The steps to becoming a life coach may appear fairly simple, but few people who start out on this path ever become a life coach.  Or at least one that is able to make a living as a coach.  It’s not that the steps to becoming a life coach are so difficult that only the extremely bright and talented can become a life coach.  And it’s not even that there are a lot of obstacles in the way to become a life coach.  There is only one real obstacle.  It is so menacing, however, that it makes the steps to becoming a life coach almost seems impossible.

Exiting Your Comfort Zone is the Most Integral of the Steps to Becoming a Life Coach

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The biggest obstacle to become a life coach is moving outside your existing comfort zone.  To do this you will experience pain of some sort.  What this looks like is having everything that you want to achieve when you become a life coach locked behind a door; a door that’s guarded by a big, formidable creature, with a sword.  As you begin taking steps to becoming a coach, you get closer to your opponent.  He becomes a greater and greater threat and instinctively, you’ll probably want to back away.  If we’re honest with ourselves, most of us are not like Rambo.

Even Though Leaving Your Comfort Zone to Become a Life Coach Will be Painful, You Must Weigh the Consequences of Staying Where You Are

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Taking those steps to becoming a life coach, or whatever that big goal might be, come with pain and risks.  But isn’t staying where you are filled with pain and risk?  When you think of it, if you stay right where you are, chances are that life will gradually get worse over time.  If pain and challenges are going to come your way inevitably, why not become a life coach or go after your dream?  At least you will have a chance of living the life you want.

One of the most important things to understand if you want to become a life coach is that most people move to avoid pain.  One of the steps to becoming a life coach is to face your own fears and expand your own comfort zones.  Don’t lie to your clients and lead them to believe that you can help them achieve their goals without pain.  Become a life coach who recognizes pain will come into our lives whether we take ‘risks’ or not.  The only power is deciding to move forward and to control your own destiny.

Colette Seymann

JTS Advisors Bi-Designated Strategy and Accountability Coach

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We all have this old school philosophy we have to have certain graces and an air of professionalism if we want to become a life coach.  We study all the steps to becoming a life coach, but fail to be candid and even brutally honest at times when it is needed most because we don’t want to break rapport.  But if you really want to become a life coach, you’ll have to learn how to get past the professional graces and superficial conversations.  Here are 3 steps to becoming a life coach to help you not only do that, but to start actually enrolling clients in as little as 15 minutes.

3 Steps to Becoming A Life Coach Who Can Enroll Clients with Ease

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The first of these three steps to becoming a life coach is to ‘ask.’  Questions like, “What are your problems?” or “What is the outcome that you want to achieve?”  Take very exacting notes or keep an accurate mental record of exactly what the client tells you.  Not just what they tell you, but what they meant.  You want to become a life coach who can get past the explicit communication and get to the implicit.

Become a Life Coach Who Knows How to Respond

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The second of these three steps to becoming a life coach is to feed the information back to them.  Become a life coach who attempts to communicate the implicit meanings and problem behind the problem.  For example you might say, “What I’m hearing that you want is to increase your sales force,” or, “What I’m hearing is that you need a system or method of bringing sales people to you.”  You might feel like you are guessing, but you can always just clarify by asking, “Would that be fair to say?”  Your clients know the problem, but if you state the problem in a clearer way than they can, they will automatically assume you will have the solution to their problem.  And by simply feeding the information back to them, it will cause a feeling of being understood.  If you haven’t been able to establish this level of rapport before, you will now on the level of a trusted friend.

How You Will Become a Life Coach that Can Help Your Client

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The last of these three steps to becoming a life coach is to ‘close.’  If you have followed these steps up to this point, you can be bold.  You may start with, “Let me tell you what we do, and we’ll see if maybe it’s a match…”  Become a life coach who can talk about what you do that fixes their specific problems and delivers their specific desired outcomes.  Don’t talk about all the rest of the stuff you do.   Only talk about what applies to them.  You want to connect the dots between what they want and your product. Explain HOW and WHY it will give them the results they want.  Then you may want to give them time to ask any questions.  Then simply state, “This is what we need to do to get started…”  Arrange the logistics, set up appointments, and set up payment.

Seeing Results from These Steps to Becoming a Life Coach

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If you follow these three simple steps to becoming a life coach who can enroll new clients, you will be well on your way to having a full calendar.  Be confident and know that it is only when you enroll them that you can become a life coach who truly makes a difference in the lives of others.

Colette Seymann

JTS Advisors Designated Accountability Coach

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There are so many steps to becoming a life coach. Consequently, many coaches spend all their time and energy taking coach training courses instead of taking action. Where do you start? After watching my daughter’s gymnastic class, it became clear that coach training is not much different than training for other sports. I developed these 5 steps to becoming a life coach:

Coach Training Step #1: Focus on Your Goals

The first of the steps to becoming a life coach is to focus on what you want. Even the 6 and 7 year olds in my daughter’s recreational gymnastic class are deliberate. They inspired me with their ability to focus on the coach’s demonstration, watch their classmates and then take their turns. Sure there might be a momentary lapse in concentration while they look to see if a parent is watching them, but even this is rare. At what level are you playing in your coach training? Where is your focus?

Coach Training Step #2: Be Coached

The second of the steps to becoming a life coach is to get coaching and participate in a coach training program. You will learn strategy to help break down the steps to get you on your way, work on the basics with supervision, and be empowered by a peer group with similar goals.

Coach Training Step #3: Put in Some Elbow Grease

The third of the steps to becoming a life coach is to be prepared to work. With all your knowledge and coach training, are you letting fear stop you from taking steps? We all have ‘reasons’ why we can’t succeed. If we just do what we can, each step of the way we’ll find ourselves halfway to our goals before we know it. The girls I watched were outside their comfort zones, even with safety equipment and someone to spot them. Set up support structure for yourself. Develop a success team.

Coach Training Step #4: Practice Makes Perfect

The fourth of the steps to becoming a life coach is to practice, practices, practice. The only way to master the coach training is through repetition. Understanding alone is worthless. Make sure you reflect and get feedback along the way. One of the keys to mastery is to look at performance and to see what was great, what could be better, and then make appropriate changes.

Coach Training Step #5: Celebrate Achievements

The fifth and final of the steps to becoming a life coach is to celebrate your victories along the way. In my daughter’s gymnastics class they have a skills list, and they check off each skill as it is mastered. In coach training there are also specific skills that need to be mastered. They don’t wait for the big wins to celebrate, and neither should you. It’s nice to see progress, but beyond that celebrating a win is the key to fulfillment. Without fulfillment, achieving goals is hollow and empty.

Colette Seymann

JTS Advisors Designated Accountability Coach

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Become a Master Coach by Utilizing These Steps to Becoming a Life Coach

There are several key steps to becoming a life coach who achieves mastery in coaching.  Life coaching training will make coaching as second nature as tying your shoes, eating, or performing other commonplace activities.  Human beings are learning machines, and the process of learning never stops.  Once you are aware of the steps to becoming a life coach who achieves mastery in coaching; the process becomes an enjoyable adventure rather than a frightening task.  One of they keys to life coaching training is to take advantage of and be prepared for new challenges and learning opportunities – if you are on the court, you should be learning.  

Step 1:  Vision – Unconscious Incompetence.  

The first of the steps to becoming a life coach is acknowledging that your coaching dream is possible.  This stage is described as unconscious incompetence, because you are unaware of your lack of ability and of the education that required to be a coach.  You have fun as you think about life coaching training and talk about it to your friends whenever possible.  You acknowledge your coaching dream is POSSIBLE and create a DESIRE in your heart.  Most coaches enjoy this stage; it is both fun and exciting.

Step 2:  Resolve – Conscious Incompetence.  

After you have created your coaching vision in the second of the steps to becoming a life coach you become conscious of your incompetence.  Many coaches never enter this stage because it is too difficult for them.  Some quickly drop out of life coaching training while others are overwhelmed with how much education is required to be a coach.  The only way to continue coaching is to have a high level of resolve toward your coaching dream.  This stage is not necessarily the longest, but may feel like it.  If you’ve made it this far you should reward yourself, the majority of new coaches leave the process before getting to this far.  Try to make it fun and know that every day you enter in resolve is a victory.

Step 3:  Pursuit – Conscious Competence:  

The next of the steps to becoming a life coach, is the pursuit stage.  By putting your life coaching training into action you begin to create some of the coaching results you desire, though each result takes painstaking thought and conscious discipline to achieve.  You have to plan and design every effort to go on as a coach.  In Stage 2 you are working hard, but not getting results.  At this stage you continue to put forth the same amount of effort but you begin to see some of the fruits of your labor.   For many this is the longest stage, lasting years.

Step 4:  Identity – Unconscious Mastery:  

In the last of the steps to becoming a life coach you no longer think in order to create your desired outcome.  You also are able to improve without effort.  You have mastery and are sought after by others to teach life coaching training courses.   You are a master coach. 

Preparedness is Key to Life Coaching Training

While of these steps to becoming a life coach is unique, it is consistently important for you to be prepared for whatever stage of life coaching training you are in.   Knowing that the challenges you face in the earlier stages are common to others may help you persevere until you reach the latter stages.  Once you reach the latter stages you will find motivation in the results you achieve.  

Colette Seymann

JTS Advisors Designated Accountability Coach

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What steps to becoming a life coach do you need to get into a state of mind where you know you can make a difference in someone’s life in a single session?

Why become a life coach when there are so many easier jobs out there? Why become a life coach when you wonder how you will ever find clients? Why become a life coach when sometimes you just don’t feel up making a powerful difference in someone’s life?

Why become a life coach when you feel like the odds are stacked against you?

Because you will experience growth beyond your wildest dreams. And here are a few steps to becoming a life coach when you feel you can’t go on…or any other time you want to go from feeling average to awesome.

1. Focus: These are the first steps to becoming a life coach who can change their state of mind. Use these questions when you start wondering “Why become a coach?”, or any time you want to feel your best:

What am I happy about in my life right now?

What about that makes me happy? How does that make me feel?

What am I excited about in my life right now?

What about that makes me excited? How does that make me feel?

What am I most proud of in my life right now?

What am I grateful for in my life right now?

What am I committed to in my life right now?

2. Peak Flow Process: The next steps to becoming a life coach who can go from sluggish to successful are to remember a time when you coached perfectly (or near perfect). See what you saw at the time. Hear what you heard. Feel the same feelings. Play the memory like a movie as if you are there. When you reach the pinnacle of your performance, make a “power move” (some physical move that’s unique and reflects the mood of that state of mind) to anchor those feelings. Something like raising your arm in the arm and yelling “yeah!” Repeat this 5 times with different experiences.

3. Quality Quantifier: The next of the steps to becoming a life coach who knows how to get ready for a great performance is to ask yourself: “on a scale from 0-10, how effective do I feel I will be right now?”, then decide what you need to believe, focus on, notice, or add to your state to raise your performance to a higher level in this moment. When you get that, make your power move again. Yeah!

4. Affirmations: This is the last of the steps to becoming life coach who can dig up what it takes to have a great coaching session. This is your “anchor” to your pinnacle level of coaching performance. Make sure you use gestures, movement within your body and breathing when you declare your affirmation. Speak out loud with volume and intensity, use inspirational music and art. Steal language from any source that gives you excitement, inspiration, confidence, etc. Some examples include poetry, monologues from movies, books, songs, words from a role model or mentor.

If you use these steps to becoming a life coach on a regular basis, you will know what to do when you are having one of these moments when you find yourself asking, “Why become a coach?”.

Colette Seymann

JTS Advisors Accountability Coach

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Is the Top Life Coaching School in America Teaching the Steps to Becoming a Life Coach With “Client Getting” Power?

I just talked with a few principles from some of the top coaching schools in America, and I realized that although they may understand the steps to becoming a life coach, they seem to not care about teaching it to their students.  A certified life coach has some real challenges in front of them if they are to get coaching clients in this marketplace, and you aren’t going to learn how to get clients from most of the top coaching schools in America.  

Why?  

Because you aren’t DEMANDING that they teach you how to get clients.  

Yes, I think it’s your responsibility to demand this type of training from these coaches training institutions and for you to let them know how ineffective their trainings are in teaching you the steps to becoming a life coach that can get paying coaching clients (even if they are effective in helping you become a certified life coach).  

I Could Blame Them for Making You a Certified Life Coach Without Giving You The Skills to Survive

I could say that the top coaching schools in America are irresponsible in their endeavour to help coaches learn how to get clients, and perhaps I would be right in saying that.  But, I’m not the one to say who’s responsibility it is to teach new coaches the steps to becoming a life coach (although I would assume it SHOULD be these so-called “coach training institutes”).  Personally I feel a responsibility to help every coach that goes through my training learn the steps to becoming a life coach that can get clients any time they want.  

Even though I’m not a certified life coach, I feel very confident that any time I want to get more coaching clients, I can just go out and promote a bit, call some past clients, and ‘voila’, I’ll have high paying clients.  You got to understand how great it feels to have the knowledge that you can subsidize your income and always just pull the trigger on a few things and then have more paying coaching clients.  The steps to becoming a life coach were challenging to figure out and learn because no one had combined all the most important information about becoming a certified life coach with paying clients in one area, along with a system for understanding how to use it.  

How a Certified Life Coach, Ignorant of the Right Business Skills, Fails to Understand the Steps to Becoming a Life Coach with an Effortlessly Growing Practice

But most coaches haven’t the foggiest idea how to get paying coaching clients, or worse, they THINK they know how to get paying coaching clients… and they’re dead wrong.

I had a coach come up to me the other day, very excited to show me their new website.  It WAS a good looking website.  They told me how they were going to make SO MUCH MONEY and get SO MANY CLIENTS with their shiny new website.  I didn’t have the heart to tell them that their website wasn’t going to make them a dime because of they way it was constructed.  This coach was a certified life coach and they simply didn’t know the steps to become a life coach who could effortlessly build their practice.  They probably shelled out at least $500 and time / money they didn’t have in order to get that website up.  the funny thing is that this kind of ‘coaching tragedy’ is happening every day.  

With the Accredited Coaching Schools out There, I Doubt You’ll Be Well Enough Equipped

It’s a jungle out there when it comes to coaching schools and what they are teaching you.  The steps to becoming a life coach can be long and quite hard without the proper life coach education.  A certified life coach needs to be careful of the ICF (International Coaches Federation) and their ‘accredited coaching school’ referral service, because it conveys a false sense of security based upon the dream of having lots of coaching clients because you learned some magic coaching trick (there are magic coaching tricks, but they don’t guarantee paying clients).  

Jeffrey T. Sooey

CEO, JTS Advisors

Founder, Coaches Training Blog community

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