Most people
interested in joining the coaching business want to know how much money can be
made from this profession and if they can turn it into a full time job or not.
This article is trying to answer this exact question, for more information Join the Facebook Support Group for Coaches for
free advice.The 2012 ICF study was the biggest ever, with over 12,000 coaches responding from 117 nations, and offered some interesting insight. The research found that the average annual salary was just over $82,000 for full-time and $26,000 for part-time.
On the other hand we have the conclusions from the Sherpa Executive Coaching Survey. Average salaries according to Sherpa range from $160 per hour for a Life Coach and $325 per hour for Executive Coaches. Multiply that with the average 6 clients per week and we end up with an average annual income ranging from $55K to $116K.
So the 2 studies do not contradict each other and that is important for our quest in finding if joining a coaching career is profitable or not.
To the above information we also need to add a few important facts.
1. You need to subtract federal and state taxes from your life coach salary, as well as social security tax for the self-employed.
2. Working with corporate clients earns you more money than working with private life-coaching clients so depending on your skills and target market you may end up with more or less money than the average numbers discussed above.
3. You can combine coaching with other forms of activity that bring additional income and help you build your business - some examples are writing or speaking, or running workshops and events, packaging the knowledge and selling it as products: books, dvds, ebooks. You may not be able to do that from your first year of activity, but you can forecast additional streams of revenue for the following years.
4. One positive financial aspect is the relatively low start up costs of setting up a business - as the main expenditure will be on training and marketing.
5. In terms of time - your coaching business could take between one year and 18 months to establish and so you will need to be able to cover your expenses - both business and personal - for this time.
6. When just entering the profession you will not be able to charge much, while gaining experience your rates will also go up. New business and life coaches can charge $100 - 200 per hour and veteran coaches with established results can often charge $250 - 600 per hour.
If the above information did not help you decide if you could make a living out of coaching you can always ask people who are already in this business.
