You are actually doing a disservice to your life coaching clients if you continue to offer free personal coach services. Most people aren’t really committed to life coaching unless they have enrolled. How valuable do they see you as a free personal coach is not the biggest issue. The biggest issue is that you are really dis-empowering your life coaching clients if you don’t get them to commit to the process. When you continue to offer free personal coach services you allow people to straddle the fence between committing to coaching and deciding not to be involved.

It’s Alright to Be a Free Personal Coach for a Limited Time

I’m not suggesting that you never allow yourself to offer free personal coach services. There may be the occasional life coaching client that simply does not have financial resources to pay you. If that’s the case, one or two free personal coach sessions should be adequate to get them to a place where they can afford to pay you something. Even if it’s only $20 per session, they are committing their hard earned money to the process of life coaching. Those clients will take your coaching much more seriously the moment they decide to invest in your life coaching services.

Offering Too Much Free Life Coaching Actually Enables Your Clients to Stay ‘Stuck’

Another reason why you shouldn’t offer free personal coach services for more than a few sessions is that you actually begin to enable those life coaching clients. You buy into their story that they don’t have money, can’t get money, and are thereby ‘stuck.’ You are helping to maintain their limiting beliefs that they can’t do better.

Don’t Count on the Future for Life Coaching Salary

They haven’t committed, yet they have you as their own free personal coach. Why marry the cow when you get your milk for free? I’ve never had a life coaching client spontaneously tell me that he/she has received a big windfall of money and has decided to pay me retroactively for all that I’ve helped him/her achieve. If your clients really can’t afford your fees, you can give them options. One is to offer group life coaching at a rate people can afford. Another is to set a baseline rate that they commit to and every month increase that rate by a reasonable amount as they start to get results. What happens if they stumble one month and can’t afford the increase? You have the opportunity to forgive. And that will create more loyalty in your relationships that you will never have by giving away your services as a free personal coach.

Colette Seymann
JTS Advisors Bi-Designated Strategy and Accountability Coach