Becoming a Life Coach: Essentials and Expectations

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If you 've 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 …show more content…

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. I 'd suggest reading a coaches code of ethics 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. I 've 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. I 've 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 you 've read this far it shows you 've got a true interest in becoming an ethical coach and I 've no doubt that you are doing your …show more content…

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 you 've 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, you 've got the greatest asset that a life coach needs. Some people have an innate tendency to 'be coach '. If you don 't naturally have this skill, rest assured that wish practice you can develop

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