Coaching Blog

Guest post by Jen Waller, Top Ten Winner of Best Coaching Blogs 2011.

I didn’t intend to become a coach, run my own coaching business or be my own boss when I first started out learning about coaching. I just found it increasingly fascinating and enjoyed playing and discovering.

It does mean that it’s difficult to pinpoint the precise moment in time when I first started coaching - it just naturally evolved. I do know that it happened over a decade ago.

There’s mistakes I’ve made, things I could have done differently and action I could have taken faster. However, I’m really comfortable with the choices I’ve made and the path I’ve taken as it’s got me to where and who I am now.

Here’s just 3 of those lessons from when I first started coaching:

Having all the coaching knowledge in the world is not going to make a difference to clients unless you are using them by actually coaching people! Some of the best learning experiences I’ve had have come from working with clients.

That does not mean I’m suggesting don’t ever seek and take formal training courses. I personally believe that it’s a duty I have to my current/future clients to continually develop, explore and refine my work.

I am suggesting that you don’t put off putting it into practice!

2. You don’t have to listen and get involved with any distracting thoughts about self doubt or insults

I remember when I first started coaching that I had all these distracting thoughts running through my head.

It was not at all unusual to realise I was paying attention to questions in a coaching session such as

• “Am I good enough?”
• “ I can’t ask that question, what will they think?” or
• “Who am I to ask that question?”

On other occasions it could be a running negative commentary on how terrible a question was, how something was clumsily worded or a general observation that my coaching was terrible and awful! - All a bit distracting to really focus and listen to my client in that moment.

It was the realisation that coaching was not about me, it was about the client in front of me (or at the other end of the phone) that made the difference for me.

It was the catalyst so that when I recognised those thoughts I could let them go, not get caught up in them and return my focus to my client in that moment – that thinking could be indulged in “my time”, as I thought of it, outside of that session.

Funny thing was that the more I didn’t get caught up in those thoughts during a session, the less they seemed relevant when it came to “my time” outside the session!

3. Not knowing a “script” of questions in advance is OK, it doesn’t mean that you are not prepared.

As you watch others coaching, attend trainings and generally read around the subject you will no doubt come across some fantastic questions. Ones that leap out at you so that you want to store them away to pull out in one of your own coaching sessions.

At some stage in my early development I mixed up preparing for a coaching session with having to have a list of pre-planned questions complete with the order they would be asked in the session ahead.

For a while I thought that the fact that I found that really difficult to create (and when I did, never stuck to the list in reality) meant that I was a terrible coach. I let it get in the way of how confident I felt with my coaching.

What I had missed was the fact that this is a coaching conversation. I don’t generally pre-plan conversations in other contexts, I allow those to flow naturally in response to what the other person says. So why do it with a coaching conversation?

Those questions stored away for future use still come in useful but they are used when it’s the “best fit” with where my client is at that moment.

This new way of thinking also allows for the possibility that some of the most powerful questions utilise that individuals own language. If you like, questions that you create in the moment prompted by the answer just given – even if it is one similar to the ones you’ve stored away for future reference.

I’ve selected just three out of many possible things I’ve learnt. These are just my experience, what about yours?

If you are new to coaching, what can you take from this post that will make a difference to your next step?

If you have more coaching experience, what would you share for your personal journey?

Jen Waller is on a mission to support, nurture and encourage coaching skills and talents from non-coach to coach and beyond.

Her coaching blog, Coaching Confidence, is a blog for coaches of all niches. Containing daily quotes, alongside posts covering topics such as personal development, coaching skills and resources. Each Friday the blog hosts a guest post covering a broad range of different coaching experiences, styles and approaches.

Want to enter Best Coaching Blogs 2012?

I became a Life Coach because of Oprah.

Yup, that's how much an influence she's been on my life. I first got fired up to become a coach, while watching Oprah do a series with Life Coach, Cheryl Richardson, twelve years ago. Now I'm training other folks who are equally fired up, to become coaches, themselves. Thank you, Oprah!

Last Monday, I saw Oprah live at the premiere of her Lifeclass Tour. You might wonder why I waited 'til now to go see Oprah live. All I can say is, I won the ticket lottery for the world premiere of her Lifeclass Tour here in St. Louis and boy was I excited! Here's what I took away from this amazing adventure...

LESSON 1: Know When to Break the Rules. Moments before leaving my house in Washington County, I called my friend, Career Coach, Joanne Waldman, PCC, for some last-minute directions to her house, more than an hour away. Joanne, who was accompanying me to Lifeclass, mentioned that the rules said we were supposed to bring small handbags, not gigant-o bags, like the one I was planning to bring (Oprah likes her audience to look great on camera, so wear bright colors and keep your little bag under your seat).

No problem! I have a huge collection of cute little bags and I quickly found one just big enough for my wallet and cell phone. I got to Joanne's house right on time, despite some crazy road construction and it was an absolutely gorgeous day. We were psyched to be seeing Oprah in just two more hours and were about to get some lunch on the way when...

Holy Crap! I left our Lifeclass tickets in my big bag at home! (That's life with ADD.) If only...oh God! But it was too late. No tickets, no admission. I called the theater. No dice...

LESSON 2: Set Your Intentions and Act Like Your Hair's On Fire. I called my sister, Becky, and asked her to bring my big bag with the tix and meet us halfway. It was crazy. There was no way we'd get there before the theater closed its doors for the taping, but we went for it.

God bless Becky, she drives like a 5-Alarm Fire Chief even when there's no rush. She met us with the tix. I handed them to Joanne for good keeping and took off to make the hour-and-a-half drive with only an hour and ten minutes left 'til doors closed. Like good coaches, Joanne and I visualized walking through those theater doors with big smiles on our faces and handing our tickets to the ushers. And we made it. With fifteen minutes to spare! (Okay, there was some speeding involved.)

My friend, Career Coach, Joanne Waldman, PCC, in-line with a big smile on her face, just before walking through the front doors of the Peabody Opera House for Oprah's Lifeclass, feeling really relieved to be there on time (and in one piece). =====>

And you guessed it! Half the audience was carrying gigant-o handbags (see above pic) and nobody cared. So respect your limitations (mine is distractability) and adjust the rules to fit you. And if you screw up (which you will), set strong intentions and act on them like your hair's on fire.

<===== Here's me in the lobby, just before the ushers threw us out, insisting we get to our seats. Yeah, we broke their rule to 'keep moving', so we could nab a couple of pics. After all, we were feeling pretty special for getting there faster than humanly possible.

LESSON 3: Take a Chance on the Unknown. I had the option to enter the lottery for 4 different Lifeclass tapings, each with a different guest. Two were Deepak Chopra and Tony Robbins, heroes of mine. One for Iyanla Vanzant, who's great. And one for a guy I never heard of, Bishop T. D. Jakes. I really just wanted to see Oprah, so I took a chance on the new guy and he was absolutely awesome. I won't even try to tell you what he said; you have to SEE him. The show airs Monday, April 9th, 8ET/7CT. Bishop Jakes is all about Finding Your Purpose.

LESSON 4: You're Here for a Reason. That was the key message of the show. You're here at this show for a reason (Joanne and I knew that. We were MEANT to be there, so we had to get there on time). Your life has a purpose and Oprah and Jakes taught us how to find it. Adversity doesn't stop you from achieving your purpose. In fact, Jakes' metaphor for purpose and adversity is an archer: If you're the arrow, and your life is the bow, then the farther the archer (adversity) pulls the arrow (you) back, the farther and stronger you'll go to reach your purpose (Joanne and I had just proven that on the way to the show).

LESSON 5: Your life is a class. I was already familiar with most of the lessons they taught that day. After all, I've been a life-long personal development junkie. Oprah and Jakes just have an incredibly intense and wonderful way of teaching it all. They connect to the audience more profoundly and reach more people, as a result. They are more animated (that's why you have to SEE them). They're more entertaining. After all, they are masters of television. They are stars. But aren't you are star, also? Oprah thinks so.

LESSON 6: It's what happens off-the-record that really inspires. At the end of the show, as we were about to leave our seats, Oprah came back out, not for the television cameras, but just for us. She talked about how her purpose was to use television to help people have better lives. That she was always asking God to use her. And she had focused on how to use the Oprah show to serve her purpose, not have the show use her. And that's her big vision for OWN TV. That she has made mistakes with the network and was digging out of a hole (the papers say she just laid off 20% of her staff). She asked for our help to spread the word, so our culture has at least one television channel that uplifts, instead of just pandering to our lowest common interests.

It was her candidness and vulnerability that spoke most clearly. Here is the biggest star in the world (according to one poll), a profoundly spiritual being who just happens to be a billionaire in kickass diamond earrings. It seems like she has the Midas Touch, but even she can make mistakes...

Hmmm, could it be that adversity will help her arrow soar even farther and stronger?

Yep, that little speck center stage is Oprah, from my iPhone in row Z of the orchestra. That's okay, I saw her with my own eyes and heard her message with my own ears. =====>

LESSON 7: Be a Servant Star. Oprah's Lifeclass made me realize that I'd lost track of my purpose, so I can't use School of Coaching Mastery to reach it. I started the school to help carry out Thomas Leonard's purpose to improve coaching worldwide with IAC coach certification. He infected me with his vision ten years ago, but then he passed away, the IAC changed, its certification has changed, the ICF has also changed. Now I'm mired in certification requirements...

School of Coaching Mastery has never really been about life coach certification. It's about the mastery coaches achieve on the way to coach certification. But what's the purpose of coaching mastery?

Coaching mastery is about helping people (coaching clients) learn the life lessons they need faster and more deeply, so they can create better lives and reach the highest, fullest expression of their beings. Period.

I've talked for years about the importance for coaches, of becoming Servant Entrepreneurs and I just had the honor of seeing the Ultimate Servant Entrepreneur.

Oprah is a Servant Star. Not because she's about being a star, it's because she's about revealing the star in you and asking you to use it to serve.

How inspiring is that?

In what ways might you already be a Servant Star? How do other Servant Stars light you up? How do you light people up? What do you need in order to use your life to serve your purpose? Do you know what your purpose is? How is adversity sending you even farther and stronger toward your purpose?

Are you ready to step up to Being a Star Who Serves? Please share your thoughts below...

Watch Oprah's Lifeclass Tour on Monday nights at 8PM ET/7PM CT. Watch two hours and call your life coach in the morning...

If you've read blog posts on how to become a successful coach, you know that building your marketing list is a must.

As the saying goes, 'The money is in the list!' But things have changed. Now that inbound marketing is replacing traditional marketing for small business, the marketing list is a must for local face-to-face marketing, as well as for internet marketers.

Not only that, but social networks, like Facebook and Twitter, have permanently altered the definition of 'list', as well as how to manage a list and nurture more sales.

So if you think the size of your list is what matters or that email is your principal marketing tool, you're missing out on some huge opportunities to connect with your potential coaching clients and get hired by more people. In short, you're losing money.

What if you're a new coach who has no list at all, yet? You need a strategy for building one, right now. The good news is, you don't need a website to start building your list.

Learn the myths of list building for coaches and find out what really matters when it comes to marketing your coaching business with Coach 100.

Get started with the popular and FREE Coach 100 eBook.

Learn what Coach 100 is and where it comes from. Find out why it works and how you can put it to work for you.

The Coach 100 Business Success Program is highly effective even if you currently know nothing about marketing and sales. It is included for FREE when you join the Certified Positive Psychology Coach Program. Get certified by the IAPPC!

Get your FREE eBook now:

Wondering how you can become a successful life or business coach?

There are three main approaches to becoming a successful business or life coach. The first, I call the Entrepreneurial Coach. The second, is the Professional Coach. The last is the Sweet Spot. Let me explain:

1. The Entrepreneurial Coach* usually has a strong business, marketing and sales background and either a juicy niche or a smoking hot specialty. This coach knows how to attract the right clients and how to encourage them to buy. However, if s/he over relies on her business smarts, s/he can get caught on the hamster wheel of constantly having to market and sell, in order to keep his/her coaching roster full.

Why? Unless clients experience fantastic results quickly, or at least maintain their motivation long enough to experience extraordinary results, they tend to drop out of coaching within a few months. That means the entrepreneur coach has to constantly close new sales just to maintain a good income. For most coaches, this is exhausting and unsatisfying.

Worse yet, if clients quit before they're delighted, the entrepreneur won't maximize their number of all-important testimonials, case studies and viral buzz - the stuff that makes for a friction-free marketing and sales engine.

2. The Professional Coach*, on the other hand, has great coaching skills, either from decades of coaching or from a few years of coach-specific training. S/he knows how to elicit amazing results for his/her clients and as a result, clients stay month after month, or buy again and again. However, s/he may know little about effective marketing and sales strategies and as a result, too few clients ever sign up in the first place. That means too few potential clients ever find out about the professional coach, so s/he's constantly searching for that rare client who's willing to pay his/her fees.

Sadly, this coach may have spectacular results to point to, but often fails to share them with potential clients, who increasingly, are looking for 'proof' that their coach really knows what s/he's doing.

* In both cases above, the coach is forced into a situation where s/he needs his/her clients. The entrepreneur always needs new ones. The professional needs to hang onto the ones s/he has. Otherwise, both risk losing their incomes. When you need your clients, your focus is on yourself, instead of on helping them. To reach the coaching sweet spot, your needs must be met, so you can focus all your energy on helping your clients get those awesome results. Otherwise, something's got to give. It's way harder to maintain a sustainable coaching business when you have to focus on your own needs instead of clients' needs.

However, there are some entrepreneur coaches who really are good at coaching and most of their clients are quite happy and loyal. And there are professional coaches who get it when it comes to marketing and sales, so they're not desperate to get and keep clients. These exceptional coaches are moving into the Sweet Spot.

3. The Sweet Spot: This is the coach who has the skill to produce awesome results quickly and to keep producing results for months or even years. That keeps current clients wanting more and paying for it happily. At the same time, this coach has his/her marketing message down cold, has expertise that new people will buy and knows how to communicate and form client relationships (a.k.a. marketing and sales). Of course, those ever important testimonials, case studies and viral buzz come easily to this coach.

When you reach the sweet spot, you aren't desperate to make new sales and you don't cling to your old clients, trying to squeeze out a few more more dollars. You naturally meet your own needs and you can focus all your energy on meeting your clients' needs and helping them get what they want. Happy clients attract more happy clients.

I call this coach The Master. Everything we do at School of Coaching Mastery is designed to move our coaching students into the sweet spot by helping them become masters, faster.

Marketing programs help entrepreneurs communicate and sell to clients, but are useless when it comes to the critical skill of getting coaching results and keeping clients.

And most coaching schools will only get you started on becoming a professional coach - who may never get clients. At SCM, we give away that part of our program for free and focus our real attention on helping our paid members become masters and enjoy that sweet spot, sooner.

Turn your five-figure business into a six-figure coaching business and turn your six-figure business into a seven-figure coaching business: Become a Master Coach.

Confusion about your business or life coach career could be destroying your chances.

Why? Confused people don’t act.

The longer you tolerate your confusion and/or your inaction the more you destroy what could be.

Here’s the funny part. If you’re not taking action, it’s probably because you’re waiting until you’re sure what to do. That’s backwards.

Having clarity before you act is a comforting ideal, but sometimes you can’t get clarity until you act. As the preacher said, God can’t steer a parked car...

How can you step out of your confusion and into inspired action that leads you to your goals? Ask yourself some questions.

And as soon as you have the answers, take massive action immediately!

You probably won’t have enough clarity to be certain until you start acting. It’s as simple as that.

I wrote seven questions to help folks like you get clarity about their next steps toward becoming business or life coaches.

Those seven questions are on a page that offers the Ultimate Coach Training Membership Program at a special price. There is a time limit on the special price and only six spots are left.

But I’d rather you asked yourself those questions and decided to do something else than join our ultimate training, than stand around like the guy above, scratching your head and wasting your life. Because if you really are meant to be a master coach, millions of people could use your coaching.

Go here to get 7 questions to banish your confusion about becoming a business or life coach.

And if you’re serious about business or life coaching, take massive action. Join us while you can save!

Today one of my mentor coaching clients said something brilliant.

She said she realized that she'd been expecting to 'manifest' her successful coaching business with about 20% effort and she needed to go full out for it. That's one of the main reasons some coaches fail. Even if they're doing the right things and even if they aren't doing them the wrong way, often they just plain aren't doing enough. 

Owning your own business and making money doing what you love has so many benefits, that if it were as easy as getting and keeping a good job, everybody would be doing it. And yet, some coaches plod along doing about as much as they would have at that dead-head corporate job they escaped from and they wonder why they don't have enough clients!

If there's one thing I love about being a coach, it's that I'm passionate about it. That passion drives me forward to be, do and have everything I want by creating value for my clients. It's known as the power of full engagement and making money is just a byproduct.

If you love coaching, tap into that passion and let it drive/pull you forward. Show up fully everywhere you go and have faith that you're creating the life and business that you really want. 

However, if you're just playing it safe, not taking risks, not willing to be vulnerable, waiting until everything is perfect, setting intentions without changing behaviors, or just trying to do enough to get by, you're not ever going to get there.

That reminds me of something a member of our Free Coach Training Program asked me today. Is the Free Coach Training everything you need to start a coaching business? For some people it will be, but others will either want much more or need much more. That's why we have more!

Related posts:

• Become a Coach: Ten Ways to Succeed Quickly
• The Biology of Success
• This Prevents Coaching Success: Are You Suffering From the Kiss of Death?

Check out the Ultimate Coach Training Program Here.

Mattison Grey is professional business and leadership coach and the founder of  Greystone Guides,  a high performance coaching and consulting firm.  Her clients and fans enjoy her contrarian views and her courage to be provocative in a way that challenges the status quo.  Mattison is fascinated by the gap between high performers and low performers and what it takes to go from mediocre to masterful in a chosen endeavor.  

Coaching is a popular choice of profession for people right now. 

Seems like everyone is a coach or is becoming a coach, doesn’t it?  That is no secret.  The trouble is there are secrets about coaching and having a coaching business.  Secrets no one is telling beginning or emerging coaches. 

The coaching schools won’t tell you – you might not sign up; coaching organizations won’t tell you – it’s not their role.   So who has the guts to tell you?  Julia Stewart, the gutsy-ist coach in America, has asked me to expose some of those secrets and share with you what I think are the biggest myths about coaching and starting a coaching practice.  Here we go with the 8 biggest myths many emerging coaches believe. 

MYTH #1, 2 and 3:  Everyone needs a coach; coaching is for everyone; or everyone is a prospect.  Sure everyone has room for improvement, but not everyone wants it.  Learning to identify who is curious about coaching and who is not takes quite a bit of practice, and assuming everyone is a prospect can get in the way of accurate sorting.

MYTH #4:  Coaching fixes problems.  In fact, if you approach coaching with that mentality you will drive people away.  Even though few people’s lives are perfect, they will resist coaching if you “come from” something’s wrong.  

I often say, Amateur Coaching fixes problems.  Masterful Coaching creates them.

What do I mean by that?  If you take the client’s problem or challenge at face value, you will be missing a huge opportunity to really move them toward their greatness.   Behind the presented challenge is always a bigger issue.  Most of us know that.  What masterful coaches know is that you don’t have to find that issue and solve it.  You have to help the client find a project or game that is so interesting, fun and engaging that the previous issue magically disappears or is solved by the new game.  

Here is a real life example:  A few years ago, I was bored with my coaching business and not having much fun anymore.  That was a pretty big problem.   I asked Julia for a coaching session.   Long story short, as a result of the coaching, I decided to DOUBLE my coaching fees.  Never mind my fee was already pretty substantial.  Doubling it would, with the exception of celebrity coaches, put it near the top tier of coaching fees in the world.  WOW, now I had a HUGE “PROBLEM” but boy was I excited about it, and instantaneously my boredom went away and the fun returned.  

MYTH # 5:  You have been coaching your entire life.  Even if you have been a great listener and confidant all your life, that doesn’t mean what you were doing is coaching or that you were meant to be a coach.   When you get really good professional training it will become obvious that, while what you were doing may have been helpful for people, it wasn’t really professional coaching. 

MYTH #6:  You can make a great living in the beginning.  You can’t charge high fees in the beginning.  Beginner coaches get beginner clients, who pay beginner fees.  That is true in most professions.  The more experience you have under your belt, the higher fee you can charge. 

MYTH #7:  Internet marketing is coaching.   This is a huge misconception and my biggest pet peeve.   You can be a coach who uses internet marketing, or you can be an internet marketer who coaches.   Trying to be both or not being clear about this distinction is a big mistake that beginners make.   Either way is fine, but to really make it work you have to choose. 

Finally the biggest myth in coaching today:

MYTH #8:  You can have a successful coaching business without learning to sell.   I hate to be the one to break it to you, but to fill your coaching practice you must learn to sell.   This has never been more of a reality than in today’s extremely competitive market. With a coach on every corner, the only coaches that will make it will be the ones who can sell in a graceful authentic way.  

Related posts:  

• How Many Years Does It Take to Become a Life Coach?
• 6 Reasons to Run Screaming From a Coach Training School
• Urban Coaching Myth: You Need to Find Your Niche
• Top Ten Worst Reasons to Become a Coach

Can new college grads find work this year, or should they just go home and live with Mom & Dad?

With the unemployment rate still hovering near 10%, new college graduates are having an awful time finding jobs this year. Transitioning from college to adult life is tough enough even when the economy is good. There's getting the job, learning to budget, pay the school loans and still buy the stuff you need, all while navigating your social and love life. That's overwhelming, right there.

But this year? For millions it's easier to just delay the whole process and move back in with the parents. Or maybe apply for graduate school and hope things get better in two more years.

Things are so bad, one frustrated NYC mother started her own website called, Get My Kid Off My Couch, with links to resume, blog, social sites, etc., showing off her daughter's skills, because both of them are desperate to get on with their lives and all it will take is just one little job.

Well here's an alternative. If your son or daughter has good communication skills (Check their cell phone bill, if you're not sure), they may want to upgrade what they already have with coaching skills for a couple of reasons.

1. There are still jobs for people who can coach. I just did a search on Indeed.com for 'coach, coaching or coaches' (and I filtered OUT  sports references like tennis, lacrosse, cheer, football, baseball, softball, basketball, etc., etc.). I got back nearly 75,000 available jobs that require coaching skills. Not bad.

2. Coaching can be a lucrative business. Some college grads are skipping the job treadmill all together and just starting their own businesses. Few businesses are as inexpensive to start up as coaching. There's no inventory, no store front, no staff needed, just a computer and a phone. And good coaching skills.

And by the way, that major transition that students go through from high school to college to first job and beyond? That's a huge coaching niche. Who better to coach young people through these major life stages a than those who have just navigated all that, themselves?

However, a very young coach needs coach training to be credible. Happily, new college grads are already good at being students and coach training costs a lot less than graduate school. And it trains them in something they can actually do, too.

For more info on how to become a coach, visit our Become a Coach Hub

If you're active on social media, then you can't have missed the hoopla over Google Buzz, Google's foray into social networking.

Google gets it right so much of the time, that most of us were surprised when they messed up with Buzz. First off, after testing Buzz internally, Google made some assumptions about how customers would interact with Buzz. Those assumptions led them to integrate Buzz automatically with every Gmail account, instantly giving millions of Gmail users Buzz followers gleaned from their Gmail address books and linking private emails and chats with public social conversations. Whoa Nelly!! That's a major invasion of privacy!

In addition, Buzz links up blogs and social networking profiles, which is kind of a nice touch, but suddenly, millions of people realized that Google knows more about us than we thought and it apparently can't be trusted to use keep all that info private (see above). This prompted Karen Rubin of Hubspot, to comment that Google knows enough about her to build an exact clone. Eew.

Result? A lot of negative buzz on Buzz. And a mild sense of paranoia about what Google was really up to. Google has enjoyed a fantastic reputation for years and the Buzz snafu will hardly bring them down, but even big companies can spoil their success with too many missteps. (Re: Microsoft, AOL)

So what are the take-aways for coaches?

1. All the data in the world doesn't mean you really know what your clients want. Nothing's better than asking and listening, no matter how smart and informed you are or how good you are at what you do.
2. Just because your customers already love what you do, doesn't mean they'll love everything you do. You can build an awesome empire with one fantastic offering (like Google Search).
3. Guard your contacts' identity info even more than you guard your own. People hate having their data spilled out where they don't want it and as a business owner, you are liable if someone's identity is stolen, because of your mistakes.
4. Do Google potential clients and even connect with their social profiles. That's normal and expected these days, but don't collect so much info about them that you creep them out. Stalking is still extremely unattractive.

Bottom line? Be a coach in everything you do. Make it all about others and be sure to ask and listen. That's the foundation of great coaching and great coach marketing. It's why coaching is such a successful business (and why even Google's CEO says everyone needs a coach)

For more ideas on how to do it right:

Download the free Become a Coach eBook.