How To Become An Emotional Intelligence Coach

Are you the kind of person who always tries to understand people? To help them feel better about themselves? To encourage them when they’re down? Are you a great listener and know how to motivate people? If so, then you might have what it takes to become an Emotional Intelligence Coach!

If you’re new around here, hey! We’re Cass + Tee. We’re web designers, turned coaches… turned web designers again. Our story is an adventure, but it led us to Lovely Impact — the go-to resource for coaches starting and growing their businesses.

Some might call it a recent movement, while others might call it a buzzword. Either way, as a coach, if you’re not familiar and equipped with the skills to work with clients on an emotional level — you’re doing your clients and yourself an injustice. 

Even though Emotional intelligence (EI) has been around since the 1930s, only recently have people begun using the term EI coach. 

In this post, we’re going to answer all the burning questions you may have when learning how to become an emotional intelligence coach. We’ll cover all the essentials, from getting certified, salary expectations, naming your business, finding your niche, business plans, creating a coaching logo & website, and marketing your business once it’s all said & done.

Ready to learn? Let’s dive right in!

What Is An Emotional Intelligence Coach?

If you have an extraordinary sense of emotion and intuitively grasp what people are feeling, you might make a great emotional intelligence coach. Many people wonder how to become an emotional intelligence coach, and the answer may vary a bit – but all emotional intelligence coaches will have a good understanding of feelings that makes them superbly suited to helping their clients.

This kind of coach will have a good idea of how to ask the right questions to get to the heart of client issues and will know how to guide clients as they come up with goals and think about what they want from their lives.

You will almost always be working with clients who are grappling with extreme negativity and need some help to overcome the weight they are feeling. As a coach, you are there to help them realign their thoughts and feelings and to move toward a more positive or at least realistic perspective on life.

Emotional intelligence coaches need to have an excellent sense of feelings and a good understanding of emotions and how they feed into behavior. They need to be able to offer support, but also to guide and prompt clients in the right direction for growth.

How Much Do Emotional Intelligence Coaches Make?

Before we start examining how to become an emotional intelligence coach, let’s take a quick look at the potential earnings. The salary can vary enormously from person to person, and depending on location, so it’s unfortunately pretty tricky to estimate.

You could be earning as much as $114,000 per year or as little as $20,500 per year. That’s an enormous range that places the average salary at around $53,000. However, bear in mind that coaches may be paid more or less in your area, so don’t just assume you can earn $50,000 without doing further research.

You may want to look into what other coaches in your area earn, as this should give you a clearer idea of your potential salary. Even this may be quite varied though. It’s always better to be pessimistic when it comes to earnings, so decide whether coaching is for you based on the lower end of the pay scale.

How to Start an Emotional Intelligence Coaching Business

Here’s a step-by-step guide to starting your own emotional intelligence coaching business.

Step One: Become A Certified Emotional Intelligence Coach

Becoming certified as an emotional intelligence coach is an important step, and you can do so through this Emotional Intelligence Life Coach Certification course. This is specifically geared toward helping people learn how to grapple with emotions so that they can pass this knowledge on to their clients and help them.

The course will give you a wide range of skills, including things like teaching self-awareness, learning stress reduction techniques, and developing emotional intelligence – both for yourself and for your clients.

You will also learn a bit more about emotions, understand how emotions can be robbed of their power, and start developing tools that will increase your clients’ motivation and their sense of strength. With the techniques this course covers, you’ll be well-positioned to be an effective emotional intelligence coach – and you’ll have the certificate to prove it!

This certificate is also an important part of getting started. When you are just beginning and you don’t have any reviews, it can be difficult to persuade clients that you have the skills to help them, but that’s exactly what your certificate will prove. Don’t underestimate the importance of formal education!

Step 2: Choose Your Emotional Intelligence Coach Business Name

So, what’s the next part of how to become an emotional intelligence coach? Well, you can’t have a business without a name. It’s also important to choose this with care as it will provide a connection with the clients who need your help and should evoke an emotional reaction in them.

When clients first come across your name, they are going to take away an impression of your business, and you want that to be the right impression. Think about what the connotations of the name might be and what feelings might be associated with it. Are you using words that are linked to emotions? Are you choosing the right atmosphere to show you are a great coach?

For an emotional intelligence coach, the feeling of the name is probably the most important element, but there is more to it than that. Your name must also represent both you as a coach, and the demographic that you are aiming to connect with. If you’re going to target an older demographic, you may want to avoid modern slang, for example.

Make sure you pick a name that feels unique to you, resonates with your ideal clients, and stands out from other businesses, and you’ll be good to go!

➡️ Need more help with naming? Check out these resources:

• How To Choose A Coaching Business Name >>
• See how other successful coaches names their businesses >>

Step 3: Choose A Niche

What niche are you going to operate in? It’s important to pin this down before you go any further because it will feed into all the various aspects of your business. So, how do you pick a niche?

One good way is to sit and think very specifically about which clients you want to serve. Are you going to work with an older demographic or a more youthful one? What problem do you intend to solve? What are your best skills, and how can you put them to the service of others?

You may find that identifying your key strengths helps you to identify your niche too, because it will let you know what you are best at, and this is likely where you will operate. 

For example, if you are particularly good at helping people resolve conflicts, you might decide that you’re going to help young workers improve their ability to operate in the workplace. You may even partner with businesses to do this.

Narrowing your focus down to a niche will help you to define a purpose for your business, and this will make it more structured and effective. Without identifying a niche, you can’t identify clients or work out what problems you are solving for them.

➡️ Need more help? Check out these resources:

• Learn how to choose a niche for your coaching business >>
• Download our free Choosing Your Niche Workbook in our resource library >>
• Watch our video on How To Identify Your Dream Clients (And Choose A Niche) >>

Step 4: Create A Business Plan

What’s the next aspect of how to become an emotional intelligence coach? It’s the business plan. If you are someone who is very engaged with the emotional side of things, you might not be particularly interested in making a business plan, but this is a crucial step in setting up your coaching business, and you mustn’t skip it.

Your business plan should cover each of the following areas:

• Mission statement (encapsulates the intentions of the business, including who you serve, how you serve them, and why)
• Executive summary (why did you start this business, what sort of business is it?)
• Services and products (what do you provide?)
• Ideal clients (who are you aiming to help?)
• Client needs (what do they need help with?)
• Customer acquisition (how are you going to get customers?)
• Competitive advantage (why are you different from other emotional intelligence coaches?)
• Owner passion (why do you want to do this?)
• Financial information (money you expect to put in, money you expect to get out)
• Business goals (what are your goals for the next few months, year, and three years?)

A business plan will give you a lot of insight into your new coaching business and may help you to steer around certain pitfalls or avoid challenges you might otherwise have failed to identify.

 ➡️ Need more help? 

• Read: How To Create A Simple Business Plan For Your Coaching Business >>
• Download our free mini business plan from our Resource Library >>

Step 5: Develop Your Methodology, Techniques & Tools

In addition to getting set up, you should also consider what you’ll do when you actually start coaching. Start considering where your clients will start, what the ultimate goal is, and what that journey looks like for both you and for them.

Most coaches have a standard methodology that they will use with all of their clients, and this provides them with a structure to operate within. Decide what structure you are going to use, and then start breaking this down into details.

You should consider what tools and techniques are going to be useful to you when working with clients. What exercises have you found helpful enough that you wish to use them yourself? What do you expect clients to do in between sessions?

All of these things will likely grow and change as your business becomes more developed, but you should have some draft ideas before you begin coaching. The more effectively you can pin down your strategies at this stage, the better you will be when you start working with clients.

➡️ Need more help? Learn how to structure your coaching programs here >>

Step 6: Create Offers And Pricing

Of course, one of the important elements of how to become an emotional intelligence coach is what you are going to do for your clients. You need to think about this beyond just sitting down and having one on one sessions. Most people expect more options than that.

You might, for example, decide that you are going to start offering group sessions to your clients so that they can help each other as well as be helped by you. You might create some half-day workshops or even full-day workshops. You could also run a yearly mastermind session where you cover the most vital information for people who are too busy to attend regular coaching.

Whatever you do, make sure you have a variety of packages, and encourage clients to sign up for multiple sessions at once by offering incentives. That leads us to price – how do you price these sessions?

The answer is that you should spend a bit of time thinking about how long a package will take you to deliver. If you are offering 10-hour-long sessions with one client, how much do you need to charge overall to ensure you are making a good salary? Take the time commitment of both the sessions and any admin into account when you set your prices.

➡️ Need more inspiration? Grab our ‘Money Making Offers for Coaches Workbook’ here! >>

Step 7: Design Your Emotional Intelligence Coach Logo

You may have already started thinking about a logo, but regardless, now is the time to really give it your focus. Like your name, your business logo should make your clients feel something – it’s another point of emotional connection between you and them, and you need to give it the time and attention it deserves.

Your logo should also be reasonably simple. Integrate your business name into it to increase the level of association between the two, and make sure your clients understand what the logo represents. 

Below is an example of a simple yet effective logo that would be perfect for Emotional Intelligence coaches. Want to make it yours? You can grab this Canva logo template from our shop and customize it in less than an hour!

Remember not to make the logo so complicated that it is unpleasant or daunting to look at. It should incorporate some color, but not more than six hues, and it should look good in black and white as well.

➡️ Need more help with your coaching logo? 

• Click here for our Brand Clarity Guide >>
• Check out The 12 Best Logos for Coaches >>

Step 8: Create Your Emotional Intelligence Coach Website

Once you’ve got both the logo and the name, you’re ready to move on to creating the website, and this is one of the most important parts to get right. A badly designed, difficult site will immediately tell clients that they don’t want to work with you – and unfortunately, this will be true regardless of how good you are at coaching.

Your website must be easy to navigate and contain some critical information. It should have pages for:

• Your home page
• About the coach
• Services
• Bookings
• Resources

If you run a blog or create content, you may want multiple categories so that you can keep this content organized and easy to find. Once you’ve created these, start working on the aesthetics so your site looks beautiful – and then it’s time to move on to the next step of how to become an emotional intelligence coach.

Step 9: Go Legal

It’s time to go legal! You might be wondering what that means. It’s not as exciting as it sounds; this is the part where you tick off the basic tasks you need to cover before you start advertising yourself to clients.

You will need to do things like:

• Register the business and the business name
• Get an Employer Identification Number if you need one
• Choose a tax structure
• Choose a tax year
• Check whether you need a permit for any of the work you’ll be doing
• Open a business bank account
• Pay your business taxes (when you have completed a year)

You should also do things like considering getting business insurance if necessary, and determine whether you need an accountant to keep your finances straight. Once you’ve done all of these things, you’re almost ready to launch.

➡️  Need more help? Download our ‘Legally Launch It’ freebie for a complete checklist to keep you on the right track >>

Step 10: Create Your Coaching Contract

Before you begin attracting clients, there’s one final – and critical part – of how to become an emotional intelligence coach that you need to attend to. The business contract that you will share with all of your clients. Do not ignore this contract or decide that you’ll deal with it later; you need it in place before you begin coaching.

Your contract protects you from clients who are unhappy with your services, and it also ensures that both you and your clients have a clear, written agreement to refer to throughout the coaching process. This contract should cover a range of areas, including intellectual property rights, your confidentiality promise, payment stipulations, and late fees.

Without this contract, you will be vulnerable to legal problems, so make sure that you have one that will suit your business. You must either buy one from a reputable website or get a lawyer to draft one that has been tailored to your business to ensure you are covered.

➡️  Want to get this part right? See these resources:

• The Official Coaching Contract 101 Guide >>
• Purchase a coaching contract from The Contract Shop >>

Step 11: Get Your First Emotional Intelligence Coaching Client

We’re now onto one of the most interesting parts of your journey: your first client. You might be wondering where this first client comes from. Fortunately, there are a few different approaches that you can take here.

One option is to start utilizing your personal network of family and friends and reaching out to them about your business. They may pass your name on to people they know, and your first client might already be an acquaintance.

Another option is to use SEO tactics and create some amazing content that will draw clients to your website. From here, they can start looking at your packages and hopefully sign up for one. Make sure you are using email sign-ups if you opt for this strategy, and be aware that it can be a somewhat slow approach – but it is effective.

A third suggestion involves blogging for an established site or partnering with an established business that relates to your niche. This will give you access to clients.

Step 12: Grow Your Emotional Intelligence Coaching Business

Finally, once you’ve begun coaching and it’s all going smoothly, your next task is to grow – and keep growing. You can do this in a variety of ways, but make sure that your business is set up to handle growth first. 

Think about the tasks you do regularly and whether you will need a virtual assistant or some software to ensure that you don’t lose all your time to administration or processes like sending emails and scheduling. There are lots of tools out there that may help you deal with some repetitive parts of your business.

Next, consider putting some money into marketing. If you’re going to do this, make sure you take a smart approach. Where are your clients most active, and can you access them there? Don’t pay for ads on Facebook if most of your market is only active on LinkedIn – or vice versa.

Check in regularly to ensure that your marketing is getting results and if you’re losing clients somewhere in the sales cycle, find out where!

Final Thoughts — You’re An Emotional Intelligence Coach, Now What?

So, you’ve read all about how to become an emotional intelligence coach and you now have everything you need to get started. Remember that it takes time and effort to build a successful coaching business. Be patient and keep putting in the hard work—you will see results over time. 

What are you waiting for? Go forth and coach! The world needs more emotionally intelligent people, and there’s never been a better time to start helping others develop their skills. 

Leave a comment below and let us know how you plan to use your new knowledge to make the world a better place. And be sure to check out our other blog posts for more tips on starting your own business!