How to Become a Life Coach in Ohio

A career as a life coach could be right up your alley if you enjoy working with people and being a leader. A life coach can play a number of roles in someone’s life: helping them set and achieve fitness goals, guiding them to advance their careers and find more meaning, helping families navigate conflict, and more.

If you live in Ohio and are looking for a career change, your first career or part-time work that is meaningful and fuels your passion, consider training as a life coach. The requirements to begin working are minimal, but you must be compassionate, a good listener, organized and a clear communicator.

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Requirements for Being a Life Coach in Ohio

In Ohio, you do not have to meet any specific training, education, or certification requirements to call yourself a life coach and to begin working. To be the best in this career, though, and to attract more clients, consider completing a training program. Most coaching programs take less than a year, with many just a couple of weeks in length.

Life Coach Educational Programs in Ohio

As an unregulated industry, you may find several coach training programs but be unsure which you can trust to provide a quality education. These programs available in Ohio are accredited by the International Coach Federation (ICF):

  • Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, Berea. The Gestalt Institute offers a coaching training program that will lead to ICF certification. The school focuses on a holistic and creative approach to coaching while also including the foundational skills deemed important by the ICF. The certification program includes four in-person sessions in addition to distance learning. It takes six months to complete. The application fee is $150 and tuition is $9,850.
  • Academy of Creative Coaching, online. For an online option, consider the three- or six-month programs offered through the Academy of Creative Coaching. The shorter program will help you achieve the lowest level of ICF certification, while the longer program is designed to prepare you for a higher level of certification.

Do You Need to Be Certified?

The state of Ohio does not require that you achieve certification to work in this industry, but certification helps distinguish you and prove that you have the knowledge and skills needed to be a good coach. The ICF offers three levels of certification:

  • To become an Associate Certified Coach, you must have 60 or more hours of training and 100 hours working as a coach.
  • As a Professional Certified Coach, you’ll need to have at least 125 hours of training under your belt as well as 500 hours of work experience.
  • The highest level is Master Certified Coach, which requires that you receive 200 hours of training and at least 2,500 hours of work as a coach.

What to Expect for Salaries in Coaching

The most up-to-date salary information offered by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for coaching is from 2015. The BLS reports that the average annual salary for coaches that year was $61,900, but has no information about state salaries.

Other organizations do record state-by-state information. For instance, Ziprecruiter.com states that Ohio life coaches make an average of $60,673 per year, as of 2019. There is also no information about growth in the industry, but with more and more people interested in wellness, life coaches should be in demand now and in the future.

Landing Work as Life Coach in Ohio

Working as a life coach in Ohio will give you a lot of flexibility. You can work full-time for a company, or you can start your own business. Many coaches even choose to work independently, part-time, while holding down another job.

Some of the companies that hire life coaches include wellness centers, healthcare companies, universities, behavioral health facilities and more. In Ohio, you may find clients anywhere, but larger cities like Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo should offer the most opportunities.