Coaching Blog

Julia Stewart

Top Ten Worst Reasons to Become a Coach

People ask me every week to help them become coaches. I always want to know their real reasons for joining this fantastic profession, because over the years, I’ve seen a lot of coaches who had a miserable time building their businesses. Very often those coaches had fallen prey to one of the following misconceptions about coaching (which are frequently perpetrated by coaching schools – even the ones that are accredited.)

Top Ten Worst Reasons to Become a Coach:

1. You’ve been coaching all your life and now you want to get paid for it.
2. You want to make lots of money.
3. You lost money on your last business and you think you won’t have to invest much money to set up a coaching business.
4. Coaching sounds easy.
5. You’ve heard that coaching is one of the fastest growing businesses in the 21st Century and you want to get in on it.
6. You’ve been in an accident or have been diagnosed with a debilitating disease and you think coaching will be physically easier than anything else you could do.
7. You just lost your job and you need to make money fast
8. You’re an author, consultant or online marketer and you’ve heard coaching is the way to boost your profits.
9. You’re broke and you’ve heard you can charge hundreds of dollars per month per client for just talking on the phone.
10. You’re a ____________ (hairdresser, bartender, lawyer - fill in the blank with whatever you currently do), so coaching should come easy to you, because you talk to people all day, anyway.

You may have noticed a trend here: People who go into coaching because it sounds like easy money almost always get burned. Do it because you love it or do it because you’re called to it. Anything else is a lousy reason.

Here are the top ten clean* reasons I became a coach:

1. Coaching supports my spirituality
2. Coaching supports my love of people
3. I like doing what I’m good at
4. Coaching supports my personal evolution
5. Coaching supports my love of learning
6. I get to work with cool people
7. I get to be creative everyday
8. Coaching supports my personal development
9. I love Thomas Leonard’s work
10. Zero commute (Okay, this last one is just a side benefit!)

*The term, "clean" is taken from the environmentalists. Clean energy is fuel that does little or no damage to the environment. Think: wind power vs. fossil fuel. Less damage makes it less costly. A clean reason is one that eats up less of your personal energy ~ or even gives you energy. A great example is my #1 clean reason, above. If you pursue a career you hate, because you think it will make you a lot of money, that's a pretty costly reason.

I’m a happy successful coach, not because my work is easy or because I make miraculous amounts of money, but because I love what I do so much that it has become my play.

Make a list of your own reasons for becoming a coach. If they sound anything like the ten worst reasons, either find cleaner reasons that genuinely inspire you, or find a profession that you really love.

As your father always said, “Someday you’ll thank me!”

Copyright, Julia Stewart, 2007
www.yourlifepart2.com

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Topics: life coach, Coaching, become a coach, Coaches, life coach training, reasons to become a coach

School of Coaching Mastery

Posted by Julia Stewart

Okay, there it is. The new School of Coaching Mastery logo. Putting it out here on my blog is an announcement of sorts. SCM has been a kind of brain child for several months. Maybe longer. I think it was gestating for a couple of years, while I was saying, "I don't want to start another coaching school, there are too many out there, already."

I didn't choose SCM though, it chose me.

For about a year now, people have been coming to me from all over the world saying, "I think I might want to become a coach. How can I find out? Where should I train? Can you help me?" I felt at a loss, because most of the schools I have direct knowledge of, where I trained and where I taught, I have reservations about and I can't recommend the ones I don't know about. I did have programs to offer, like the beginner-skills Coaching Groundwork and the client-attraction Experienced Coach Program, but these people were looking for more than just a program.

Other beginner coaches would ask to join the Seven Secrets of Certificatio n, which is really for intermediate coaches who are preparing for IAC Certification via coaching mastery. That can work, but sometimes the coach really needs more tools, first.

I've got too many programs with too many gaps between them. That confuses people.

What if I shaped it all into one school? What if that school prepared coaches for IAC certification (and beyond) from the very beginning? Hmmm...

That's the certification that I believe in and that's the only approach to coach training that makes sense to me. Most coach training schools base their training on coaching models that were developed in the 90's. Coaching has already evolved way past that.

Other schools are a little too commercial for my taste and/or they're based on values that aren't that useful for solving 21st Century problems.

Maybe the world really does need another coaching school.

If I weave together the programs I already have and fill in the gaps, I can create that school fairly easily. That's inspiring ~ maybe I've really been designing this school all along.

What would the ideal coaching school look like to me? That question has become a fun toy to play with. Time to invite others to play, as well. Over the next four months, I will be meeting with advisers, colleagues, clients and students to get their input on what kind of coaching school the world really needs, as of 2007, and where this school may need to grow in the future.

What will it look like? I don't really know yet, but I'm thinking small classes and targeted training with a lot of practice coaching from the very beginning ~ a "boutique" approach. Gifted coaches learn fast, when given the opportunity and attention they need.

I'm also thinking the trainers should be genuine experts with a real gift for coaching and teaching. (Right now, that would just be me ~ sorry ~ but perhaps not for long.) So many coaching schools are staffed by students or recent graduates of their own programs. Sometimes the instructors aren't even paid. That's just not good enough. You need excellence to teach excellence. This ideal school will be staffed by a well-rounded assortment of expert coach/trainers.

I think the program needs to be flexible, so coaches can get what they need, without being tied down to unnecessary requirements. That just instills a culture of mediocrity and cynicism and isn't useful in a world that needs inspired leaders who can stay ahead of constant change.

Live training? Teleclasses? Webinars? Practicums? MP3's? Video? Probably all of these ~ and whatever else works best, as well.

In the meantime, I will continue offering the programs I do have, while I design what is next. And I'll get to work on the new website, while keeping an SCM web presence at www.yourlifepart2.com.

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Topics: coach training, School of Coaching Mastery, Coaching Groundwork, coaching schools, IAC, coach training school

Virginia Tech: A Dumb Question Might Have Saved Lives

Posted by Julia Stewart

An article in this morning's New York Times about the massacre earlier this week at Virginia Tech reminded me of the importance of not making assumptions.

The article explains that the reason campus investigators didn't lock down VT campus after the first two shootings - a move that might have saved thirty lives - is that they were following up on a lead that suggested the murderer was the boyfriend of one of the victims.

It was a good lead, or so it seemed. However, during a two-hour pause in the shootings, while investigators interrogated the boyfriend, the real murderer, Cho Seung-Hui, was chaining doors and taking other measures in preparation for more carnage.

The investigators made a reasonable choice. As Col. W. Steven Flaherty, the superintendent of the Virginia State Police, said, “There was certainly no evidence or no reason to think that there was anyone else at that particular point in time.”

And I'm not here to blame or criticize them. They did the best they could. The outcome however, is far from what anyone would have wanted.

You want smart professionals doing a job like this. Most of us try to be smart professionals in our own jobs. Nobody wants to be stupid. But a couple of dumb questions might have made an enormous difference here.

As quoted in the Times, authorities “made the right decisions based on the best information that they had available at the time.” That's what all of us do, right?

Professors and students on campus had been nervous about the killer's behavior long before he acted, but as one professor said, "little could be done."

These are smart reasonable people and they all did their best. But when reasonable choices don't get the job done, that's sometimes a sign that it's time to think differently.

And of course, it's easy to to point out what they should have done, now that we have the benefit of hindsight, but there IS a way to think differently in the moment and that's worth talking about, because it can lead to very different outcomes.

It's to refuse to make assumptions, which can sometimes lead us to unreasonable, even dumb questions like, "What if the boyfriend isn't the killer?" or "What if there is a second shooter?"

Again, I'm not here to criticize anyone. This blog is written for coaches and I'm just using this story as a powerful example of what can happen when people do the right, reasonable thing and still get awful results. It's why it's the coach's job to ask dumb questions - seriously.

I'm defining a dumb question as one that is so obvious, people may not be asking it.

I'm definitely NOT suggesting that the investigators should have hired a coach to help them. And I'm also not suggesting that they didn't think about those questions. I bet they did. But for whatever reason, at the time, those questions didn't seem reasonable. I bet they wished they'd taken them more seriously.

My heart goes out to the investigators. They are probably suffering as much as anyone over this tragedy, so I apologize if this article sounds at all harsh.

At every stage of human life, people learn to make assumptions about situations and people as a tool for survival. As human life has gotten more complex and is moving far faster though, this tool has become a big liability in many cases.

For instance, if you live in a tribal culture, making assumptions about people based on their appearance, makes sense. People who look different from members of your tribe may very well be less trustworthy towards you than members of your own group. In a pluralistic society though, judgements based on appearance can be tragic. This is an assumption that has used up its usefulness.

However, reasonable people still make assumptions everyday. I'm assuming right now, that when I click "publish", this article will be uploaded to my blog. Otherwise, I might as well quit typing.

That's why it's the coach's job to listen for assumptions that may pose problems to our clients and challenge them.

"Are we certain we have the right suspect?"

The answer to a question like this is often, "No, but..." It's our job to take a hard look at those "buts". They're the cause for the assumptions!

In this situation, the considerations may have included: "We're pretty sure we have the right guy and shutting down the campus would inconvenience a lot of people and cost a lot of money and we'll be criticized if we take action and are wrong."

That last reason is huge and it stops most of us from taking courageous action. These reasons don't hold up though, if we compare them to human lives in danger.

That's why it's so important for coaches to catch our clients when they are making fateful assumptions and be willing to ask the right question and follow up with more questions until a real solution is found. Anything less can be awful.

It's also our job not to let our clients wriggle out of looking at the truth. Fear of being wrong is powerful and most people won't look at it without someone there who gently, firmly and without judgment, holds them to it. That's when clients make huge shifts. It's also when coaches earn their fees.

Our clients don't want to be wrong and often they can't afford to look stupid. It's our job to risk being wrong, unreasonable and even dumb for their benefit. We can't be too curious, too doubtful nor too nosy. That's our job.

Sometimes the smartest thing we can do is to be dumb.

Copyright, Julia Stewart, 2007

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Topics: Coaching, Coaches, coaching clients, curiosity, questions

Are You Worth More Than a Latte?

Posted by Julia Stewart

I coach incredible people. Most of them don't know how great they are until they've coached with me, but all of them are amazing and once I've unleashed them, there's no stopping what they can accomplish!

We frequently have conversations about about money. How much should they charge their clients? How do they ask their boss for a raise? I have these conversations with my coach, too.

There's a big difference between how much you think you can get and how much you really want. And I'm not just talking about money.

Play a game with me, ok? Imagine you can charge (get paid) any amount of money you want. How much would that be? Now imagine you live in a country that taxes 100% of your income (Yes, I know you'd move away as fast as you can. Just bear with me.) Would you still charge the same amount?

Let's say, in this make-believe country, all your needs are magically taken care of. You get to live an awesome life, no matter what you get paid. And you never hold your money in your hot little hand, cuz it's all taxed. (Kind of like socialism, if it actually worked)

Now how much would you charge for what you do? Nothing, you say? Minimum wage? A million dollars? What's the difference, right?

Now wait a minute. You and the people you work with would relate to you and your work - as they do in the real world - a little differently, depending on how much you're paid. I'm not talking about status, roles, or power here.

Let's say you charge the equivalent of a Starbucks latte per hour. How are you going to show up for your work? Would that be an excuse to coast? And how much would other people expect from you? How much effort would they put into working with you? About as much as it would take to say, "Tall Decaf Latte, please." That's my guess.

Would you enjoy your work, then? Remember, nobody would bust you if you fooled around most of the day, but if you did, you wouldn't be providing much value to others. Would that excite you?

Let's say you charge $1000 per hour. How would you show up differently, now that you're not just working for latte money, anymore? Would your butt be on the line? (As Mattison would say)

Would you expect more from yourself? Would others expect more? Would your clients expect more of themselves? Would they work harder to get $1000 worth of value?

Would the people who want to work with you be different? I bet they would!

How much more exciting would that be? How much less mediocrity would you and everyone around you tolerate?

Most of us charge what we think is reasonable (which is another way of saying: What we think people will pay us) and then we work at a level that we think is reasonable (which is about as mediocre as everyone else) and that's not very inspiring.

What if we charged what we really want to charge and did our very best to earn it? Wouldn't that be a whole different game? And wouldn't it be a little more exciting?

I once heard Donald Trump say (I'm paraphrasing here) "There's no limit to what people will pay for the very best. Not second best. The very best."

Never mind how much money The Donald has. Don't you think he has more fun playing that really big game? Do you think he wishes he were more like everyone else?

And what about Starbucks? I remember when (OMG, I must be getting old with that line!) it was outrageous to pay more than a dollar for take-out coffee, but it usually tasted awful. Now $5 for a latte at Starbucks is a bit of a treat.

All it took to get us to pay five times as much was for the owners of Starbucks to have a greater vision of what a take-out cup of coffee could be. And now we're happy to pay more! How reasonable is that?

I propose that we're all worth much more than we're settling for and that the only thing stopping us is our "obligation" to be reasonable. I see people charging what they really want and having fun stepping up to the challenge and I see a lot more people charging what is reasonable and plugging along being less than they could be.

It's just a choice. What do you want to be worth?

Copyright, Julia Stewart, 2007
www.yourlifepart2.com

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Personal Development? Busted!

Posted by Julia Stewart

Ah personal development can be soooo exhausting! And personal developers (Like us: Coaches, no?) can be sooooo full of it! :-)

Nic Askew (Monday9AM Films) has busted us. If you're just dog tired of the whole thing, take a break here:

http://www.monday9am.tv/archive/intro/48

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Topics: personal development

Coaching 2007: The Industry Is Headed In Completely the Wrong Direction

Posted by Julia Stewart

OK, my coach put me up to this. But it's true.

The Coaching Industry is headed the wrong way. Not coaching, mind you, the industry.

It blows my mind that coaches who should know better don't get this. Maybe it's time I let you in on it!

Coaches like to think they're all on the leading edge, that they know stuff the rest of the world doesn't get, yet. We're oh, so precious about what we do.

Don't get me wrong. Great coaching is incredible. That's why it's so surprising that so many coaches don't see what has happened.

Hello?? We've had an impact. We've been coaching world leaders for 20 years and our clients influence a lot of people. A large chunk of the world does get it and they're quietly passing us by. We've done such a great job of coaching that non-coaches have picked up the banner and they're running with it!

I know a coach who is training 10,000 employees of the City of Seattle to coach each other. I know another coach who's helping her husband write a Broadway play about coaching that will soon open in NYC.

Meanwhile, the majority of coaches are still obsessing about how to get enough clients. No wonder they're missing the boat! Coaches think too small.

Most coaches are still hung up on the entrepreneurial model of coaching, thinking they have to get enough clients to make that work. If you've been a coach for more than a few years and you've never had a full practice, maybe you're just not cut out for that. Maybe you're a coach, but you're not a coach-preneur.

I just did a job search at www.indeed.com. 76,771 jobs that require coaching skills came up. That's more jobs than there are coaches. These days, even engineers are required to coach and they're the most left-brained people on the planet!

If people can get coaching from their managers and team members, what do they need to hire you for?

Coaches are still waiting for coaching to go mainstream, as if that will make it easier to have a coaching business. No, that just means you'll have a lot more competition.

Coaching already went mainstream and now everyone is trying to coach everyone else. Most of them aren't doing it well, but that will change soon enough.

The biggest advances in coaching are currently going on outside the industry and that's a great thing. Imagine what the world will be like when coaching is the default communication skill, when every child grows up being coached by their parents and teachers, when employees are coaching and getting coached everyday on the job? How will people evolve then?

Pretty cool, huh?

I just met a coach who works for a suburban school system. Every student's family in that system gets up to three coaching sessions per year to optimize that child's development. This is a tradition-bound school system. They didn't go looking for a coach. She developed the program herself and her results are very impressive.

Coaching is showing up everywhere: in banks, the military, the government; but the people doing it aren't always called coaches. They're called financial advisors, chefs, principals, HR directors.

Coaching didn't just go mainstream, the mainstream is now coaching!

Okay, I'm inspired and I know what I'm going to do about this. The real question is: What are you going to do about it in 2007??

Copyright, Julia Stewart, 2007
www.yourlifepart2.com

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Featured in Blogwild!

Posted by Julia Stewart

Hey! I got this little graphic from Andy Wibbels, today. Cool. He used my blog testimony in his newly released Blogging Bible, BLOGWILD! Basically, I talked about how this blog attracts new coaching clients to my business. (Very cool. Check it out on page 138.) Nice to attract business by doing something I like anyway. Yet another example of the old Attraction Principle, "Add value just for the joy of it." Something very attractive about that. That's also partly why Andy's work is so attractive (and successful): He gives cool stuff away. (And he happens to be very, very good at what he does!)

He's a great example of "Giving is the new marketing." The web makes it possible. Consciousness makes it inevitable. (More on "The Power of Giving" in April 18th's Confab with special guest, Kathryn Gotshall English. If you still haven't joined, go here:www.coachingconfab.com)

Copyright, Julia Stewart, 2006
www.yourlifepart2.com.com

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Topics: Attraction Principles, IAC

Is the Media Helping You Find Coaching Clients?

Posted by Julia Stewart

We often fall under the delusion that we have to do everything ourselves, if we want to be successful. But that's never true. We need to do A LOT ourselves, but never all of it.

An example? Well a nice upbeat article on Life Coaching came out in the March 26, 2006 Sunday New York Times and suddenly, one coach that I know got called by a potential client who read the article and hired him on the spot! And other coaches that I know are also suddenly hearing from more potential clients. One article can have a big rapid ripple effects.

One article can spawn more media mentions. My partner at ACE, Donna Steinhorn, was just called by someone who is looking for coaches to be guests on her radio show. Donna's scouting that for our ACE members.

Can we attribute all of this new interest in coaching to just one article? Well, maybe. Don't underestimate the power of the media to help you create coaching success.

And don't sit on your hands while opportunity knocks. One Coach 100 ECPer went out right away and posted coaching flyers in all the apartment buildings in her neighborhood after the NY Times article appeared. Will she immediately get new clients? Who knows? Sometimes people pull off numbers, carry them in their wallets for a year and then call. I've had that happen lots of times.

That's why you need to be consistently doing things that will bring attention to your business and patiently waiting for those things to pay off AND you need to be prepared to act fast when there's a genuine opportunity - like when a big article or TV spot on coaching comes out in your city.

What are you doing on a day-to-day basis to bring yourself more clients?
And what are some creative ways that you can leverage media mentions?

By the way, as coaching becomes a household word, you see more jokes being made about it. Did you see what the Daily Show with Jon Stewart did to us? Don't worry, all media coverage is good coverage. This is just another sign that the mainstream public knows about us. (Jokes about lawyers haven't exactly ruined that profession. Rather, they offer feedback to reputable attorneys about how not to practice law.)

Here's a link to the NY Times article on life coaching

And the link for the Daily Show piece on life coaching

Your challenge: How can you leverage these pieces to create more success for yourself (and your potential new clients)?

More on this subject in Coach 100 class #18, Where Are Your Next Clients Hiding?

If you're not already a member of the Coach 100 and you don't already have a full practice, then you might want to check it out.

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Topics: coaching clients, Life Coaching

The Evolution of Coach Certification

Posted by Julia Stewart

The Certification Preparation course at the University of Houston's Executive Coaching Institute last weekend was a transformative event - not just for the participants, but for Mattison and me! Twelve coaches spent 24 hours together over three days, teasing out the meaning of "great coaching" and courageously stepped up to the plate again and again. It takes heart to do that and when you bring together fearlessness, generocity and a love of coaching, you get magic.

Mattison and I are recovering from our writer's cramp and are just now fully realizing how big an impact this event has had on us. It's still just sinking in.

A minor downer is an email I just received from a former client who is an absolutely brilliant coach. She just got her certification results back from IAC and they didn't pass her. She scored above 80% on both sessions, but too low on one Proficiency. Bummer! She'll have to submit one more recording.

The thing that bugs me is that I know another fantastic coach who had the same experience recently - and same Proficiency! I asked to listen to her two recordings and from what I heard, I would have been thrilled to pass her. The sessions weren't flawless, but they were truly masterful.

Whoa! Is the IAC raising the bar? Fortunately, Mattison and I knew they were taking a pretty strict view of this Proficiency. and we coached our participants around it. About half the sessions passed our standards. It'll be interesting to see what the IAC does with them.

After spending a long weekend with the Proficiencies and new Masteries, I'm more blown away than ever at the power of great coaching to transform both the coach and client and literally create a new world. I'm so thankful that the IAC exists, because it gives coaches a wonderful incentive to become the best they can be. Here's what one coach, whose two sessions passed the IAC, wrote:

"Anyone who is committed to his or her own greatness as a coach needs to take this course. The profession will be enhanced immeasurably as a result and the way this would effect humanity is awe-inspiring!" - Kristi Arndt, IAC-CC

I've listened to a lot of coaching sessions since I did the "Lead Certifier" thing in 2004-5. Coaches are getting better and that's a very good thing!

Here's what I'm curious about: Is the IAC raising the bar because the quality of the applicants has improved? Some time ago, they revealed that they only pass about 25%. Is that still true?

Coaches adapt pretty quickly, so I don't have a problem with the IAC raising the standard, as long as they don't narrow down the style of coaching that is acceptable. I'm all for high standards, which reflect well on all of us, but narrow standards could reduce the number of clients who can be helped.

And of course, all of this is subjective. Nobody's right or wrong. The perfection is in what we learn from each other.

As long as we're all free to be ourselves, while practicing our brilliance to transform the lives of others, coaching will grow as a force for positive change. I hope the IAC will fully communicate with us on any changes in their standard. ;-)

Here's my favorite testimonial from last weekend:

"Go do it! It will change your life & those you work with! Hold on to your pants and shoot for the stars :)" - Jan O'Brien [Update: Jan is now an IAC-CC]

The question we're getting is when will we do another Certification Prep? We honestly don't know, but we're thinking about it.

In the meantime, the Seven Secrets of Certification practicums are going strong. they are basically the same thing, but in virtual form. A new group will start next month.

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Topics: Coach Certification, Kristi Arndt, Mattison Grey, Certification Practicum, IAC, Certification Prep

Koans to Live By If You're Thomas Leonard

Posted by Julia Stewart

Thomas Leonard The Zen of Attraction

by Thomas J. Leonard

I developed these 14 koans to help me get more space so that I could better apply the 28 Attraction Principles and Practices of the Attraction Operating System. Note: You can take these literally, figuratively or as a place to come from in your dealings. They are simply what works for me.

1. Promise nothing.
Just do what you most enjoy doing.

2. Sign nothing.
Just do what doesn't require a signature of any kind.

3. Offer nothing.
Just share what you have with those who express an interest.

4. Expect nothing.
Just enjoy what you already have; it's plenty.

5. Need nothing.
Just build up your reserves and your needs will disappear.

6. Create nothing.
Just respond well to what comes to you.
7. Seduce no one.
Just enjoy them.

8. Adrenalize nothing.
Just add value and get excited about that.

9. Hype nothing.
Just let quality sell by itself.

10. Fix nothing.
Just heal yourself.

11. Plan nothing.
Just take the path of least resistance.

12. Learn nothing.
Just let your body absorb it all on your behalf.

13. Become no one.
Just be more of yourself.

14. Change nothing.
Just tell the truth and things will change by themselves.

Copyright 1997 by Thomas J. Leonard. All rights reserved.

(Used with permission)

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Topics: Thomas Leonard, Attraction Principles, Zen of Attraction

Julia Stewart

Recent Posts

Top Ten Worst Reasons to Become a Coach

School of Coaching Mastery

Virginia Tech: A Dumb Question Might Have Saved Lives

Are You Worth More Than a Latte?

Personal Development? Busted!

Coaching 2007: The Industry Is Headed In Completely the Wrong Direction

Featured in Blogwild!

Is the Media Helping You Find Coaching Clients?

The Evolution of Coach Certification

Koans to Live By If You're Thomas Leonard

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