Is Starting a Life Coaching Business Worth It? (2026 Strategy)

In 2026, the safest careers on the planet are actually the most dangerous. Not because they disappear overnight, but because they quietly erode without any warning. Now, I used to practice for 10 years as an optometrist earning $120K a year. It was stable, clean, respectable, and for most of my career, I thought I had it safe. And so the idea of leaving security into starting a coaching business was extremely terrifying. But that fear turned out to be an illusion because turns out The optometry industry is not so safe anymore, and most optometrists cannot even find work, and the ones that do do not earn as much as I used to earn. And so the income has dramatically dropped. And so when people ask me, is coaching actually worth it as a career? What they're really asking is something deeper. Is it real? Is it safe? Or is it just another internet illusion? And even though I've built up an 8-figure coaching business, I didn't get here through hype or being an overnight success. Success. It took a lot of late nights, a lot of discouragement. Many times I felt like giving up, yet alone the cultural backlash that went against me from being of an Asian descent. And on top of that, I had to learn a whole new set of skills in a completely new industry, which meant I had to learn a lot of new rules and new ways of thinking. So in this video here, I'm going to give you my honest review of the coaching industry and coaching as a career— the good, the bad, the ugly, who it actually works for, and if you do decide to take this leap, then when is it the right time for you to actually burn your boats and go all in? Now, the first thing I want to talk about is that coaching is a skill business, not an influence business. Now, you can fool everybody once, you can fool some people sometimes, but you can't fool everybody every time. And so if you're seriously considering coaching as a career path, then my guess is you're looking to do this to enter the new season or the new chapter of your life right now, which probably is going to be 10, 20, maybe 30 years for some of you watching. My guess is you're not watching this because you're looking to get in for 1 or 2 or 3 years just to completely rape the market, pull as much money out as possible, and then leave and do something else. If that's you, then not saying that you can't make money fast in this industry. I've seen a lot of people that have done that, but it's probably not the right industry to do it if you want to make money fast. I'd rather just go to the casino or invest in trading or something that just allows you to make money in a much faster rate than coaching ever will for you. But if you're watching this, my guess is you want to be here for the long term, which means you need to protect your brand. Because if you don't focus on skills and you only focus on influence, people are going to find out very quickly that you're not very good at what you do. And so the number one thing you must focus on is your competency as a coach, meaning how good are you at explaining concepts, teaching your frameworks, and getting your students results? Because ultimately, that's what's going to build your brand. It's not having a million followers, it's not having a million views, it's not going viral. Because when people find out who you are and find out when they work with you, they're just going to go all over online and say how bad you are, which is what you don't want. Now, how do you know you're good at what you do? There's really only two objective measurements. You can say that you're good But there's really only 2 objective measurements, and if you measure these consistently throughout your career as a coach, then this will be the focal point that will make you successful. But I want to be clear that in order to start a coaching business, you're going to have to learn a new skill, and that skill is in coaching. And what defines whether you've learned that new skill or not is the 2 things, which is whether you get referrals or repeat business. If people love what you do, they'll tell their friends about it. Now you can ask for referrals, but if you're not good at what you do, they may say, "Yeah, sure, I'll help you out," but they won't. Or they may not even help you out. Now, if you're good at what you do, the customers that you serve will always come back for more. Otherwise, people vote with their feet. And so the really only objective way to know whether you're good at what you do is if you get referrals and repeat business. Everything else is just hearsay. And that was like that when I was an optometrist as well. —what made us or what defined us as a good optometrist was number 1, if the patients came back to see you. We knew that you did a good job because if you did a terrible job with their eyes, they'll never come back. The second thing that defined whether you're a great optometrist or not was whether or not they referred their family and friends to come and see you. But there was one third thing in optometry was the, the competency level was how many times did you have to recheck someone, meaning that if you prescribe glasses and they went out and bought the glasses and they came back and tried on and it wasn't as clear as they thought they'll be, and you have to recheck the prescription. And around about 1 in 50, as an average, you have to recheck for various reasons. And so you get them back in, you retest their eyes, you recheck them. Now, for some terrible optometrists, their recheck rate is about 1 in 10. And so for 1 in 10 eye tests, they're having to recheck it, or someone else has to recheck it, like me. My recheck rate was about 1 in 300. It was very rare that I had someone come in for a recheck, and that's how you know you're good. Now, in the coaching space, how do you know you're good in that concept is that you can help them get a result in a shorter amount of time. You don't— like, for example, if you're giving out 10 one-on-one sessions, a competent coach can get the same outcome for that same person in 3 sessions. They don't need more time or more rechecks to be able to get the same result. So that competency comes from experience. Experience, but also skill set. And so if you're prepared to learn a new skill set and understand that this takes time and repetition, then maybe it is worth it in that regard. But there's other factors I want to talk about as well. And so a few questions that I would objectively answer for yourself, because I want to give my honest opinion, because many people get into this and think they can coach overnight because there's many gurus out there that says you don't need to learn any skills, you can start without any experience and you can, you don't need any certifications, all that garbage out there. But the reality is you do need some skill. So ask yourself these questions: what skill do you need to learn to effectively solve the problem that you're looking to solve in coaching? So whether you're grief coaching, relationship coaching, leadership coaching, mindset coaching, life coaching, business coaching, marketing coaching, property coaching, whatever coaching you're doing, ask yourself, what skill sets do I need to learn to be able to coach this person? Because there's a big difference between having the result yourself but then being able to teach it and pass it on so someone else can get the results. And that's called communication and coaching. And so I've seen many coaches who have great results in their personal life. For example, you may have been to the gym and there's many personal trainers out there they have a six-pack and they know how to eat right, they know how to diet well, and clearly they know what to do for themselves. But when it comes to training you, it's just a different experience. And I've had many personal trainers in the past, and I know that there's one particular personal trainer, the way he articulates things to me, the way he describes things, the way he pushes me, is vastly more effective than another personal trainer who doesn't communicate effectively. So Communication and coaching style is key. It's not whether or not you got the result. That's the first step, but can you communicate? Do you have the skill to pass on that to someone else? So the first question is, how much skill do you need to learn to effectively solve that problem? The next question you want to ask yourself is, how much time, effort, and energy will it take you to learn that? There will be some time, effort, and energy, some resources, maybe some capital intensive, maybe some late nights, maybe some weekends that you have to go away, whatever it is. How much time would it take to learn that skill for you to be good enough to start? How much will it pay you? How much will it pay you? How much will you solving that problem pay you? And then ask yourself, is it worth it? So if you can discern, okay, is it worth learning this skill? How much time will it take? How much resources will it take? How much will it pay me in return? And is it worth it, then you can answer that for yourself. I'll give you an example. In university— well, I wouldn't do this again, but obviously at the time it was good— university degree in optometry is 5 years. 5 years in optometry. That's how much time, and it's full-time. So it's not like you can work another job, which you can sometimes and do it part-time during spring break and university break and all that kind of stuff, but most time you can't. So you're being supported by either the government or your parents because you're still living at home, or you're working part-time just trying to hustle and make ends meet. And so this is the pitch in, in university. This is a 5-year degree. It's going to cost you $30,000 a year to learn optometry, take you 5 years. So that's $150,000 and 5 years of your time. And after that, you'll get this degree where you can go out there and earn about $100,000, $120,000 a year. And that's what I did. I got that degree that took me 5 years to earn, to earn $120K a year, and over 10 years being an optometrist, I earned over $1 million. But I had to spend 5 years and $150K to earn $1 million over 10 years That's the trade-off. And to me, I thought, okay, well, that's probably worth it. But in hindsight, not really. I don't think I'd spend 5 years to learn anything anymore, and you don't need to now because the world we live in. And so that was it. So you got to ask yourself, okay, well, if this takes me 6 months to learn, which is probably reasonable, and, and I need to put down $10,000 to learn it, and, you know, 300 hours of my time, is it worth it? Okay, cool. How much could this pay me long term? Yeah, it could pay me $100 grand a year. Okay, maybe that's worth it. So only you can answer that for yourself. Obviously, for me to transition out of optometry into coaching, I had to invest a lot of resources and time to learn the skill. And for me, I saw it as being worth it because I had done worse as an optometrist. And so the next thing I want to talk about is this: coaching only works if you solve pain, not pursue Passion. What do I mean by this? People who have a headache, the only thing they want solved is their headache gone. They don't want some positive thinking blah blah. So if you try to do some positive thinking on a person that has a headache, you're going to lose a lot of business. You're going to break a lot of trust. People with pain just want the pain gone. And so if you need to be in the business of solving people's pain points, not trying to get them pleasure. For example, A person with eczema just wants to not have any scratchy, itchy skin. They don't want supple, luxurious, soft skin. That's way out of their— way out of their mind right now. They don't want the perfect, like, the perfect tan. They just want their itch gone. And so you need to be addicted to solving problems. And this is one of the illusions of business. People think, oh my gosh, I want to start a coaching business and I want to help someone live their dream life. Because people just want their dream life. Well, the reality is people just want their problems solved. And so what does that mean? That means every single day you are listening to someone complain about their problems to you. But that's what you want because that's what they will pay to have solved. And so you need to fall in love with solving people's problems. You need to fall in love with listening to their problems every single day and listening to their pain points. And this is not any different from any other job except that when you have a job, probably your employer listens to all the problems, has to carry all that weight and just tells you to do the work and you become effectively a button pusher. Now your pay is directly correlated to two things. Number one, how big is the problem you solve? Number two, how many people have that problem. And then the final thing is how many problem solvers are out there for that problem. I have an equation for this, so I'm going to backtrack a little bit to the topic of this video. Is it worth pursuing? Well, answer this for yourself: can you fall in love with listening to your ideal client's problems every single day and then being able to solve it? Can you do that? Because you must be able to fall in love with solving the problems. And if you feel like that's not worth doing, then maybe coaching is not for you. But if you feel like, you know, I can do that, I want to share with you on how much money you can make by solving people's problems. And this is my income equation in coaching. And so in coaching, okay, you're going to pick a pain point that you solve. So there's a a patient, a client that has a problem. Now you gotta ask yourself is how big or painful is that problem. Now if it's big and painful like I'm about to have a heart attack or I need brain surgery or I have a tumor. Those are big, serious problems. And so that's why brain surgeons and heart surgeons get paid so much. If you have an eye problem that you're about to go blind, you send yourself to an ophthalmologist, and they get paid a bucketload because they solve a big problem. So ask yourself, how big is the problem you solve? The next question is, if you multiply that by the actual number of people that have that problem That's going to be part of how much you earn. Now then we need to divide it by the amount of people that solve that problem, meaning how saturated it is. So for example, if you are solving depression, which is a big problem and it's getting bigger, how many people have it? A lot of people have depression. I would argue that at least 20 to 30% of people watching this have gone through depression or feeling depressed right now. And so big problem, a lot of people have it, but millions and millions of people coach it or try to solve it. And so this times this is a big number divided by a lot of people to coach it ends up you maybe only making a little bit of money. But if you solve a big problem that a lot of people have and not many people are giving the solution, you are gonna make a lot of money. If you solve a big problem that not many people have but not many people solve it, then you still make a good amount of money. If you solve a small problem that a lot of people have and not many people solve it, you'll still make good money. The worst scenario is if you solve a small problem that not many people have and a lot of people solve it, you'll make no money. So you've got to ask yourself, how much money is the problem I solve gonna help me make? Is it a big problem? How big is it? Do a lot of people have it? And do a lot of people solve it? And then you kind of work out for yourself what is the potential of me earning money in this space. Is it not? And that will allow you to say, okay, well, is the time investment worth it? Is learning that skill worth it? Is putting up with listening to their pain points every day worth it? And so those are the questions you ask yourself after you figure this out. But this is a logical way of doing it. So I'll give you an example for our niche, for our niche. So we help a big painful problem, which is helping coaches get their first paying clients. Now, the coaching industry is huge. It's It's booming and it's a big pain point problem because most coaches don't know how to get their first paying client, get their first $10K, and they want to make money. And so yes, it's a big problem. Do a lot of people have that problem? Yes, every coach starting out in the industry has a problem of how do I get my first paying client, and most of them get stuck on the zero client flywheel. And so yes, big problem. Now, are there a lot of people coaching that problem? Yes. There are. And so how is it that we were able to make $10 million cash collected last year? It's because we have a unique way of solving that problem that no one else has, and it's called the Tiny Challenge. And that's what my book is about. And we are the only ones on the planet teaching this, and we're the only ones allowed to teach it because it's trademarked. And so we have one very unique way of solving it. So we're the only ones on the planet that can solve the first client problem through a tiny challenge. Hence, that's why we're making a lot of money, and that's why it's worth it for us. And so to recap this, if you have a big problem, a lot of people have it, not many people solve it, you are on a gold mine. And then probably for you, it's going to be worth it. By the way, if this equation was valuable, just type in valuable below. I want to make sure that this is useful for you. Now I want to end with a couple of things, okay? So whether or not it's worth it or not, you know, in optometry we had to do this thing called CPD, which means— and it's a health industry thing where you have to get continuing education, and every year you have to get 40 points. It means you have to constantly learn to keep updated, but there's not much advancement or, or revolution or, you know, innovation inside of optometry. Just every time you just go to these little CPD CPD events and you learn and you do some tests and, and you're learning the same thing every year and you can pass it with your eyes closed. Like, there's not much innovation. So, so the, the constant new learnings is very minimal. Basically, you don't learn much else from apart from what you learned at uni. And so the coaching industry is very different though. You— the marketing is constantly changing, what happens on algorithms change, Content changes, formats changes on marketing. That's from a marketing aspect. But then the coaching industry changes too. Rules, regulations, niches. AI has really changed the game in coaching. So there's constant proactive learning in the coaching industry. You can never ever stay still. And what you learn today, the skill sets you learn today, you're going to need to constantly evolve because it's changing so fast, and it's a very dynamic industry in that sense. And so if you are in the mindset of, you know what, I, I don't want to be doing that, then it's probably not worth it because you have to be on your toes pretty much all the time. And that's the truth. Like, most of my week I'm just creating something new, and I love it. I, I love creating something new. I love creating new content. Like this video here is a new piece of video, new content I've done that I've never done before. I've just ventured into YouTube. Now I'm trying to blow up the Instagram account. Predominantly I was really big on Facebook. Like these things, I'm learning these things too, and what it means to build a personal brand and all these kind of things. So you're constantly learning something new, you have to. And so the other thing when you're getting into business is there's always the risk of failing. And the reality is some people will fail when they step into coaching. In fact, probably most do, and they need to go back to work. And so that is the risk that you take, and so you need to be prepared on whether or not you're willing to fail. And it's not so much failing is a problem, it's just that most people are afraid of other people seeing them fail. And I've never met someone that's actually afraid of failing, it's just they're afraid of other people seeing them fail. And so if you started a coaching business and no one else was on the planet to see you fail, you'd probably go all in and do everything it takes because no one's going to see you fall down. And so are you okay with seeing others seeing you fall down? And in trade-off for a career that's fulfilling and could make you a lot of money, that kind of stuff there too, are you okay with that? More importantly, I would even say that if you are starting this, then maybe Maybe give yourself a pre-meaning of what it means if you were to fail. What if I fail? At least I gave it a go because no one else chases their dreams. If I fail, that means that I know that this is not the right path for me. If I fail, that means maybe this is not God's path. So you need to pre-decide on what it means. Now I'm going to end with this. It's this: if you're still sitting in a job that you hate, because it feels safe, then you're already paying the highest price, which is your fulfillment. And to the big question, is it worth it? Is coaching worth it as a career? Well, obviously I have created a successful coaching business, and so my answer is biased. But if you were my best friend if you were my wife, or if you were my daughters, and you said, Richmond Dinh, I want to get into coaching, here's what I would say. I would say, if that's what you feel pulled to do, then I'd highly recommend you go all in on it, because the rewards are geometric, both from fulfillment and income and lifestyle. But make sure you do it the right way. And that means a couple of things. Number 1, seek mentorship. Number 2, burn your boats at the right time. And what do I mean by this? I do believe at some point you need to leave your job and burn your boats and say, I quit, I'm going all in on coaching. But most people do it at the wrong time. And so, because if you give yourself options to fail, you'll fail. But the problem is, as that metaphor states, And I got this from Tony Robbins. When the boats get to shore, the soldiers get off and they burn the boats so they can't retreat. Now, that works because you have no way out and you have to go all in. But here's what most people do. They are burning their boats when their boat is 1 kilometer out from shore, only to realize they jump on the boat and they realize there's no land here, and now they have to swim a kilometer only to realize they can't swim and they sink and they die. And so I do believe that you need to burn your boats, but you need to burn it at the right time. Do not burn it 1 kilometer out from shore because you would die. Burn it once you get to the shore and it's anchored in and it's tight, and then you burn it. So when is that the right time? For me, it took me 5 months to transition out of optometry into coaching, and I was working 6 days a week, then I dropped it down to 5, then 4, then 3, then 2, then gone. And that's how I did it over a 5-month period, and I started to make some traction in my coaching business. I started to make some money first, and then I had a game plan on how to market myself and make continual cash flow. But I also had a very small amount of cash reserves just in case cash flow wasn't there right away. So I did it the the safe way. I did it the right way, and I got the mentorship to build me the map and the plan. And I spread it over a 5-month period to transition out of optometry, to burn my boats. And so I did it the right way, in a way that it could support my mission, support my dreams, but also be safe for my family as well. So those are the two things. First, seek mentorship. Burn your boats at the right time. But I got two more, two more, if you are going to take this leap. Understand it's a long game, meaning that if you plan to get in here for 1, 2, 3, 4, even 5 years, don't do it. I don't suggest that at all. It is a long game. It will take time for you to build a brand. It will take time for you to get a reputation out there. It will take time for you to be really good at what you do, and it really is a long game. It's fulfilling, yes, but it's a long game, and the more you can see it as a long game, the more you'll be able to handle discouragement and setbacks and late nights and all those things that come with it. The final thing is if you do decide to take this leap, the most important thing is make sure you surround yourself with the right people. You are who you spend time with, and who you spend time with is who you become. And if you want to ensure yourself of becoming successful, then make sure you spend time with also successful coaches that don't laugh at your dreams, that support who you are, that support where you're going, that really encourage you to become your best self and more importantly, they stretch you to grow and raise your standards. I trust this video was worthwhile to you and I trust it has answered some questions for you and I trust that if you do take the leap of faith, I wish you all the best and if you've decided after this video that you know what, not for you, I'm grateful that you were able to watch this and make an informed decision for yourself and your family and your future as well. For now, if this was useful, I have another video here for you that I think you'll love. And keep believing, never settle.