How Not To Get Taken By Life Coaching Training (Or By A Life Coach)

I’m going to take a break from writing about founders this week because I want to address a New York Times article that talks about some of the absurd promises that some life coaching training programs make.

(Don’t worry, there is also some guidance for founders who are looking for coaches in the paragraphs below.)

This past Sunday the New York Times ran an article entitled, “They Spent Their Life Savings on Life Coaching.”

The article focuses on a number of unnamed, “credible” coaching schools that apparently promise people they will get “everything they need to make their first $100,000” in exchange for tuition payments that were thousands of dollars. In one case, someone pulled $18,000 out of her 401(k) to pay to enroll in such a program. The participants said they were victims and repeatedly pressured to spend money they didn’t have.

Is this true? Is “life coaching,” or at least certification for life coaching, a pyramid scheme in which people are bullied to pay money and told that “to be a coach, you have to have a coach?”

Absolutely.

Coaching has grown exponentially in its prevalence and impact. As coaching has grown, there has come with it an underbelly that is shady and manipulative.

(Like much of the online world.)

I’ve been a full time coach for eight years and I have seen, over and over again, people make inappropriately aggressive promises of quick riches in the coaching world. It’s only gotten worse.

People are told that if only they sign up for the right program or build the right sales funnel or use the right paid ads approach they can easily make it as a life coach.

Even if they have had no prior career success.

I can assure you that making a full time living as a coach is not easy and you will certainly not learn what you need in a weekend course.

Or even a course that takes months or years.

And you certainly will not make it with Facebook ads or sales funnels (though those can be helpful later).

It takes sustained effort and deep personal work to become an effective coach.

Building a sustainable coaching business will test you. It will be uncomfortable.

But you CAN do it if you are willing to put in the time.

While there are people who will make unrealistic promises, for the most part they are easily avoided.

This article will show you some of the red flags.

There Is No Short Cut

I had a twenty-seven year corporate career before I went out on my own as I coach. I had managed people, teams, and multi-million dollar client relationships for decades. I also had a twenty-plus year meditation practice and had closely studied with multiple teachers.

It still took me years to build my business, and even after eight years of full time coaching I continue to grow.

Needless to say, most people who enter coaching don’t have that background. Frankly, most trainers of coaches don’t have that background, either.

If someone says you don’t need that kind of work or background if only you take their shortcut, avoid them.

You Have To Be Willing To Fail

You will not enroll coaching clients easily at first. You can imitate the people you see on social media, but people will see through that. Most critically, YOU will not be confident doing it and people will pick up on that very quickly. As much experience as I had before I started coaching, it took me a couple years before I was comfortable enrolling clients and it is a skill that I believe can never be fully mastered.

And that’s before you actually coach anyone.

At this point I have had thousands of coaching and enrollment conversations. I have been working with some people for years, through several career and life shifts. I still feel like a beginner a lot of the time.

If you’re not willing to feel new and uncomfortable for a long time, you might want to consider something else.

If someone tells you that they can do the hard parts of building a coaching business for you, avoid them.

Building a coaching business IS the hard part.

You Will Probably Not Be More Successful Than Your Previous Employment

Don’t think that coaching will somehow rocket you past your prior work experience.

The people who are most successful as coaches didn’t leave unsuccessful careers. With very few exceptions, they were already successful when they decided to become coaches. Some have decades of previous experience.

If someone tells you prior experience is not necessary or relevant for coaching “riches,” avoid them.

If It Sounds Too Good To Be True...

It is. There are plenty of credible people in this field who are actually helping coaches succeed. Every one of them says that becoming a coach takes time and is a lot of hard work.

That said, if you're willing to do the work, coaching is an amazing occupation that I continue to love and recommend. And if you reach out to me I can tell you about a LOT of resources, much of them free or very low cost, that can help. (People who immediately come to mind as excellent in this field include Rich Litvin, Steve Chandler, Carolyn Freyer-Jones, Townsend Wardlaw, Michael Neill, and John Patrick Morgan.)

I’m happy to share my personal experiences, pro and con, along the way.

How Not To Hire A Fly-By-Night Life Coach

For those of you who are looking for a coach and are now scared that you’ll get taken by a coach who really isn’t qualified, I have good news.

You’ll be able to smell most of these folks a mile away. Their insecurity and neediness will be readily apparent.

But just in case...

Make sure you’ve had the experience of being coached. I work with most people for a year or more and I make sure we both have an experience of working with each other before I am willing to commit. I want them to feel the same way. They are going to share things with me that most of them don’t even tell their spouses.

Just as clients worry about coaches, good coaches worry about clients who won’t do the work. Good coaches are auditioning you just as you are auditioning them.

Get a referral from someone you trust. Many of my clients come through referral. While a client might look at what I post on social media, they generally do so AFTER they’ve heard about me from someone they trust.

Ask about other clients. It’s perfectly appropriate to ask about other clients.

Don’t shop based on price. A high fee or a low fee may be totally independent of how good a coach is. Looking for the cheapest coach is generally not recommended. That said, the most expensive coach may not be the best one for you either, depending on what you are looking for.

Make sure the coach is good at what you actually need. I had a client decide to try a different program than mine. The program was shorter and cheaper than what I was suggesting, but it wasn’t really addressing what the client needed. Because of that, the client is now going to have to pay for my coaching, too. Solving the issue once is almost always cheaper than trying to solve it multiple times. That said, most people try a lot of things before they settle on a coach. I even use “What else have you tried?” as a barometer to assess if they are ready for coaching with me. A credible coach will be honest with you if they don’t feel like you are a good fit.

Does This Resonate?

I’ve put together a video on how to hire a coach that goes into these issues in a bit more detail. Drop a comment or send a message and I will be happy to send it along.

Whether you’re a coach or a founder looking for a coach, f you want to explore topics like this in more depth, you’re not alone.

More and more people like you are coming out of the spiritual closet and seeing their work, and what they want to create, as a vital personal journey to both abundance and meaning. To the joy of feeling alive and “on purpose.”

This is what I write about. For founders, for original thinkers, no matter where they are in their transformation.

The world needs YOU, in all your brilliance and imperfection.

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video .

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