Five Things You Need To Create a Highly Successful Career As a Life or Business Coach

The coaching industry is now tremendous. It is a 15 billion dollar industry. Many professionals have left their office jobs to become highly successful coaches. At the same time, not everyone who starts a coaching business sees success. What does someone starting a career as a life coach, wellness coach, or business coach need to know to turn it into a very successful and rewarding career?

In this interview series, called “Five Things You Need To Create a Highly Successful Career As a Life or Business Coach” we are interviewing experienced and successful life coaches, wellness coaches, fitness coaches, business and executive coaches and other forms of coaches who share the strategies you need to create a successful career as a life or business coach.

In this particular interview, we had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Katia Ravé .

Katia Ravé is the owner of a prominent business coaching company consistently featured in podcasts, magazines, news in the USA and on stages internationally.

After nearly two decades in business, hundreds of clients, three books, Katia knows what drives sustainable personal and professional growth.

In addition to her extensive business and sales experience, Katia is a leadership performance coach who has learned and worked with top performing teams, CEOs, entrepreneurs and students from all walks of life.

Katia takes pride in providing the structure that supports a vision and environment of love unity connection faith trust and abundance for families, businesses, and communities.

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Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and what brought you to this career path?

Business and leadership were a huge part of my growing up in France, in Brittany. My parents were entrepreneurs and busy with growing their companies. I became the non-official apprentice. Adding checks, going to the bank depositing in, taking care of my brother, making sure his homework was done.

Growing up in this environment gave me the leadership skills I am using today on a day-to-day basis.

I came in America at twenty years old not speaking English and had to figure it out. Soon though working for others, being limited to how fast and far I advanced, I decided to open my own businesses. A small one first, then a bigger and larger one of 3000 square feet. And now as a business and leadership coach, I get to work on numerous businesses of my clients.

You are a successful business leader. Which three-character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

Integrity- Integrity is a huge part of my success. Integrity with who I am, who I work with, and high integrity with my clients. Not selling my integrity for money, staying true to my core values, and treating my clients.

One story about integrity is that I fired a client that was not aligned with the work we were doing. He was not showing up doing the work and taking monthly payment was not something I wanted to do. I work with driven entrepreneurs and when they are not doing the work it is not a great combination. I was willing to not get the payment because he did not do the work.

My vision- My vision is what drives me every day to wake up. My job as a coach is not just to be the star, but it is to be a star maker, and support other coaches to elevate our industry. My vision has always been big. I wake up every day for many years to get a dream home at the beach. And now I am answering these questions from that beach house. My next vision is a swimming pool in that beach house

Time Management- To be successful, business and life coaches must understand time management, money generating activities and don’t get distracted. Most coaches work out of home and the lack of discipline is a huge factor in the success or failure.

How have habits played a role in your success? Can you share some success habits that have helped you in your journey?

Habits have helped me so much in my journey, in many ways they set my intention, my mindset for the day.

My morning ritual is the moment I open my eyes in the morning, I start a gratefulness list aloud, then I go directly into what I am committed to creating. Every night I also finish the day with what I am grateful for.

I ground myself before meeting with clients and that sometimes includes letting go of energy, for that I have a dance party with the song “Love Shack” by the B52 or Tina Turner with “Proud Mary”.

This will be intuitive to you, but it will be helpful to spell this out directly. Can you help explain a few reasons why it is so important to create good habits? Can you share a story or give some examples?

Well to start, I would love to say that I don’t believe there are good habits or bad habits, there are habits. We decide what is beneficial or not. We make it good or bad. It is important to create habits that serves us.

I for example have an app where I created my own affirmations. Every 5 minutes it gives me one of my own affirmations, now even if I don’t look at my phone, when I do the notifications are things that bring me up, versus just social media notifications. It is priceless. It is a reminder of how great and worthy I am, of how I get to have healthy relationships, constant reminder of positive thoughts.

Speaking in general, what is the best way to develop good habits? Conversely, how can one stop bad habits?

Habits get to be looked at as is this benefiting me. Where I am in my life now? Some habits I have, can be looked bad by someone else and vice versa.

Each thing you do as a repeat, ask yourself is this benefiting me and my goals? Starting there. Go back to what I call the drawing board.

Instead of stopping bad habits, replace by something else that serves you. For example, instead of putting whole milk in your coffee, switch to 2 percent and then 1 percent …

Years ago, I decided I wanted to have earrings every time I meet with a client. I had a post it to remind me on my desk “Are you wearing earrings today?”

Can you share your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Why does that resonate with you so much?

I am stronger than my problems is a huge life lessons for me. I don’t let anything come my way take over for too long. It resonates with me because I tend to play victim. I am not a victim of anybody or anything. I am a creator. Remembering that has been a huge key to my success.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?

I have 2 amazing things coming up…. I am writing my 4th book. It will come out in July. All about leadership and how to grow little by little, day by day on accessing our zone of genius. And I am having a summit starting on May 11th. The summit gathers experts from my industry that will give tips and strategy to the audience to grow their business, eliminate procrastination and make more money,

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Many coaches are successful, but some are not very successful. From your experience or perspective, what are the main factors that distinguish successful coaches from unsuccessful ones? What are your “Five Things You Need To Create a Highly Successful Career As a Life or Business Coach”? If you can, please share a story or an example for each.

To create a highly successful business as a coach:

1- You get to be seen, you get to be on podcast, on stages ( virtual or live) on social media, and being in giving and generosity. Too many entrepreneurs are hiding behind the computer and in creative mode, and yet expect people to find them just like that. Bring buzz, and don’t be afraid to share your life, people hire people they see. My followers know my values: I am committed to creating a world of love, unity, connection, faith, trust, and abundance. They also see me with my bible, having my quiet time outdoor in the morning. These are things that people want to see.

2-To know your avatar, to understand the pain points of your clients and to remember that being a coach is not becoming a guru, it is evoking the answers within from the clients. Know that your avatar pains evolve and is not always the same…are you surveying your avatar? Are you asking questions? Are you meeting them where they are at?

3-You get to remember that when we are an entrepreneur in any business that means that we are in sales as well. This is the biggest mistake in our industry. Coaches are amazing at coaching, and they are so good at their trade, but they don’t want to sell. They want only the part they want and that is not entrepreneurship or at least at the beginning. Sales is a huge part of the work. Coaches spend a lot of money on getting leads, but when they have the leads, they don’t know what to do with them.

4-Life and business coaches must put their ego aside and start with knowing that they will eat humility for breakfast, lunch and dinner. This is where we get to remember we are of service. We cater to clients and humility goes a long way in our industry. Too many coaches think they are above, and don’t care about their clients.

5-To be successful, business and life coaches must understand time management, money generating activities and don’t get distracted. Most coaches work out of home and the lack of discipline is a huge factor in the success or failure. They get distracted and don’t show up for themselves versus if they were working for a company.

Time management is huge in coaching. How do you set your days? When do you coach versus having sales conversations? Your mindset is very different when you are doing one or the other.

What are the most common mistakes you have seen coaches make when they start their business? What can be done to avoid those errors?

They spend so much money on logo, website, colors, and creating online programs. They are under the impression that this is where they start. They also spend so much time doing it all by themselves.

At the beginning it takes time to discern who is your avatar, what is your concise message. What can be done is to sell your solution before creating bunches of content that nobody will want. Get support.

Based on your experience and success, what are a few of the most important things a coach should know in order to create a Wow! Customer Experience? Please share a story or an example for each.

It is about the client and not about you- One coach I knew made everything about him, and forgot who he was serving others

In order to create a wow experience with coaching business, you get to know your avatar and when to say no to work with someone versus taking them as clients and having to fire them because in the end nobody is getting served. I had a client long time ago, who I onboarded even after knowing we were not really a match, but he really wanted to work with me, and I was at a beginner stage of my company. I was dreading my sessions with him as he was barely showing up, not doing the homework. Best things I ever did was to fire him. I did not do a good job at the beginning. Creating a wow customer experience has many layers, not only at the beginning.

Last but not least, be there for your clients, know their birthday, have compassion when something happening to them. One of my coaches, I did spent over 2 years close to 100000 dollars never acknowledge me on my wedding day, not a card, a word on social media ….Yet a coach that was not my coach anymore took the time to send me personal wishes, that was a huge eye opening for me. One of my client the other day, on our forum posted that her car broke down and she was walking in the blizzard, and having the best attitude about it. I called her and speand 5 minutes talking to her before my next clients. I know that it is the small little gestures that count. What would it look like for you to go above and beyond for the people that already pay you? We get to nurture them there are our biggest fans.

Lead generation is one of the most important aspects of any business, and particularly in coaching. What are the best ways for a coach to find customers? Can you share some of the strategies you use to generate good, qualified leads?

Using public speaking to generate leads is one of the best ways to generate leads. One of the things we teach our clients is how to offer amazing generous Call to Action freebies at the end of a speech and what is the anatomy of carving a signature talk that converts in high ticket client is so important

Being interviewed on podcast is also a great way to generate high tickets leads as long as you have a great CTA (Call to Action)

Doing joint venture such as summits is an incredible way of getting leads.

Coaches are similar to startup founders who often work extremely long hours and it's easy to end up burning the candle at both ends. What would you recommend to your fellow coaches about how to best take care of their physical and mental wellness when starting their business?

I believe and teach that at different seasons we have different timing. At the beginning, I suggest taking one day that is dedicated to you learning.

Each month I take what I call flex week, and on flex week, I read, I write, I go on long walk and nurture my spiritualty with God. I take walk on the beach and get inspired. I sit on the beach as I am now on flex week and enjoy the waves and getting interviewed by you.

I also recommend time blocking; time management is a huge part of mental health.

I do my phone coaching by walking around my neighborhood, and exercise. I also work out at least 5 nights out of 7.

I drink alcohol on 10 days out of 90 days. It makes me put intention behind my drinking and keeps me very attuned with my work and clients.

Drinking half of my weight of water each day is also a great physical rule.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I love education and art. I buy little free libraries, paint them and donate them to different and would love more little free libraries to be persuade

We are blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

I would love to have breakfast with Patton Manning his leadership is amazing!

How can our readers further follow your work online?

We give a lot of tips, nuggets of gold on LinkedIn and on all social media. We have a blog where our goal is to be generous with our strategies at https://www.ravestrategystudio.com/blog

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success and good health!