Finding a good life coach who is right for you at prices you agree with can be a perilous frustrating process if you do not know and understand how different and confusing the coaching world is. Unfortunately, you might even fall into the trap of paying the wrong person for the wrong reasons and ending up with nothing to show for the money you paid. But when you become aware of the unique characteristics of the life coaching industry and how to successfully navigate through the options and obstacles involved, you will be able to find the good coach who is right for you to achieve your coaching goals and fulfill your desires on favorable terms. And when you do connect with your ideally matched coach, you will undoubtedly reap the incredible rewards and benefits life coaching was designed to produce for you. Being coached by a very good life coach who is right for you will be more than worth it! You will embark on an enjoyable prosperous adventure that will generate incredible beneficial results for you.
Life Coaching Industry Review
The life coaching industry is not like any other. It is relatively new. Thomas Leonard the architect of the life coaching process inspired the birth of the life coaching industry in about 1992. But today it has morphed into wide open hodge podge disorganized collection of diverse individuals. It is unregulated with no governing bodies. Anyone can call themselves a life coach. And all sorts of over one hundred thousand people call themselves some type of life coach. And they designate any services they dream up and products they sell as coaching. Regardless and even sometimes because of how far removed they are from the process created by Leonard. Thus, the range of services, coaches, products, pricing, qualities, purposes, skills, integrity and promises made in the potential coaching pool is extreme. Furthermore, the industry in a revolving door attracting and loosing thousands of “coaches” every year.
Yet, there are many very good life coaches to pick from because the life coaching process invented by Leonard works exceptionally well when conducted by very good life experienced coaches.
Steps to find a good life coach
Go into the process relaxed and have fun. The good news is that as a potential life coaching client, you are in demand. It’s a buyer’s market. There are far more coaches than clients. Let’s look at the ways you can wade through everything to find a good coach who meets your criteria to achieve the goals you want on your terms. And do so much easier at less cost by minimizing and even eliminating many of the apparent obstacles in front of you.
First step to finding a good life coach
Determine the reasons you want to engage a life coach and the goals you want to achieve first. What results and benefits do you wish to attain through coaching? Be bold. Shoot for the stars. Compare your desired goals to the “Coachable Goals” you will be able to achieve through coaching. Also consider comparing exactly how life coaching works to the other 9 human improvement processes to be sure you feel the life coaching process is the best choice for you.
Determine if you are ready to be coached
The next step is to determine if you are ready to be coached. Being ready is a state of mind only you control. It is not good or bad. You are ready when you are ready. Not when you are not. In essence, being ready means, you are committed to your personal growth through greatly improving your self-awareness and to achieving your chosen coachable goals. You want to move forward not go back. You are motivated to take charge of your life. One of the key ingredients of life coaching. This will be a life and career improving process that will require your efforts and motivations to discover yourself to move forward. Most clients discover they are ready when their gut or intuition guides them.
Evaluating life coaching costs
Determine your desired budget for coaching. Calculate the amount of money you are comfortable with to allow you to afford paying for coaching to completion of your goals that does not create financial strain on you. And stick with it. Borrowing money to pay for coaching has proven to be a bad idea for many reasons.
Just like other aspects of the life coaching field, the life coaching costs and pricing structures are all over the map. Discovering the true charges and contractual demands of coaches is critical and can be tricky. Most coaches do not publish their costs, nor reveal their contracts up front. Many charge by the hour, like lawyers. You want to get their session pricing in writing or from published sources before you consider engaging that coach. To be sure the prices fall within your predetermined budget. If a prospective coach hedges on presenting his or her fees, how can that lead to a trusting relationship? Especially if the coach asks, “How much are you willing to pay,” forcing you into a negotiating position against yourself. Move on to another coach.
Coaching quality not based upon prices
Just because a life coach charges higher fees does not mean you will receive higher quality coaching or generate higher quality results. Or visa versa. Many people feel that the fees coaches charge are too high. In fact, numerous “coaches,” especially “celebrity coaches” charge excessive fees as a sales gimmick to project higher quality coaching, or to promote their “celebrity” status. You may be surprised to discover that you can connect with a very good coach who is right for you at much more reasonable rates.
Coaching Contracts!
Be very careful to avoid signing coaching contracts that bind you to undesirable restrictions, especially to terms longer than approximately one month. Regardless of the discounts and extra products and services thrown in to entice you to execute longer term contracts. Signing coaching contracts is not mandatory, should be shunned, and the good coaches rarely require contracts.
What constitutes a “good” coach.
Your definition of a good coach my vary from what someone else considers a good coach. You will be the ultimate judge of how good your life coach is. There is no coach rating scale. However, we have found that there are several life coach qualifications that virtually all good coaches possess. Unfortunately, experts have also reported that the percentage of coaches who possess these qualifications is low.
Find the good life coach who is ideal for you.
Seek coaches who will be good enough to suit your needs, assist you to achieve your goals, you can afford, whom you respect, trust and connect with personally. You want to develop a positive trusting open, comfortable relationship with your coach, where you feel you are always the center of attention, the king or queen. Select a coach based only on how you feel about the coach from your perspective. Do not settle for any coach. Be picky.
Bill, I have been, and continue to be, so very impressed by TCC and the coaches I “auditioned
In today’s coaching market, it really is time consuming to try to find your ideal coach. The time you spent with me to identify my needs and connect me with potential coaches added enormous value to the experience. I tell my other coaching peers about your organization and recommend they check you out.
Laura Gurreau San Diego, California
Seek life coaches with considerable experience
You want your life coach to have considerable experience being paid to coach one-on-one clients. Not as a manager, or friend, or corporate coach, or group coach, or having “coached all of their lives,” or in training, etc. A good rule of thumb is that you want a life coach who has been coaching professionally for over 3 years and has coached over 100 individual clients.
You also want your life coach to have high success rates coaching others like you to the same goals. And be highly motivated to coach you because he or she knows you are their ideal client. Life coaches have different experiences, desires, strengths, and chosen specialties. The best life coaches know the types of people they really enjoy and connect with. Go with winning coaches who know they want to coach you.
Discount coaching credentials
There are over 60 different coach “certifications” that are purchased as marketing tools to promote credentialed coaches as better than others. Most “certifications” are granted to graduates of one of the over 620 for profit coach training schools, or by various coaching associations to capture coaches as continued dues paying members. There is little indication that coaches with certifications become better coaches. In fact, some of the most successful “very good” life coaches have no certifications and never attended a coach training school.
Thomas Leonard consistently claimed that the only way to become an exceptional life coach was to coach, even though he was the force behind establishing 3 major coaching schools and the first major coaching association. Thus, even the brilliant mind behind creating the remarkable life coaching process recognized that coaching experience is a much better indicator of determining the quality of a coach, versus their credentials.
Experience live coaching beforehand
The best way to find a good life coach is to test drive several life coaches towards your stated “Coachable Goals.” Conduct real-life coaching sessions with at least three life coaches, before you make your final selection. This way you will discover enough about their styles, their personalities, their skills and their genuine interest in you as a person to consider all the factors described above to select the life coach who will be ideal for you.
We have found that conducting coaching sessions over the telephone, (without visual contacts like videos or photos) has proven to be the most effective, least costly and most enjoyable method. Avoiding face-to-face coaching will be a good move. Plus, you can now easily find the good coach for you without geographical constraints by tapping into the entire English-speaking world.
You also want the sessions to be devoid of any form of sales or pressure tactics. The life coaching process cannot be sold. If you feel any sales, guilt, or pressure tactics from a coach, stop, and move on! You want to experience their true coaching, so you will get a clear picture of what you can expect from their future coaching. Inside tip: virtually all good coaches with the “gift of coaching” try to avoid sales and/or self-promotion. Not in their genes.
Possible sources to find a good coach
There are many potential sources for you to discover, connect with and research life coaches for you select from. We have attempted to list a healthy range of options for you to consider.
Get accurate recommendations from trusted friends about their coaching experiences. Learn how they felt their coach treated them, and what they accomplished in the process. And if possible, their professional coaching experiences.
Search the Internet for life coaches. But you must dig very deep into the search engines (Pages 25-100 or more) to find the good life coaches who are not paying big money for placements, marketing, and advertising and who will finally show up because they are not blocked by Google’s zip code algorithm restrictions. Google treats the life coaching process like buying a pizza where they only show life coaches who are physically closest to your zip code, as if they were pizza parlors.
When researching coach websites, you want to consider that the good (read best) coaches have the “Gift of Coaching” where they focus only on you making you the true center of attention. As such they are reluctant even unskilled at promoting themselves. Investigate their actual coaching experiences and read their testimonials, to get a sense of how they relate to being a coach. But try to minimize even avoid considering their backgrounds, expertise, and physical appearance. You are not hiring an expert in any subject, or someone who has a similar background. You want your coach to be an objective nonjudgemental mirror to reveal you to you, without bias or superiority.
Consider using coach warehouse services to find a good coach. These include, Noomii, Bark, the ICF get coaching, Tony Robbins Coaching, and others. They are organized so coaches pay for the marketing services, sometimes with the appearance of some form of coach screening.
And of course, you can use The Coach Connection where we provide a No Risk Guarantee that you will find and connect with the good coach who is best for you, with just one call. And No Contract. Because TCC guarantees that you be matched with your ideal life coach who is a highly screened very good experienced coach with the special “Gift of Coaching”. Vetting over 4,850 coaches to accept only 91 is not an easy job.
Have fun and good luck!
Blog Author
Brought to you by Bill Dueease Founder/President of The Coach Connection who struggled through the same process to find the good life coach who was right for him, after going through 27 coaches in 6 months. And find him he did. Bill is not a coach, but a thrilled coachee. Through the remarkable coaching self-awareness process he discovered his passion and talents were to create and operate TCC so that others would be able to find and select their ideal life coach with only one call and avoid all the pitfalls he encountered. He shares his full story in his online book entitled “Go To Play Every Day and call it work” which he has been enjoying since 2001.
Conversations are sales FREE,
obligation FREE, and Very Confidential
