Mistake #1: Avoiding face-to-face training

Coaches who try to learn how to coach from manuals and limited (anything less than 50 hours of training) training generally struggle to achieve the success that is possible.

How to avoid this mistake:

The reality is, when you’re coaching your clients you will be coaching them both on the phone and face-to-face. You MUST learn how to do this advanced technique and the only way to learn this is through seeing successful coaches demonstrate it, and then you practice it with supervision. Learning through manuals is only part of the picture and your success is accelerated when you participate in a live training.

Mistake #2: Not specialising

People who remain “Life Coaches” and who don’t develop a special niche or area of expertise earn much less than specialist coaches.

How to avoid this mistake:

Choose a program that teaches you how to develop your own niche from someone who has already done it. You need to also learn about a number of niches so you will eventually be able to explore which niches you might like to specialise in. (Start to learn about niches immediately, but allow 12 to 18 months of starting your training before you specialise, unless you already know what you want to focus on.) The simple reality is that coaches who specialise earn more than double that of “generalist” coaches who don’t specialise. Niches can include (this is not the whole list):

• Spiritual Coaching
• Career Coaching
• Leadership Coaching
• Image Coaching
• Parent Coaching
• Business Coaching
• Executive Coaching
• Sales Coaching

Mistake #3: Not enough focus on marketing

Most people (more than 90%) start their training with us with no experience of marketing. Too many new coaches are strong at coaching but have little clue about how to market their business. The clients are there if you know how to reach them. The best coach in the world will not succeed unless people know they are there!

How to avoid this mistake:

Firstly, you MUST choose a Life Coaching School that will provide extensive training in marketing your coaching practice. This training needs to take the form of classes, Webinars, manuals, demonstrations, support, and mentoring of a recommended minimum 6 months of training. The more our students learn about marketing, the more success they can create. We have coaches who haven’t graduated yet who are already earning six figure incomes because they know how to reach their audience.

Mistake #4: Rely only on one-on-one coaching for their full-time income

In the E-Myth, Gerber talks about the “entrepreneurial seizure’ that people have – they go into business because they love something, but when they have a holiday, so does their income. This is not a business, it’s a hobby or a “Mum and Pop Store”. A BUSINESS has sustainable income even when the business owner is not there. Too many coaches ignore this when they first start out. If you plan on staying part-time, then you can disregard this. If you plan on coaching full-time within the next 2 years, then we strongly suggest learning these skills.

How to avoid this mistake:

We strongly recommend you learn about “multiple sources of income” as early as possible, say, within 6 months of starting your training. This can include developing a CD, a DVD, a series of articles, an online membership business, a training company, an agency of coaches, a series of teleclasses, downloadable e-books and e-classes...

The Coaching Institute is the ONLY Life Coaching School that provides this training, through its Diploma Diamond Club Membership.

Like all things in life worth having, there is no guarantee this will work for you. There is, however, a complete system that when followed has assisted hundreds of people to experience more success than they have ever experienced before in their lives!

Ask yourself, what are the moments you feel most proud of in your life? Was it when the opportunity was easy to achieve? Or was it when you had to stretch yourself in some way, and as a result of this you learned that you had more in you than you realised!

Success without fulfilment is failure. Fulfilment comes through growing and contributing to others. This is one of the reasons why coaching is so popular and growing fast as a home-based business throughout the world.

And yes, we don’t know you yet, so we don’t know if you can do this. That’s why we have a ½ hour “Your Success Planning Session” at the start of your coaching training with us, so we can fully assess your strengths and weaknesses, determine your goals, and design the Coach Training Action Plan that is ideal for you.

The Coaching Institute programs were designed for a single mum working fulltime, with our thinking quite simply, if she can do it, then so can you! (Yes, she is a real person who graduated four years ago and is still coaching successfully.)

You will need to set aside between 2 to 10 hours a week to graduate. The more hours you give, then obviously the better your results.

Some weeks you may have no time for any training or practice sessions, which is fine. Students have taken 5 weeks off to go on holiday and still completed their chosen program on time.

If for whatever reason you can’t get to a class, then it will be repeated later.

People become Life Coaches for a variety of reasons, including to:

• Make a difference
• Learn more about themselves and how to improve the quality of their own life
• Enhance their relationships
• Master challenging areas of their life
• Be able to set and achieve goals they might have procrastinated on in the past
• Stop doing things that they know are holding them back
• Become better equipped to handle conversations in the workplace
• Enhance a current business
• Create a home-based business that suits their lifestyle
• Earn income from a field they love – personal development
• Give themselves flexibility
• Contribute beyond themselves in a meaningful way

Many (more than 80%) of our students come to us with only limited confidence in their ability to coach. But, why would it be any other way? They haven’t learned how to coach yet, so how can they know how they will do it?

You may be low in confidence, but what you will have is a drive to improve, a curiosity about what makes you tick, and a desire to create more success in your own life through making a difference for others. These are the qualities we notice our students possess!