Life coaching is a rapidly growing industry, with more than 53,000 professional coaches worldwide and more than 17,000 in North America alone. Becoming a successful life coach requires more than just being approachable, pleasant, friendly and helpful. It also requires enthusiasm, empathy, a sense of humor and patience. But what does becoming a life coach entail and how do you know if you're qualified to help change people's lives?Before becoming a life coach, it is important to find your niche and build your reputation from there.
Most life coaches focus on people's professional, personal or romantic lives. Others go deeper and help them make health changes, such as nutrition and exercise plans, or discover their spiritual side. Technically, you don't need to earn a life coach certification to work as a life coach. However, according to the International Federation of Coaches (ICF) study, 89% of practicing coaches receive training accredited or approved by a professional training organization. When it comes to pricing your services, the way you break down and the price of your services depends entirely on you.
Quint offers a variety of packages, including Breakthrough (a 30-minute session), Makeover (a dozen 50-minute sessions) and Quickstart (a 90-minute session).Good life coaches are good listeners, but life coaching involves a lot more than listening to people's problems. It also requires formal sales training as well as sales study. If you're afraid of sales and never want to learn, life coaching can be a bad deal for you. On a personal level, studying Jungian psychology has been a lot of fun (and occasionally scary), and it has given me a lot of ideas for the growth of my own psyche. James Hollis has been my go-to resource for the Jungian study last year. Traditional therapists work through patients' emotions and treat mental health.
Life coaches help clients ask important questions and plan for the future. As a coach, a session with a client is not the time to talk about their personal life in detail, unless it is of value to the client. Just like learning any new skill or pursuing a new profession, the first step is to learn the basic skills needed to be a life coach. Switching between different perspectives is one of the best advantages of a life coach and other therapists who often have to remain tied to the limits of the chosen framework. While it may seem that learning to become a life coach requires little more than stellar listening skills and enormous compassion, in reality, becoming a life coach is also a business decision. Entering the life coaching industry was a challenge for me, and it was rigorous personal development tools that helped me overcome this challenge. Another popular request that clients make is to improve their fitness, and life coaches must be experts in this field.
Now, you can treat every life coaching client as the most important, whether you're 10 or 100. But what makes those coaches' businesses work is that they've chosen a very specific niche and haven't been afraid to build a brand around a very specific problem: Becca Tracey, The Uncaged Life. If you choose not to receive certification directly from the ICF, you can find training programs for ICF-accredited life coaches through their Training Program Search Service (TPSS). Life coach certification can take you 16 to 100 hours to complete, depending on your program. If you're eager to live like helping others reach their full potential and want to start your own business, you might want to consider learning how to become a life coach. If you have had a dark past that you have successfully dealt with, this gives you an asset as well as likely compulsion to help others with similar problems. You'll also learn the business of becoming a life coach and the ethical concerns you may need to resolve during your practice.
