You’ve had a successful career and you are looking ahead to what’s next. It will be nice to have less stress but you don’t want to stop working. Coaching pops up and sounds attractive. You like to help people and it seems like fun. And you do this today and it seems to work well so it can’t be too difficult, right? In fact, you’ll probably be good at it. Maybe you should become a coach. Does this ring true for you?
What Does It Take To Become A Coach?
If you are good at mentoring and giving advice, you might make a good coach, you might not. Coaching is not advice-giving. Sharing your advice with someone can be very helpful but most of the time it isn’t, and is frankly more likely to be annoying. Michael Bungay Stanier wrote an excellent book about the perils of advice-giving. I recommend you read it.
To become a coach you have to learn how to coach. Yes, coaching is a learned skill and the best way is through an accredited coaching school. The number of schools has exploded recently and here are a couple I highly recommend: Hudson Institute and New Ventures West. Certification through both programs will take about a year. If you are like me, you will learn as much about yourself as you will about coaching. I highly recommend either school. They aren’t cheap, expect to spend more than $10,000.
You are certified, now what?
Some people get into coaching for the pure joy of helping others. Many people see it as a second career where they can earn enough money to get by comfortably in retirement. Now for a word of caution. While it is relatively easy to get certified as a coach (it takes work but it is very learnable), earning a living is much more difficult. When I first graduated from coaching school, more than half of my peers struggled to make money. Running a coaching business is very different than being a coach.
You can earn a very good living at coaching and I will talk about how to do this in my next post. You can also spend a lot of money and end up with very little. The New York Times recently published an article titled ‘They Spent Their Life Savings on Life Coaching’. It is a cautionary tale about the shady side of learning a new skill. Don’t be put off and don’t be naïve. There will always be people who promise much and deliver much less.
If you still want to become a coach, check out my next post.
Great post Andy. Coaching people and running a coaching business are two very different skills.
In my experience, there are strong parallels with natural therapies/ alternative medicine. In that field, many people feel drawn to helping others through an alternative model and so they undertake a costly training course. Then they sit at home, waiting for the phone to ring, because building up and running a practice requires a very different skill set to what is taught in the natural therapy college.
Also, both fields lack the rigour, government regulation and licensing, and consistent common standards that characterise established helping professions such as medicine and psychology. Governing bodies in both these fields keep the economic returns high by limiting the supply of professionals through maintaining significant barriers to entry and licensing.
Consequently, they lack the same degree of access to the large flows of money available from health funds and government.agencies. My observation is that the people making by far the most revenue and the biggest profits, are the people running the training schools and colleges.
I make these points in support of your post: not to discourage people, but to make them aware of the bigger economic picture, and the understanding that they may also need to develop the entrepreneurial and networking skills to build a practice if they hope to put their training to good use.
Thank you Phillip and you raise a great point. There are no limits on the number of new coaches entering the industry which increases competition for work, especially for new coaches. This is where new low cost coaching companies take advantage by offering work for extremely low rates.
Everyone is a coach these days or so it seems as Phillip suggests above there are no barriers to entry.
You mention ‘Certification programs’ and $10k+ that’s just the start. That is a technical qualification, there is then professional credentialing through a recognised body such as The International Coaching Federation which includes among many other things clocking up years’ worth of experience.
I would recommend any one seeking a coach to make sure they are professionally qualified and experienced and credentialed through a recognised body. And to anyone seeking to become a coach to aspire to that level.
And then as you say, making money is another matter.
Good add Dave, I forgot to mention the ICF and I agree any new coaching should plan to be certified with them. It adds an important level of credibility.