Obviously, this book will not teach you everything you need to know about becoming a life (or any other topic) coach because the industry is so encompassing, and so widely varied, that it would take an entire library to teach you everything. But after reading this, you should have a basic understanding of the following principles:
- What coaching is (and isn’t) and how you can find your own place in this exciting and potentially lucrative industry.
- How to merge your existing online business and income streams (books, websites, affiliate products, etc.) with a coaching business so that one can promote the other and vice-versa.
- Understand why people hire coaches in the first place, and have the tools to make people want to hire you over the competition.
- Understand the costs that might be involved with setting up a coaching business and getting a general idea of what to charge.
- Know what the different options are when it comes to coaching and be able to choose which style you prefer, or if you prefer to incorporate multiple styles, which ones will best go together.
- How to set up rules for coaching and maintain the line between building a coaching relationship with the client and allowing them to get too personal or treat you as an employee instead of a coach.
- How to specifically do life coaching on the internet as opposed to one-on-one or group counseling sessions in person.
- How to promote your coaching business to build up your clientele as quickly as possible and start making money so that you can do it full-time.
- Understand the technologies that are available for coaching, both in-person and over the internet, and have the tools to use those technologies in your own practice.
Most of all, you should have the ability to see your coaching business as a reality and not through the rose-colored glasses that every new business owner puts on. Creating realistic goals and reaching them is what will allow your business to be successful over the long-term and make clients want to come back to you for additional sessions or recommend you to their friends and family members.
Becoming a life coach is one of the most rewarding careers that a person could have. Rarely, do you get to see the results right away when you help someone in your life, and even rarer is the ability to make money while helping out many different people.
The rules of coaching are fairly simple. First, make your primary goal that your clients are able to achieve things that they wouldn’t have been able to reach without your help. Second, give them the tools so that they not only know how to set their goals and work towards them but also reach them with little or no help in the future.
If you do this, you will always have satisfied clients, as well as a successful coaching business, and most important of all, you’ll feel great about what you do for a living.
Business Coaching – Checklist
This checklist will give you a series of steps that you need to complete, mostly in order, to get your coaching business started. Some of the items have other items or sub-lists within them, and those are meant to be completed before moving onto the next step. These steps are in standard outline format to make them as easy as possible to follow.
- Learn about coaching and decide if coaching is really right for you and if you have what it takes to become a successful coach. If you believe you have something unique and valuable to offer people, you will do great at coaching.
- Figure out what type of coaching you want to pursue. There are hundreds of different niches that a coach could specialize in, and then there are the all-encompassing coaching styles of executive, business and life coaching.
- Decide if you are going to offer one-on-one coaching as part of your practice. You probably want to have more than one method of coaching, but you should evaluate each one carefully to see which ones fit your practice best.
- Determine if you are planning to offer group sessions as well as, or in place of, other types of counseling that you offer. Group coaching can have some great benefits and will help you maximize your income and coach more people.
- Check out the Facebook group page or check out some existing Facebook groups to know if you want to offer coaching this way. There is an entire chapter in the book about offering a private Facebook-based coaching group.
- Look into coaching via email. Many people prefer email coaching over everything else because they find that they can express themselves better through writing than they can verbally. Check out the section on email coaching and find out if it is something that you might want to incorporate into your practice.
- Look at all of the options and opportunities you have for video coaching. Video-based coaching can not only turn into another income stream ñ it can also be a great way to build your coaching business online, by doing either pre-recorded video courses or by holding live video sessions through something like Google Hangouts or Skype.
- Learn about coaching people to make more money, which is a huge part of the life coaching that you are planning on doing. Make sure that you are familiar with some of the strategies that exist these days for making money and research enough so that you can help your clients achieve their goals if they are using any of these strategies to increase their income.
- Check out some of these money-making strategies for yourself. You might find some ways that you can supplement your coaching income with income streams that not only bring in money, but also act as promotion for your coaching business.
- Do the research in your local area and find out what coaches are getting. Each area has its own general rate for coaching and Bismarck, ND will be a completely different price than Los Angeles. Also, check out what people are making for the specialty that you have decided on.
- Decide what you are going to charge and make up a rate chart that you can refer to when clients ask you what your prices are. You can base this on all of the factors discussed in chapter or just price what you think you are worth.
- Decide if you want to be a specialty coach working exclusively in an area like weight loss, increased confidence or getting a date, or if you want to work with people as a life coach and help them with the issues that they are struggling with over the entire scope of their life. This may include help with: work, school, personality, income, self-esteem or relationship problems.
- Decide how you are going to promote your coaching business and examine some of the methods of promotion that are examined in Chapter Ten. There are promotional methods that cost money, some that cost nothing and still others that actually work as an additional income stream and you will have to decide which ones you want to pursue.
Business Coaching – Mind Map
Business Coaching – Resources
This cheat sheet of resources will give you some great information about coaching on the web in a variety of categories. Read as much as you’d like in between sessions and you’ll find yourself becoming a better coach because of it.
Resources to Help You Become More Confident
This is a list of some of the helpful websites and blogs that are out there to help you become more confident as a person and as a coach. Some of them are simply common sense, but many are backed up by actual science and have been used by some of the top leaders in the world today. Having confidence is a hugely important part of becoming a life coach, and it is almost impossible to become a coach without a great deal of confidence in yourself.
ZenHabits : Zen Habits is a great website and resource started by Leo Babauta, which uses the wisdom of Zen to help you change your life and become more confident.
Entrepreneur.com: A huge resource for everything about starting your own business, including the linked article on confidence.
HuffPost Article on Confidence: The Huffington Post is a great resource for news and opinion, and occasionally, they have great how-to articles like this one on having more confidence.
Success.com: This is an article on how to become a more confident person, but the website in general is a great resource for all kinds of success advice.
Personal Excellence Article: This is a great blog that has posts on just about every aspect of self-improvement, and this article is a terrific one for helping you feel better about yourself and create the kind of confidence that you need to be a coach.
Life Coaching Blogs You Can Learn From
This is a blog that was founded by Lori Deschene and uses the principles of Buddhism to provide tips on wisdom, motivation, success and happiness and how to simply live a better life.
Peter Clemens details his methods for life change and for reaching your goals and become fulfilled and happy in The Change Blog.
If you need a dose of positivity, Henrik Edberg has a great blog that teaches you how to become more confident in yourself, more motivated and all-in-all, happier.
Deva Coaching
Deva Coaching is great because it doesn’t allow you to be lackadaisical about change. If you read this blog, you’ll want to change right now, starting that very day. This can be a very good thing.
Gretchen Ruben went on a mission to find happiness for herself, and after she understood how to get it, she started the Happiness Project to show everyone else how to have it as well.
Advanced Life Skills
This blog was created by Jonathan Wells and it will not only allow you to have a much richer life, it will give you lots and lots of tips to help you with your own coaching as well.
The School of Life
There’s the school of hard-knocks, the school of cool and a bunch of other metaphorical places of learning. But this is the only one that is going to help you become fulfilled and happier. Join Principle Srinivas Rao as he teaches class in The School of Life
The blog 17,000 days (just over 45 years) reminds you that life is short and you should make each day count. Join Cara Stein as she gives you tools to help your own coaching clients.
Articles to Help You Become a Better Life (or Whatever) Coach
A list of over 100 questions that you can ask your clients when they complete a coaching session.
Help avoiding the pitfalls of life coaches that are not able to make a go of it and end up failing.
Some important things that you really need to know before you decide to quit your job and start your own coaching business.
Miscellaneous
Forbes article on how to become part of the growing contingent of life coaches that have become extremely wealthy thanks to their coaching efforts.
Video Resources
Tips on becoming a life coach from one of the successful life coaches of today.
Every part of the process of becoming a life coach revealed in one video.
A twenty minute video that shows you the most important traits that you can have as a life coach.
A short video about a day in the life of a weight loss coach.
A video session of weight loss coaching using hypnosis.
An hour long video that gives you a question-and-answer session with a successful career coach that was created by the Alumni of Stanford University.
Check Out the Top Fifteen Life Coaches
Christian Mickelson
- Secret of Success: Free Sessions that Sell
- Website: www.freesessionsthatsell.com
Susan James
- Secret of Success: Clearing Limiting Beliefs
- Website: www.selfdiscoverytechniques.com
Esther Hicks
- Secret of Success: Getting into the Vortex
- Website: www.abraham-hicks.com
Bob Doyle
Secret of Success: EFT
Website: www.wealthbeyondreason.com
Cheri Huber
- Secret of Success: Meditation
- Website: cherihuber.com
Bob Proctor
- Secret of Success: Visualization
- Website: bobproctor.com
Harv Eker
- Secret of Success: Financial Blueprint
- Website: harveker.com
Monique Gallagher
- Secret of Success: Clearing “Blockers”
- Website: ctcoach.com
Anthony Robbins
- Secret of Success: NLP
- Website: anthonyrobbins.com
John Assaraf
- Secret of Success: Neuro Reconditioning
- Website: johnassaraf.com
Brian Tracy
- Secret of Success: The Science of Self Confidence
- Website: briantracy.com
Jim Britt
- Secret of Success: The Power of Letting Go
- Website: jimbritt.com
Terri Levine
- Secret of Success: Leverage Client Relationships
- Website: terrilevine.com
Milana Leshinsky
- Secret of Success: Multiple Income Streams
- Website: milana.com
James Ray
- Secret of Success: Law of Reversal
- Website: com
