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If youve found this article from a Google search, I assume that you are already familiar with what a life coach is. Even if you are, reading my article "What is a Life Coach" will provide you with valuable information on what exactly a life coach does, how coaching contracts work, what typical coaching formats look like and how you might want to focus your business as you consider becoming a coach.
This article is geared towards the logistics on what you can do to become a life coach and start your own business.
What Credentials do I Need?
At the risk of turning people off to life coaching in this article, I am going to give you the facts about people that are calling themselves coaches. Truth be told - there are NO job requirements to become a coach. Sounds scary huh? Put a sign up, print some business cards, call yourself a life coach and you are good to go. Pretty easy business to build eh?
Lets take a bit of a closer look here. What I am really saying is that by law, no professional certification is required for someone to call him or herself a life coach - or coach (often the word life is either omitted or replaced with a different word such as executive, wellness, lifestyle management or business). So unlike a psychologist, a physical therapist, registered dietician, a contractor, or a lawyer, the state and country (USA) does not recognize a life coach as a credentialed profession. Therefore, no license is required to call yourself a coach (at least as of the date this article is posted).
Lets look at some other examples of similar professions that might fall into the same category. How about that big one of consultant. There are lots of consultants out there consulting on everything you can think of - typically a consultant needs no license to be a consultant, just experience doing so. Similar to a coach, a consultant with no experience at all can draft up a business card and start doing business. Of course the big question is whether or not youd be able to sell anyone on your services given that background. A computer consultant would probably have trouble selling themselves if they knew nothing about computers!
Before Calling Yourself a Coach
If you are intending to call yourself a coach, please understand what it means to give yourself that title. Without government regulations, I admit you can stake your claim at coachhood with relative ease, however its a discredit to the professionals with years of experience and training if you simply use the word as an allure for clients and in any way you are misrepresenting what the coaching profession is all about. Id suggest reading a coaches code of ethics (the ICF offers a good one here) to see if what you are offering could truly be considered coaching.
One problem that I see is that many people who are misrepresenting the profession do not even recognize what it means to be a coach. Ive seen MLM (multi-level marketing) companies give their marketers buttons to put on their shirt stating Wellness Coach - when all they know is a couple of herbal supplements that the company sells. Ive seen Real Estate Agents call themselves Real Estate Coaches because they wanted to differentiate themselves from the crowd of agents. Clearly these people are marketing themselves as coaches with little understanding of what a coach really does. If youve read this far it shows youve got a true interest in becoming an ethical coach and Ive no doubt that you are doing your homework!
What Background do I need?
This is an interesting question. Coaches come from all backgrounds. As previously mentioned there are coaches in the health and wellness world, in the executive development world, relationship coaches, coaches for families with children that have special needs, stress management coaches - the list goes on and on. Of course there are many coaches that cross pollinate and have several areas they focus on.
If you choose to focus your coaching on a specific area - lets say parenting troubled teens, then its a good idea that youve got a background of working with troubled teens so that you can best understand your client. Now a pure life coach is committed to recognizing that a client has their own answers and that the coaches job is to empower the client such that they see this clearly for themselves. Therefore, a coach is a generalist - their training and skill is really in communicating with people such that they can identify and build appropriate goals and actions that fulfill their dreams. If you naturally have this skill, youve got the greatest asset that a life coach needs. Some people have an innate tendency to be coach. If you dont naturally have this skill, rest assured that wish practice you can develop it.
What Education if any Should I Get?
If you are considering becoming a coach, I definitely recommend that you get training. A coach training program often has coaching and mentorship not only on how to be a better coach, but also on how to build your business. Whether or not you choose to go through a full coach training certification program is a big decision as it will typically involve a commitment of 1-3 years, up to $15,000, and will require that you obtain between one and two hundred client hours to become certified. Prices, times to certification, and program depth and intensity vary greatly dependent on the program you choose.
Typically after an introductory class, you are encouraged to begin enrolling coaching clients. Therefore, you can charge what you are comfortable charging while you are going through the certification process (remember, you dont need a license to be a coach). I wish I knew the percentage of professionals out there calling themselves coaches that have gone through a certification program. I am sure that someones put an estimate out there but Ive yet to find it. My suspicion is that it is less than 1/3 of all coaches. So being a certified coach differentiates you for sure, however at the moment a typical coaching client probably would not know the difference.
If you elected not to become certified, my recommendation would be that you take some introductory courses, become familiar and comfortable with what coaching is, then try your hand on clients willing to work with you. If these classes are too expensive, read through this whole blog, read as many books as you can find on coaching and develop a toolset which you can stake claim to and comfortably use to team with clients to promote their advancement and self discovery. Make yourself an expert coach based on the knowledge of what a coach is and what they do.
I remember having a conversation with one woman that a friend referred to me. She wanted to change careers, she was very interested in life coaching and she felt she had been coaching friends and co-workers for years. She did have a good understanding of what life coaching was. Furthermore she said she new a number of people that would be willing to pay her for coaching! As I coached her, all she needed to hear was herself confirming that it was OK to get started - even if she had doubts and worries as to what a formal coaching session would look like. She had a fantastic motivation to learn regardless of whether or not that would be in the framework of a credential program (and I dont know if she elected to enroll in one).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJDFpLptJyg
I hope this answers your first set of questions on how to become a life coach - I am sure it will lead to more questions. Ill provide more coaching tips, tools and suggestions throughout the course of the year on this website- so visit often. Till then
"If youve found this site useful, please link to it so that others can benefit!"
Be Well
Written by Doug Nau, www.i-grow.net
Author's Bio:
Doug Nau received a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1996. In 2003, he attained his Masters in Busines Administration from the University of Arizona. Doug has been trained as a life coach at the Academy for Coaching Excellence in Sacramento, CA and in addition to running 'The Wellness Coach', he also works part time as a Lifestyle Management Coach with the Sutter Health system in Northern California. Doug is a member of the International Coaching Federation and has been successfully in business since early 2006.
