know what realm you “belong” in, I would recommend breaking the process down. For instance, here are some factors to consider:

✔️- Are you most comfortable, or do you find yourself focusing on a certain area of your life?

✔️- Have you achieved growth, or had a major breakthrough in a certain area of your life that you would like or have the skills to help others through?

✔️- Do you have more knowledge of the personal, professional, or spiritual elements of life? Or, would you even say that you are well versed in two or more of these areas?

The point is, before you can start offering services, or claim your position as a life coach, you must first discover what, who, & where you want to help. People, especially millennials, find careers and the workplace to be quite stressful, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. 

People are needing more assistance & guidance due to an increase in the demands of the workplace that then filter into their regular, everyday lives. Having a life coach that people are happy to pay for, can and will help alleviate some of the day to day issues that arise. 

At the very least, life coaches work to provide clients with methods to bring their clients back to their center. Just like YOU 😍.

As a yoga coach, you are already working with paying clients & your clients work to make themselves better through their yoga practice. You already have a client base to pull from. You know the demand there is for it, if you are coaching in person or online, your clients already love their yoga practice with you. Your yoga students would be more apt to trust you as opposed to other coaches because they already have developed a relationship with you.

Life is hard, and people need life coaches in a variety of ways to help them get through life as they know it. They need you. 💖 In fact, many companies are also starting to employ life coaches as an added health benefit to their employees. Could you be the next coach they employ to assist their employees with your coaching methods?

I have already listed the niches with the most clients or need for coaches. It’s no surprise that the most profitable niches in life coaching are those that are most in demand:

🌺 Mindset & Accountability Coaches

🌺 Health & Fitness Coaches

🌺 Small Business Coaches

🌺 Relationship Coaches

🌺 Career Coaches

🌺 Parenting & Family Coaches

🌺 Executive Coaches

How To Evaluate The Competition

When you first start out as a life coach, especially as new coaches, it can be very intimidating. You fall into this rabbit hole of constantly watching what your “competition” is doing, how they are doing it, and how you can be like them to be a successful life coach too. Most coaches do this same thing when they start out.

You want the truth though? You don’t need to do that. Approach your life coaching the same way you approach teaching your yoga students. 

Showing up as your authentic self, and embodying the life/ lifestyle you are saying your clients will get from working with you.

I know this sounds too good to be true, but your future coaching clients will be attracted to who you are as a person. They want to work with people that look like them, sound like them, have been where they are. They want someone that understands who they are, where they come from, and where they want to go.

All of that being said, I would recommend approaching your business & pricing strategy with some market research. Personally, I have taken several marketing classes to get some perspective on marketing (not my forte), and the “Get Clients Now Program”, hosted by Maria Wendt has been the MOST beneficial. I mention this program & place it here because she has a lovely method for conducting market research. 

She provides a script that you can use & adapt to your niche, but the sole focus is to get face to face with people, or get them on the phone. Sure, it is easy to get on the phone with someone, but here are the benefits of physically speaking with someone:

🌟-you can engage in a conversation with someone in your target audience to determine if your coaching method, program, etc. would be something others could use

🌟- you can also determine if this idea/ coaching service is something others would want

🌟- whether or not they would be willing to pay for your coaching

🌟- if they are willing to invest, what their price range is for your specific coaching practice

These factors are the best ways to evaluate your “competition” because you are able to discern whether or not your specific type of coaching & your approach to your coaching are things your target audience would pay for and benefit from. The best thing to come from coaches who conduct personal market research is that if you don’t feel you can get the value from your starting point that you are giving, you can make adjustments or start all over if needed.

Also—another key element to this market research is to allow a safe space at the end of your call to let them provide feedback for your idea & see if there is one or two things they think is either missing, or could be added to provide more value to your life coaching.

You may also find that as you start working with people, you want to change your niche. There are no rules here. It is your practice. You are allowed to make changes & adjust as needed. Just like with your yoga strategy: maybe you prefer or teach one method of yoga over another. The same mindset can be applied to life coaching.

Feeling overwhelmed, and needing some clarity on whether or not becoming a life coach would be a good fit for you? Try Brett’s 18 Days of Yoga for Your Body and Soul to get the clarity you need 🤩

How To Add Life Coaching To Your Yoga Business

As mentioned earlier, being a yoga instructor, it may be easier to start your life coaching practice than you may initially believe. For example, many life coaches I know are also certified yoga instructors. They range in life coaches from business coaches, to spiritual coaches, to embodiment coaches. In other words, because you are a yoga instructor, it does not automatically qualify you as being a better life coach in one area or another.

Many life coaches I mentioned use their current students as a place to start. After all, if you start off working with people who already know & trust you, you will get testimonials sooner rather than later.

If you want those salaries to start making an impact for you, life coaches make sure they get constant feedback from clients. This strategy will greatly add to your credibility & word of mouth is the fastest way to grow your life coaching. After all, when we get together with our girlfriends, aren’t we all always giving feedback about the new shirt we bought, or the new yoga practice we created, or any other new thing we are in love with. What if your yoga students were in love with you as their life coach & raved about you to all of their friends.

We tend to co-exist with other people that are in our same season of life, so the odds are in your favor that one person in a friend group could potentially keep a steady flow of clients rotating through your inbox. Thus, helping you to—at the bare minimum—get to that state average salary from the chart above.

You are already creating value to your students’ physical & mental health, what if you just took the leap, went a step further, & kept helping them reshape what their reality looks like. Life coach salaries depend on how well we can shift perspective for and with our clients, so when we help them create a new reality for themselves… We have something to truly be proud of.

If you are not already a yoga instructor, but you are looking to add that to your resume, check out one of Brett’s amazing certification programs. They are offered online, and a convenient way to be a yoga teacher even if you have a busy schedule 

💃 There are three options to choose from:

⭐- 200 Hour Yoga Teacher Training

⭐- 300/500 Hour Yoga Teacher Training

⭐- Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training

Take my quiz to find out which YTT is best for you:

Closing Thoughts

Overall, the projected outlook for these careers is positive. If you are interested in becoming a life coach, you can check out our other blog post, How To Become a Life Coach to find out what steps need to be taken in order to make this idea into your own business & start making additional money & be able to achieve growth in a way. 

The life coaching industry is growing fast, and frankly, people need the support of life coaches more than ever. Being a yoga instructor, you have the business skills, so why not add “Life Coach” to your name as well? Is having your own coaching business what is next in the cards for you?