Coaching used to be a little-known career, but has experienced significant growth in recent years and is now a fully established and respected occupation.
Have you noticed the increase of coaches there are now?
As life is becoming more challenging for many people, help and support is often needed to stay on the right track.
The International Coaching Federation surveyed people who'd worked with coaches, and 99% of them reported being satisfied with the overall coaching experience.
As many as 96% of those respondents said they'd repeat the process. (Source: ICF 2009 Global Coaching Client Study).
Becoming a coach is definitely not for everyone, but if it’s something you think you’d like to explore, this 3-part blog series will help bring you clarity.
In this article, I share some questions to ask yourself to determine if coaching is right for you.
In part 2 of this blog series, I share 7 reasons why it is an amazing time to be a coach and in part 3, I share 7 tips on how to get started.
I started coaching in 2008. Back then I hadn’t done any type of formal coaching qualification. I was working in Auckland at Les Mills gym as a Personal Trainer at the time.
I quickly learned that most of my personal training clients needed a lot more support in their lives than simply with their exercise routines. Many people were struggling with stress, body-image issues, emotional eating issues, low self-image and a host of other challenges.
I realised that continuing to just train them over the months and years wasn’t enough. They needed much more. So I started booking them in for what I called ‘non-sweat’ sessions.
Typically, we would work together every fortnight for an hour in a cafe or in the gym consultation room and would discuss their challenges and goals and I’d help them create milestones and actions for the coming weeks ahead.
Little did I realise that doing this would lead to some incredible transformations. People started acheiving goals they'd been working on for years and hadn't been able to progress on. I absolutely loved it.
After I moved to Australia in 2012, I decided to pursue a career in coaching more seriously. I did a coaching course and an NLP course and hired a new coach for myself (coaches need coaching) and started coaching people mainly in the area of mindset.
In 2016 I transitioned to business coaching, helping service-based entrepreneurs to get more clients.
Coaching has provided me with incredible opportunities, growth, and reward. I sing its praises to anyone who will listen. It's wonderful work to do.
Coaching is one of the fastest growing fields there is. Many people now employ coaches for all sorts of areas of life - business, career, emotions, health, relationships etc. and after the experience of working with a coach, often decide to become a coach themselves because of their own personal transformation.
The demand for coaching has gone up so enormously that it's becoming that there are not enough coaches to coach the people that need coaching. This is only going to continue to grow.
Here are some questions to ask yourself if you’re considering becoming a coach:
- Are you committed to improving your own life?
If your answer to those is yes, you probably are invested in working on yourself and naturally gravitate towards personal development.
You will know this is you because you listen to podcasts, watch YouTube clips and attend events on personal development, human behaviour or psychology and you tell every single person you know about it, you try to help them, and many of them think you're weird.
If that is you, then you have a compelling desire to grow. It’s one of your highest values and this is a crucial ingredient to have as a coach.
If the answer is no, coaching is probably not for you, because if you don't love self-improvement and self-help, you are not going to love coaching.
- Do you enjoy helping people?
One of the primary jobs of a coach is to motivate and encourage people to reach their full potential.
If you find yourself doing this to your friends who aren’t paying you, you probably would love being a coach.
Seeing people light up because they have had an a-ha moment, or they achieve their goal is one of the most rewarding things ever to a coach.
- Do you want to be an entrepreneur?
Things have changed a lot in the coaching industry, where more coaches are being employed by corporations. This may be an option for you, depending on what type of coaching you want to do.
But for most people, coaching requires you to become a business owner and entrepreneur.
To have full control of your income, your preferred hours of working and creativity in the type of work you want to do, being an entrepreneur is one of the best ways.
It is true that not everybody should be an entrepreneur. Not everyone wants to build a business, not everybody has what it takes in terms of the grit and determination that it requires.
If you decide that you want to be a coach and an entrepreneur, that's two skillsets that you need to learn. If you just want to be a contractor or an employee, then you just have to learn how to coach and look for someone to hire you.
If you answered yes to these questions, you may be a very good candidate for being a coach.
In part 2, I share with you 7 reasons why it is an amazing time to be a coach.
Would you like to know more about how to build a coaching business?
I have a free 2-hour seminar called 'How to Build a Profitable Coaching Business' coming up in Sydney onThursday 28th February at 6pm.
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