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hey this is Leo for actualised org and here we're doing another quick self-help segment where I'm going to quickly cover the topic of how to become a life coach so I am a life coach so I'm kind of qualified to talk about this I went through the process it's actually not very hard so if you're interested in becoming a life coach then listen up because I'm going to give you some some quick little tips and techniques and basically give you a little plan for how to do it and I'll go into much deeper detail on it at some in some other video where I can talk about it for at length but this is a quick rapid-fire segment I'm just going to give you the skinny and the practical things you can do right now so if you want to become a life coach basically the best thing that I can recommend for you is to join a life coach training program there are many programs out there make sure that you get one that is credible that has some good reviews and that provides you with certification certification comes from the International coaching Federation you can look up there their website and there they'll have a list of all all sorts of schools that they that they accredit and that will will give you the kind of a training that is in line with international coaching Federation so you really want to align with the school that's aligned with the ICF because the ICF is like the standard the standard governing body across the world for coaches and so it just kind of came out as the standard and now everybody is is on board with that but honestly you don't even need a coaching certification to be a coach what I do find valuable though in the training programs is that they really teach you what it means to be a coach because it's not all that it seems to be at the beginning these certification programs let me give you some details on them I went through a program called Ipek you can google them they're one of the best programs out there it's a comprehensive program it costs around nine thousand dollars to do it so it is a little bit pricey but you got to put that in perspective with everything else that is out there right any coaching program around is going to cost I say a decent one is going to cost you in the range of eight to ten thousand dollars so Ipek is competitive there and they don't have any extra hidden fees or anything and that's it you just pay the nine grand and then you do the program very pretty pretty nice and you know nine grand you got to ask yourself is that worth it to you if this is going to be your career in your profession then it's actually not a big price to pay any other profession that you would go into any serious profession you would spend way more than $10,000 to get degrees and certifications for and training for and it would take you a lot longer than it will take you to finish a coaching program even a very comprehensive one like I Peck the way I Peck works is it it takes about ten months to do the whole curriculum they they do it in modules where you you have four modules you take one module then you get like two or three months to do the work and then the the homework assignments and also the practice of coaching throughout that and then they have another module where they train you for a weekend and then you do another couple months of training and kind of homework assignments etc and then and then they do more of these modules so through this module process you can learn to become a coach actually what's great about the program is that it's not a full-time program so you can do it while you're still working in your current job if you're if you're employed right now and you can't quit your job then this is a really great program because you can take it on weekends and there's only four modules so each each weekend is like three days and it's really not that bad because you know you can take a Friday off and then you've got the Saturday and Sunday you learn all that information and then you go home and you can do the homework over the course of two or three months and it really doesn't take up that much time what I would say is that if you want to become a coach the core of it is not even the training the training is important because they're gonna teach you some techniques and some principles of coaching that are that are actually really important that you're not really going to get by yourself and I find that the value of it is that you actually experience it because you can buy some books out there on on life coaching which I'll recommend but the problem with those is that you don't really get a taste for how the process works you want to get a taste for how to actually coach someone in person and also over the phone to do that why these programs and training programs are so so effective is because they put you into group environments with other newbie coaches as you guys are learning it and you get to coach each other and you get to try this stuff out in a very kind of a low risk low pressure environment and you also get the instructors who are coaching you and you're coaching them and they give you immediate feedback and you're you're working with a manual and like you've got stuff to go on it's actually really easy and fun process to learn some of these techniques and to learn the coaching process what I would say though is that if you really want to become a serious coach you got to become you got to go above and beyond what the program is doing the program will put you into teams where you can coach other people that are also in the program and that gets you the experience that you need but I find that you need more than that you need more experience so when I went through my program what I did is I went out I made sure to find extra people in the program and in other groups that I could coach I just partnered up with them I just shot them some emails we connected with on the message boards and what I try to do is I try to get as many coaching hours in as possible so I was doing many many calls a week to the point where I wanted to get as many calls in as possible the more calls you do the more people you coach the better you become and it doesn't take that many coaching calls maybe takes a hundred coaching calls to get really really comfortable with the process because when you start it's going to feel scary you're not going to know if you're doing it right but after about 100 calls it's all going to iron out it's going to become easy it's going to become effortless and you're going to do great so really the bottom line is that you got it you got to join a training program I don't think it's very very feasible to learn how to coach all by yourself in isolation just by buying a bunch of books or maybe watching some some seminars or some DVDs you really got to go out there and join one of these programs get certified so that you know how to actually be professional as a coach and you know some of the guidelines and some of the principles of coaching and also what's great about the coaching programs is that they give you business and marketing support which is actually the hardest part about coaching the coaching is not what's hard you'll master that pretty easily what's more challenging is how to set up the business of coaching how to market yourself how to niche yourself and how to go out there and find clients that's the tricky part because most people that go through the program what they don't do is they don't actually start a business because they're not able to get the clients and they're not able to build enough of a client base to the point where they can actually sustain this model and so what they do is they join the program and then then dropping and dropping their business dreams and going back and doing their old job because they don't have the business mind in the entrepreneurial mind to make a coaching practice you got to realize as a coach unless you're working in a in some sort of corporation then you're working for yourself and that basically makes you an entrepreneur it makes me makes you self-employed and you got to understand that beyond being a coach you got to understand how to be self-employed that means you got to be self-motivated you got to be able to set your own schedule you got to be able to set priorities you got to understand business you got to understand money and you got to understand marketing and you got to understand sales you got understand the process of going out there and finding clients whether it's online through online sources or where whether it's in person through networking events and public speaking or whatever whatever other kind of vehicles you're going to use to market yourself so make sure that whatever coaching program you get into the one that you choose also gives you business and marketing support because they will give you important information about the coaching business there are just certain practices within the coaching business that you want to know you want to know for example that you need to choose a specialty and that nobody hires a generic coach you want to be specialized in some aspect of coaching whether its life purpose or spirituality or career or money or fitness and weight loss you know you got to pick a niche and even within all those categories you can still sub-specialize the more you specialize the better and that's kind of a counter intuitive notion especially for newbies I know I really resisted that for a long time and everybody does that goes through the program but these are kind of things that if you don't go and people don't tell you about it then you're really going to trip up on some of these points and then also you know what are the common ways to mark yourself as coach what are the do's what are the don'ts how do you go out there and work networking events how do you present yourself declines how do you pitch yourself how do you share your value to the client so that they understand that they're actually paying you for something how do you charge money for your services how do you set up the paperwork how do you handle the legal side how do you handle the payment processing etc so they're going to tell you all those logistics at least a good training program will so that is kind of the gist of it is I would say that if you're interested in coaching research a little bit about it and then you just got to dive in if you're really serious about you think this is something that's right for you scrounge up the money you need about 10 grand and pay it forward and then go ahead and join that program and work that program work the program and my advice would be work the program more than the program works you which means that go above and beyond do more than the homework assignments coach more people than they're telling you to coach go out there and buy books and study some books on coaching and and then eventually what will happen is that through that process you will become so good that you'll easily out coach and out market the rest of your class and then you're gonna be in a really good position to go out there and create a business out of it because you got to understand that a lot of people go into coaching and they think that they really want to help people and they want to connect with people they're really people people they they love helping they love contributing but you understand that it is a business and if you're not able to sustain the business side of it then you're not going to be able to help anybody so there's a little bit of that trade-off between helping people but then also being business savvy about it too and knowing how to market yourself and so that is really important all right this is it this is going to do it for this quick quick self-help segment on how to become a life coach if you want more information I'm going to have more detailed videos about how to become a coach more insights that I can't really share within 10 minutes here on actualised org so check that out and also there you'll be interested if your are a coach on some of the advanced prosol development techniques and strategies that we have that will help you both in your coaching practice in your business but then also to develop yourself as much as possible because I feel that to be a coach the most important thing is that you have to live the example right what you're selling is you're selling a lifestyle you're selling something to your clients you're selling them personal development you're showing them that they can be something more than they are and to do that they have to see it in you because if you are not demonstrating it how are they going to believe it how are they going to trust you with their money to deliver them real-world results if they don't see you delivering it to yourself and I found to do that you got to really immerse yourself in personal development study it become a master of it and there's no better way than check it out actualize that org signing up to the newsletter we've got a lot of cool content for free that will that will get you up to speed really fast all right that's it I am signing off go ahead and comment like and share you