How would one weed out and figure out which courses to even read the website about?

It is an interesting experience for me to put myself in the proverbial shoes of someone who is starting such a search. I think I would be wildly confused. I just jotted down a list of 5 things that will help and that will give you a way to sort through and recognize which ones might be of interest to you:

• What kind of coaching do they teach?

Coaching is varied. There are coaches who will help you with life skills or specialize in ADD or work with executives. The list is very long and almost as long as the list of people who call themselves life coaches. I’ve seen people who are in multi-level marketing call themselves life coaches and those like I was when I did general coaching who feel they can help most anyone with anything. Ask yourself what do you enjoy helping people achieve in their lives? I eventually realized that I want to help people learn how to divest themselves of the accumulation of old unexpressed emotions and feelings because I realized in my own life what amazing transformational benefits I achieved in my own life as a result of that work. So in my course of training, coaches learn the same thing – how to help clients transform their lives by virtue of teaching tools and coaching them though a specific 8 month program leaving everyone with higher self esteem and a closer connection to who they really are.

• Are the life coaching courses you are looking at inclusive of personal and/or group coaching for you?

It is my experience that you can’t become a coach unless you’ve had a coach. Coaching is not an intellectual pursuit that can just be learned from books or videos. Books or videos can teach you re-useable techniques but they cannot teach you how to use the intuitive parts of yourself to work with clients. It doesn’t mean a course is bad if it doesn’t include this; it only means it is incomplete and you will want to get this experience somewhere and somehow. Because I knew from my own experience that this was true, I built coaching and mentoring in a group and privately into my program.

• Is there supervised coaching?

If there is no experienced person who has been doing coaching successfully for some period of time who will listen to your coaching and give you pointers and praise, it will be your clients only who you will be “experimenting” with and it will be hard for you to have conversations with conviction with potential clients. Which leads to marketing and promotion….

• Do the life coaching courses you are looking at include training and support on how to attract clients to you?

Will you be promoted on their website? Will they teach you how to become a known person on facebook or twitter or how to set up local workshops to let people know who you are? Is their ongoing support and collaboration with other coaches in other areas and who have varied backgrounds and experience and who will contribute what they know to improve the whole?

• And finally it is important to know the cost and the time needed to fulfill the training.

Hope this helps you as you wade your way through the 336,000 life coach courses.

As a life coach, it is important to know when it is the best time for your clients to move on and continue working on their own. It is the role of  a life  coach to  have the communication skills to end the relationship. A good coach is responsible enough to know that the life of a coaching relationship is not a lifetime. Knowing that is how the best life coaches build their business. Not by keeping clients forever, but by letting them go when the time is right and generating more referrals based on their outstanding service.

In the beginning, clients are unsure. They may be testing the relationship and feeling the waters to determine if life coaching is really for them. Or if you really are the right coach for them. Soon, if it’s right, they will start to become a little more trusting and may feel it may benefit them to continue. As things start to come together for your client and some of the small goals seem to be falling into place, the client will begin to expect the life coaching to work and for things to continue to progress in the right direction. When the client has mastered all the skills you have to offer and is doing well towards their goals, you will see that it is time for them to continue on their own.

And it goes both ways. If you have a coach and feel it is time to move on – either to another coach or onto your life by yourself – test your communication skills and have the courage and courtesy to yourself and your coach to give at least a month’s notice. Some coach’s will talk to you about this in the beginning or along the way but they may not and it’s good for you to know. Since you have built up such an intimate connection, be fair to the coaching relationship and build in a few sessions for closure.

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free – a free self-help ebook!

Hang Up Your Sign

Since there are no government requirements, at least in the United States, then one can simply hand up your sign – on your door, the door of your office, on the internet, on posters, flyers, etc. As a matter of fact, I used to just tell people to do just that.

THE MAIN PITFALLS: Most people don’t have the confidence to just do that unless they come from a background that easily transfers their talents and skills and if they have the personal confidence in themselves to do so.

THE MAIN BENEFIT: You just do it and start promoting and marketing yourself however you think is best.

Take an Online Course

If you’ve looked at all, you know there are approximately a zillion online programs telling you that they will train you how to become a life coach. I myself have never done that but have heard many reports.

THE MAIN PITFALLS: I hear even about the best ones is that there is no support and no actual training. There may be books and tapes and videos but that is not really training as a coach. Coaching is a doing kind of thing and all the information in the world does not give one the experience of coaching.

THE MAIN BENEFIT: I believe these courses are fairly inexpensive.

Go to a Training School (In-person or online/teleconference)

This is how I got my training. I was trained by one of the top schools. I went to 5 weekend classes along with around 22 others. The training was the very most basic of trainings.

THE MAIN PITFALLS: We did what they called popcorn coaching which meant that all 22+ of us got to do about 2 minutes of coaching in front of the room which made me feel very self-conscious and uncomfortable and really didn’t teach me anything much. If I wanted to work with a coach, I’d have to hire one trained by them for $400+ per month and go through their certification program which cost another $6,000 or $7,000.

THE MAIN BENEFIT: Since I decided to forgo that experience, I can only report what the many others I know have told me. They felt like they could coach however their support and coaching were over after the program was over and they were on their own again.

Become Trained by a Coach/Mentor with Experience

No this isn’t a sales pitch but this is what I do. I work directly with each trainee and supervise their coaching when they get to that part of the program. I actually teach them how to become a life coach by helping them find their own unique gifts and talents. They weekly hear not only my coaching but coaching done by those that have come before them. It seems silly for me to go on about it. But if you’ve been asking yourself how to become a life coach, click here and read and see if what I do is right for you.

Whatever you decide, have a ball coaching. It is a most joyful thing to do for and with people.

When I was commenting to you how stagnated I feel because I “should” be more focused on creating my website, you made me aware of “should”.  Thanks.  I will be working on the assignment you proposed and look forward to next week’s time together.  My assignment was to live with the inquiry of “What if I jumped right to going after being a life coach with no steps in between?” I’ll let that percolate for the week and see where it goes in me.

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free – a free self-help ebook!

Many people are joining or thinking about joining the most likely huge future of life coaching by becoming a life coach themselves.

• If you have always been the kind of person that other people come to for advice or help with organizing and guiding their life, life coaching might be right for you.

• If you have a passion for this type of thing and are looking to make a potentially  lucrative income, you owe it to yourself to check out the opportunity. It is much easier than you may think.

I recommend that you hire a life coach to first experience what coaching is like. “Interview” your life coach and get a feel for what day to day life is like for them and how they spend their time. If you are still interested, give some thought to what you might like to specialize in. Consider whether you need training and definitely work with your life coach for awhile to gain some experience with the process.

Part of your decision-making progression, besides your intuitive leanings toward the profession, will be to work with your coach on whether life coaching is what you really want to pursue and any other issues surrounding that decision.

Working with a great life coach, will give you an understanding of life coaching from the inside out. You might even try offering a little free life coaching with a willing buddy and see how you do as coach – both from their perspective and your own.

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free – a free self-help ebook!

One of my clients just retired after almost 5 decades of working for someone else. Her goals setting and why we started our coaching relationship was to retire and start a life coaching practice. She has done both. She has found through our work that she was hiding her insight for living. She did this by working in an academic                environment where she only has a Masters degree and everyone else had a Ph.D. It was the perfect place and situation for her to hide.

Now that she recognizes that she does this her spirit is calling her to rid herself of that limitation. She has proven her change recently.  She has a minister who she’s been in training under. The minister is unconsciously trying to do the same thing my client.  The minister called her, met with her and made it known that she expects my client to be pretty much totally available at the church and at the minister’s beck and call because “now you have the time now that you are retired”.

My client realized when she woke up the next morning what had occurred. She was being asked to shift her own insight for living. She realized what she needed and for the FIRST TIME IN THE 17 MONTHS WE’VE BEEN WORKING TOGETHER, ASKED TO HAVE HER APPT. EARLIER IN THE WEEK IF I COULD DO IT. This was such great news. It was her asking to have her needs fulfilled and not making do – as she is wont to do.

We spoke and asked her questions like: “What do you want to/really love to do at the church at this time?” pretty much over and over until she came up with her list and will get back to the minister with “what I am willing to do for you and the church” rather than “what you automatically expect me to do and I’ll make fine with me.” This was her reclaiming her insight for living and what she truly had a passion for.

Somewhere the words that probably my mother gave me seemed to want to come out to her. “We gave you your backbone today.”

I got a great little email after our call saying: “Thanks for the call – it helped tremendously.
This line was in a local advice column today:
“…people who don’t assert themselves are essentially agreeing to live life on the terms of those around them who do.”

And that about sums it up for me, as I see it. While I know this, sometimes I slip into what is easiest, and it is more comfortable to avoid confrontation, but then I don’t really get to live the life I want to live. And to use the other analogy from the piece I read you earlier, I am the one letting the fuel leak out (of my enthusiasm).”

This woman has found the intuition to follow her own insight for living.  If she continues to follow this and listen to herself she will find true happiness. I love coaching!

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free – a free self-help ebook!

How does life coaching work over the phone? 100% of the life coaching I do is over the telephone. I live in California and coach people in N.J., Florida, N.Y., Nevada. I even have clients who live in England and Scotland. Since long distance is so inexpensive these days, it’s easy. It also means the coach does not have to have an office. She just has to have a phone and a place to sit down – at minimum. She can have (and most do) a good headset and a nice, non-distracting setting in which to sit.

But you might wonder if it is most effective for the client and I will wholeheartedly answer, YES!

I have the ability to read energy. A quote from Gia Combs-Ramirez who says,

Reading energy is our ability to perceive vibrations in our surrounding environment and interpret them correctly. The human body has many mechanisms for doing this, most notably the energy field that surrounds us.

I could have probably quoted some science to prove my point but you can prove it yourself. How do you know someone is angry with you when they smile and say nothing? Or, how do you know when a baby is satisfied when they can’t talk?

Start noticing if this is a gift you have developed. I think I developed this gift as a child because I was very afraid of my mother and was always energetically checking in to see how she was feeling so I’d be prepared for her emotional onslaughts. I used to just be hyper-vigilant. Now I live a happy, peaceful life and so I have honed this skill and use it to communicate with my clients and feel what’s going on with them.

So that’s why I find phone coaching so effective. It allows me to totally tune into my clients with no visual cues to get in my way.

And if I’m not sure, I don’t just presume. I ask. So then I am modeling good communication skills which is one of the areas most clients want to improve.

So how does life coaching work over the phone? Very well!

Click here and watch the Three Magic Secrets Movie for free – a free self-help ebook!