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Comparing Coaching Models
What Does It Take To
Become A Six-Figure Coach?
The earning power between life coaches and high-performance coaches continues to grow. In this article, I take a closer look at this growing trend and detail what it takes to make 6-figures and highlight 5 key differences between life coaching and high-performance coaching...
Tom O'Connor
Back in the 16th century when the dominant view of the world was that the earth was the centre of the universe, one man, Galileo Galilei, dared to think differently.
To not follow the crowd but instead to verify with his own eyes what he was told. So he built a new type of telescope, one that could see 20x to 30x further than what came before it.
Today the dominant on-ramp to the world of coaching is to become a life coach. But a number of years ago, after seeing so many coaches fail to build their dream business, I started wondering…
Is there a better model that coaches could follow that is far more lucrative, involves working with fewer clients, has high barriers to entry and attracts higher-calibre clients?
The answer is yes!
It’s called High Performance Coaching.
And if you checked out my previous article (The 8 big coaching trends for 2023) then you know that this form of coaching (which typically falls under executive coaching) is growing twice as fast as life coaching.
To understand why, we first need to define what high-performance coaching is and what a world-class high-performance coach does.
Life coaching and high-performance coaching are both forms of coaching, but the latter has important differencessssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss. The key differences between the two can be summed up into 5 words:
Focus, Approach, Clientele, Results and ROI.
Focus: High-performance coaching focuses on helping individuals who are already
performing well, achieve even greater performance in a specific area such as
their career or business.
The focus is on what is working really well - what we call the client’s ‘Glimpse of
Brilliance’, whereas life coaching has a broader scope that a coach may work with
that may encompass many areas of an individual's life and even extend into therapy, mentoring or training.
The dominant theme as a life coach is on
correcting (or improving) a client’s deficiencies.
Approach: As a high-performance coach you don’t need to be ‘the expert’ in the
client’s domain. Your job is to be an expert on how to unlock a client to greater levels of performance. This means you can work with clients across multiple industries without needing to be ‘the expert’.
The approach is dynamic and tailored to the client, unlike the procedural approach present in traditional life coaching. By identifying what the client does brilliantly and helping them focus on and develop their strengths, extraordinary results become possible. On the other hand, traditional life coaching typically focuses on helping clients overcome their limitations and fix the ‘holes’ in their buckets.
Clientele: High-performance coaches frequently work with higher-profile, higher-paid and high-achieving individuals, such as executives, CEOs, sports professionals and entrepreneurs. The areas and outcomes they want to improve typically have far greater economic value for them than the general ‘life issues’ addressed by life coaches.
Cost: High-performance coaches charge anywhere from $300 to $1,000 or more per session, with some High Performance Coaches charging up to $10,000 per session. They don’t ‘sell’ their services and they don’t sell sessions by the hour but by the engagement.
Due to the far greater value their work has for their clients, the higher level of expertise and experience required to become an HPC Coach and the more complex and demanding nature of the work they enjoy, they charge much more than life
coaches. Up to 20x or more. This has a big impact on their economic engine which
we’ll talk about shortly.
Results: The results created by high-performance coaching are far more immediate
and tangible, such as improved athletic or business performance, income growth, career success etc, whereas the outcome of life coaching may be more subjective, such as increased happiness and well-being.
Increased ROI & Fees: Because High Performance Coaches focus on where their clients are brilliant and help them amplify and apply their strengths in the areas of their life, business or career that matter most - they can generate many, many times the return on investment that the client spends to hire them.
So that’s a quick overview of the key differences between High Performance Coaches and Life Coaches. Now let’s look at what impact this has on their earning potential and income.
Why it Pays (Far Better) To Become A High Performance Coach:
According to PayScale, the average hourly rate for a successful life coach in the United States is $45 and the average annual salary for a life coach in the United States is between $30,000 and $52,000 per year.
According to Forbes, high-performance coaches can earn anywhere from $100,000 to $500,000 or more per year working with a smaller group of clients.
That’s a dramatic difference.
Let’s take a closer look to see why as a high-performance coach, the earnings difference can be so dramatically different.
To do this, I’ve created a simple model to compare the potential return on investment (ROI) for a high-performance coach vs a life coach.
According to the International Coach Federation (ICF), the average number of clients a life coach works with at any given time is 8 to 12 clients. High-performance coaches typically work with fewer clients.
Unlike life coaches whose engagements tend to be shorter (typically circa 5-7 sessions), performance coaches work with clients for longer periods, typically 6 to 12 months at a time.
Here is how the client models compare:
Client Model Comparision | Life Coach | High Performance Coach |
|---|---|---|
Number of Clients Per Week | 8 | 8 |
Session Fee | $50 | $500 |
Duration of Engagement | 7 Sessions (2 months) | 24 Sessions (6 months) |
# Client Sessions Per Month | 4 | 4 |
Total Revenue Per Client | $350 | $12,000 |
Total Monthly Revenue | $2,800 (8 x $350) | $16,000 (8 x $2,000) |
Total Yearly Revenue | $31,600 | $192,000 |
(For simplicity, the above numbers assume both types of coaches fill their coaching offering throughout the year.)
Based on these calculations, we can see that the high-performance coach generates a significantly higher total revenue compared with a life coach. The high-performance coach in this example earns $16,000 per month, while the life coach earns $2,800.
For the life coach, each coaching client delivers $350 of value to their business. For the high-performance coach, this number rockets to $12,000 per client.
Over a year, the high-performance coach needs just 9 clients (on a six-month engagement) to break the coveted ‘6-figure’ coach mark.
Working with just 13 clients a year, they can earn over $156,000 and potentially holiday for three months and working just 9 months of the year!
Meanwhile, for the life coach, since they charge much less and have, on average, far fewer sessions per client (7 instead of 24) they are constantly on the ‘looking for new clients’ hamster wheel.
While high-performance coaches can hit six-figures in as little as 9 clients, life coaches need to find and enrol a whopping 285 clients per year, or 23 per month!
That level and pace is unsustainable for most coaches.
That's why so few life coaches ever break the six-figure mark.
Yet, as an entry-level performance coach charging just $250 per session, it is far easier to become a six-figure coach working with just 16 clients per year when you enrol clients into your six-month engagement.
Are you beginning to see how, due to the structure of each coach’s 'economic engine' operates, high-performance coaches have a HUGE advantage...
It is this difference in earning power over one's career that leads so many coaching schools to charge between $10,000 and $40,000 to become a high-performance coach or executive coach.
But you might be wondering, could YOU become a high-performance coach? And what does it really take to work with higher-profile, higher-paying clients?
Stay tuned to your inbox for a special free training tomorrow to find out.
To your success,
Tom