BEST Life Coaching Resources (2024) To Thrive

As a life coach with a coaching practice you can empower clients to find new levels of fulfillment and achieve rewarding goals across both the personal and professional domains.

Yet, beginning the coaching journey, you may discover gaps or want to increase your selection of materials and tools for life coaching.

Read on for best life coaching resources to thrive.

Let’s dive right into it.

What Tools Do Life Coaches Use?

A life coaching business draws from humanistic psychology, which always accepts clients as they are, viewing and treating them as inherently worthy and deserving of love.

To be the best life coach, you need the best life coaching tools and resources to make a difference in your client’s life, daily. Here are some excellent coaching tools:

1. Wheel Of Life

It’s a simple, easy-to-use of all coaching tools to help clients find out which areas of their lives are most satisfying and where they would like to focus their development efforts.

This coaching tool is for identifying your client’s satisfaction across the various domains of their life.

These domains are:

  • Health
  • Friends & Family
  • Romance
  • Personal Growth
  • Fun & Recreation
  • Physical Environment
  • Business/Career
  • Finances

This visual can then facilitate a discussion about strategies to improve satisfaction in the

domains with lower scores.

2. Action Brainstorming

The action brainstorming worksheet can help clients pick out behaviors that are (and aren’t) serving them in the pursuit of their goals. 

You’ll work with your client to help them identify current or possible behaviors that may or may not support them in pursuing this goal.

They are then written into one of five columns:

  • Stop Doing
  • Do Less Of
  • Keep Doing
  • Do More Of
  • Start Doing
Life Coaching Resources
Photo by Per Lööv on Unsplash

3. Understanding Goals

‘Understanding Our Goals’ worksheet is a coaching tool to help clients identify whether

their goals are worth their time and energy and prioritize goals in terms of their utility. 

Invite your client to identify their top three current goals. Then, for each goal, your client 

is asked why they want to pursue that goal and what they hope to gain from achieving it.

The questions then drill down to address the real “why” behind the goal pursuit, rooted in 

sought-after emotional experiences.

4. Leadership Assessment Tools

Whether it’s leadership in the boardroom, a work team, or one’s own personal life, most clients will benefit from developing their potential as a leader in some capacity with these coaching tools.

  • Leadership Competency Inventory 

This assessment is composed of 39 items, which gauge the degree to which the client has demonstrated certain behaviors.

If your client is interested in gaining a holistic view of their leadership skills and abilities, they can also have their colleagues, subordinates, or even friends respond to these items as well, serving as a kind of 360-degree feedback tool.

  • Leader Effectiveness and Adaptability Description (LEAD)

This 12-item assessment from developers Paul Hersey and Kenneth Blanchard (1969) helps clients discover their leadership style and generates scores in four areas.

This assessment is most useful for those who must practice active influence in their work, but it can also help those preparing for a leadership role within a team or workgroup.

5. Personality Assessment Tools 

While no personality assessment can tell you exactly who you are and what is most important to you, results from these coaching tools can serve as a guide to help you understand your goals, preferences, and priorities.

  • VIA Inventory of Strengths (Seligman)

The Values in Action Inventory of Strengths, or VIA-IS, is an assessment tool examining what’s truly valuable to the client through the lens of their character strengths.

There are 24 character strengths which are divided into six categories:

  1. Wisdom
  2. Courage
  3. Humanity
  4. Transcendence
  5. Justice
  6. Moderation

Identifying these top strengths will serve as a launchpad to discuss how best to put these to use in daily life.

  • The Valued Living Questionnaire (VLQ; Wilson, Sandoz, Kitchens & Roberts, 2010)

A useful tool for assessing a client’s moral principles across ten key life domains. This tool was originally developed for Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.

This will allow clients to understand whether their behaviors are consistent with their core principles.

If clients discover their moral standards and behavior are not in alignment, this assessment can help a coach start a dialog about improving it.

6. Emotional Intelligence Assessment Tools 

These coaching tools assess a clients’ Emotional Intelligence (EI) refers to a person’s

ability to monitor their own and others’ emotions, distinguish between and label emotions

correctly, and use emotional information to guide and influence thinking and behavior

(Goleman, 1995; Mayer & Salovey, 1997)

  • Emotional and Social Competency Inventory

This measure is based on completed questionnaires from the individual and responses they receive from others. Clients can choose to nominate family members, friends, coworkers, direct reports, or others they interact with regularly to provide these responses. The assessment takes about 30 to 45 minutes to complete.

The scores on areas such as teamwork, empathy and conflict management, can then facilitate a discussion of strategies to better use one’s strengths or improve skills in areas with lower scores.

  • Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test

A life coaching tool for assessing a client’s ability to perceive, use, understand, and regulate emotions using scenario-based approaches and various creative tasks.

This assessment assesses four branches of emotional intelligence:

  1. Perceiving Emotions
  2. Use of Emotions
  3. Understanding Emotions
  4. Management of Emotions
  5. Motivation Assessment Tools

These life coaching tools tap into motivations underlying goal pursuits while being ideal for workplace settings.

  • Personal Directions Tool

This assessment helps clients understand which areas of life they gain the most satisfaction from, thereby starting a dialog about how they may best direct their energy.

This tool helps the client understand what is important to them and focuses their attention on the areas they want to improve.

It’s broken down into these six categories:

  1. Affiliating (giving, receiving, belonging, expressing)
  2. Attracting (gaining stature, entertaining)
  3. Perceiving (creating, interpreting)
  4. Mastering (excelling, enduring, structuring)
  5. Challenging (maneuvering, winning, controlling) 
  6. Maintaining (stability, independence, irreproachability) 

What Should I Charge For Life Coaching?

Determining your life coaching fees will depend on your professional experience, how you market yourself and the niche or specialty you work within.

For example, if you do corporate or business coaching specialising in executive mentoring then you are likely to be able to charge significantly more than if you are working with single mothers or students.

Be practical and cover expenses like coach training and marketing for your coaching business.  Add 10% to each amount to allow for expense creep!

Depending on your skills, experience, quality of marketing efforts, and previous success record, you could make anywhere from about $27 000 to $210,000 per year.

Hourly-Based Vs. Value-Based Pricing

  • Hourly-Based

A new life coach typically starts at $50-$75 per session. Meanwhile experienced coaches may charge $100-$200 per session. Then there are package deals that may come in at $1200-$2400 per bundle.

Generally, the more you focus in on your niche, the more you can charge. You become an expert in solving a specific set of problems that is relevant to a specific group of people.

This means you are very valuable – way more so than any other general coach.

  • Value-Based

Charging by the hour may work well for less experienced and newer coaches. Yet, once you have the experience under your belt, you may want to move toward charging for the value you are providing.

Many recommend charging according to your client’s results, the difficulty of what you are coaching your clients on, and the expertise you are able to provide.

This pricing approach moves away from the hourly rate and emphasizes the results you get for your clients. 

Re-evaluate your coaching practice 5 or 10 years down the line. You may be able to increase your pricing as you gain more training or if you’ve been getting undeniably incredible results with clients.

What Should I Teach As A Life Coach?

As a life coach you can do a lot of different positive things to help your clients in many personal growth areas. It’s important to discover your niche of new clients that you can help most in your practice.

  • Coaches are able to guide others through achieving goals that they never thought possible.
  • You’ll help your clients discover their limiting beliefs, process and heal wounds that are holding them back.
  • On a practical day-to-day basis, interaction, positive reinforcement, and accountability are key areas where a life coach will be present.
  • Life coaching helps people improve their personal and professional lives. Whether they want to strengthen their relationship with others, move their business forward, or simply have more peace in their lives, a coach can help set, understand, and meet those goals.
  • Life coaching keeps people accountable, and gives them the tools to see success and change their life.

In the same way that there are different types of sports coaches, there are different types of life coaches. When you discover your niche you’ll attract the right new clients to your life coaching business.

1. Career Coaching

A particular industry where coaching is needed is where a career coaching is thriving.

Not only will they speak the language of that particular industry, but they’ll also understand the kind of mentality that’s required for that field.

Because business coaching understands what’s needed, they can spot the areas where you’re having trouble and make breakthroughs in those spots.

2. Personal Life Coach

Most people look for a personal life coach because they feel that getting overall help with life, in general, will also help them have more success in their career.

In short, this type of coach is someone who can help clients achieve goals, overcome setbacks and obstacles, and help someone see blind spots in life where they’re overlooking something important.

You’ll help people when they feel like they just can’t get ahead or when they’re sabotaging themselves.

3. Spiritual Life Coach

A spiritual life coach helps you connect with a higher power.

A spiritual life coach can help you remember how to better connect to the Universe so you can make the most of everything it has to share with you. If someone is having trouble with meditation, spiritual life coaching sessions help in that area as well.

4. Business Life Coach 

Business life coaching and career life coaching aren’t quite the same. As a business coach, you’ll show others how to bring in more income and improve the ability you have to make good decisions.

They can create owner accountability, build actionable plans and help people succeed in areas of business where they may have struggled in the past.

You can also teach how to network with others in their field, how to form a mastermind group, and feel confident taking your next steps.

Constructive Conversations
Photo by Jopwell from Pexels

How Do Life Coaches Get Rich?

You can see annual salaries for life coaches quoted as low as $11,000 to a peak of over $320,000.

The national average salary in the US for life coaches is $72,996 per year. The majority of wages trend towards the lower end.

However, some of the top performers in the industry make serious money waves. Tony Robbins, for instance, has a net worth of $500 million.

Best Ways To Earn More Income As A Life Coach

1. Speaking Gigs

Book relevant speaking gigs or create workshops to gain more exposure for your coaching business and get in front of more prospective coaching clients.

This builds credibility and trust by educating your audience. This is precisely what you accomplish in a speaking engagement — you share your expertise as a coach.

The more expertise you share, the more likely you are to net customers.

2. Membership Site

Offer your coaching services to multiple clients at once, which you can do by building an online community using a membership site.

A membership site can be streamlined and allow you to service more clients over extended periods (most programs run over a year).

You simply provide updated valuable content and your coaching services regularly in exchange for an ongoing membership fee.

3. Ebooks

Digital products are a great way to scale your coaching business and pull in additional revenue. Ebooks, in particular, are an easy entry point into productization for life coaches.

Ebooks can be produced with little to no investment, and as a life coach, you already have a ton of experience in solving people’s problems through content.

When you package your expertise as an ebook, you offer the ability to solve those problems immediately.

4. Online Courses

An online course is great to create an addition to your coaching business because they’re educational in nature and, like ebooks, are low maintenance.

With limitless inventory on hand, a course will also give you uncapped passive money earning potential. Very profitable.

Resources For Life Coaching
Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash

Free Coaching Templates

Aside from providing your amazing coaching services, be sure to:

  • Make a great first impression by positioning yourself as an expert and outlining the benefits of your coaching program
  • Welcome your new coaching client properly, manage expectations, and set boundaries
  • End your coaching program on a high note by providing free resources, links, and tutorials
  • Provide an amazing client experience so you can stand out as a premium coach in your industry

A template of exercises and forms can give you a head start. Here we offer two valuable professional coaching resources free for you to save for your successful journey:

Life Coaching Toolkit

Coaching tools are inspiring professional coaching resources or exercises to use for your coaching business. You can save them to give your clients help in moving forward and growing.

These exercise forms deepen your clients’ self-understanding, to help them see things differently, learn and make changes in their lives.

Try these Best Online Coaching Platforms And Tools as a powerful coaching tools to supplement your coaching practice. They can be used in one-on-one coaching sessions, as homework, in workshops, with teams and groups, in webinars and more. 

Coaching Tools And Techniques

Great life coaching goes beyond the ability to ask the right questions. Capable coaches are not only good listeners, but also good strategists and people with a vision.

Skilled life coaching uses knowledge from their coach training to help customers realize their true potential.

These coaching tools and techniques help clients understand themselves, for goal setting, determine their obstacles and find ways to overcome them.

Life coach training offers some of the most innovative coaching tools and resources to benefit existing or new clients to your coaching business.

1. Guided Visualizations

Visualization is a practice used by highly successful people. Life coaches utilize this technique to help their clients reach their goals.

This powerful coaching technique leading to self discovery is getting back to dreaming and the “What do I want to be when I grow up” question.

It is the process of vividly imagining your life the way you want it to be and picturing important scenarios turning out successfully.

During this exercise, they are challenged to dig deep and visualize what they truly desire in their career on a perfect day, from start to finish. It really primes their ambition.

2. Open Ended Questions

Life coaches are trained to help us figure ourselves out in ways that are not easy for us to do on our own.

One of the most effective strategies is to ask powerful coaching questions which are open ended rather than questions with a limited range of answers.

This allows your clients to enter new areas of thought never visited before and encourages them to contemplate their true dreams and desires.

3. Guided Meditation

One of the most healing and beneficial practices for self care is meditation. Meditation is widely known for its ability to increase focus, improve health, reduce stress, and even add years to a person’s life.

As a life coach, you can introduce your clients to different meditation techniques and practices as well as guide them through the process until they are comfortable doing it on their own.

4. A Reflection Journal

Ask what size reflection journal they would like and if they want their initials or name on the cover. Order and pay overnight shipping so when you go through their assessment results they can start to make notes for later reflection.

Each subsequent session can include, “What kinds of benefits did you get from reflecting and journaling?”

5. Core Values

Knowing your true core values is an anchor or returning point. When there is conflict or a boundary issue, it’s likely because someone has stepped on a personal value. 

Unrest or distrust often stems from this place of misunderstanding. Individual and team discussions around moral standards and aspirational principles create connection and greater understanding.

The largest benefit to being a life coach is the value you can give to people.

Help them conquer obstacles in their lives with these coaching resources and exercises. The best coaching resources can support you in your coaching journey.
If you’ve found this article to be of value ✅ , I invite you to forward this to people you know who could have a boost from reading all the free coaching tips.

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About The Author

Bijan Kholghi is a certified life coach with the Milton Erickson Institute Heidelberg (Germany). He helps clients and couples reach breakthroughs in their lives by changing subconscious patterns. His solution-oriented approach is based on Systemic- and Hypnotherapy.

Bijan