Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Health and Wellness Coach

Health is one of the major priorities of humans and for many decades now, people have been trying to seek solutions to their health problems and also looking forward to improving their health by certain strategies. Health and wellness which has been in existence for a long time found a huge breakthrough during COVID-19, when health became a very top priority and people needed others to instruct them on how to keep a healthy and fit lifestyle and was mostly done online.

Previously, health and wellness focused on nutrition and exercise but recently, the industry has become wider and has moved into other aspects. Now the health and wellness industry is growing more focused on the need for self-care and self-care tips which can now be accessible from anywhere since health and wellness coaches are everywhere on social media and even the web, all you just need to do is search.

If you're an expert in health and wellness or you studied anything that is related to health and wellness, you can try obtaining the requirements and go into coaching to use your skills and expertise to contribute to the lives of people who need your services as a wellness coach.

Health and Wellness Coaching

Coaching is an empowering approach centred on clients to encourage and empower them to take charge and improve their lives in various aspects. Coaching has various industries ranging from self-development, digital skills, goals and even health and wellness coaches are available.

Health and wellness coaches are people whose jobs are to empower and coach clients and make them focus on taking charge of their health and improving their health. They support their clients both psychologically and physically, motivation and also help the clients to be accountable in setting and achieving their goals related to health and wellness.

They work hand in hand with their clients, paying attention to their problems and every detail and providing them with guidance, education and strategies to promote and sustain good behaviour to improve their health.

McKinsey in its recent survey, discovered that consumers of today consider the main dimensions of wellness to be healthy, fitness, nutrition, appearance, sleep and mindfulness. These areas are the key areas that health and wellness coaches are to concentrate on when offering their coaching services.

Coaches can choose to go a bit outside these areas but they have to consider the areas above as the key areas in the health and wellness coaching industry as in today's market.

Qualifications Needed to Become a Health and Wellness Coach

You can become a health and wellness coach through different approaches which solely depend on the area of wellness you want to specialise in as a coach. You can also choose to study in more than one aspect of wellness coaching and that also determines your route of entry into being a coach.

A university degree is not a mandatory requirement to become a health and wellness coach but it can have the great advantage of expanding your knowledge and experience in a particular area of health and may help give you more information and knowledge about your specific niche as a coach giving you an advantage to compete with your competitors.

There are various niches you might want to consider during your journey as a coach. You might want to choose more than one aspect to focus on but it is very important to choose parts of wellness where you're well experienced and can work efficiently. These aspects include; psychology, nutrition, health, sports science, fitness and some other aspects you can research more on.

You can also choose to earn a degree in any of the aspects of wellness and this can contribute greatly to your journey as you have more information and knowledge about the field since you have a degree in the course or subject.

You can also choose to alternatively go for a vocational qualification or diploma in the areas of health coaching or nutrition that can be completed either in person or virtually. This method offers a faster route of entering into the coaching degree as opposed to obtaining a degree in that area of study. And after these training sessions, you will be able to achieve a certificate or diploma in either personal training, nutrition, health or fitness.

Either by obtaining a degree diploma or vocational qualification, you should always make sure to obtain your courses from a recognised body to enable you to legally and efficiently practice your coaching program without any restrictions.

You have to fully prepare yourself for your journey as a coach and if you're doing one-on-one coaching, you have to provide a space for your sessions and if you're going for an online session, you have to make sure you have a stable internet connection.

Starting a Health and Wellness Coaching Business

As long as you have the necessary qualifications and knowledge to be a good health and wellness coach, you can consider starting and setting up a business as a coach. To successfully become a good coach, you must be willing to empower and coach people with honesty and also do it because of the health of your clients and not the pay attached to the session.

To successfully start and set up a coaching business as a health and wellness coach, you can go through the following steps.

1. Your Niche

A Niche is a particular area of speciality you would want to focus on rather than the whole health and wellness industry. Before you think about starting this business, you should research and relate it to your qualifications which aspect of wellness will be suitable for you to specialise in during your coaching.

You may choose to base in nutrition and cover everything involving nutrition as a nutritionist or someone with a qualification relating to nutrition as a speciality. Specificity in the industry will help you to be competitive and scale through business.

Weight management, stress reduction or fitness might be some areas you would want to consider when you want to niche down in the wellness industry. Discovering your niche also helps you with a marketing plan targeted at your target audience.

Once you have discovered your niche, you have to work effortlessly in trying to improve yourself and focus on your niche to obtain mastery. You can always choose to expand your scope into other niches in the future.

2. Perfect Your Skills

Discovering your niche is the first step in mastering your skills. Toh can only enhance your skills when you have discovered and decided on a particular niche to focus on. For a health and wellness coach, it is important to put your coaching skills into practice and work towards gaining a lot of experience, particularly with your target audience.

Feedback is also a great way of increasing your work efficiency and improving your skills. Always ask for feedback from your clients after a successful coaching session. This will help you identify your areas of lack and work on those areas to ensure you deliver good coaching to your clients.

To attract clients and at the same time perfect your skills, offering free or discount sessions is also a very effective way. It not only helps you with awareness but also helps you to practice more and perfect your skills in coaching and also to build confidence.

There are lots of online platforms to help you meet with other coaches and experts in your industry who will help and support you throughout your journey in coaching. These experts will also help you with webinars and classes to help you gain more expertise in your field and it will also expose you to meetings and conventions for coaches.

For example, the NHS is a program specifically for health and wellness coaches who are new in the industry. It has provisions for webinars and materials necessary for your growth and expertise in the industry.

3. Company Structure

Once you have succeeded in gaining the necessary knowledge needed for starting up a Coaching business, then you can look forward to choosing the type of business you want. There are several business types available to health and wellness coaches, you just have to find out which suits you and your services better then you go ahead to register your business.

For coaches, there are two company structure options available; sole proprietorship and limited company.

• Sole proprietorship

A sole proprietor or sole trader is a very simple business structure with as little as one administrative personnel available in the business. There is only one person present who is the sole trader of the business and the sole trader is the only one responsible for managing and running the business.

Being a sole trader means you are responsible for all losses and profits of your business and you are responsible for registering yourself for self-assessment with HMRC and filing tax returns annually for both your income and your business.

The whole business is controlled by the sole trader and all profits of the business belong to the sole trader, in the same way, all losses must be dealt with by the sole trader. Also any legal claims against the business, the sole trader is liable for them as well as tax debts of the business.

As a sole trader, you do not have to pay tax for your income and that of your business separately but you pay the tax altogether in your annual tax filing since your income and your company's income do not have a clear differentiation. This is different in the case of limited companies.

• Limited Companies

Another business option for a health and wellness coach is a limited company. As a limited company, you must register with Companies House and follow the due procedures before your company can be fully incorporated. A limited company is also called a private company or a private limited company which in most times the acronym LTD is used.

The limited company provides you with a clear limited liability for any debts or legal claims against your business and helps you to get access to a range of tax-saving opportunities and tax planning benefits.

In a limited company, you do not completely own the company except you are the only registered shareholder or director in the company. But in cases where other shareholders are present, the ownership of the company is divided and every decision must be taken with the approval of other shareholders and directors of the company.

In a limited company, company tax is paid differently and every shareholder or director of the company is to register for self-assessment to pay tax on their income and not the company's income as in a sole trader. In a limited company, the profits of the company are distributed based on the percentage of shares held by a particular shareholder in the company.

In limited companies, reporting requirements and filing tax returns or other requirements are the duties of the director(s) of the company, unlike UK sole traders where the sole trader has to do the reporting. You need to register for corporation tax with HMRC and the directors of the company as well as the shareholders will register for self-assessment.

4. Insurance

After you have successfully chosen a business structure and set up your business, insurance should be next. Insurance is very important as a health and wellness coach. There are several types of insurance you can register for as a health and wellness coach.

For health and wellness coaches, professional indemnity insurance is a very important insurance to register for. This insurance covers claims that might arise from errors, omissions, or even negligence in your professional service as a coach. This insurance also protects you in a case where a client alleges that your advice through coaching has resulted in harm or financial loss.

Also, if you specialise in a niche of wellness like fitness which demands you to meet up with clients one-on-one or you run a fitness group, obtaining public liability insurance is very important. This insurance protects you against cases of accidents, injuries, or damage to property that may occur during your coaching sessions in your place or while you are offering your services at a client's location.

Before choosing insurance policies, it is advisable to consult a professional advisor for proper guidance on the type of insurance that best suits your pattern of services. These professionals will help you compare your business' risk factors, to the available insurance and therefore help you decide which is best for your business.

5. Business Format

Your format of delivering your services should also be considered with great regard. As a health and wellness coach, you should select the format that best suits your niche and will promote the efficiency of workflow.

Your format depends on your style of coaching, your target audience, scalability, and personal preferences.

• One-on-one Coaching Method

This format of coaching allows you to have a deep and focused conversation with your clients and enables you to adequately relate your client's problems to their basic needs. It helps to build a strong coaching client relationship with your clients and also enables you to collect detailed and well-explained information about your client's situation.

This format of coaching also allows you to keep a flexible schedule that can permit you to work with various clients simultaneously with a good interaction rate. Most times it also helps you to judge the client's psychological health and is important for people who engage in psychological coaching as one-on-one interaction aids easy accessibility of psychological health through interactions and body language.

• Group Coaching Method

Group coaching mainly involves gathering individuals who share similar challenges or goals they are trying to achieve and allowing them to interact, learn from your coaching and grow together. A sense of community and support within people helps to foster love and can help these persons deal with their challenges effectively.

Group coaching can either be performed by hosting physical live sessions or online live sessions but this depends on the nature of the coaching session and the preference of the coach. This is a good format If you want to get to a larger audience you need to manage your time by having a coaching session of multiple participants at once and can also offer affordable options to participants who cannot afford a one-on-one coaching session.

Also, if you want your coaching sessions to be interactive, you can opt for a group coaching method with people with similar challenges or goals.

• Online Coaching

Creating online courses, programmes and classes is also a good way of getting to a larger audience and generating income remotely. This type of format allows you to coach others in the comfort of your home with just materials. You just have to package your knowledge and expertise in a presentable manner to give your audience what they want.

You can package your knowledge into courses, webinars, classes or a combination of all the methods.

This method allows clients to get coaching and access to materials at the convenience of their homes and at a lesser cost than for physical live sessions. It also provides the coach with effective time management since they can offer their services to multiple people at the same time without scheduling a one-on-one live session. Even if this is one of the less stressful ways of providing coaching services, it is also one of the most difficult to navigate.

To develop and market your courses online, you need an expert to help with course creation and various marketing strategies targeted at the target audience. You can hire a professional marketer to help with the marketing of your courses if you do not have experience with marketing.

You can also choose to combine all of the mentioned coaching formats to offer diverse patterns of services to meet the needs of various clients. You should always make sure to choose a coaching format that suits your personality and the niche of your coaching. For example, physical coaching sessions are great for fitness coaches and self-care coaches can choose an online coaching format.

You can still change or add more coaching formats to your business as you proceed in the business and gain experience and never forget to get feedback from your clients on which format is the best.

6. An Online Presence

In a digital world, one of the most effective ways of getting to your target audience and building your brand or business is through online channels. Building your digital reputation helps you to gain more clients and it reflects a professional image of your business.

• Professional Website

Every business in this digital age should possess a professional website. Your website is the main site for calling and receiving clients who want your services as well as answering questions clients may want to ask about your services. Your website must be user-friendly and easy to navigate to help your website visitors access information available on the website easily.

The website should contain all the necessary information about your business, your services, your formats of services and the types of services you offer including the cost for each service and format available.

You can choose to create your website yourself by making use of user-friendly, customisable and professional website templates from websites such as WordPress or Squarespace. You just need to pay for your hosting and you can customise your website to suit your business and services.

And if you cannot customise your website yourself, you can seek the services of a freelancer who specialises in designing and creating suitable websites for companies or businesses.

• Social Media

Social media is an effective marketing platform that allows you to interact with your audience. Leveraging social media as a business is very important in increasing reach and sales. The right content also has an important role to play in boosting your business performance. Posting regularly on your business pages or accounts and regular interaction with your audience can help you grow your audience and also get to know the preferences of your target audience as well as how to position your business.

The best social media platforms to focus on as a small business owner are Facebook and Instagram. These spaces offer business owners the ability to showcase and sell their businesses on the platform.

You can also check out the social media or leading companies in your industry and use their pattern as a template to leverage your social media presence to your target audience. You do not have to copy them but use them as an inspiration for your business model and also your social media pattern.

7. Feedback

Always request feedback from your clients as it is a highly valuable tool for the improvement of any business. Feedback can help you identify areas that need improvement and growth gives you space to work on those areas and helps you effectively consider your clients during your coaching sessions. It also helps you to clearly understand and be able to effectively interact with your clients for a smooth coaching journey.

One void way of obtaining feedback as a health and wellness coach, you use anonymous surveys which help clients give feedback without exposing their identity to the coach. You can also request testimonials and recommendations from satisfied clients to help improve the positive image of the company and also help boost company credibility for attracting new clients.

Attending feedback is very important and no feedback should be considered too little or ignored as your business is to satisfy your clients and without a good business response to feedback, there will be fewer referrals from previous clients.

Form Your Company with Incorpuk Today

At Incorpuk, we will help you through the company formation process and file your confirmation statements to help your business stay compliant. Whether you're a UK resident or a non-UK resident, our team is ready to provide guidance and help you establish your company in the UK. Contact us here today

Conclusion

There you have it. Everything you need to become a health and wellness coach. Do you have any questions about how to become a health and wellness coach? Kindly contact one of our experts for help today.