How to become a successful parenting coach
Do you want to become a parenting coach?
Starting a parenting coaching business can be incredibly rewarding. And today, you'll learn the exact steps you need to take to become a successful parenting coach.
You want to know more ? Read on!
WHAT IS A PARENTING COACH?
A parenting coach is someone who helps families in different areas of child rearing, including babies' sleep, potty training, communication, nutrition, and more.
Here are some examples of parent coaching companies in our American neighbors (where coaching is particularly developed):
- GoDiaperFree is a coaching and classes company that helps parents potty train their children.
- Mealmentor is a vegan meal planning service that helps people, including parents, plan and prepare their meals.
Coaching is about helping people get the results they want. Therefore, to qualify as a parenting coach, you must have helped others (or yourself) overcome the parenting challenges you help your clients with.
For example, you may have had a baby with sleep problems and you developed your own sleep methodology to get your baby to sleep. Your friends may have started using your strategies – it's a great way to show your future clients that you can help them too.
Here are some examples of parent coaching niches…
Baby Sleep Coaching
Breastfeeding Coaching
Potty Training Coaching
Birth
Coaching Communication Coaching
Relationship Coaching for Parents
Divorce Coaching Bereavement
Coaching
ADHD Coaching
Stress Coaching
Happiness Coaching
Nutrition
Coaching Spiritual Coaching
Foster Parent Coaching
Foster Parent Coaching
Co-Parenting Coaching
Now you know what parent coaching is. But how do you build a business around this concept?
HOW DO PARENTING COACHES MAKE MONEY?
How do you make money as a coach? There are three different pricing models you can use:
Per session. If you charge per session, your clients pay you for each session. I don't recommend this pricing option because it makes your clients believe that the value of your coaching is in the time you spend with them.
Per month. This is a subscription contract, meaning your customers pay you every month. I'm not a fan of this pricing model because it's harder for you to set limits and there's not as much focus on results.
By package (my favorite) . If you charge per package, your clients pay for a specific package, such as a 3-month coaching engagement. I'm a big fan of package pricing because you position your coaching and pricing based on the results you'll help your clients achieve.
Let's go back to the USA. The average salary of a coach is, according to the ICF Global Coaching Study, $62,500. That said, as an online coach, you can grow your coaching business to six figures and beyond.
How ? Let's do the reverse calculation. If you charge $3,000 per coaching package, you need to sell 3 packages per month to reach six-figure revenue per year. It's totally doable!
That said, a good starting point for new coaches is to charge €1,500 for a 3 month package. As your coaching grows and you help your clients achieve better results, you can increase your prices.
But how to become a parenting coach?
This is what we are going to see now.
WHAT DO YOU NEED TO BECOME A PARENTING COACH?
Do you need a degree in social management or child development to become a parenting coach? Or a parenting coach certification? The answer is simple: no, you don't need it.
Education is not what determines your value as a coach. What matters is the transformation you help your customers achieve. Here's what you need to know.
How do you become a certified parenting coach?
What are the best parent coaching certification programs? And do you even need certification?
The fact is that you don't necessarily need it. Coaching is not the same as therapy or counseling (which require education and training). Yes, you help your clients, but coaching is not a substitute for therapy (just like therapy is not coaching).
Instead, look at the results you are able to help people achieve. That's what matters to your customers – not whether you're certified or not.
And if you're worried about your lack of experience if you don't get certified right away, don't worry. You'll gain experience coaching paying clients (but you charge less at first so you can develop your coaching skills one client at a time).
That said, some coaching niches require certification. Typically, these are health or mental health related niches, so if you plan on helping parents with these or related topics, you need to be very careful when researching whether your coaching niche requires certification.
If you decide to get an online parenting coach certification, make sure you choose a good certification program. Too often, these certification programs are not recognized in any way, even though they can cost 1,000 to 3,000 euros or more. Going through a non-quality program will not help you at all and will not give you any credibility.
If I had to recommend ONLY one program that is a recognized certification program? That of the International Coach Federation.
But while you don't need a coaching certification to become a parenting coach, you do need clients. Here's how to find them.
WHERE TO FIND CLIENTS FOR PARENTING COACHING?
You may be thinking, “Why would anyone want to talk to ME? I'm nothing special. What if I’m not good enough?”
In any case, that's what many of my students tell me.
Don't worry: if you have results in some form (your own results and/or you've helped someone else get results), you're ready to take on paying clients.
And starting your own online coaching business can be surprisingly simple if you follow along.
You don't need much more than these strategies to get coaching clients (pick one and get started):
Ask people you have already helped (family and friends) if they want to work with you as a coach.
Offer podcasts and guest posts
Be active in online or offline groups where your target audience hangs out (like online mom groups or local parenting groups).
That's how I got my first clients as a marketing coach, by asking friends who I had already given marketing advice to if they wanted me to help them more.
And these are strategies that several of my students have used to quickly grow their coaching businesses.
But once you have your first client, how do you coach them? This is what we will look at next.
HOW TO COACH PARENTS?
Here's what it is:
Coaching is a skill that can be learned. So don't worry if you don't feel like you're an amazing coach right now. The more clients you work with, the more your coaching skills will improve.
And because you charge a discounted rate from the start, your first customers also get a good deal. They can work with you at a lower cost, while you develop your skills as a coach.
When you've earned your stripes and have some testimonials to share with your new clients, you're ready to increase your prices.
Here are some ways to develop your skills as a coach.
Become a Great Coach
The word “coaching” is actually a bit misleading. I like to talk about coaching as “coaching-sulting”.
You see, while coaching used to be based on Socratic questioning (asking probing questions such as “what do you think about this?”), coaching these days is increasingly a mix between coaching and consulting.
As a coach, you not only help your clients to find the answer themselves (= “traditional” coaching), but sometimes you also give them the answer and help them find it more quickly.
For example, if your client is having trouble getting their baby to sleep through the night and you know what they could try to get the baby to sleep better, you will give them the alternatives rather than leaving it up to your client to figure out the answer.
Now that you know what coaching looks like, how do you organize a parent coaching session? Let's take a look.
CONDUCT A COACHING SESSION
I remember my first coaching session. I was so nervous that I ended up preparing for hours and writing down word for word what I was going to say.
But for every client I worked with, coaching got easier and easier. I learned what questions would arise, how to structure my calls, what materials I should create, and so on. Ultimately, I could just do coaching calls without needing to prepare in advance.
Before your first call
That’s why you don’t need anything before your first coaching calls – no website, PDFs or other materials.
Instead, send a welcome questionnaire to your coaching client to understand what's on their mind (you can use Google Drive to share the document). Be careful; I limit my questionnaire to around 30 questions.
During your calls
You can organize your calls using Zoom, Google Meet or Skype. And Calendly makes it easy to schedule your coaching sessions.
Each coaching call should have a goal that supports your client's overall goal. For example, if her goal is to help her baby sleep better, a session might focus on a specific sleep strategy as a subgoal. The next one will focus on another strategy, and so on.
Each coaching call supports that month's goal, which in turn supports the overall goal of your coaching package.
You can break down the months as follows:
Month n°1: Establish the foundations for better sleep (nutrition, routine, etc.)
Month #2: Test proven sleep strategies to see which ones work for your baby
Month No. 3: put everything in place so that your baby gets a full night's sleep.
After your calls
Your coaching is much more than the coaching sessions.
Between sessions, your client works on the points you discussed in your previous call.
I always send a recording of the call so my clients can return to it if they need to.
Coaching also involves checking in with your clients between calls and answering their questions. Maybe you do a quick tutorial, share additional material… Anything that can help your client achieve their goal.
UP TO YOU !
There it's done ! Now you know how to become a parenting coach.
Parent coaching is about helping parents succeed and what matters is that you build a sustainable business based on your clients' testimonials.
Are you ready to launch your parenting coaching business?
Let me know in the comments below!
