If you have a love for business and a knack for giving others advice, you might be able to combine both of these skills into a successful career path as a professional business coach. Of course, the route to positioning yourself as a trustworthy source who provides valuable advice can be fairly challenging in comparison to simply applying for a typical job. However, if you’re willing to put in the groundwork necessary to become established as an authoritative speaker and consultant, you could wind up earning a salary of 6 figures or more by charging a premium price for speeches and presentations at corporate events and conferences. Once you’ve built a reputation as a prominent coach, companies may even hire you to provide employee orientation and training services. If that sounds like a career you might be interested in, you can get started by taking the following 7 steps:
1. Take an ILM Coaching Course
The Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM) has designed a number of courses that will help you become a better business coach and mentor. By completing an ILM level 7 coaching course, you’ll be well-positioned to land speaking engagements and coaching contracts in your respective field of expertise. These courses are administered by accredited providers like The BCF Group. You can enrol in mentoring from The BCF Group to earn your ILM level 7 coaching certificate.
2. Manage a Blog
Regularly posting informative content to your own blog is a great way to showcase your expertise and coaching abilities. Companies who hire business coaches want to know for sure that you’re the real deal, and having an extensive blog archive that covers all the topics and sub-topics in your niche can help to prove your experience and trustworthiness. Your blog also serves to create brand awareness for your public persona, so more people will know about you. In general, the more well-known a business coach is in the public eye, the more they’re able to charge for their services.
3. Start a YouTube Channel
Uploading coaching videos to YouTube on a regular basis is another way to showcase your skills and appeal to prospective clients. Submitting written applications doesn’t really give you the chance to convey your ability to deliver presentations in a convincing and captivating manner. By showing your face and speaking skills on camera, you give potential leads an accurate representation of what you’re capable of providing for their businesses.
4. Guest Author in Major Publications
Partnering with popular blogs, online magazines, local newspapers, and other publications to distribute business coaching content is another way to make your name known. Many blogs will let you publish a guest post on their site with a link pointing back to your own blog or coaching profile. You may need to invest some funds into a comprehensive guest posting campaign, as some sites will require sponsorship fees in order to post your content.
5. Make Guest Appearances on Popular Podcasts
Showing up as a guest speaker on a popular podcast can help you expand your fan base quickly by intersecting with the fan bases of other more established coaches and speakers. Keep in mind that companies are always looking for fresh faces and ideas to liven up their conferences, so by making yourself known as an already popular platform, you’ll be giving your brand a major boost. It’s important to be prepared whenever you have an opportunity to make a guest appearance, as you don’t want to leave the entire conversation up to random chat.
6. Apply for Open Projects and Positions
Many companies will post ads and job listings on job search platforms and freelancing sites in search of their next business speaker. They often do this to get cheaper deals, so you can get your start in this lower-level arena quickly and you may just run into a few premium clients along the way. The benefit of taking this global, go-getter approach is that there are so many companies willing to pay for business coaching, and most of the coaches you’ll be competing with won’t have an ILM level 7 coaching certificate, which you would if you heeded the first tip in this guide.
7. Build an Impressive Portfolio
Now that you’ve taken all of the steps above and have begun to land your first clients and contracts, it’s time to start collecting your greatest speeches and coaching sessions into a highlight reel that can be used to bolster the appeal of your portfolio. Business coaches with extensive portfolios are able to outshine other candidates when competing for prospective gigs, so this is an area of career improvement that’s definitely worth investing in.
Business Coaching Can Be a Pleasant and Prestigious Career
Proper advice and training are becoming increasingly valuable in the corporate realm as competition continues to become increasingly fierce in every industry. As such, there are opportunities available to any aspiring business coach who has the ability to effectively deliver potently informative and enriching messages in front of a crowd.