Health coaching is an important and rapidly growing segment of the healthcare industry.

While there will always be an essential role for physicians and other conventional medical professionals, growing rates of preventable, lifestyle-related chronic disease (obesity, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, certain types of cancers) is changing the way healthcare is delivered, and underscores the need for additional support in helping at-risk patients develop healthier habits—before they get sick.

Enter: health coaching.

What is a health coach?

A health coach is a wellness authority who serves as a guide in making positive, health-promoting food and lifestyle changes. Whether that’s helping someone lose weight, sleep better, de-stress or clear up acne naturally, health coaches focus on helping our clients set and achieve health goals in a way that is seamlessly integrated into their lifestyle and maintains results long-term.

In contrast to a doctor, health coaches do not diagnose or prescribe treatment. Rather, health coaching is an interactive process that’s all about action, accountability and follow-through. Because of this, health coaching tends to be more program-based (meeting regularly over the course of several months), rather than a one-time visit in which a patient receives a diagnosis and prescription.

Both in-person and online health coaching are new and promising opportunities for anyone looking to make the world a healthier, happier place.

Here’s more about how to become a certified health coach and start your own online health coaching practice:

Health coach training + certification

Though health coaching is not a regulated field in the same sense as medical professions (or even certain nutrition fields, such as Registered Dietician), in order to practice health coaching in a professional capacity, it’s important to be properly trained in health and wellness topics, as well as the ethics of coaching.

There are several reputable health coaching programs accredited by the International Coach Federation.

While the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, which I attended, is the only program I can speak of from my own personal experience (and I’m happy to answer questions about IIN for prospective students), it’s certainly not the only program available, and I’ll list a few other reputable health coach training programs below as well.

How to become a certified health coach

Here are a few popular, reputable options for professional health coach certification programs:

Institute for Integrative Nutrition

The Institute for Integrative Nutrition (otherwise known as IIN) is the world’s largest integrative health and nutrition school, with over 100,000 graduates.

The program is offered in either a standard one-year track, or an accelerated six-month option (I did the one-year option, which worked better for me while still working full-time as a healthcare marketing manager). The curriculum is entirely online, which makes it possible to complete the coursework from anywhere in the world, any day of the week, at any time. (So far, IIN has worked with students in over 150 countries!)

IIN’s health coaching curriculum focuses on what we call “primary food”: the aspects of life that contribute to our overall well-being in addition to food—things like physical activity, relationships, career and spirituality. (In fact, these four pillars of integrative health are the story behind our name, Four Wellness Co.!)

IIN is a great, well-rounded program for studying multiple non-nutrition components of health coaching, and building your capacity to assist clients with overall lifestyle management (not just nutrition or fitness specifically). It has a large network of coaches, and plenty of opportunities to get involved professionally with other IIN students and alumni.

If you’re interested in learning more, you can grab the IIN Curriculum Guide here:

✨ Use this link to get $2,000 off your tuition ($1,500 off payment plans)!

Health Coach Institute

Health Coach Institute is another health coach certification, offering a 6-month online program centered around four pillars of health: Nutrition, Health & Wellness; Transformational Coaching; Personal Growth; and Proven Marketing & Simple Business Systems.

They also offer an advanced program for experienced health coaches looking to develop more business capacity.

Emory University Health Coach Certificate

Emory University Continuing Education offers a professional Health Coach Certificate. A few things to note:

this 16-week online program requires two weekends of in-person attendance at their campus in Atlanta, Georgia
and the program is only open to students who have already completed a bachelor’s degree.

(In contrast, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and Health Coach Institute do not require a bachelor’s degree for enrollment.)

Duke Integrative Health Coach Professional Training Program

Duke University Integrative Medicine also offers an Integrative Health Coach Professional Training program, available either online or via in-person training. The online training is live, and incorporates mentored feedback.

How to choose the best health coach training program for you

I recommend researching multiple programs (and talking to a former student, if possible!) to determine which program fits best with your particular health coach training needs—your personal and professional interests, your learning style, and your timeline and capacity to do the coursework!

As an IIN alum, I’m happy to answer any questions you may have about the program—feel free to submit them here.

Whichever program you choose, it’s an important investment in the future of your business.

The cost of a professional health coach certification training may feel like a burden at this time—but it’s a comparatively small investment compared to the income you can achieve with it (and we’ll talk more about that in a moment!).

Can you become a health coach without certification?

Kind of… but I wouldn’t recommend it. 😬

Technically, it’s possible to refer to yourself as a “health coach,” regardless of your training credentials, as it’s not a legally regulated field.

But, in light of that, having a professional health coach certification under your belt is important for several reasons.

Why professional health coach certification is beneficial for your practice:

Professional certification gives you credibility with prospective clients. (Most people find this to be more trustworthy, particularly in health fields. Would you want to pay for wellness advice from someone whose source of information was unknown?)
Because the term “health coach” is not legally regulated, informed consumers are likely to be more sensitive to a coach’s specific training credentials, as that’s the best method of determining their professional qualifications.
While personal research and experience can be meaningful forms of education (and many health coaches do incorporate their own experiential learning into their coaching practice), they’re not a substitute for professional training in health coaching, which incorporates much broader expertise than simply one coach’s personal experience.
Training in the specific practice of coaching is incredibly valuable if you haven’t practiced coaching professionally before. From how to speak to clients to how to legally process and store their personal information, to how to handle common problems that come up—these are all essential areas of knowledge for new health coaches.

Create your health coaching business plan

Once you have your health coach training and certification, the next step is to outline how you’re going to use it!

There are a few common business avenues for health coaches interested in practicing in the online space. You could choose to focus on just one of these methods, or incorporate several of them. (Though, if you’re planning to incorporate several, it’s a good idea to pick one to start with, and grow from there.)

Online career paths for health coaches

Here are the most common forms of online health coaching:

1:1 health coaching

This is simply the online version of 1:1 in-person health coaching—except you don’t need a physical office space to meet and receive clients (yay, reduced overhead!).

In this form of health coaching practice, you’ll sell coaching packages via your website (3-month, 6-month, and 1-year being the most common) and then meet with your clients virtually.

There are a variety of technology tools that can be used for virtual sessions, including free video chat options such as Zoom, Skype, Google Hangouts and Whereby.

Our personal favorite is a wellness-specific platform called Practice Better, which is a one-stop-shop of tech tools for health coaches. 😍 It provides video chat, secure messaging, contracts, invoicing, document and form libraries, and appointment scheduling all from one place, one tool, one username and password (awesome!). And, it’s all accessible from a mobile app, so you can manage your practice while on the go!

Here’s more about why Practice Better is our favorite client management tool for health coaches, and how it set it all up for your own health coaching practice.

Group health coaching programs

Another common form of health coaching that can also be accomplished online is group coaching.

Group coaching can be set up through a similar process as 1:1 programs. Practice Better offers group coaching functionality, and the other video conferencing tools can also be used with multiple users, at different tiers of pricing.

Self-paced online wellness programs

There are many different ways to offer self-paced online programs for your health coaching clients.

These programs typically involve a specific area of practice, and a specific outcome or transformation the client will receive. For example: a couch-to-5k training plan (not all clients are running the same 5k race, but they can all access the program material when needed and apply it to their own race timeline); or an online course on detoxing your home and pantry.

There are many technology tools available for creating online programs for your health coaching clients. If you already use Practice Better for 1:1 or group coaching, the platform also supports the sale of online programs. This could be a great way to offer supplemental programs to students already familiar with your coaching platform.

If online courses are your main thing, either MemberSpace or Squarespace Member Areas are likely better options for setting it up and focusing your efforts there.

Membership programs are one of my absolute favorite business avenues for online health coaches, so we’ve got lots more resources on setting up on your own online membership programs if you’re interested.

Whichever topic and technology platform you choose, self-paced online programs can be a great way to serve more clients with your wellness content—you only have so many 1:1 or group coaching spots available in your calendar, but your running guide or online course can be developed once and then accessed by many clients over and over again.

Side note: This also helps to add passive income streams into your business, which is one of the best ways to make money as a health coach.

Digital health coaching + wellness products

And, finally, digital products are a great way to offer smaller, more digestible pieces of content to clients who could benefit from them but aren’t quite ready (or in need of) a more intensive, more expensive 1:1 health coaching option.

Digital health coaching products can include:

an e-book
a video training (or video training series)
templates or workbooks

Build your health coaching website

Once you have a general sense of how you’ll be providing your health coaching services, the next step is to build and launch your health coaching website!

Personally, when I went through health coach training several years ago, the business resources provided were more along the lines of “Eh, you don’t really need a website, your network is more important.”

I will say that did not turn out to be true, especially for someone interested in online health coaching services. You absolutely need a website for your business, and you need it to be a nice one!

We have an entire post on building your health coaching website, so pop over there for more details on what exactly to include in your health coaching website, how to set it all up, and the website platform I recommend using for your wellness business.

It’s important to get your website up and running as soon as possible, to begin growing your SEO and your mailing list. Here’s why that’s so important:

What is SEO (search engine optimization) and why is it important?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of helping search engines, like Google, understand and rank your website content.

Put even more simply: It’s what drives traffic to your website. (And website traffic = potential customers.)

You want to get content on your website as soon as possible so search engines can begin to understand what’s happening over in your corner of the internet, and they can begin to send relevant search queries your way.

It truly takes time to build SEO, and the sooner you start the better!

For more info on maximizing SEO for your health coaching website, here’s our overview of what health coaches should know about SEO. It’s worth getting a good understanding of SEO before you set up your website, so you know the key tips to keep in mind as you’re building and launching your website.

Why your health coaching business needs a mailing list

Again, we’ve got an entire post on how to set up email marketing for your business (and why it’s so darn important!), so I won’t repeat it all here.

But just know that email marketing is one of the most important marketing strategies at your disposal as a health coach. Your email list (aka, your audience of potential customers) is worth its weight in gold, and it’s best to get it set up and growing as soon as you can.

So, as you build your health coaching website, be sure to add in plenty of opportunities for interested audience members to sign up for your email list.

There’s lots, lots more that goes into building an effective website for your health coaching practice—more details in my free Health Coach Website Checklist:

Market your health coaching business

And, finally, once you have your health coach training and certification, your business plan, and a place to send prospective clients (your website!), it’s time to start marketing your health coaching business.

Marketing is not a popularity contest. It’s not about getting max Instagram followers or a certain number of likes on your Facebook post. To effectively market your health coaching practice, you want to focus on sending people to your website.

How to start marketing your online health coaching practice

Here are the key steps for beginning to market your online health coaching business:

Start a wellness blog

Start blogging… a lot!

More blog content = better SEO and more opportunities for content marketing (see below).

I mentioned SEO earlier, and how important it is for connecting with health coaching clients online—and I can’t stress that enough! Invest in blogging to build SEO and grow your audience of prospective health coaching clients. Here’s more about how to start a wellness blog with your particular areas of expertise.

Promote your wellness content on Pinterest

Once you’ve created quality content on your wellness blog, I recommend using Pinterest to share that content and help grow more website traffic to your new wellness blog posts (more website traffic will in turn help grow your SEO too).

The first step here is to set up your Pinterest Business account to enable Rich Pins—those lovely little pins that also pull in metadata from your website (things like your blog post title and excerpt).

I recommend using Canva to create branded, properly-sized pins (2-3 per blog post).

And then, start pinning… a lot! (Here’s a more detailed overview of how we promote our wellness blog content Pinterest.)

Start your wellness newsletter + email list

Now that you’re sending traffic to your website via Pinterest (and the organic search traffic that will be continuing to grow behind the scenes over time), make sure you’re capturing your interested audience with your email list, and then keeping your audience engaged with regular email newsletters.

See our full post on the best ways to market your wellness business for more details on using content marketing via Pinterest to grow your health coaching website traffic.

More health coach business tips