What types of coaches are there?

There are plenty of coaching niches and today, you’ll learn what the most profitable types of coaches are. 

Want to learn more? Read on! 

You’ll learn:

What is coaching?

The different types of coaches

The benefits of coaching

How to choose your coaching niche

The coaching that’s most in-demand

Virtual coaching vs in-person coaching

What is coaching?

First, what is coaching, really? 

At its core, coaching is about supporting clients to achieve transformation. 

My own core principles of coaching is the “ABC” – ways in which you can help your clients succeed: 

• Actionable advice
  As a coach, you help clients to get from A to Z, Z being their ultimate goal. And you do it by offering clear, monthly steps: 

Month 1 – Learn how to eat right

Month 2 – Maintain eating habits

Month 3 – Add an extra strategy to help clients get even better results

• Belief
  Clients hire coaches like you because they want someone in their corner who has achieved the same they want to achieve. That’s what you do as a coach – help your clients see what’s possible. 
• Candor
  Clients need you, as a coach, to be honest with them. And because you’re on the outside, you can help clients reframe and review their unhelpful thoughts and behaviors that are holding them back from achieving their goals. 

While the “traditional” way of coaching is more based on Socratic questioning (asking questions and letting the client find the answer themselves), I believe effective coaching is created by combining coaching and consulting. 

I call this hybrid approach “coach-sulting” and it helps you and your client get the best of both worlds. You let your client reach their own conclusions, but you also give them straight advice when appropriate. 

This way, your clients get concrete results during the time they work with you and therefore your coaching style provides more value than traditional coaching. 

You can learn more about my coaching philosophy in this video:

But why should you start coaching? 

If you’re a first-time business owner, coaching is one of the best ways to get started. 

After all, you do fulfilling work by helping others achieve their goals. As you sell your expertise and help people individually, you’ll also be able to charge a higher rate, which makes coaching a highly profitable business model. And finally, online coaching is incredibly flexible, so you create more of that flexibility and freedom in your life.

(That’s why I call this type of business a Freedom Business – one that allows you a lot of freedom, while being profitable and supporting your overall goals and dreams.) 

Now you know what coaching is. Next, let’s move on to the different types of coaches. 

The different types of coaches

What are the different types of coaches? Here are the 50 biggest coaching niches you can get started in. Read to the end to learn how to choose YOUR niche. 

1. Life coach

Life coaching is one of the biggest coaching niches.

BUT being a life coach is not the key to success. Why? Well, it’s just too broad. 

You need to get specific about what you do and who you help so that potential clients understand the value of your services. 

For instance, the benefits of a health coach are clear. The benefits of life coaches are much more intangible and so fewer will want to spend a lot on your services. 

Learn how to become a life coach here.

2. Business coach

Business coaching is about helping entrepreneurs build businesses and grow and scale them. Or they might help leadership or teams improve their strategies and the way they work. 

Personally, I firmly believe that business coaches need to have experience of doing what they teach others. I’ve built businesses for the past ten years and have made multiple seven figures in the process.

Naturally, someone with less experience can still be a fantastic business coach at the level they’re at (for example, helping business owners scale to multiple six figures). 

Here’s my guide on becoming a business coach.

3. Executive coach

Executive or leadership coaches work with leaders, teams, or individual employees. As an executive coach, you help people manage and lead better, improve their team-building skills, and improve culture and structures. 

Executive coaching requires you to have a strong executive background; after all, that’s what you help others with. 

Want to learn how to become an executive coach? Here’s my guide.

4. Career coach

Career coaches help people find jobs and grow professionally. The types of people you work with depends on your specific niche; do you specialize in helping new jobseekers or executive-level job transitioners? Your work depends on your methodology but typically, career coaches help their clients create compelling resumes, improve their interview skills, and job search effectively. 

Your background depends on the type of career coaching you do. 

For instance, my student Emily has a background as a recruiter. Today, she helps people find fulfilling careers at her career coaching business Cultivitae. 

Learn more about becoming a career coach here.

5. Health coach

Health coaching is another broad term. You help your  clients improve their health and wellbeing. But to be a successful health coach, I recommend getting specific about the type of health you can help clients with. 

For example, maybe you teach people how to use a plant-based diet to improve their health, use a specific methodology to help people lose weight, and so on.

My student David is a good example. He uses herbs to help people lose weight.

Here’s what you need to know about becoming a health coach.

6. Mindset coach

A mindset coach helps clients improve their confidence, self-esteem, and self-talk to achieve their goals. For instance, entrepreneurs (myself included) often work with mindset coaches. 

My student Spencer used her corporate experience to start her own mindset coaching business that makes 3x what she used to make in her job. 

Here’s how to become a mindset coach.

7. Wellness coach

Health and wellness coaching are very similar, but wellness coaches focus on holistic wellbeing. You might help your clients with exercise, sleep, addictions, relationships, mindfulness, and more. Some wellness coaches have narrower specialisms, like alternative medicine.

Want to start a wellness coaching business? Here’s my guide.

8. Fitness coach

A fitness coach helps people work out and become fitter to achieve different goals, for instance to improve their heart health, lose weight, build muscle, or become leaner. 

For instance, if you have experience as a personal trainer, you have the right experience to become a fitness coach. 

9. Nutrition coach

Nutrition coaches help clients improve the way they eat. You might work with a specific type of client (for example, diabetics, athletes, or pregnant women). Or you work with a type of diet, like plant-based diets. 

Registered nutritionists and dietitians often have academic degrees and many states require them to hold licenses. 

Become a nutrition coach by following my guide here.

10. Weight loss coach

A weight loss coach is a type of health coach who specifically focuses on weight loss. Some weight loss coaches work with a specific methodology (spices or herbs to lose weight) and some develop exercise regimens and diets for their clients. 

As a weight loss coach, you ought to have helped other people and/or yourself to lose weight and be able to tailor that strategy for other people. 

11. Relationship coach

Relationship coaches help people improve the relationships in their lives, for example by helping people find love or maintain their relationships. You might work with individuals and/or couples and work with a specific dating skill (how to find love as a senior person, how to online date, and so on). 

To stand out in relationship coaching, get specific with who you serve. For example, you can work with an underserved demographic, like single men over 50. Or you could have a signature coaching program that teaches your secret sauce to relationship success.

My student Ruby used to be a matchmaker at companies like eHarmony. Today, she helps single men find love.

Here’s my guide on how to become a relationship coach.

12. Fertility coach

Fertility coaches help people improve their chances of getting pregnant. Here, your work could include suggesting diet, supplement, and exercise changes based on the latest research-backed methods for boosting fertility. 

Or you could take a more spiritual approach with alternative medicines or homeopathy to improve fertility. Whichever philosophy you choose, make sure you have the education to help people.

For instance, if you have a medical background, you’re well-equipped to help others improve their fertility. But also your own fertility struggles can have helped you acquire the skills you need to become a fertility coach.

Become a fertility coach here. 

13. Parenting coach

A parenting coach teaches clients how to improve different aspects of their parenting. Some parenting coaches focus on new parents, while others focus on helping the parents of older children or even teenagers. 

As a parenting coach, you might help parents understand how their children develop, how to communicate with their children, how to discipline their children, how to parent children with special needs or ADHD and so on. Or you might work with things like sleep coaching or breastfeeding coaching.

This is the ultimate guide to starting a parenting coaching business.

14. Marriage coach

A marriage coach is a type of relationship coach who specifically helps married couples improve their marriage or work through divorce. Importantly, a marriage coach is not a couples therapist. Although if you do have a background as a therapist, you can obviously mix the two. 

15. Divorce coach

A divorce coach helps people create fulfilling lives after their divorce. You work with individuals or couples to work through their divorce and reach their goals. For example, couples might want help to reach an amicable divorce and individuals going through a divorce might want emotional support to work through a difficult time in their lives. 

16. Personal development coach

Personal development coaching is about helping people with their self-growth. For instance, if someone wants to improve their self-awareness, empathy, or other life skills, that’s something you might help them with. Those types of skills often go hand-in-hand with goals like becoming a stronger leader or improving relationships. 

17. Leadership coach

Leadership coaching and executive coaching are essentially the same thing. You might work in a corporate setting or with entrepreneurs teaching leadership skills. For instance, the “trillion dollar coach,” Bill Campbell, worked with tech entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs and Google-CEO Eric Schmidt and had a tremendous impact during his lifetime – he is remembered as one of the most important figures in Silicon Valley. 

18. Sales coach

A sales coach specifically helps sales professionals or entrepreneurs improve their selling skills. 

When I started my business, selling was hard for me. I associated it with used-car-salesman tactics. So, I hired a sales coach – and it completely changed the way I viewed sales. Today, I have a multi-seven-figure business because of my selling skills. 

One of my students, Sanae, built her own sales coaching business – and makes multiple six figures doing what she loves. 

19. Marketing coach

A marketing coach helps marketing professionals and entrepreneurs improve their marketing skills. This involves helping clients come up with effective marketing strategies and build successful campaigns to market their products or services. You might specialize in a specific marketing area, like social media or ads. 

20. Branding coach

Seth Godin describes a “brand” as what people say about you or your business when you’re not in the room. Basically, it’s the reputation, theme, and aesthetic of a person or business. 

And that’s what a branding coach helps their clients achieve. 

21. Communication coach

Communication is a key skill in the workplace (and in all types of relationships). Communication coaches help their clients improve their skills and communicate more effectively.  

Some communication coaches focus on speech specifically for those with cognitive or speech impediments. Others focus on how to communicate more broadly, like starting conversations and communicating clearly.

22. Public speaking coach

Public speaking is one of the number one fears. At the same time, speaking skills are incredibly important for people who want to get ahead. 

As a public speaking coach, you help clients shake their fears and become more confident on stage. You could apply your skills to help people in the workplace or entrepreneurs.

My student Victoria helps others improve their speaking skills. Here’s a fun video I did together with her:

23. Grief coach

A grief coach helps clients through times of loss, including the loss of a loved one, pet loss, divorce, and so on. All losses have a grieving period, and you as a coach would help your client work through their grief and find that thing that lights them up so that they have a vision for the future. 

Here’s my guide on how to become a grief coach.

24. Writing coach

A writing coach helps writers improve their craft and reach their writing goals. Whether that’s writing fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or academic research, a writing coach keeps their client accountable and gives practical advice on how to improve. 

As a writing coach, you likely have experience of writing professionally or by having published or self-published books. 

25. Transformational coach

A transformational coach specializes in creating deep transformation through a specific medium to help their client change their mindset, health, or life. 

For instance, you might work with your clients to help them completely transform what they see as being possible for them. Transformational coaching is similar to mindset coaching. 

26. Productivity coach

A productivity coach helps clients improve their productivity. For instance, you might help your clients create habits to focus better and not get distracted. There are plenty of areas where distractions keep people from doing their best work and where focus can improve their work a lot. Other ways you might coach clients is to support them in applying structure or outsourcing their work. 

27. Stress management coach

Stress management coaches are similar to wellness coaches and work with clients to identify the causes for stress and build tools to manage that stress. These techniques may include mindfulness, meditation, exercise, sound baths, journaling and breathwork, depending on your own methodology.

28. Mindfulness coach

A mindfulness coach helps clients learn how to use mindfulness to achieve calm and clarity in their everyday lives. Mindfulness coaching is less tangible than other forms of coaching on this list, while the coaching itself can pay dividends in the form of productivity, happiness, and lower stress levels. 

Become a mindfulness coach here.

29. Meditation coach

A meditation coach focuses on helping clients create a meditation practice. As a meditation coach, a lot of your work would involve creating meditation routines, providing audio guides, and helping clients create their own resources to stay on track. 

There are lots of schools of thought when it comes to meditation, so choose one that aligns with your philosophy (and that of your client).

30. Spiritual coach

A spiritual coach helps clients create a spiritual practice. Some spiritual coaches work with traditional religious practices, such as helping people of a certain religion deepen their spirituality. Or you might work with reiki healing, astrology, or other new age spirituality. 

Here’s my guide to spiritual coaching.

31. Financial coach

A financial coach works with clients to help them achieve their financial goals. Notably, financial coaches aren’t the same as accountants or financial advisors – these require certifications and licenses. 

Instead, a financial coach works with clients to improve their finances. You might help your clients create sustainable budgets, identify unnecessary expenses, make realistic plans for a client to become debt free, and so on. 

But you don’t manage a person’s portfolio, give investment advice, file taxes on behalf of clients, or have direct contact with their accounts. 

Get the guide to become a financial coach here.

32. Investment coach

An investment coach helps clients figure out the best moves to make with their investments. So, people who are new to investing will seek out investment coaches to help them get started. 

But they’re not the only ones. For example, well-established investors also seek out investment coaches to help them achieve a specific investment goal. 

33. Retirement coach

A retirement coach helps people design the life they want after their career ends. A big part of your role as a retirement coach is to help clients transition from one major stage of their life to the next. 

This could include helping clients reframe their relationships, create wellness plans, figure out what leisure or work activities they’ll do, and how they’ll manage their finances going forward. 

34. Real estate coach

A real estate coach helps clients identify the best real estate opportunities for them and create a plan to grow their real estate portfolio. You could advise clients on how to find properties, renovate them, and sell them. Or you work with people to create a rental portfolio. 

For example, my student Ryan, who has built his own six-figure real estate portfolio, is a real estate coach who helps his clients invest in student housing. 

35. Legal coach

Normally, a coach is not the same as a qualified equivalent. For example, you don’t have to be a psychiatrist to be a mindset coach. You don’t have to be an accountant to be a finance coach. But legal coaches are lawyers. They just don’t represent the client as their lawyer. 

Let me explain. Say you have a client who’s having a small civil dispute and they want to represent themselves. They may seek you out as a legal coach to help them understand the law and how best to fight their case.

You could also advise them on the legal bodies they could go to in order to fix their situation. So, you’d be a lawyer giving legal advice, but you wouldn’t be their lawyer.

Another example is a legal coach who helps small businesses understand what they need to do to start or manage their businesses (without giving specific legal advice). For example, my friend Lisa Fraley helps coaches by selling templates and giving one-on-one advice. I always recommend her products because they’re such a time saver and they make it much more accessible for people to get solid legal contracts in place. 

36. Motivational coach

A motivational coach focuses on motivating clients to achieve their goals. So, as a motivational coach, you use techniques like accountability and positive psychology to boost your client’s self-esteem. You might also teach your clients how to motivate themselves going forward. 

I created this guide to becoming a motivational coach.

37. Negotiation coach

A negotiation coach teaches professionals and entrepreneurs the art of negotiation, which can be difficult to master. Why? Because it requires great communication and persuasion skills. That’s why many negotiation coaches work within organizations to help them close better deals with clients and collaborators. 

To become a negotiation coach, you need more than just good negotiation skills yourself. You also need a defined process for negotiating that you can customize and teach your clients.

38. Diversity and inclusion coach

A diversity and inclusion coach works with businesses to improve their diversity policies and practices. This could involve spearheading programs for more inclusive hiring practices or helping employees work better with a diverse clientele. 

39. Team-building coach

A team-building coach helps organizations nurture and support their teams. Team coaching is typically done through activities and exercises that strengthen communication, trust, and morale within teams. Many organizations hire team-building coaches, and these coaches can also host team-building retreats to facilitate team growth.

40. Performance coach

A performance coach has many definitions, but I’ll cover the two most common ones. The first is performance in sports. So, as a performance coach, you would help your client with their athletic performance by taking a holistic view of their training schedule, diet, exercise, and sleep. 

The second most common type of performance coaching is in business. Here, you as the coach would help your client create better results for their organization or business. This involves identifying where the inefficiencies are in their performance and creating a plan to improve. 

Here’s how to become a performance coach. 

41. Agile coach

An agile coach is a high-level project manager who aims to improve the agility of a medium-to-large-scale company – not to be confused with the term “scrum master”. A scrum master manages the project flow of a single team within an organization. 

So, consider agile coaches as a step above them. Basically, they’re the master of scrum masters who look at the company as a whole to improve project management processes. 

This type of coach does need a scrum master certification. 

42. Sports coach

A sports coach helps clients achieve their athletic goals. So, most sports coaches specialize in one sport that they personally master. With that said, it’s common for those who coach school-age kids to have a broader set of sports skills. 

Ultimately, this type of coaching is all about helping clients reach their potential through training programs, exercise plans, and diet plans. Your work as a sports coach may have some overlap with nutrition and fitness coaching too. 

Typically, sports coaches have experience in the sport they coach on and/or a sports degree. 

43. Music coach

A music coach helps clients reach their musical potential – either with a specific instrument or with musicianship in general. Unsurprisingly, there are some basic skills you need to improve to become a great musician. For example, sight reading, listening, composing, collaboration, and improvisation. 

So, as a music coach, you would identify the areas that your clients can improve in and make a plan to help them make progress. You need to have relevant experience in the instrument you teach. 

44. Acting coach

An acting coach helps clients reach their acting potential. So, you can help amateurs with beginner acting skills or you can help established actors hone their craft. In fact, many famous actors turn to acting coaches to help them prepare for specific roles. 

Within the acting coach umbrella, you have accent coaches, movement coaches, film coaches, and theatre coaches who all work on specific elements of acting. 

45. Voice coach

Voice coaching involves helping clients improve their speaking or singing voices. To be a great voice coach, it helps to have a background in singing and understand the mechanics of the vocal cords. 

Depending on their niche, voice coaches can help a wide range of clients, from singers to people recovering from vocal surgery or strokes. 

46. Confidence coach

A confidence coach helps clients boost their confidence to reach a specific goal. They work with clients to identify the underlying negative beliefs and poor self-talk that hold them back from achieving their wildest dreams. 

47. Travel coach

A travel coach helps clients achieve their travel goals. So, this can involve suggesting potential destinations, routes, and means of travel. The coach can also help break down any self-limiting beliefs and fears clients may have about traveling. 

48. Image consultant coach

An image consultant coach helps clients improve their image through communication, style, and behavior. It’s like branding but for an individual. So, image consultants are typically hired by celebrities, public figures, and business leaders to help them come across in a certain way to the public. 

But also other people, like entrepreneurs or people who want to get ahead in their career, might hire image coaches. 

As an image consultant, you know how to draw out someone’s best qualities through their style and appearances. 

49. Style coach

While style coaches and image coaches are somewhat similar, a style coach focuses on helping clients find their personal style. This is about making the individual feel confident with their wardrobe. On the other hand, image consultants are more about improving the public perception of a person. 

As a style coach, you could help clients find colors, patterns, and clothing shapes that suit them – and even the right hairstyles and accessories. 

50. Recovery coach

A recovery coach helps people work through their addictions with a practical plan. This is different from therapy, though. Therapy would focus on emotional healing and past traumas. Coaching focuses on helping clients build habits so they can avoid relapsing and create a better future.

Here’s how to start a recovery coaching business. 

The benefits of coaches

Those are the different types of coaching.

But should you become one? 

Regardless of the type of coaching you choose to do, there are plenty of research-backed benefits. 

Let’s take a look:

• 80% of people who receive coaching say their self-confidence increased.
• 95% of those coached experienced significant positive effects on their psyches.
• 50% of clients confide in their coach as much as in their best friend.
• 51% of companies with a strong coaching culture enjoy higher revenues.
• 73% of coaching clients reported having better relationships

As you can see, coaching is impactful.

You get to help clients, while you build a business that supports your dream life, whatever that might be – going for a long lunch on a random weekday, traveling more, or spending time with your family. 

But how do you pick your profitable niche? Let’s take a look. 

How to choose your coaching niche

To start your coaching business, you need to pick a niche.

Fortunately, it’s relatively simple to find a profitable niche. (And you have the skills you need to start coaching – it’s just a matter of identifying them.)

To find your coaching skill, take these steps: 

1. Figure out which areas you’re most skilled in
2. Figure out the demand in the audience you’re targeting

Combine the two and you have a winning formula. 

Let’s break that down.

You have skills, interests, and talents – things you could teach people. So, start by writing down a list of all the things you could do a ten-minute lecture on with no preparation. 

These are your areas of expertise. Think further than just what your degree might be in or what you do professionally. Maybe you’re a great public speaker, you give amazing dating advice, and so on. 

Then, circle the topics that could solve a real-world problem. Why? Because before deciding on your niche, you need to make sure there’s a demand for it.

And that’s it!

You can’t build a successful coaching business without skills. But skills mean nothing if no one is looking for them. So, find that middle ground between talent and demand and you’ll have your niche. 

I explain more about choosing your coaching niche in this video. Check it out: 

What type of coaching is most in demand?

But to choose your niche, you also need to know what type of coaching people want to buy.

The thing is: 

There are coaching niches that are more in-demand than others.

For instance, the health coaching industry is bigger than voice coaching.

But health coaches need to figure out their niches, too. They can’t serve an entire coaching industry. 

That’s why you should first and foremost understand what your skills are and decide your niche based on the value you can provide. 

In terms of understanding if YOUR niche is in demand, do a Google search to see if other people are offering the same service.

If they are, there’s a good chance there is an audience for the services you sell. 

One more thing, though…Should you do online coaching or in-person? 

Virtual coaching vs. in-person coaching

There are two options to working as a coach: 

Online coaching or in-person coaching. 

I personally find online coaching a far better option. If you want a truly flexible life, online coaching gives you that flexibility. 

You don’t have to be physically in one place or use a lot of time on commuting. And you can work with clients all over the world versus just the city where you’re located. (Similarly, your clients get to work with YOU.) 

Plus, studies show that virtual coaching works just as well as in-person coaching sessions. 

Ultimately, you and your clients win on an online coaching business.

Over to you!

And there you have it! Those are 50 of the most successful types of coaches.

Coaching can be an incredibly fulfilling career – and profitable too. What it comes down to is that you pick your niche and start building your business around it. 

What’s YOUR coaching niche?

If you want the simplest strategy to figuring it out, get my FREE workbook to implement what you’ve just learned.

Learn more: 

How to Market Your Coaching Business

How to Create a Coaching Package