Life Coach Business Plan Template
A roadmap for building a coaching practice, covering goal setting, service offerings, financial planning and market analysis, so the business has a direction rather than a hope.
What it covers
- The one sentence that describes who you help and what changes for them
- Your services, and the price each one carries
- What you need to earn, and how many clients that actually is
- Who else is doing this near you, and what you do differently
- The first ninety days, as a list of things to do rather than aims
Why a coaching practice needs a plan at all
A life coaching practice has almost no startup cost, which is exactly why so many of them drift. Nobody has lent you money, so nobody asks what the plan is. The result is a coach who has a website, a logo and a vague intention to "help people live their best life", and no idea how many clients would make the month work. A plan is the conversation a lender would have forced, held with yourself instead.
The plan is short because its job is to force decisions, not to impress anyone. Every section below ends in something you have to commit to on paper: a sentence, a price, a number of clients, a date. If a section cannot be finished, that is the useful finding. It usually means the specialty is still too broad, and that is cheaper to discover now than after six months of marketing to everyone.
Filling in each section so it holds up
Start with the positioning sentence, and write it as a situation rather than a feeling. "I help people find their purpose" describes nobody in particular. "I coach mid-career parents who are returning to work after a break and have lost confidence in what they are worth" describes a person you could find, talk to and refer to. The rest of the plan is built on this sentence, so rewrite it until a friend could name somebody who fits it.
For services and prices, list no more than two offers. Most new practices need one core package (a set number of sessions over a set number of weeks) and one smaller way in, such as a single focused session. Write down what the client has at the end of each, not only how many hours it contains, because that is what they are paying for.
The income section is where most plans become honest. Write the yearly figure you need, divide it by the price of your core package, and you have the number of packages you must sell. Then divide by the weeks you will actually work. That number, set against the hours you have, tells you whether the plan is a business or a hobby with a price list.
The competition section is not a list of every coach online. Pick three who serve a similar person and note what they offer, how they describe it and roughly what they charge where they publish it. Then write one sentence about what you do differently that a client would notice.
The ninety-day list and how it connects to the course
End the plan with the first ninety days written as tasks with dates, such as "tell forty people in my network what I now do, by the end of week two." Aims like "grow my presence" do not belong here, because you cannot tell on day ninety whether you did them.
Units 5, 6 and 7 of the life coach course work through these same decisions in more depth: choosing a specialty that is big enough, turning what you do into a package with a measurable result, and setting a rate you can say out loud. The plan is the two-page summary of what those units ask you to decide.
A filled-in example
| Practice name | Example Return-to-Work Coaching |
|---|---|
| Who it helps | Parents returning to paid work after two or more years away, who feel out of date and underpriced |
| Core offer | Twelve-week package, six sessions, ending with a written return plan and a rehearsed salary conversation |
| Smaller way in | One ninety-minute clarity session, credited against the package if the client continues |
| Income target | $36,000 in year one, from coaching alone |
| What that means | At $1,500 a package, 24 packages a year, or about one new client every two weeks |
| Different because | Works on the salary conversation directly, which the three similar coaches reviewed do not mention |
| First ninety days | Weeks 1 to 2 tell my network; weeks 3 to 6 run five discounted pilot packages; week 12 review pricing |
Mistakes to avoid
- Writing the plan for an audience of everyone. A plan that says "adults who want more from life" cannot produce a marketing channel or a price. Narrow the sentence until you can name three real people who fit it, then build the rest from there.
- Leaving the price blank until later. The price is the one number every other section depends on. Put a figure in, even a provisional one, and let the income arithmetic tell you whether it works.
- Planning a year of content and no conversations. Early clients almost always come from people who already know you. Put named conversations in the first ninety days before you plan a single social post.
- Treating the plan as finished. Review it at day ninety with real numbers. A plan that is never compared with what happened is only a wish written neatly.
Questions
Do I need a business plan to start coaching?
Not to start, but you do need to have answered the questions one contains. The value is not the document, it is finding out mid-way through that you cannot yet say who you help.
How long should it be?
Two pages. Anything longer is usually somebody avoiding the part where they have to name a price.
Training to be a life coach?
The Life Coach Certification is ten units, an open-book exam and the C.L.C.P designation, from $247 with a 30-day money-back guarantee.