Does Becoming a Life Coach
Sound Interesting?

Becoming a life coach, and creating a life coach career for yourself can be very rewarding in a lot of ways. But like any other important decision that you make, it is important to do your research before you dive in head first. So before I discuss how to become a life coach, you'll want to check out the waters and be sure that becoming a life coach is the right life choice for you. You need to learn if your "who" would work in the life coaching profession and learn the answer to the question, what do coaches do?.

I suspect it is also important to you to learn if there is a demand and what the potential for acceptable life coach career income potential actually is. And finally, it is important to research various life coach courses to figure out which one is right for you.

Who Becomes a Life Coach?

People from all backgrounds, cultures, and countries, and with all kinds of personalities and temperaments can have a successful and rewarding life coach career. But there are four important qualities that are foundational to the "who" of all effective life coaches.

• They have a high level of self-awareness
• They have the desire and the ability to listen .... really Listen
• They have a strong belief in the intrinsic worth of every person.
• They get really excited when they see people succeed.

There are other qualities and abilities a person should strive to develop if interested in becoming a life coach.

• Building Rapport: Rapport building means making and keeping trusting, comfortable connections with people.
• Demonstrating Respect: Respect is an action verb in this case. It means to treat people with kindness, courtesy, and believe the best of them.
• Good Interpersonal Communication Skills: This takes us back to Listening. An effective life coach not only to listens, but asks great questions. He or she understands that the spoken words are often if not usually, the least reliable measure of a person's meaning.
• Curiosity and an Intuitive Appreciation for Differences; Curiosity is a strong emotion that leads a life coach to exploration, investigation, and learning about many things, but especially about the people they coach.
• Confidence: A good coach will have confidence in themselves, with their intuition, and with their coaching skills and abilities.
• Speaks Honestly and with Kindness: An honest coach knows how to be direct and honest with her clients, often when the truth is difficult to handle.
• Committed, Accountable, and Flexible: Following through on commitments, being accountable for his or her actions and able to hold others accountable ... all while remaining flexible and understanding.
• The vast majority of successful coaches also have the desire and the ability to be in business for themselves.

What Do Coaches Do?

See the page called What Do Coaches Do? for a description of what coaches actually do for clients during sessions. But the time spent actually coaching clients isn't all they do. Most life coaches are small-business owners. And not everyone is cut out to be a small business owner. There are many tasks that coaches are responsible for that you should be aware of if you are interested in becoming a life coach and one of the most daunting is the marketing task.

If a life coach career is going to work, coaches must have clients and that means they must market their services. And they need to manage their clients along with the finances and records. That means learning about, setting up, and managing technologies such as Social Media; Email,telephone and voicemail systems; Blogs and Website; Newsletters; Scheduling and Calendaring; and Bookkeeping systems.

That list of tasks necessary for successfully becoming a life coach can seem overwhelming but there is relief in the form of other entrepreneurs whose business it is to help Coaches with all that.

Go to Positive Changes Coach home page from Becoming a Life Coach