Here are some of the more in-demand coaching niches for 2023.
In the infancy of coaching as a career path, people became life coaches to help their clients progress and find fulfillment in their lives. Today, the life coaching market is estimated at $1.5 billion, with an expected growth rate of 4.9% by 2030. An International Coaching Federation survey showed that 43% of respondents used a coach in the past, and 22% of those that have never had coaching plan to use a coach in the future.
Coaches are mentors that work individually with their clients, but they don’t do the work for their clients. Instead, they teach people to improve their own performance. Personal coaching is similar to coaching a sport. A sports coach doesn’t do the running; they coach the runner to excel on their own. Now, many life coaches are choosing to specialize in a niche congruent with their skills and experience.
Here are some of the more in-demand coaching niches for 2023:
1. Financial Coach. A financial coach helps their clients improve their personal finances. They are not financial advisors and do not sell financial packages such as life insurance or annuities. People eager to make a change in their financial situation hire financial or money coaches to establish better relationships with their money.
There are several niches under the umbrella of financial coaching. For example, some financial coaches work specifically to help students avoid student loan debt or get out from under student loan debt. Others focus on making key financial decisions. Some may focus on improving relationships with money.
Financial coaches tend to make between $100 to $300 per session, although there are very high-end financial coaches for a more niche customer.
2. Mindset and Confidence Coach. This coach helps people achieve their goals by improving their mindset to overcome life obstacles and the limiting beliefs or mindsets that are keeping the challenges in place. Mindset coaches often work with a specific type of person or in a particular niche. For example, mindset coaches may help their clients make more money by overcoming limiting beliefs about money. Or they may help them lose weight by overcoming obstacles that get in the way.
Mindset coaches differ from business coaches, holistic health coaches, or other niche coaches in that they work specifically to change the way their clients think.
3. Executive Coach. This coach works with C-suite executives or leaders in an organization. They focus on how to create team synergy, implement new ideas, make important decisions and navigate change in an organization.
Executive coaches typically make between $50,000 and $125,000 annually in the US, though top earners can make well over $280,000. While individuals hire executive coaches, many companies are recognizing the return on the investment of hiring coaches for their top-tier employees.
4. Holistic Health Coach. Wellness coaching is synonymous with holistic health coaching. A holistic coach focuses on the whole person — physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. This coach helps educate and empower their clients to create healthy environments for the whole being. This could look like having experience as a nurse, and ordering lab work for clients, or simply evaluating their nutritional and life habits, both from a tactical and mindset perspective, to empower them into creating new results.
Holistic health coaches work at colleges and universities, wellness centers, corporations, or for themselves. They can earn between $100 and $500 an hour.
5. Business Coach. A good business coach holds clients accountable and keeps them motivated to succeed in their business. Business coaches provide personalized advice to help business owners make money, be it through establishing or scaling their personal brand, or helping them create effective marketing funnels and lead generation... They are typically entrepreneurs or executives who have successfully owned or operated a business.
There are a number of niches under business coaching, including helping businesses set up for success, market their business, or create financial strategies for growth. A business coach can charge between $100 and $1000 an hour.
Deciding on where to specialize within the coaching industry should line up with your interests as well as your strengths. Your personal story can help guide you — if you lost a significant amount of weight and kept it off, you may consider becoming a weight loss coach. If you’ve successfully managed a startup, business coaching may be your expertise. While the bar to entering the coaching industry is low, the bar for success is quite high: great coaches are constantly expanding their knowledge and deepening their facilitation skills.
Plus, to be successful, you’ll need to show client results, but that doesn’t mean you need to be perfect!
