So, you want to be a life or business coach? That's a great goal to have and many people have amazing success at it. However, for everyone who is able to break into the industry, build a following and earn a decent living from their coaching, there are 15 who don't make it. This isn't to make you think about quitting, but you should know what the odds are before you begin. More importantly, you want to find out what sort of things make other coaches fail - pitfalls that they have already experienced and failed because of - because you can learn how to avoid those same pitfalls that way. Here are the top four reasons why life and business coaches fail, and how to avoid them.
Being to Formulaic: If you use the same method for every single client, you are going to have very limited success. That's because people are all different. One size does not fit all when it comes to coaching, and you need to be flexible enough to try other methods when you see what one particular one isn't working.
Lacking Confidence in Themselves: This is a big reason that coaches fail. They just don't believe in themselves, and so their clients never believe in them either. Even if you never tell your clients that you don't believe in your ability to coach them to success, they are going to know, because people can just sense that sort of thing. Avoid this by making sure to work on yourself first before you start coaching and give yourself positive affirmations every day.
Copying Others: Some people learn one style of coaching, which is a method that they got from a mentor or a training program and they just coach the exact same way; but that's not how leaders work. Followers copy other people but leaders forge their own way and take what others have taught them and develop their own style.
Lack of Persistence: Finally, the last thing that many coaches fail as a result of is a simple lack of persistence. If you continue working at your business, you are eventually going to make it, but it is going to take time. Just like any other business, you're going to have to work to build up a clientele and get it to the point where you are actually making a living from your coaching practice.
Getting Over Your Fear of Failing Your Clients
So, you've taken the giant leap forward to setting up your own coaching practice and while you are excited to start helping people realize their dreams, you are also pretty nervous too. In fact, you might be so nervous that you're not even sure how you are going to meet with your first client. Suddenly, there are all these voices of doubt inside your head, telling you that you're not good enough to be coaching anyone, that your advice sucks and that no one is actually going to pay for coaching with you, and if they do, they're going to be disappointed.
Guess what? Those voices are perfectly normal; unless they start telling you to do other things, that is. Every coach that starts out in the business experiences doubt, and sometimes it can be crippling. So, life coach what do you do to get rid of this doubt and have a successful coaching business? While the only real cure for the voices in your head is some actual experience and time being a coach, and experiencing success, there are some things that you can do to bring your doubts down to a manageable level.
Offer Free Sessions: One thing that you can do is to offer free sessions for a few clients so that you can get some experience coaching. You will be able to coach them without feeling guilty that they are paying you, and those feelings of doubt will slowly disappear once you see that you actually are making a difference.
Do Short Sessions at First: Another idea is to keep your sessions pretty short, so that you can charge less for them, and so that you can get your feet wet with coaching without having to jump in with a full-fledged hour long session.
Practice with Friends or Family: If you have some friends or family members that you could help with their problems, try coaching with them first. It can be intimidating to coach strangers and a few sessions with people you know might allow you to become more comfortable with yourself and your coaching position.
Remind Yourself That You're Supposed to be doing this: Finally, just keep in mind all of the reasons that you started coaching in the first place. Remind yourself that you chose this path because you felt as if you truly had something to offer, and you'll eventually see that you were right the whole time.
4 Mistakes to Avoid When Coaching Online
If you want to be an online coach, you are going to want to get as good as you can at your job before you start taking on clients. That means learning everything you can about coaching, developing a game plan for helping clients and being able to bounce back when someone isn't working properly. It also means making mistakes. Making mistakes is a vital growing part of any new endeavor and while you can't avoid all of them, there are four mistakes that you should avoid making as a new online coach, because it will kill your business before you even get started.
Doing Everything: People that do 'everything' actually get very little done. If you are a writer, a coach, a YouTuber, a web developer and internet marketer and a wife and mother (or husband and father) you are going to find that all of your endeavors will suffer because you are trying to do too much. Just concentrate on a few things, and do them well.
Having a Crappy Website: Unfortunately, one of the other major problems that new coaches suffer from is a terrible website; many coaches seem to want to make the website themselves to save money but they end up with an amateur-looking site that is not going to attract a single person. Make sure that you spend some time and money making your website shine, because it is your face to the online world.
Concentrating Too Much on Training & Certification: Some coaches start their businesses and have enough money to invest and grow their coaching practice, but they end up spending everything they have on training and then wonder why they can't get anyone to sign up; that's not to say that training isn't important - it definitely it - but you want to do just enough training to get you started and invest in your website, equipment, tools and promoting your coaching business.
Not Having Money to Start & Grow Their Business: Finally, many coaches go into the business without any sort of nest egg to build their business with. You'll want some money to invest into your business, because the old adage is right: you have to spend money to make money. You're going to want to have a little bit saved to build your coaching business as well as money saved to live on if you have decided to it full time.