Prosper as a Life Coach

I have written at length about why I believe life coaching is such a fulfilling and meaningful career but is it really a commercial proposition?

I mean we all want a business that makes us feel fulfilled … but if we can’t make enough money from it to survive then that warm feeling we get from doing something fulfilling will soon be overshadowed by that dark feeling of financial despair, not so?

There’s no question in my mind that life coaching offers one of the best all round home business opportunities – provided, of course, that you take the right approach to it.

This week, I’d like to offer some advice on what I believe is the ‘right approach’ to ensure longer term prosperity as a life coach.

[box type=\”shadow\”]“The single most effective step you can take to secure your future and to bring prosperity and wealth into your life is to start a home-based part-time business.”

– Kelvin Boston (American TV financial analyst)
[/box]

Prepare the groundwork in your part-time

If you’re currently employed and need the monthly income don’t drop what you have to train to become a life coach. The pressure you’ll put yourself under will play havoc with your ability to enjoy the training and thoroughly integrate and practice what you are learning.

Stay away from ‘quick fixes’

No matter how experienced you are or how adept your people skills, ensure you invest in thorough and credible training.

Quality training will impart a high degree of self awareness, knowledge, skills and a certain amount of experience. This all takes time and is not something you should realistically expect to achieve in a few days or weeks, even if you do it full time. Set your sights on working methodically for a few hours per week over the course of a year (or even longer if you have less time to spare).

Choose broad based training

Start out with holistic, broad based training. You can always build on this solid base with more specialised training in due course as you find your way as a coach.

If you start out with more specialised or ‘niche’ training you are likely to find this quite restrictive.

Ensure you have ready reference material

The problem with some online courses and even classroom based training is that you are usually heavily dependent on the quality of the notes you take in class, the handouts you receive or your ability to download and print material from the Internet.

Having comprehensive, professionally prepared training and coaching material on hand to fall back on will be of enormous boost to your confidence when you start coaching for reward and need to refer back to your notes.

Set a clear vision and powerful intent

Having a clear vision of what you want to achieve and matching this with strong intent to achieve your vision will put you way ahead of many other would be life coaches.

Take your vision beyond just completing training. Envision yourself as a successful, happy, life coach with a flourishing practice, either part of full time as it suits you.

Set your intent to achieve this vision and maintain that intent no matter the detractors you will encounter.

Don’t make it up as you go along

Your coaching will be defined by your unique character and style and the types of people you choose to coach. But you will, ideally, need a coaching system or structure to follow, at least in the early stages of your practice.

Clients will will intuitively know when you are ’freeform’ coaching without being very good at it. They will feel far more at ease if you take them through a structured programme or personal transformation.

Don’t fail to plan or you might plan to fail

Life coaching is just like any other business. You need to have and to follow a viable plan for your practice to have the best chance of succeeding.

Who will you coach? What hours will you coach? Where and how will you advertise? Will you work from home or from other premises? Will you coach after hours? Will you coach face to face or by telephone/Skype or both? How long will your sessions be? How much will you charge? Will you charge by session or by the month or by programme? What will your overheads be? How many clients will you need to cover your overheads?

The answers to all of these questions and more need to be clear in your mind before you start out.

Learn to live with ‘’marketing’ and ‘selling’

In my experience most life coaches wince when they hear the words ‘selling’ or ‘marketing’. They’re just not ‘salesy’ types. And yet, to survive and prosper life coaches, just like all other business people, must know how to market their practices and sell their services.

The answer is not to avoid the whole sales and marketing thing but rather to confront it head on. Learn about the art and psychology of selling and marketing, understand what it involves and apply it in your own unique ‘life coachy’ way.

Learn from those who have gone before

Why reinvent the wheel? There have been many, many very successful life coaches. If you can learn from them and adapt what they have done to suit your own needs then you too will be destined to enjoy success.

New Insights

When Neil Asher – the ‘founding father’ of New Insights life coach training – created the original home study certification programme he did something no other life coach training institute had given a great deal of thought to.

He reasoned that the true measure of New Insights’ success would be the success of the coaches trained by it. Their success would be determined not simply by the degree of knowledge and skills that they possessed upon certification but their ability to apply what they had learnt to create and sustain a prosperous business.

New Insights life coach training remains unique today in that it combines thorough, extensive training, with a structured coaching system and a host of practical advice, tips and information on how to plan, promote and market a life coaching practice and how to sell coaching services effectively.

As I am often at pains to point out in our marketing this is much more than training. This is a wonderful, full blown value for money home business opportunity that can be pursued either full or part time.