A Business Program I Recommend for New Health Coaches

Wellspired's Wellness Coach Business Academy

Note: This post contains an affiliate link. I only recommend programs I genuinely believe in. If you enroll through my link, I may earn a small commission for helping you find out about this program at no additional cost to you.

One of the questions I get most often from new health and wellness coaches is some version of this: I know how to coach. I have no idea how to run a business. Where do I even start?

It's a fair question — and an important one. Your training program prepared you to be a skilled coach. It almost certainly did not prepare you to find clients, structure your offers, navigate the legal and operational basics of private practice, or have a consultation conversation that feels natural rather than salesy.

That gap is real. And it's one of the main reasons coaches who are genuinely talented at the work still struggle to build a practice that sustains itself.

The Wellness Coach Business Academy from Wellspired is one of the programs I point new coaches toward when they're ready to close that gap.

What is the Wellness Coach Business Academy?

The Wellness Coach Business Academy (WCBA) is a six-month group mentorship program for certified wellness coaches who are building — or rebuilding — their private practice. It's designed specifically for coaches who are at the beginning of the business-building process and need more than a course to watch alone: they need structure, live support, and a community of peers who are doing the same work.

The program guides coaches through the foundational pieces that most certification programs don't cover in depth: how to clarify your niche and message, how to attract and serve your first clients with confidence, how to understand the legal and operational basics of running a practice, and how to have consultation conversations that feel client-centered rather than transactional.

It also includes 15 NBHWC continuing education credits — which means that if you hold the NBC-HWC credential, this program counts toward your recertification requirements while teaching you genuinely useful business skills. That combination is rarer than it should be.

What's included

• A structured curriculum and business framework that walks you through the foundational pieces of building a private practice

• Group mentorship with board-certified coaches — real support from people who have built practices themselves

• Community with fellow coaches who are navigating the same challenges at the same time

• Practical tools and templates you can implement immediately — not theoretical frameworks that gather dust

Why I recommend it

There are a lot of programs out there promising to help coaches build their businesses. Many of them are generic, expensive, and taught by people who have never actually coached anyone. What I appreciate about Wellspired is that their programs are built specifically for health and wellness coaches, by board-certified coaches, with a clear understanding of what our scope of practice looks like and what our particular business challenges are.

The group format also matters. Building a coaching practice can feel isolating, especially in the early stages when nothing is moving as fast as you'd like. Having a structured program, live support, and a community of peers going through the same experience changes that significantly — both practically and psychologically.

The testimonials from WCBA graduates speak to exactly the things I hear new coaches struggle with most: getting systems in place, understanding their ideal client, feeling confident marketing themselves, and signing that first client. Those are real outcomes, and they reflect what the program is actually teaching.

Who this is for

WCBA is a strong fit if you:

• Have completed your coach training and earned your credential (or are close to finishing)

• Are ready to build a private practice but don't know where to start

• Want structured support and live mentorship rather than a self-paced course you'll do alone

• Are looking for CE credits that are genuinely useful to your practice

• Want a program built specifically for health and wellness coaches — not generic business coaching

It's probably not the right fit if you already have an established practice and are looking for advanced growth strategy. Wellspired has a separate program for that — the Wellness Coach Business Network — which is designed for coaches who are ready to scale and deepen what they've already built.

How this fits into your broader toolkit

I want to be clear about where WCBA fits relative to everything else I talk about on this site.

WCBA is about the business strategy and mindset side of building a practice: your niche, your messaging, your first clients, your consultation process. It's the big picture.

The tools I cover in my 7 Systems I Use to Manage My Coaching Business series — Vibly, Podia, Found, Canva, Descript, Asana, and Google — are about the operational infrastructure: the platforms and systems that make your practice run day-to-day once you know what you're building.

Ideally, you're doing both. The strategy tells you what to build. The systems are what you build it with. WCBA can help you get the strategy right. The systems help you execute it.

One more thing

If you're not ready to commit to a six-month program right now, Wellspired also offers a free workshop — 5 Steps to Jump-Start Your Wellness Coaching Business — that's a solid introduction to their approach and approved for 1 NBHWC CEU. It's a low-stakes way to see if their teaching style resonates with you before you invest more.

Not sure The Wellness Coach Business Academy is for you? Here's another option...

Building a coaching practice is one of the most meaningful and most challenging professional endeavors I know. Having the right support around you — the right community, the right mentors, the right structure — makes an enormous difference in both the process and the outcome.

1:1 Business Coaching Support: For high-touch and highly personalized business coaching, check out my 1:1 coaching program, The Business Edit.

Asynchronous Course: For help getting your business up and running at a lower price point, check out my course, The Business Edit Course.

Looking for more resources for new health coaches? Download my free guide — The 7 Systems I Use to Manage My Coaching Practice — for a practical overview of the tools that keep my business running.