The Dark Side to Life Coaching

Does it feel like everyone seems to be a life coach these days?

Or that life coaching is everywhere?

It hit home for me when Jackie on Roseanne turns up in the reboot as…you guessed it! A life coach. Which = #awesome.

I’ve been a successful coach for 6 years, which has felt like a lot longer because I’m not just a coach, I’m a business owner.

So that means I feel like I age in dog years.

And it’s been the most amazing, fun, profitable, and personally fulfilling career I’ve ever had.

But, it’s not all unicorns and flowers (despite what you may see in your Facebook newsfeed). So oh my gosh, can we all stop pretending it’s magical and just tell the truth for a second?

Ready? Here it is:

Being uncomfortable all the time is tiring

When I was a consultant, I reached a place of “cruise” with a hint of boredom, meaning, I knew how to do my job and what was expected. There wasn’t a ton to learn in order to succeed.

You know the feeling: You waft into a meeting with one eye open, knowing what to expect, and half of your mind is on lunch, 20% is thinking about the meeting, and the rest is secretly responding to an annoying email.

So much has changed!

When I become a coach, starting with my career coaching business, The Revolutionary Club, I didn’t initially realize I was entering three new industries with three separate areas of expertise, all of which needed me to stay informed and up-to-date. The three industries were:

1. Coaching
2. Career expert (keeping up with LinkedIn alone is tiring)
3. Business owner

And the second I get comfortable with something, it gets pulled out from beneath me. LinkedIn changes their posting policy which affects hiring, a new social media tool is introduced which affects marketing, and a new book or methodology in personal development is published which is helpful to coaching.

I have to learn new things ALL THE TIME. Which means I’m uncomfortable…all the time.

It’s gotten easier as my team has grown and I can outsource certain levels of discomfort to them (hello paid advertising!), but I still need to keep informed.

I’ve never wanted to go back, but just for a moment last year a friend was talking about how she’s hit a new level of recognition in her industry and how much she likes her job after doing it well for so many years, and a part of me was like “oh wow, it would be nice to just feel comfortable for a second.”

It’s hard to make every decision, every day, all the time.

I love being able to be in control of my destiny, choosing how I will spend my time, which projects to work on, and the strategy behind my coaching business.

But I never thought that sometimes I’d miss having other decision makers working with me.

When you become a full-time life coach, you are also most likely becoming a full-time entrepreneur. So not only are you making decisions about your clients, you are making decisions about where to market your business, what to charge, what legal contracts to put in place, what kind of branding to use, how to structure your day, when to hire employees, how to train them, how to handle difficult clients and so on and so forth.

It’s a pretty endless list.

I can remember, early in my business, my now-husband asking me if I wanted ketchup or mustard with my burger at dinner.

My answer was “….”

I literally had no more decision making power left! Which is crazy, as the correct answer is clearly both :).

But back to decisions: Forbes tells us that “decision-making power is a depletable resource” and I have FELT that.

It’s weird losing your ability to plan in your personal life, because your coaching business has taken every last decision making ability from you.

But it happens.

It can be lonely

I’m an introvert who sometimes seems like an extrovert.

But I like being alone.

However, I never realized how lonely I’d be in the very beginning, before I managed to build my team and my peer community.

I was lonely.

I was scared.

And it was easy to fall prey to anxiety and worry.

It’s tough when you are on a career path that is still considered a little *different* by those who aren’t familiar with it, and when you are trying to forge ahead and build something special.

I can look at my success with both the Revolutionary Club and Coach Pony and know that I’ve done it, I’ve built that path.

But my team works remotely.

I work from home because I like wearing PJs.

And every now and again, I miss being able to just have a happy hour with the people who share their career with mine.

It’s a *tiny* violin complaint, and one that doesn’t bother me in the way it used to before. With Skype, email, and conferences I can get plenty of the personal, but every now and again I feel lonely in a way that I never did as an employee in a big office.

The good news for you

Now that I’ve rained on your parade of being a life coach, I just want to say one thing: My worst day as a coach is better than my best day in any of my previous careers.

I’ve never once regretted it.

And for every hard moment, there’s an exponentially greater amount of awesomeness.

So if this path is for you, go in with your eyes open and don’t be *too* scared! (It’s okay to be a little scared).

You can do this.

But before you begin, this will *definitely* help

I’ve got a fancy-pants free guide on how to *actually* make money as a coach, which is fun, witty, and informative. So grab some tea and coffee and read it now. Wine is also allowed :).

Grab it here.

H?ey! Christie Mims is the Founder of the Forbes Top 100 Career Site, The Revolutionary Club, and the creator of Coach Pony, a safe space for life coaches to learn the business side of coaching. Grab tons of fancy-pants free and helpful resources (with a side of chocolate and wine) right here: www.coachpony.com