Leaving Corporate America for Health Coaching (10 Pros and Cons)

Michelle Leotta:
Welcome to the Health Coach Power Community Podcast. I'm Michelle Leotta, ex-corporate girl turned certified health coach with over 15 years of experience growing a successful online practice. I started out with no idea what I was getting into and learned a lot of lessons along the way that have given me the freedom to do the work I love and raised two boys as a single mom.

I created a health coach power community over a decade ago to make it easier for health coaches to build a career they love and make the world a better place.

If you are a certified health coach still working in your corporate job. I get it. Making the leap to full-time coaching is a pretty big decision. When I enrolled in health coaching school, I was still working in big advertising, so I had a solid salary and had a window office, 401k matching, all that good stuff.

Most of all, I had worked really hard to get there, so the thought of walking away was like, Am I crazy? But maybe you know, the feeling like it just didn't feel right anymore. I wanted to do something that felt more meaningful, and so I ended up jumping into health coaching, and I have been now working for myself for a very long time, since 2009.

So I've lived both lives on one hand. You got the nine-to-five, the world of performance reviews, and cost-of-living raises. And then on the other hand, it's the rollercoaster of self-employment as a health coach. Today I'm sharing five pros and five cons of making that leap.

Let's start with the pros. Let's start with the good stuff. So the most obvious. As a health coach, you get to do meaningful, impactful work that makes the world a better place. Can you beat that? And you get to see these changes in real time as you work with clients. Like you're not doing TPS reports behind the scenes and attending staff meetings all day, that just feel pointless.

When you're coaching, you are directly working with someone, making a difference in their lives, and it's just this amazing feeling. I call it like Health Coach High. When you watch your clients' lives evolve right in front of your eyes, when they get wins, you get wins, and it's the best feeling in the world.

It makes you wanna get outta bed in the morning. And I know that, in particular, was always missing for me in my corporate job, where, like, let's say, on a good day, my biggest contribution to the world was helping some brand sell more product. You know, and it might've been McDonald's, and it might've been Ocean Spray.

You know, Hey, sell more sugary juice. Yay! The next huge pro of health coaching is that your time is your own. Yes. So much better than working in corporate. This has been so important to me. As a mom, you can choose your own hours. You can work when it makes sense for you. That's all true. You wanna take a walk in the middle of the day, you wanna book a vacation in the middle of the week, attend your kids' school play at like 2:00 PM. You can do all of that.

And I have. So I would say definitely flexibility is one of the biggest pluses. It just makes for a much better quality of life. I can't even imagine being a mom, having two kids, and working in advertising. Our life would be totally different. Just last week, in fact, my son like broke a bracket or something on his braces, and he needed to go to the orthodontist right away.

So no problem. I didn't have to ask anyone. I didn't have to feel guilty about it. I just made an appointment and took 'em. Another really great part about being a health coach is that self-care becomes part of your job. Isn't that a great feeling? So suddenly, when you're going to yoga, it's not an indulgence. You actually have to, so you don't have to, but it's part of your job to take care of yourself.

I'm not trying to say that we just sip smoothies and like meditate all day. That's not the case. But as a coach, you are your best marketing tool. Your energy and what you radiate into the world, that's what matters. And you just can't pour from an empty cup. So taking care of your own well-being is just baked into the gig.

Thank goodness. Right, because I remember when I was still working in advertising, I would have to like sneak out of the office to get to yoga on time, and everyone would get annoyed that I was leaving, like actually leaving at five o'clock, 'cause they were probably gonna be there till at least eight o'clock.

Whatever you can do it. I can go to yoga any time of day or night. Flexibility. Now, one of the most powerful moments that I ever had was when I realized that as a health coach, I had no salary cap. Like, there's no ceiling to what you can earn as a coach, and that is definitely not true when you're in a corporate setting, because when you're in corporate, you've got the HR department, and the HR department decides how much every position can ever be paid, right?

There's a hard stop right above your head, like this is as much as you can earn the end, but in this field, sky's the limit. So that's really empowering. Number five on the pro list. As a health coach. Oh boy. Do you have location freedom? So I've worked from home primarily since 2009, from my office, from the kitchen table, sometimes from the couch or the deck, but I've also worked from Hawaii.

I remember I did a client call because I didn't wanna reschedule it, so I just did it while I was there. No problem. I've worked from Europe. Many trips. I've worked from the beach, I've worked from the car pickup line. I've worked from soccer games. You know, I built my business, actually working from my phone, typing while pushing a baby stroller.

My son only slept in the stroller. I pushed that thing four or five hours a day. I worked at the same time. Otherwise, I probably would've lost my mind just aimlessly wandering through the streets. So there are so many great things that I would never, ever give up. And I am a realist. I'm practically speaking.

It is not all sunshine and roses. So you gotta think about this. Let's talk about the five cons of leaving corporate for health coaching. The biggest one for me and the one that kind of smacked me in the face when I started was, oh boy, did it get lonely? Like, there was no one to chit-chat with, no office banter.

There's no one to go grab lunch with. You will need to create your own community of support, which right now I'm gonna just have a shameless plug right here to join the Health Coach Power Community on Facebook, if you haven't already. But yeah, I find myself, even these days, I'm excited to talk to someone.

When like my family members come home, I'm like, please talk to me. I just need some social interaction. I think, though, through the years, I've done a much, much better job of figuring out what kind of. Work is the most fulfilling for me. Like hours spent talking to clients and networking, and actually like interacting with people, versus just doing work on the computer.

And I definitely get out of the house now and then to work from the coffee shop, like just to be around other people and around other people's energy. Another con, and this is important, finding clients isn't as simple as they make it sound when you're in health coach school, it is definitely not build it and they will come hang your shingle and you're gonna get a line out the door.

Just doesn't work like that. And you can know a ton about health and nutrition. You could be like the best health coach in the whole world, but getting the clients, the marketing, that's a whole other ball game. And you might not be skilled in that. You might not have a background in that. Good news, though.

It's something that you can learn because it is a skill. So if you have a growth mindset around it, you're good to go. This is exactly what I help health coaches with, by the way. So if you're listening to this and you want support in finding clients, I work with coaches who are serious about building a full or part-time practice.

Just email the word Corporate to me at michelle@healthcoachpower.com. That way, I know that you came from this episode, and we can talk about it. All right. A third con. I was just talking to one of my clients today, and she is noticing that some people in her life, they just don't get it. That's gonna happen.

Like here I am 16, I don't know, 17 years into a multi-six-figure business, and friends who knew me way back when will say, Hey Michelle, how's your little blog going? I'm like, it's good. Thanks. But the truth is, you know, friends, family, even your partner, they might raise an eyebrow, expect that this isn't the path that most people take.

But then again, you and me, we are not most people, and you are certainly not alone. Even if it feels like you are, 'cause of people in your life right now, don't get it. You're gonna find that perfect strangers are going to take you far more seriously than your family sometimes, or even your closest friends.

All the more reason to learn how to market yourself and get in front of new people. All right. Number four. There are no built-in benefits to this job. I mean, that's not entirely true. Time and location freedom are enormous benefits, but I mean, there's no. HR department handing you health insurance, dental insurance, and a retirement plan.

None of that is happening when you're working for yourself like this. Now, I haven't needed a doctor in like six years, but I do pay for state health insurance in case of emergencies. Some health coaches I know feel like their lifestyle keeps them out of the doctor's office so much that they just. Skip the insurance completely.

It's up to you. Now, as for retirement, you can set up, you won't have the 401k you get matched like you did at the corporate job, but you can set up a SEP IRA. That's for a self-employed person. I think that's what SEP stands for, something like that. Anyway, it's called a SEP IRA, and that way you can save for your own retirement.

That's something I did not know at first, so I missed many years of doing that. Ask your financial advisor or your CPA, and number five. Income fluctuation. That is a real thing, and I think it's true for just about any business owner. There are gonna be months where money flows in, and there's gonna be months where money is not flowing in, and that can be difficult to manage.

So you wanna have multiple income streams, that's number one. And you need a repeatable marketing system so that you are constantly marketing yourself, not just here and there. Anyway, I teach all of that to my clients. Again, you can email the word corporate to me to learn more. I'm at michelle@healthcoachpower.com.

So here's the deal: leaving corporate isn't gonna be for everyone. Maybe you don't even wanna leave. Maybe you like your job, but you wanna develop like a side gig. Maybe you just kind of want one foot in each world, whatever the point is. If your gut is telling you that maybe there's something more out there for you, maybe there's something that you'd like to be doing more of, listen to that.

You know, the change doesn't have to be major all at once. You don't have to have it all figured out right now, and I'm sure you won't, and you don't have to take any major steps to blow up your life. I have never looked a health coach in the eye and said, Quit your job tomorrow. I don't think that's really great advice.

But instead, what you need to do is start where you are with the time that you have. You can, and I help coaches with this all the time. You can find clients now, and you can start earning now. I'm gonna tell you, whatever got you ahead in corporate, that's not gonna work here. It is a totally different industry.

Coaching is a totally different model of working. I can help you make a smoother transition from your corporate job to coaching if that's what you're looking for, or even just create that meaningful side gig. So email me, just send the word corporate to michelle@healthcoachpower.com, and let's talk about it. I'll see you next time.

Thank you so much for listening to the Help Coach Power Community podcast. Please take a moment, leave a written review on Apple Podcasts. It helps us reach more coaches and allows me to bring you this free content every week to join us live. Ask your questions and have a direct line to me. Join our free Facebook group at HealthCoachPowerCommunity.com.