10 Tips on How to Make Money as a Health Coach

If you’re an aspiring health coach or an already practicing professional, you’re likely thinking a lot about this key aspect of your business: How to make money as a health coach.

And, you’re wise to give it serious consideration. In a world where money is a requirement to live your life, it’s ideal to have the knowledge and the tools to make more of it. When you choose to be a coach, you’re entering a specialty field that has some of its own unique guidelines and principles when it comes to earning a good living. 

Here are some great questions to ask yourself about making a living as a health coach:

• How do I learn about the business of health coaching?
• What are the easiest ways to make great money?
• What traps should I avoid?
• What practical steps do I take?
• And how can I set up my inner world for outer success?

With this in mind, I’m going to share 10 tips for how to make money as a health coach. These are powerful principles I’ve learned over 35 years as a health coach myself, and after training thousands of coaches over the last 20 years. I know there are so many programs and approaches for coaches these days when it comes to practice building. You have an abundance of resources to choose from. That’s the good news.

 Here are the 10 tips on how to make money as a health coach:

1. Build Your Practice Organically

2. Be in a Compelling Conversation

3. Value Wisdom

4. Play a Long Game

5. Keep Giving Your Gifts

6. Embrace the Business Person Within 

7. Market Yourself Authentically

8. Find Your Favorite Platform

9. Tap into Your Already Existing Network

10. Make Great Money By Giving Great Value

The challenging news is that it’s easy to begin your practice-building journey with the kind of mindset that actually gets in the way of your success. That’s where these 10 keys come in. These principles will help lay the foundation for how you think.

They’ll set you on the right path for finding your true value. And they’ll help you create a mindset that allows you to make more money as a health coach, more easily. Let’s dive into a deeper explanation of each tip on how to make money as a health coach…

1: Build Your Practice Organically

I’ve noticed that far too many coaches graduate from their training and feel a tremendous amount of pressure to have instant success. Perhaps they’ve heard stories of people who made big money real fast. Or maybe they’ve been taught that you simply need to follow a certain business formula that the experts are teaching. Follow the formula and you’ll make it big. But if you don’t see wealth fast, then surely something must be wrong with you.

Well, please don’t waste a moment of your precious time trying to do the impossible. Like all things in life, growth takes time.

Growth follows natural cycles. 

You wouldn’t stand over the tomato plant that you’re growing in your garden and yell at it to grow faster. You wouldn’t judge it for developing at its own natural rhythm. So this is the most important principle to reaching your greatest financial potential:

Grow your business organically.

This is the same way you’d grow your garden, or watch your children grow. It’s an attitude. An approach. A deep, restful knowing that life has its own inner wisdom, and its own innate flow. In other words:

Take the pressure off of yourself. 

Relax into growing your business, don’t stress into it. If you’re in an anxious rush to build a practice, you won’t be as effective as you could be. Life won’t be any fun, and health coaching won’t be fun.

For this reason, I suggest to all first time coaches to take the need to instantly make a living from your health coaching practice off the table. 

Of course you want to earn money as soon as you can. Just remember that every new business of any kind takes time to become profitable. On average, 2-3 years. It took Amazon six years to show a profit.

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Trust that life has its own timing that does not respond to our demands for instant success.

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Of course, you’ll still be tending to growing your business and doing all the strategies that help take a practice into success. But you’re building your business without pushing, forcing and bombarding yourself with artificial pressure and toxic expectations. The flow of money does not respond to our anxiety to have it fast. Breathe, relax, and respect the natural rhythm of life.

2: Be in a Compelling Conversation

If you’re looking to be a financially successful person, it’s important to have a clear idea of what you’re actually selling. As a health coach, what do you think your product or service actually is? 

For sure, you’re helping people. You’re coaching, mentoring, and advising others on how to be their best self when it comes to their health and their life. But I’d like to suggest a bigger perspective here. As a health coach –

What you’re actually selling is a conversation.  

• When you’re sitting down with your client in person or on Zoom, you’re in a conversation. 
• When you write an article on your blog, that’s a conversation between you and your audience. 
• When you’re chatting on social media with your tribe, you’re in a conversation. 
• When you give a talk or lecture, that’s a conversation. 
• If you create an online program, that’s a conversation between you and your students. 
• A book is a conversation. 
• As is a video. 
• Or an audio.

I think of my entire career as a coach, author, presenter, consultant, teacher, and creator of content as one lifelong conversation. 

That conversation is about health, nutrition, eating psychology, and personal transformation. I’ve been very committed to that conversation even through ups and downs, slow growth and rapid growth. 

From a business perspective then, I have essentially been selling a conversation. 

So if you want to prosper by selling your abilities to be in a conversation with others, there’s one important key:

Make your conversation compelling!

• Make it relevant to your audience.
• Make it practical and useful for people. 
• Be in a conversation that matters to you and to others. 
• Communicate thoughts, ideas, beliefs, opinions, and wisdom that move people – that create transformation.

What you don’t want to do is talk about things you don’t really care about. You don’t want to speak about topics or convery ideas that don’t personally move you.

Think of it this way: if you’re at a party and meeting new people, the ones you’d likely find most interesting to talk to are the people who are inspired by what they’re talking about. You wouldn’t want to converse with someone who’s bored with themselves.

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Your job as a health coach and businessperson is this: always be in the kinds of conversations that move and inspire you.

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This means you need to continuously learn, grow, educate ourselves, and notice what moves you and what you’re inspired to share with others. 

Please don’t underestimate the value of inspiration and how you convey it. So many people feel stuck, unhappy, bored with hearing the same old information. They’re tired of listening to how they’re doing something wrong. 

Inspiring yourself and others helps you create a powerful conversation and a happy client and customer.  

3: Value Wisdom

Many of us who get into health coaching come into it with the belief that our job is to convey information to our client. Meaning, the more facts that I know about nutrition and health, the more I learn about vitamins, minerals, macronutrients and all the medical afflictions that people might face, the more value I bring to the table.

In fact, this is what so many health coach trainings teach – facts and details about health and nutrition that we are to then deliver to our clients.

And yes, conveying useful information is part of the job of a good health coach. 

But the problem is, a vast majority of people are suffering from what I call a high FACT diet – they have too much information in their head. And so much of that information about diet and nutrition is contradictory. People can read books and spend time googling if they truly need more facts.

Here’s the good news: Your value as a practitioner goes far beyond hurling facts at your clients.

What most people are missing and so often hungering for is one simple thing:

Wisdom.

Wisdom comes from heartfelt and meaningful communication. Wisdom means speaking words that move a client to think more deeply about themselves and their life. Wisdom is the ability to listen with insight. Wisdom is all about helping people transform, have breakthroughs, and finally find freedom with food and body. Wisdom makes us all better and happier humans.

We all – including our clients – have our own unique wisdom that we learn from the school of life. And we can learn to convey wisdom to our clients with the right kind of training. Such an education that cultivates your ability to deliver wisdom includes, but is not limited to:

• The art of deep listening.
• A powerful understanding of our client’s life story.
• Working with your client’s life stage.
• Knowing how to work with the eating archetypes within.
• Skills that help clients feel open and safe.
• Techniques for helping your clients reframe the beliefs that hold them back.

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In a time when information is widely available, the value of wisdom is dramatically increased. That’s because it’s far more rare.

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Can you recall a time in life when someone said something to you, or had a conversation with you that moved you to a deeper understanding of yourself? That gave you an “aha” moment? That helped you get unstuck? That enabled you to “see the light”? That catalyzed a breakthrough for you?

If yes, then you know the power and value of wisdom.

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4: Play a Long Game

If you want to be make money as a health coach, it’s best not to dabble. Meaning, don’t just try out a business idea for a few months and lose interest if it doesn’t work. I’ve had many very successful health coaches come through our training, and I’ve met many successful business people over the course of my lifetime. And they all have one thing in common:

They played a long game. 

Playing a long game means you are in this for the long haul. 

Of course you want success to happen as quickly as possible. But at the same time, be willing for it to take as long as it needs to. In this way:

• You’re staying with one thing.
• You’re letting Life know that you’re committed.
• You’re trusting your journey. 
• You’re allowing success the breathing room it needs.
• You’re creating a foundation for long-term growth, not just quick wins

The challenge is, we live in a time when it’s fashionable to think we should win the lottery. Or make a killing in the stock market. Or find a can’t-miss, get-rich-quick opportunity. We hear stories of people who became overnight millionaires, and who did very little to achieve great wealth.

And, as the health coaching industry continues to grow rapidly,  we hear the same old get-rich-quick promises from far too many business ‘experts’ online, too.

These memes can easily distort our reality and cause us disappointment when our health coaching practice doesn’t deliver fast and fabulous results. 

I’ve met too many coaches who feel defeated because they were told they would build an empire in a year, and no such thing materialized.

Play a long game. 

Commit yourself to learning on the job. Grow your business as you grow with your business. 

I think it’s extremely helpful to see your work as a calling. Callings are lifelong. They speak to our soul and ask us to devote ourselves to something greater than us, more than us.

So yes, your practice is about you, and your business is about you. But your business is also about giving yourself to a lifelong pursuit. You’re offering yourself to the world. 

Success favors those who endure…

5: Keep Giving Your Gifts

As you play a long game, it’s quite useful to know exactly what game you’re playing. That game is very simple and straightforward when it comes to health coaching:

Give your greatest gifts.

The value you offer your clients is what you do best. The value you offer your clients are the gifts that you were innately born with, along with the gifts and talents you’ve acquired along the way.

Here are some examples of what your gifts might be:

• You’re a great listener
• You make people feel safe
• You make people laugh
• You have a passion for nutrition
• You love sharing and teaching about cooking
• You’re great with young people
• You love working with women
• You love working with athletes
• You love helping people of your ethnic or religious group
• You have a special connection with those who have weight challenges
• You love working with a specific kind of health condition
• You have a way of making people feel good about themselves
• You truly care
• And the list goes on…

Chances are, the people who’ve inspired you throughout your life are people who were simply giving their gifts to the world in a generous and easy way. Your coaching practice is an opportunity to give without holding back. To offer your best to people. This means taking the time to do a self inventory.

Ask yourself:

• What are the gifts I have to give this world?
• What do I already do naturally and easily?
• What do others say about what my gifts are as a person?
• And what is it that I feel inspired to share with the world? 

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The more you give of yourself, the more abundant you will feel, and the more abundant you will be. 

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I’ve noticed that there’s one thing that commonly holds health coaches back from giving their best gifts and creating success in their practice:

We think we need to be perfect to help another human being.

We say to ourselves, “I’m only qualified to help another person if I have the ideal weight, I’m super fit, I never overeat or emotionally eat, I don’t eat sugar, and I have it all together.”

The sooner you toss this outdated belief out the window, the better. Let’s reframe this false belief and replace it with a far better one:

You only need to be one step ahead of another human being to help them on their journey.

This is true when it comes to coaching, or anything in life. You only need to be a few steps ahead of your client to be of service to them. You don’t need to be perfect. No one is. You’re on your own learning and growing journey when it comes to food and body.

Other than a good training and education, this is what qualifies you to be a health coach:

• You’re actively working on yourself. 
• You’re not holding yourself to an impossible standard.
• You have compassion for yourself.
• You’re health coaching others in the very thing you need to learn. 
• You’ve learned lessons from the School of Life.
• You’re willing to give your gifts to the world.

If you truly consider it, this is how all of life works. We help one another by being a few steps ahead of the person we’re helping. Other people help us in the same way. We lift each other up. Everyone benefits. 

Making money as a health coach is all about giving your gifts, and letting go of perfectionism.

So please don’t wait to be perfect to give your gifts. Give them now…

6: Embrace the Business Person Within

Many of us who go into health coaching or other helping professions have this one thing in common:

We’re great helpers.

Meaning, we’re really good at serving others, being supportive, and wanting to be a good helper.

The challenge is, good helpers are not always good business people. 

It just doesn’t come naturally to a lot of us. In an ideal world, we would first be trained to be a great coach. And then, the Central Command Center of the Coaching Universe would just roll out the red carpet and send us all the clients we need. An abundance of paying customers would always be there for us so we can go about the business of doing what we do best.

If only this were true…

The reality is, it takes work to help others. It takes work to build a practice. Sure, you can find a job where someone pays you to be on staff. But when those opportunities are not readily available, or they’re not your first choice, then it’s your time to step up. 

So here’s my suggestion if you’re attracted to being a health coach but you’re not adept at business:

Embrace the Business Person Within.

This is all about your mindset. Choose to grow this part of yourself. Welcome this new role. Be nervous, be afraid if you need to, but give this new and growing part of you a big hug and welcome it to the table. Yes, there’s a lot to learn.

And the good news is, it’s all learnable. 

There is no secret formula here. There are many ways to grow your practice and grow your business, which will ultimately pay off (with patience!) and lead to making money as a health coach. For now, set aside worrying about the details and see if you can agree to cultivating this part of yourself that may not have gotten much attention. 

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The truth is, selling yourself is a beautiful thing. 

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Selling yourself means you’re letting the world know who you are and how you’re here to serve others. It gives people the opportunity to work with you. You’re stepping onto the stage of life and putting yourself out there. You’re saying to life that you’re serious about what you do, and that your door to success is open.

7: Market Yourself Authentically

For many aspiring health coaches, and even for practitioners who’ve been at it for a while, it can feel daunting to think about marketing. That’s because it’s easy to get online, go through social media, and see health coaches who look fabulous, fit, and wealthy. They might have famous clients, a big following, and they seem to have it all.

And it’s easy to think that you need to be that person. 

We might conclude that we need to look perfect, have perfect health, the perfect weight, and we should be following a perfect diet perfectly in order to be a legitimate health coach. We’ve seen this outdated belief before.

Well, here’s some advice that can save you a ton of energy and put you on your unique road to success:

Stop comparing yourself to others.

Once again, the answers to your worries are to make sure to be yourself. There is a clientele out there who wants to work with you.

There are plenty of people out there who feel most comfortable with someone who looks like you, talks like you, is your age, and has your way of being with people. 

Health coaching is such a profound profession because it levels the playing field for everyone. So many kinds of people from all walks of life can be successful coaches. And as a coach, the wisdom and skills you’ve been taught are available to the widest possible audience. Everybody wins.

So the good news is, you don’t need to try to be someone else in the public eye. You don’t need to reinvent yourself into a fabulous and glamorous person. 

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You just relax into who you already are and present that person to the world. This is what it means to market yourself authentically.

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When you market yourself authentically:

• You talk about what you do best.
• You share what you’re inspired about.
• You own who you are.
• You do and say what feels most natural to you.
• You don’t make false promises.
• You’re honest with people, and with yourself.

I’ve noticed that there are so many business programs for health coaches that make big promises if you take their course. I’ve also noticed that many people take such courses and come out feeling bad about themselves. Why?

Because they couldn’t reach success fast. 

They did what they were told, but were disappointed because they had the expectation that the money and the clients should come pouring in.

Remember, you are building your practice organically. 

Yes, learn the marketing techniques, get educated, take honest programs that don’t make unrealistic promises, and keep embracing the businessperson within. Develop the confidence that you can make money as a health coach. But don’t force your practice or your life into a corner. Let it breathe. Put in the effort, and let your practice grow at its own natural pace. That’s one of the most important keys to how you make money as a health coach, and find long-term success.

8: Find Your Favorite Platform

Another trap that aspiring and practicing health coaches fall into is the erroneous belief that we need to be everywhere and do all the things. 

Meaning, we think we need to be on every social media platform, have a blog, a Youtube channel, a podcast, an all encompassing website, pay for advertising, and more. 

It can feel exhausting to think that we need to dominate all of these online spaces.

So here’s some advice that has been helpful for so many of my graduates:

Find your favorite platform and start playing with it.

Rather than doing everything, everywhere, all at once, start with one thing. Consider choosing a platform that you already use. One that you enjoy and that you’re somewhat familiar with.

And think of this platform as the place where you build your conversation.

Remember, it’s all a conversation. So, where and how do you like to communicate?

• Do you prefer to write and feel most comfortable with a blog?
• Do you shine in front of the camera?
• Are you already an active user of Instagram or Facebook?
• Can you imagine yourself doing an audio podcast?
• Would you like to experiment with Tik Tok?
• Do you enjoy speaking in public?

Consider it all as an experiment. You’re giving it a try and finding out where you feel best when it comes to sharing what you’re inspired about and being in a conversation that matters. This is all about doing what feels natural to you, and not forcing yourself to fit into some ideal that you have in your mind. An ideal that’s not really you.

You don’t even need to have an online presence if you want to build a practice. In this case, you’d focus on word of mouth, or presenting and teaching locally.

Sometimes, there are mediums that we might not feel comfortable with, but we’re very drawn to learning about. For example, most of us aren’t trained to be public speakers, the thought of it might scare us, but at the same time, we might feel compelled to learn how to do it.

I’ve had so many graduates who learned to speak in public and it helped them grow both personally and professionally. 

So, notice what you feel called to do when it comes to the different platforms that you can have a conversation in.

In this way, you are once again letting your practice grow organically. You’re allowing your practice to teach you.

9: Tap into Your Already Existing Network

Growing your business and marketing yourself can seem like a lonely endeavor if you’re a solo practitioner. The online universe is a big unknown.

So it’s natural to wonder:

• How will potential clients find me?
• Do I need to spend money on advertising?
• Who will even want to work with me?
• And where do I even begin?

Well, if you’re just staring out and you want to make money as a health coach and build your practice in the easiest and most cost effective way, there’s one very simple and elegant solution: 

Tap into your already existing network.

This means making an exhaustive list of all the people who know you, who like you, who love you, who will potentially show up for you, and who will answer an email that you send to them. This can mean friends, family, loved ones, co-workers, former co-workers, friends of friends, business connections, practitioners you might know, anyone and everyone in your world.

Then, send them an email. 

Let them know: 

• That you have health coaching practice. 
• How inspired you are about the training you’ve just taken.
• Exactly the kinds of challenges you work with.
• The kinds of clients who can benefit from seeing you.
• You are offering a free first session.
• Please reach out to their network on your behalf and share your contact information.

Of course, craft a great email, follow up with everyone you communicate to, and be persistent.

For so many people, our already existing network is a goldmine of potential clients, practice clients, and income. This is a great way to get your feet wet when it comes to authentically marketing yourself. It’s the place you begin when you don’t know where to begin.

You’re starting with your tribe, and your extended tribe’s tribe…

As you grow your business and practice into the future, always take note of who your allies are. Who might be potential allies? Who might be a potential source of client referrals? And be willing to ask for support.

The worst case scenario is that people will say no.

And in that case, you’ll be strengthening your businessperson archetype, the salesman or saleswoman within. 

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We can grow our business from all of our experiences, including what might feel like a setback or a failure.

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The good news is, the more you’re in a conversation that matters, and the more you put yourself out there, the greater the chance that opportunities will come your way.

I personally built my career on giving free talks anywhere and everywhere I could. I drew so many clients from those talks. What’s more, I made connections. I became more confident the more I presented. 

At the young age of 30, before the days of the internet, I was a relatively unknown “expert” but got a book contract with Random House for my first book, Nourishing Wisdom, because I had something interesting to say. 

I was inspired by what I was communicating, and I had shown up speaking in so many places that I built up a compelling resume’ and what I would call “invisible momentum.” 

This was my way of growing my business organically. You have your own unique journey. And it starts now…

10: Make Great Money By Giving Great Value 

If you’re alive on planet Earth, then at some point you learn the importance of money. The value of it. The need for it. Money makes things happen. We all have a different relationship with it, and the bottom line is, we require it for our existence.

Being a health coach is a unique and fascinating way to make a living. It’s not for everyone.

But it is for you if:

• You love working with others. 
• You’re inspired to help people grow, heal and transform. 
• You feel good when you make a difference in someone’s life.
• You’re drawn to making money by doing something good in the world.  

These are some of the key aspects of being a health coach that drew me to this profession. After four decades of being a coach, training coaches, observing coaches, and listening to coaches, it’s abundantly clear to me that the money making aspect of this work is a deeply important consideration.

This is the domain where health coaching careers are made, or fall away. The same is true for any job or profession. With that in mind, of all the money making strategies out there, I believe there’s one that trumps all the others, and it’s this:

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The most superior path to making great money is by giving great value.

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I hope this seems obvious.

Because the truth is, far too many of us lose sight of this as we work at building our career. It’s understandable. We want to earn good money, and we need money now. 

In my training, I teach our students that our relationship with food and body is a great teacher. This is a core principle to effectively help others with their eating challenges. {Discover 3 of the most powerful coaching tools we train our health coaches in…}

And I believe the same is true of money:

Our relationship with money is a great teacher.

If we want to make great money, doesn’t it make sense that we need to give something of equal value? This is the inner game of money. It’s putting first things first. It’s a privilege to help others. It’s a privilege to have a great lifestyle. It’s a privilege to have financial success. 

• Are you delivering value? 
• Are you offering your greatest gifts?
• Do you believe in the value of what you offer?
• Do you stand by the value that you bring to the world?

These are the powerful questions you can ask yourself as you explore your relationship with money. These are the things to consider as you devote your life energy to what you wish to accomplish in this world.

When we’re helping another human being, giving our gifts, and sharing the wisdom we have with a sense of abundance, then we quite literally are living in that abundance. We feel a wealth of energy and satisfaction. And in that state of abundance, money and opportunities can more freely flow to us.

This is the inner game of money and success.

I trust you’re beginning to see that there’s a more empowering approach to practice building and making money as a health coach. And that approach begins with how you think, feel and believe about your business journey. 

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The 10 Tips to Making Great Money As A Health Coach are just some of the many concepts we teach in the business building component of the Mind Body Eating Coach Certification Training. 

The core aim of this professional program is to give you the best possible education in eating psychology, so you can then give your clients the best value when it comes to helping them transform their unwanted food and body challenges.

So, your success begins within. It begins with the right training. And your success continues as you grow your practice organically, play a long game, market yourself authentically, and always give your greatest gifts.

I hope this article on how to make money as a health coach has been helpful to you…