How To Become A Life Coach

Meeting Ethical Guidelines and Professional Standards 2. Establishing the Coaching Agreement.

Planning and Goal Setting Managing Progress and Accountability. These are skills that all accredited and many non-accredited coaching institutions teach and that you must master in an exam before becoming a coach. Now if you're still intrigued by the idea of becoming a personal life coach, let's review some of the steps you'll need to take in order to get started. One of the best places to begin your research is on the ICF website in order to find accredited training schools. Here you can narrow the field of options by the type of coaching niche that interests you, whether you want in-person or distance learning, the language you want the program delivered in, and whether a program offers financial aid.

Be aware that many accredited programs teach entirely by distance learning — through teleclasses or online learning. Some offer a combination of in-person and distance learning, and some only offer in-person. All of these methods work perfectly well, especially since many coaches only work with clients by phone or Skype. If the program is accredited, you'll know they had to meet certain criteria of standards of excellence through the ICF. When hiring, some companies look for business coaches who have attended a school accredited by the ICF or another accrediting organization.

If you choose a non-accredited program, be sure to do your research. Also, a strong program will cover the core competencies within their curriculum, will test you on what you are learning, and will offer a certification once you pass all of your exams and finish the program. In addition, you can receive an additional certification through the ICF. Most strong coaching programs offer you training in setting up your business, finding clients, and marketing your skills. There are also many colleges and universities that now offer coaching certification programs.

Columbia University, Georgetown University, University of Miami, and many other collegiate institutions offer programs for various coaching certifications or degrees. These are definitely worth checking out.

Become a Life Coach - www.newyorkethnicfood.com

Before you sign on the dotted line with a coach training school, consider the niche or specialty you'd like to focus on as a coach. Rather than simply calling yourself a personal life coach or business coach, consider refining your area of coaching to attract a specific group of clients. Every single field has competition, and that includes life coaching. The only problem with this scenario is that most newly trained life coaches underestimate the time it will take to get there.

Going from zero clients and limited experience to 15 billable hours per week, 46 weeks per year will take one to two years.

This is assuming your business, marketing, and sales systems are effective. Factoring in the time it will take for you to complete your life coach training, set up your business, and begin your marketing, I strongly suggest that you plan on an alternate way of keeping the bills paid for 2 to 3 years before you can live off of your life coaching income. This can be extremely disheartening, not to mention expensive and entirely unnecessary.

As online platforms became more accessible and user-friendly, purely online training options gained in popularity due to their convenience and lower tuition cost. One significant drawback to pure online learning is that these training programs often do not offer adequate or any, for that matter oversight or personalized feedback.

Pure online learning is not how to become a life coach. If you choose to get your life coach training through an unsupervised online course, you will not qualify for any life coaching credential. In contrast, an accredited blended learning program will provide the flexibility, convenience, and affordability of purely online training, while offering the personalized supervision needed for proper learning and accreditation.

Good blended learning providers offer live training sessions in an online classroom.

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Blended life coach training hits that optimal middle ground. Finding the best life coach training platform will depend upon how much time and money you have available to you. If you have the resources available to travel and take time off from your regular work, then attending an in-person training might be something to consider. If you require the flexibility of studying at your own pace as you transition out of your current career, then a blended learning curriculum will likely be your best option.

For this reason, the training programs we offer through iNLP are of this style. The necessary skills are taught in smaller chunks with personalized support and live virtual training. And our extensive online peer and trainer community offers an on-going resource for practice, assistance, and encouragement. Whatever the style of program, students serious about becoming life coaches should insist upon the following:. Based on over 25 years of personal experience running a life coaching business, training others to do the same, and setting up and establishing my own coaching practice on three separate occasions, I have put together a list of business and administrative tasks that you will need to complete while you set up your own life coaching business.

You may not understand how long these types of tasks actually take. Why not plan for the worst-case scenario from the start, and be delighted if you get the job finished early? And remember, the fancier you get with your branding and material, the more time you should expect the process to take. As an example of just how long this all-important development stage can take for something that might seem simple, I invite you to take a look at an overview for a short online program my wife and I developed together as a complement to our full training programs — The AHA Solution.

• How to Become a Life Coach | Summary of the 10 Steps.
• How to Become a Life Coach.
• How to Become a Life Coach ~ Ultimate Guide & Aptitude Quiz;
• Who am I to tell you how to become a life coach?.
• How To Become A Life Coach (And 56 Coaching Niches for ).
• What I Tell Anyone Who Wants To Be A Life Coach - mindbodygreen.

It took two people one full calendar year to develop that program from concept to end product. This is not shared to discourage you. They need solutions that they cannot find on their own. If you become a life coach, you will be facilitating solutions to problems. Many coaches consider themselves more than mere problem solvers. While this is true, clients especially in the beginning do not care.

They want out of the painful situation in which they find themselves. If you can demonstrate that you understand their pain and offer a believable solution, you will be hired. This is why many successful life coaches and other businesses regularly demonstrate their understanding of problems. It has inspired enough inquiries to fill more than one coaching practice:. When the right person reads these kinds of articles, they see themselves in them. This is often a profound experience. They are reading an article from someone who understands what they are going through!

They know you get it. This is the first step toward connecting with someone who will become your coaching client. A critical step in your sales and marketing plan is to create custom coaching packages that offer solutions to the specific problems your ideal clients are struggling with. At the iNLP Center, we help our students to identify the main problem they want to solve with their clients, and to then create tailored coaching programs to address those needs.

How to Become a Life Coach ~ the Ultimate Guide & Aptitude Quiz

In this way, you let prospective clients know when they should call you and why. Your conversion of prospects into clients will skyrocket with this simple but crucial step. There are numerous and creative ways to market your new life coaching business.

• Take the next step....
• Become a Coach | International Coach Federation (ICF);
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You can start with free options such as social media postings, local area business listings, and word of mouth. Or perhaps you have a modest budget and can afford some online ads, or a spot in the local paper. But whatever your budget, you must market your business. Deciding on the specific advertising method you use will depend a lot on your budget, but also on your target niche.

Similarly, posting an ad in the local community newspaper will likely not be effective if your target market is Millennials, as this age group gets their news almost exclusively from online sources and social media. It pays to do your research to determine which marketing vehicle will be most effective for your target clients. Having an active social media presence is an effective and low-cost way to promote your services. You can create free accounts on Facebook, Linked-In, Instagram, Pinterest, and many other social media platforms.

There are many free resources you can find in a Google search for learning the best marketing practices for each social media platform, and you can also research the specific demographics for each, which allows you to target the ones that best match your niche. I had no idea! So I found myself staring at his brightly colored socks, and then looked up at him. Moments later, these words came out of my mouth: My therapist looked at me like I was about to rob him. It was my favorite class in school.

Become a Life Coach

But I didn't get the comforting response I wanted. I explained to him that I was a C student and I just couldn't go back to school, that I would feel like the kid that got left behind. He focused on the logistical aspect of my anxiety , and explained that you only need a Master's degree to be a therapist, which you can get in less than two years. Still, I was nervous. I found this out the hard way: And those 3, training hours? Well, I worked at non-profits and charter schools as a counselor.

Really, I did anything I could do to get those hours, and it was a long, strenuous climb to say the least. And when I was finished, I felt like Will Smith in a post-apocalypse war movie where I was the last man on earth. Not because I was a hero. So I started to work at various treatment centers all over Los Angeles. I quickly learned that there was no room for poetry in my practice.

How To Become A Life Coach + 56 Coaching Niches

You were trained to treat clients by the books. So I stayed in a safe-zone: I woke up every morning, put on my shirt and tie, and drove to work with a latte and a blank stare. The pay was safe, I had health benefits, but I quickly became a zombie. Meanwhile, I started documenting the journey in writing on a little blog I called The Angry Therapist.

This was the secret little space where I could color outside the lines. To my surprise, the blog — my place for poetry — was resonating with others, and proving to be an investment for my business.