If you have a burning desire to become a life coach I have some really exciting news for you.
If you follow the secret plan that I’m about to share with you to the letter, you will be up and running before Donald Trump’s next nonsensical Tweet.
Don’t cut corners though.
This is a tried and trusted method guaranteed to have you living the life of your dreams and bathing in client supplied cash in no time at all.
Not only that, but I can help you with absolutely no money down and none due on completion.
How’s that for the deal of a lifetime?
Certainly worth whipping yourself into a frenzy for, I think you’ll agree.
Well here’s the lowdown, and remember to tell all your friends because the world needs more websites with pictures of mountains, starfish strewn beaches as well as crap vision statements and twee taglines about ‘loving life’ and being a ‘coffeeaholic’
So buckle in, because this is the ultimate guide to becoming a life coach.
Call Yourself A Life Coach
When anybody asks you what you do for a living you reply, ‘I’m a life coach’
This is very important.
Under no circumstances should you say any of the following:
‘I’m a magician’
‘I’m a cosmologist‘
‘I’m the dictator of a small African nation’
Life coaches almost never say such things.
Partly because they tend not to be true, but mainly because the chances of being hired by a potential client are significantly reduced.
David Copperfield, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Robert Mugabe have never been hired to life coach anybody to the best of my knowledge.
Think Of A Company Name
Think up a company name and register it with whomever you need to register company names within your County, State, Country, Constellation etc.
Try to incorporate as many of the following words into your company name as possible; Authentic, awaken, vision, inspire, dream and of course Life Coach and/or Life Coaching.
I’ve just checked and unbelievably
www.Awakenfromyourdreamsinspiredwithanewauthenticvisionlifecoaching.com is still available.
Hurry and register it before somebody else snaps it up. You’d be a fool not to.
There are a couple of drawbacks to all this though.
Officially, you are a life coach, and nobody can take that away from you. So don’t fret, Tim’s got your back.
However, it doesn’t necessarily mean anybody will hire you even if you’re a coaching genius. And I suspect we both know you are.
Life Coaching Isn’t Fair
I know, I know, life (coaching) just isn’t fair, but worry not because I’m not going to desert you now we’ve come this far together, my dolphin-loving friend.
Firstly, we need to ascertain whether Life Coaching is absolutely right for you.
I’m sure you are a perfect candidate, but let’s take 2 or 3 minutes to do some thorough due diligence, just in case.
Run through the following checklist and make sure at least 3 of the reasons for becoming a coach apply to you.
Three is a bare minimum and five or above would mean you and coaching is a marriage made in heaven.
12 Great Reasons To Become A Life Coach
- You like a good argument
- You feel a strong urge to convert people to your way of thinking
- You like a good gossip
- You like wearing sandals and eating tofu sandwiches
- It’s easy money, there aren’t many set-up costs and very little competition to the best of your knowledge
- You once attended a Tony Robbins seminar and have a certificate to prove it
- You persuaded your friend Susan to kick her husband out after the pig put his socks in her underwear drawer
- You get strangely aroused discussing other people problems
- You have a copy of ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’ Reading it isn’t absolutely necessary – you showed willing.
- You can work on your own anger management issues at the same time
- You own a whistle and like wearing baseballs caps back to front and high-fiving people
- You’ve attended the ‘School of hard knocks’
I’m guessing you past the test, so let’s move on and look at what you need to be super-successful in your chosen field.
Life Coach Training
In the USA and the rest of the world for that matter, there is no legal requirement to undertake any training whatsoever to become a life coach.
Phew, that’s good news, eh?
But the bad news is occasionally pesky clients ask to see some form of proof that you’re qualified to dispense your undoubted worldly wisdom. The bastards!
Anyway, there are several options available to you at this stage because obviously nobody wants to waste time and money getting coach training.
I wasted two years and thousands of dollars with initial training and then a load more with ongoing training in NLP, Hypnotherapy and some other airy-fairy stuff the names of which I forget now.
I even bought some books on self development.
As I look back with a heavy heart I realize what a damn fool I was.
With that money, I could have bought a bunch of colour printers and set about printing off certificates for myself and my friends.
I could have then made a fortune selling them on Fiverr too.
Alas, I didn’t think of any of that and listened to do-gooder types that suggested training was the correct route.
If you haven’t got the cash to splash on the mega-printer I would advise three options.
Option 1
If a client asks to see proof, feign temporary deafness.
Say you have a weird painful ringing in your ears and then as he or she shows concern deftly switch the subject to terms of payment.
Option 2
If that doesn’t work and they still insist, you can choose option two and tell them to piss off because you’ve had troublemakers like them before and they’re obviously uncoachable.
I understand some people don’t feel comfortable abusing their clients, but no problem because there’s a third option and it’s really cunning.
Option 3
I have 3 words for you
The – Law – Of – Attraction
Ok, so that’s actually four, but who’s counting?
Until the women who wrote ‘The Secret’ invented the Law of Attraction people had to work for a living.
Now things have changed though and as a life coach, you can put this to good use to make sacks of cash.
If you’re a law of attraction coach you don’t need any qualifications other than a strategically placed copy of The Secret, a vague knowledge of some guy called Abraham who talks and looks very much like a woman, and an ability to put a big cheesy smile on your face at a moments notice.
The biggest upside of being a Law of Attraction coach is that if clients don’t get the results they want it’s their fault!
It’s quite brilliant.
If they complain that they don’t see any improvement just tell them they’re doing it wrong and they must be vibrating at the wrong frequency.
Then double your rates telling them that they manifested you into doing so.
Niche Markets
I know I said that you could become a Law of Attraction coach and I suppose that’s a bit of a niche, but be careful you don’t fall into it anymore.
If you start positioning yourself as one type of coach, people that don’t need you will see you as a very strange fish and won’t call.
That can be bad for business.
Therefore, do what I did and claim to be a life coach, business coach, executive coach, stress management coach, solution coach, basketball coach and just for good measure, a 52-seater coach.
If somebody points out that each discipline requires a different skill set and approach and one is even an inanimate object, laugh loudly, shake your head slowly and ask them what medications they are currently taking.
Marketing Your Life Coaching Services
I know clients can play havoc with your social schedule, but the reality is they pay the bills.
No matter how much you like stroking your chin and pondering the meaning of life, you’re going to have to speak to some of them from time to time.
Where do they come from you may well be wondering?
Well, I’m afraid for the first 3 or 4 days until you’re full, you’ll have to market yourself or heaven forbid, hire me to help you.
I know that sounds tiresome and you don’t want to be hanging around Chamber of Commerce meetings with lots of sad-faced realtors eating vol-au-vents, sipping alcohol-free wine and showing your pictures of their ugly kids, but there’s another way.
World Wide Web
It’s called the Internet
It’s free and you don’t even have to get dressed in the morning to use it. How brilliant is that?
The starting point is to get yourself an account on Twitter.
Don’t worry this isn’t a place for anorak-wearing bird watchers to hang out, but a funky new social media website. Twitter is chock full of gurus and potential clients.
All you do is spend 12 to 15 hours per day ‘following’ every person you can find and hassling anybody stupid enough to enter ‘Life Coach’ into a tweet.
In return, they’ll all love you and want to hire you for gargantuan sacks of cash.
Ok, we’re almost home and dry. Just one more thing to do before you can tell people to not forget to be awesome for a living.
Get A Weblog
A weblog or as the young cool kids call them these days, ‘blogs’ are great for encouraging clients to beat a path to your door.
In a matter of minutes after setting up your blog you’ll be sick of answering phone calls from people needing your services.
Clients, reporters, TV stations, executive bigwigs and stalkers will all be eager to talk to you.
Make sure you have a team of VAs standing by once you hit that publish button for the first time.
So there you have it. You now have all the information you’ll ever need to become a successful super-wealthy life coach.
Welcome aboard the gravy train and I look forward to networking with you in the near future.
Oh, and if I have missed any other cons, er, I mean short-cuts off, please let me know in the comments below.
Oh Tim, Tim, Tim…..keeping the sarcasm finely tuned I see. Kind of funny about the law of attraction. I’m a zen guy so I’d be the first to poo-poo law of attraction. The thing is tho, my wife started listening to Ester on you tube three years ago and she has mellowed waaaaaaay the hell out and now is a lot more calm, reflective, and determined to make the life she wants to live. So in my book, that’s up there with an hour of meditation in the morning.
The philosophy whether it works or not, which you could never prove, improves one’s life. It says recognize you’re probably focusing on what you don’t want. Focus on what you do want, have that clarity, based on your values. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that somewhere as a positive trait.
It says you don’t have to do everything to make this thing happen. This was my problem, I thought I had to do everything to succeed. This came from my hard scrabble parents who went thru the depression. Work, work, work……and then work some more….
When I finally eased up on the hustle I started getting clients. What it does say is take action that is in alignment with your intuition, this is also something I’ve heard in these circles and the problem is most people, and especially men haven’t got a clue as to what this means.
This seems to be the case that the official word has come down from on high that this thing is bullshit, sorry Tim, but like that’s your opinion, man.
I’ve been experimenting with it and whenever I’m getting neurotic about my life, I know I am screwing it up and that’s where meditation comes in. To get a crowbar in between stimulus and response, in that space, I see that I’m fighting the river and that I should mellow out, get back to the process, reassess my values, reestablish the clarity of what I want, then feel into my intuition about my next step. The whole putting stuff into my vortex, none of that can be proved and sounds crazy and I just don’t go there. That’s none of my business and she says as much. I just get back to the clarity, not splitting the energy between what I want, what I fear, what I want, what I fear, in an endless loop of pain and suffering.
The thing is I have to be in the closet about this, working the steps of law of attraction is like being gay in the 1950’s, I can’t even talk to my zen people because whatever respect they had for me would be out the window. Ultimately, I go back to Robert Anton Wilson, “Whatever the thinker thinks, the prover proves.” I think I’ve also heard this somewhere before in these circles…..Law of Attraction in my book is very much about effort, intuition, collaboration, and fun. It’s the combination of working hard, working smart, and expanding what we think is possible. What I think, but I can’t prove is this: The Universe is a creative place and it wants us to be creative too, what could be more creative than living the life that you envision for yourself.
I’m not getting into a debate about the LoA, especially as everybody seems to have a different opinion of what it really is – which is kinda weird for a ‘law’.
You know my opinion and you know your comment isn’t going to sway me one iota. So why not focus on something you can influence? I’m just curious why you felt the need to defend a ‘law’ of the universe.
And yes, of course, it’s my opinion. This entire website is chock full of my opinions. They are the only ones I own.
Nice to not be so serious all the time. You will weed out the people you don’t want to work with and attract those who see you for who you are: fun and knowledgeable.
Mate, you get a great big gold star. Nailed it!
Hi Tim
it’s Sunday morning here in UK and I was obviously still half asleep when I started reading and for one moment I thought you were being serious. It’s lovely to see that living among our American cousins you have not lost your great British sense of humour. However, there are some gems among this, and as Scott points out when you are truly you; you can attract the sorts of clients you want to work with and have no fear of getting rid of those that are a poor fit. Win/win.
Glad it made you smile Geraldine. I had a couple of emails from people in my list telling me it was a waste of their time!
You hit the nail on its head. I am sick and tired of airy-fairy statements where everyone can claim anything and most of it is not substantiated like the LOA. Of course, is focusing on what you want better than focusing on what you don’t want. But it has nothing to do with a “law”. Especially in the life-coaching industry, there is found so much “junk” education. So, I appreciate your input as food for thoughts.
I absolutely loved this. Just my kind of humour. I’m profoundly jealous that you write so well with just the right amount of sarcasm to make it clever and funny.
Thanks and very timely Desiree.
I just sent you an email, but it has bounced back to me saying it looks like spam.
With no images, no links and no mention of money I have no clue how it came to that conclusion. God bless BT!