Questions About Becoming A Life Coach? Ask Me

[Leo Gura]

I've noticed a lot of aspiring life coaches here, which is cool. I remember the days, not so long ago, when I was in your shoes, struggling to enter this weird new field called life coaching.

If you have any questions about the DO's and DON'Ts of coaching, ask away. I'm happy to share my lessons from the last few years of coaching clients.

I've actually stopped coaching at this point to focus on shooting better videos and developing Actualized.org. One thing that I discovered about myself through this career journey is that my zone of genius is more about direct advice-giving and research than coaching and guiding. I enjoy coaching people, but I enjoy shooting videos more.

[Sarah Marie]

After you became ceritified did you build your own website and do it all yourself? Being in marketing I know how to do all of that, but wonder if it will take too much time around building my coaching business. I go back and forth if I should invest in someone else doing it or just go at a slower pace and do it myself. I am sure I will have a bunch more questions so thank you for posting this! 

[Leo Gura]

2 hours ago, Sarah_Flagg said:

After you became ceritified did you build your own website and do it all yourself?

My situation was rather unique. I'd been an amateur and professional web developer for nearly 15 years. So it made sense to do it myself. And I knew I wanted a lot of custom features.

Of course that takes a lot of time away from doing other stuff. Then again, when you're just starting off, it's not like you have a full roster of clients.

For most people, just throwing up a Wordpress blog is the way to get a good-looking website up fast and cheap.

I would say, focus on your core competency -- coaching. Not on technical things. Tech is not your Zone of Genius and can become a quagmire very quickly, distracting you from you real work.

[Arman]

Could you speak on being at the point where you feel confident enough in the depth of your understanding to coach people? What I kinda I mean is, did you or do you experience self-doubt? Or did you ever worry that you would be stumped by something, or feel hypocritical or uneasy about offering advice about something when maybe still struggling in your own life? It seems like an interesting balance to keep. 

Basically what I'm asking is how did you know you were ready. Dealing with someone 1 on 1 seems to feel like a paradoxically heavier responsibility than releasing a video to the masses.

Thanks for the thread. 

Edited February 7, 2016 by Arman

[Leo Gura]

20 minutes ago, Arman said:

Could you speak on being at the point where you feel confident enough in the depth of your understanding to coach people? What I kinda I mean is, did you or do you experience self-doubt? Or did you ever worry that you would be stumped by something, or feel hypocritical or uneasy about offering advice about something when maybe still struggling in your own life? It seems like an interesting balance to keep. 

Basically what I'm asking is how did you know you were ready. Dealing with someone 1 on 1 seems to feel like a paradoxically heavier responsibility than releasing a video to the masses.

Thanks for the thread. 

Good question.

If you go through a coach training program (which you should) then they will train you in the basics and you will have partners that you practice on.

Every new coach of course still feels self-doubtful and inexperienced.

What I did was I committed to getting massive 1-on-1 coaching experience. I found extra partners and coached every week as much as I could for months. Then I contacted all of my friends and acquaintances and offered to coach them for free. I do so for months. All this coaching was free. After doing that for 6 to 12 months, I had over 100 coaching hours under my belt and started to feel moderately confident, although I still had anxiety before each call. I just kept pushing through the anxiety and doing the best I could. Sure, sometimes I would be on the call and I got stumped or didn't know what you say. But clients are quite forgiving and hardly even notice.

Remember that coaching is NOT about giving people advice. Coaching is about asking the right questions that make people think. If you're coaching properly, you should be able to coach a person through a challenge that you have zero experience with. Realizing this helps a lot to build up your confidence. Coaching is a form of facilitation, not advice-giving. You don't tell the person how to solve their problem. You help them to find their own solutions.

Just like with starting any business, you gotta fake it till you make it a bit.

Realize that most people you are coaching have NEVER heard about life coaching before and they have zero expectations. They are often pleased just to vent their frustrations with you. You don't need to do very much. You just listen real close, and then asking a question or two that makes the person really wonder about their thought-process, or their goals, or their actions.

[Boss]

Did you ever have to deal with bad reviews or someone trying to destroy your name just because they didn't like the questions you were asking? How would you deal with that?

[Guest]

Jesus Christ, thank you for the oppurtunity Leo! Life Coaching is my vision, I want to be a full time Life Coach with my own business and enough money so I can move to the US, Miami to be precise. This is my dream, and I get tears in my eyes just thinking about me as a Coach in Miami! I have so many questions to ask that I don't even know where to beginn. Ok, let's start.

How important is it to make videos, have a blog and maintaining other social accounts to attract clients? I haven't found an instagram profile of you, and you aren't very active on twitter, although I believe they are great tools to get some fame/clients. And what about youtube videos, do I HAVE to create videos to get a strong clientbase so I can make enough cash as a fulltime Life Coach? I haven't started yet to build my business and social media accounts, but I'm on my way to create my own youtube channel. 

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Boss said:

Did you ever have to deal with bad reviews or someone trying to destroy your name just because they didn't like the questions you were asking? How would you deal with that?

Never. All my clients were great and polite and very respectful.

You would have to do something horribly wrong to get a negative coaching review. Where would they even post it?

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Coach Vito said:

How important is it to make videos, have a blog and maintaining other social accounts to attract clients? I haven't found an instagram profile of you, and you aren't very active on twitter, although I believe they are great tools to get some fame/clients. And what about youtube videos, do I HAVE to create videos to get a strong clientbase so I can make enough cash as a fulltime Life Coach? I haven't started yet to build my business and social media accounts, but I'm on my way to create my own youtube channel. 

There are many ways to market yourself as a coach. Videos and social media are NOT an easy form of marketing. They are very challenging and extremely labor intensive. I do it because I love to create videos, not because I want to attract clients. If you did what I do just to attract clients, you would probably hang yourself after a few years.

Most life coaches struggle to get clients because they suck at marketing.

Most life coaches never even begin to make money and quit because they cannot attract clients.

Most successful life coaches attract clients in-person through word-of-mouth, speaking events, and networking functions. Successful coaches are usually very social and build a large social-circle of contacts.

Running an online business like I do, is VERY different from coaching. Which is basically why I don't coach any more. They are two different fields.

There are information products and seminars available that you can purchase which will teach you how to market yourself as a coach. Learning marketing is more important to be a coach than learning to how to coach. Coaching is EASY. Marketing is HARD. As a self-employed coach, you're a coach second and an entrepreneur first. Most coaches are terrible entrepreneurs so they fail.

If you wanna be a successful coach, you have to make sure that you don't let your positivity and passion for coaching blind you to the realities of running a business. Business is cut-throat and demands very pragmatic thinking.

[Jecht Spencer]

Do you see yourself expanding your own personal circle of coaches or will actualized.org always be a one man band?

[Harry]

I was wondering, what are the distinctions between coaching, counselling and therapy?

[Sleepwalker]

How many ways are there to become a life coach? For instance, do I have to finish a specific college for that, do I even have to finish college, or just finish a course, get a certificate etc., where do I have to go, where to start? 

[Leo Gura]

5 hours ago, Jecht Spencer said:

Do you see yourself expanding your own personal circle of coaches or will actualized.org always be a one man band?

I don't have a desire to manage coaches. That's not my path.

[Leo Gura]

3 hours ago, Harry said:

I was wondering, what are the distinctions between coaching, counselling and therapy?

Basically, therapy is dealing with more dysfunctional people. More serious issues like depression, anxiety, anger, abuse, severe trauma, etc.

Coaching is dealing with high-achievers who want to do even better. Less serious issues. More about achieving success and optimizing one's life.

[Leo Gura]

2 hours ago, MelanieWalker said:

How many ways are there to become a life coach? For instance, do I have to finish a specific college for that, do I even have to finish college, or just finish a course, get a certificate etc., where do I have to go, where to start? 

I know of two ways:

1) Go into a coach training program, get certified. Doesn't require college. Takes about 1 year.

2) Don't even get certified. Just start coaching people and building a client-base.

Option #1 is much preferred because without good training you will make many mistakes.

[Phocus]

How did you get your first client and how did you know when you had the skills to go from taught to teacher?

[Leo Gura]

22 minutes ago, Phocus said:

How did you get your first client and how did you know when you had the skills to go from taught to teacher?

During the phase when I was coaching all my friends for free, one or two of them were serious enough to finally decide to pay me money after I told them that the free coaching was coming to an end.

If you finish the coaching training program, you are ready to coach paid clients! You don't need to prove yourself. Of course your mind will tell you, "Oh no! I could never charge someone for this. I'm too inexperienced! I need another 2 years of practice." << But those are all bullshit excuses and limiting beliefs. You just gotta go for it. Have courage in yourself. No one else will until you do.

Like I said before, coaching is the EASY part. It should be the least of your worries. The real trick is in getting people to hand you their hard-earned cash. << That takes some real business acumen to accomplish consistently. Time to start learning business and marketing.

[Guest]

Alright Leo, I want to start practicing this right now. In fact, I already tried to coach someone but it failed horribly. Basically she started to ask me questions and for advice and short after her questions became so tricky that I didn't know what to say anymore. Thank god it was just a practicing session. Tomorrow I will coach my mother and see how this turns out.

Until I can do my coaching training I have to wait one year, because I don't have so much money. Can you spare any advice on how to actually coach someone? Can you share one coaching session for example? I really need to get my head around how this works. I know that I ask questions and make the client think, but like with my last client she answered all my questions so fast and then started to ask me tricky questions and totally threw me off. I still feel raped by her, lol. Session was over after 5 minutes. Tommorrow I want to do better!

 

Edit: I'm not asking for you to teach me how to coach, don't get me wrong! I can't wait for the training programm to teach me how to do it. But at least one little hint, a small stepping stone on how that actually works just to give me a small taste would be really appreciated.

Edited February 8, 2016 by Coach Vito

[Guest]

Cheers for the thread Leo. I’m 25 years old, 18 months out of university with no significant career successes at present. My question is: how important are age, (perceived) life experience and a track record of success in being taken seriously as a life coach?

[Anders]

On 2016-02-07 at 1:15 PM, Leo Gura said:

Remember that coaching is NOT about giving people advice. Coaching is about asking the right questions that make people think. [...] Coaching is a form of facilitation, not advice-giving. You don't tell the person how to solve their problem. You help them to find their own solutions.

I found this really worth considering. Thank you!