Life Coaching Fees: How to Structure Your Prices and Charge Your Clients

At Jay Shetty Certification School, we believe deciding on a fee structure for how you charge your clients is one of the most important aspects of becoming a life coach.

All too often, it is easy for life coaches at the beginning of their career to undervalue themselves and charge far below what they are worth.

This challenge to find a way to balance your value as a life coach with the cost of life coach sessions is one that can affect even the most seasoned coaches.

After completing your life coach training, whether at Jay Shetty Certification School or another organization, you will be faced with the task of developing a client base. One of the more daunting aspects of this is deciding upon a pricing structure that accurately reflects your level of experience, your training, and your value.

Many life coaches struggle with answering the question, “What are your fees?”

Being unable to answer this question confidently often stems from being unsure of your value, what the right pricing structure is for your target market, and how much you need to earn in order to be able to live life comfortably.

In this article, the Jay Shetty Certification School team will go over the process necessary for understanding life coach charges, introduce different methods of payment for coaching sessions and help you answer the elusive question, “How much is a life coach worth?”

How to Decide Your Coaching Fees

For many coaches, deciding upon what to charge their clients for their services is an emotionally difficult experience. There are many factors that you need to consider when deciding upon the cost of life coach sessions.

Determining your coaching fees will depend on a number of factors. First, the price you can charge, and the way you charge your clients will depend on your level of experience as a life coach. Another important factor when deciding upon your fees is to consider the level of training you have received–– how qualified you are as a life coach.

Another consideration to make when you are deciding upon your fee structure is how you market yourself as a life coach. Your coaching style should influence price–– is it more intense and involved, or on the lighter and casual side?

The niche that you work in as a life coach will also impact your coaching charges.

A less experienced coach working with college students will likely be charging less for their services than a highly-experienced executive coach that specializes in leadership coaching. For a college student on a budget, a bill of $100 a month may be the most that they can afford.

Certain clients, however, will expect more bespoke, specialized service from an expert.

Many clients will be searching for the best life coach available to them to improve their business, health, and family. If you are coaching business professionals and corporate leaders, a fee of $1,000 a month may seem more reasonable–– and even be expected.

Jay Shetty Certification School recommends narrowing possible life coaching fees by looking at what other life coaches that work within your niche are charging. It would be typical to expect that a business executive would be willing and able to pay more for your services than a single mother on a tight budget.

Being able to establish a generalized idea of what other life coaches in your niche are charging, as well as what clients in your niche are typically paying for these services, is a helpful way for you to choose your price points going forward.

Coaching by the Hour

The go-to life coaching pricing structure for many coaches at the beginning of their career (and indeed beyond) is to charge your clients an hourly rate.

An hourly rate for your services is simple––you charge the client a set amount per hour of coaching that they receive.

But how much is life coaching per hour?

Deciding your hourly rate can be a challenge. Factoring in your level of experience, as well as the amount that clients in your niche are usually willing to pay for life coaching services is a good way Jay Shetty Certification School recommends to work out your rate.

Research carried out by the International Coaching Federation found that the global average salary of a life coach is $51,000 a year. That works out to a little over $4,000 per month.

If you are charging $100 per hour for your coaching service, you would need to be delivering 40 hours a month, or ten hours a week, of coaching sessions to reach this amount. Is that achievable for you? Could you have a rota of that many clients without experiencing burnout?

One of the benefits of becoming a coach is that you can set your own hourly rate.

When deciding upon your hourly rate, you should factor in the amount of money you wish to earn monthly. This figure should be an amount that would allow you to live comfortably and with a high quality of life.

Once you have decided upon your ideal monthly income, it is easy to work backwards from this point in order to establish how many clients you will need to be working with, as well as how much you should be charging these clients for your services.

Setting life coaching fees in this way will allow you to see exactly how you can achieve your monthly goals in a way that is aligned with your values, fits into your niche, and is sustainable with regards to the amount of time you are able to spend working.

Offering Life Coaching Packages

An alternative to hourly charges is selling coaching packages while offering supplementary products or services to your clients.

There are many advantages to creating life coaching packages as opposed to simply charging clients hourly, weekly, or monthly. Creating a package for your services is a good way to help you and your clients understand and achieve their goals, and to set clear financial obligations.

Jay Shetty Certification School believes offering a life coaching package to prospective clients can help you to achieve your professional goals as well. When a client purchases a coaching package from you, they are committing to a set amount of sessions and a set amount of money, and you are committing to providing these services for them.

Having these set stipulations not only helps your client to understand their commitments to you, but will also help them to feel motivated and excited to keep working with you.

You will also be able to clearly see how much time you are dedicating to your sessions with each client and gain a sense of financial security. You will know exactly how much money you’re earning per month from each client, and how much time you should be dedicating to your life coaching sessions with them.

Offering a range of life coaching packages will allow you to develop a set of programs that are designed to meet the needs of various clients in your niche. You can cater these packages to the budgetary and time considerations of your clients allowing you and your clients to be able to set clear goals and milestones.

For instance, could you create resources that guide your clients towards their goals? Could you offer them access to an online course, give them a piece of merchandise or access to an exclusive club that adds value to their journey?

In addition to coaching, these add-on products offered as a package can supplement your income and reduce the time needed every week to commit to sessions. Your full package will also be more appealing to potential clients if it includes an array of features, benefits, and offerings.

Pricing Life Coaching Packages

As mentioned above, coaching prices vary greatly, and you should be basing yours upon your monthly needs, the prices your competitors are asking for, and what clients in your niche are willing and able to pay.

Prices for life coaching packages can also vary depending on a variety of factors such as:

• What the package offers––- are you including extra material and bonuses?
• Your life coaching niche
• Your level of experience
• The number of coaching sessions included

Jay Shetty Certification School has a simple way to work out the life coaching pricing structure for your packages: base the price point on your hourly rate.

If you are charging your clients less per hour, with more sessions included in the package, your clients will be incentivized to commit to a life coaching package from you as opposed to one-off sessions.

Another important factor Jay Shetty Certifications School recommends you consider when deciding on the price point of your life coaching packages is to determine what additional content or incentives you offer alongside the sessions. Many coaches include additional services, elements, and add-ons to their packages.

While this may make it more difficult for you as a life coach to determine your price, add-ons and additional services are a great way to incentivize and encourage your clients to purchase a package. They also help life coaches stand out from their competitors and attract new clients.

Life Coaching Package Examples

It can be challenging to put together a life coaching package that meets both your needs and the needs and expectations of your clients.

When creating a package designed to allow your clients to achieve the best results possible, Our team at Jay Shetty Certification School recommends you factor in what clients in your niche typically want to achieve. What timeframe is realistic for these goals and milestones to be reached?

You will also want to think realistically about how much time in between sessions your clients may expect or need in order to be able to work through, integrate, and absorb what they have learned in their sessions with you.

Some key areas that you should consider when creating a package for your life coaching sessions are:

• Who your clients are and what they are looking for
• The desired outcome of the package
• What your clients need to learn in order to achieve this outcome
• The best framework to help your clients
• An approximate time scale needed

A simple package you could offer may be made up of three, six, or nine sessions delivered over a period of 3 months. Recommending the package with six sessions can allow your client to opt for the cheaper package if time or budget is lower, with the option to always upgrade their package for more sessions with you if they change their mind at any point in time. It may be appropriate for you to offer a bespoke package depending on the area of life coaching you specialize in.

For example, you may want to offer a VIP Package made up of 10x 1-hour video or telephone coaching sessions with an initial 2-hour life strategy session where you get to know your client and understand their goals, along with 5 emergency 15-minute calls, plus a Course Graduation Lunch upon completion of the course. All of this could be delivered over a 6 month period priced at $5,000.

Alternatively, you could offer a 3-month life coaching package made up of 6x 1-hour bi-monthly video sessions, unlimited coaching support between sessions, and additional tools and course materials, priced at $500.

These are just examples of life coaching packages and they are by no means conclusive. Ultimately, the decision on how to price your sessions when you establish a life coaching business is personal and up to you.

Final Thoughts

Deciding on your life coaching fees can be a challenging but rewarding experience. Working out what to charge your clients can depend on a variety of factors including your coaching value, experience, monthly financial goals, and the prices of your competitors.

There are many different ways for you to work out the cost of life coach sessions for your clients. You may decide to charge hourly for life coaching sessions, or you may choose to create a bespoke life coaching package.

However you determine your own life coaching fees, remember to decide on your fees in a way that aligns with your personal goals. Life coaching is a highly personalized, and high-end service. Always place value in yourself and the work that you do.

If you would like to learn more or hear about how you can become a certified life coach, contact our amazing team at Jay Shetty Certification School to get started.