Q&A: I want to become a certified Life Coach through your training program!
Friday, November 12th, 2010The following question has been asked by someone via email:
Question: I want to become a certified Life Coach through your training program!
Answer:
Kisses&Hearts Coaching is not a certification program or school for becoming a life coach. I coach young women 1-on-1 and help them accomplish whatever goal they may have. Of course that goal may very well be to become a life coach, though so far my clients have all been interested in different career paths. However, K&H is branching out and it’s very possible that I will create exactly what you are interested in, a certification program for becoming a life coach, at some point. Not anytime soon though, sorry! (Unless I get hundreds of emails from young women begging me to create it and thus it becomes my priority!)
Meanwhile, there are many other certification programs. Googling is really the best way to find and compare them. They usually cost $800-$3,000. I want to point out that none of them are necessary (you don’t need a certification to be a life coach) and also none of them will provide you with your own clients, which is the hardest part of this profession. A good certification program will provide you with some coaching tools to use when you are working with clients, and some practice (this is usually done by pairing up members and letting them practice coaching each other). A good certification program should also help you come up with your own niche (i.e. what kind of clients do you want to work with?) and your own pricing.
The coaching certification programs might provide you with some general ideas about how to get clients, (to be honest, these ideas are things any average person would come up with). So getting clients is something that will be completely your responsibility as a self-employed entrepreneur. Most life coaches are like struggling actors. Just like even the best acting schools can only give you some skills but can’t give you a talent or a successful career, it’s the same with coaching certification programs. I want to make that point very clear because most people thinking about getting into coaching think it’s an easy path to money and clients or their own self-realization. They think they just need to get their certification and they will have arrived. Not even close! A certification is more like the starting point.
For this reason, if you do decide to do a certification program, figure out what you really want to get out of coaching and whether you have the passion to stay with it and find your own niche and clients. Life coaching can be an amazing career for those of us who are wise, brilliant, dedicated, and have found our own voice, but it is definitely NOT a quick path to money and clients.
For those of you reading this and who are interested in a K&H certification program, you can always shoot me an email. If I was to create such a thing, it would be a huge undertaking. I’d have to write lesson plans, do group web seminars, provide 1-on-1 phone coaching, etc etc, and it would probably be priced @ $800.
Kisses,
Len@KissesAndHearts.com