If you’re considering becoming a coach, you may be wondering what your prospects are like.
To be honest, beginning a coaching career asks for patience and perseverance.
The idea of location and time freedom are totally attainable. However, you won’t get there by sitting in a lounge chair by the beach and hoping the clients will magically roll in.
It takes work.
It also asks us to be strategic. Just like the industry is growing fast, so is the number of coaches. In fact, scrolling through Instagram or LinkedIn makes it seem like the world is overrun by coaches.
While it may seem overcrowded, the demand for coaching has never been higher and we are still in the early days of a long-term boom.
So, just how fast is the coaching industry growing?
Over the last ten years, the industry has more than tripled. In fact, PwC’s 2018 audit of global market trends found coaching to be the world’s 2nd fastest growing industry. This pattern is likely to be amplified by the massive global shifts we have witnessed.
However, there are various challenges that coaches need to address if they are to thrive in this fast-changing landscape.
Coaching in a Digital World
When Covid hit, business as usual was done. Companies pivoted to remote collaboration. Entrepreneurs found themselves needing online consultants. Individuals were suddenly cut off from their established support structures.
This left a lot of coaches, consultants and therapists scrambling to translate their work to the digital domain.
As an established online coaching and coach training organization, we were ready to meet this demand. In fact, this is what fueled our expansion into four different languages and helped our trained coaches to create thriving coaching practices.
Coaches who have focused on online coaching are uniquely equipped to support individuals, entrepreneurs, and businesses to meet the challenges they are facing. Of course, using tech effectively is only a small aspect of what it takes to provide transformational online coaching.
What Skills Are Needed?
Our times demand coaches who have a more multi-faceted skill base than ever. Ideally, you can support your clients with their mindset and wellbeing, their communication and relationships, and their sense of purpose and professional success.
Mastering how to work with people across the domains of inner work, interpersonal work and professional success, positions coaches to become a trusted source of full spectrum support. In a time of increased social isolation, this is invaluable for our clients.
Another key challenge is how to create a depth of trust and connection when the coaching relationship is limited to audio and pixels. This asks us to grow our capacities in relation to what we call the LIPS of coaching:
- Anhören with our whole body and mind.
- Inquiring skillfully to unlock our clients’ honesty and wisdom.
- Embodying Presence to sensitize ourselves to subtle shifts.
- Speaking with clarity and purpose to facilitate maximum understanding.
Building each of these capacities within online trainings is the most efficacious way of learning to translate these core skills into the digital domain. However, beware who you choose to train with as there are a lot of shallow coaching programs out there – including many that are certified.
Common Pitfalls and Some Advice
Even if you have the skills needed for deep online coaching, success is not assured. For all the opportunity in the coaching industry, it is important to realize most would-be coaches are watching from the sidelines, unable to turn their practice into a success. In fact, the average wage for self-identified coaches is under $20K per year.
Given there are many of us making 6 or 7 figure incomes or more, this means there are mountains of coaches making next to nothing. What are they doing wrong?
Common pitfalls for coaches include:
- The inability to work in a tech ecosystem at the same level of depth and impact as in-person work.
- Weak understanding of their coaching niche’s needs.
- Poor messaging making it unclear what value they offer.
- Lacking key coaching skills in the mindset, relational, and/or professional domains.
- Working with clients for an insufficient time to integrate sustained transformations.
- Offering low-end coaching packages leading them spend too much time on marketing and sales.
- Offering too many coaching packages creating indecision and confusion for prospects.
To remedy these common problems, it is important to:
- Practice bringing an increased focus on mindfulness to your online work to ensure you and your clients are as embodied and present as possible.
- Engage deeply with your chosen niche or tribe to understand their aspirations and problems.
- Test your messages with them to find out if they are clear and resonant.
- Upskill in whatever areas you feel insecure in as a coach.
- Create a maximum of three coaching packages, each of which should have a high enough value for you to work with a minimal number of clients in ways that create sustained transformations.
Your best path forward
If you know you want to develop your coaching skill base or business savvy, look for organizations and individuals that align with your values and have programs in place that will support you to:
- Develop a comprehensive coaching skill set
- Undertake the transformational work that is necessary to become a transformational coach.
- Create an intimate connection between participants as this will support you to risk throughout your learning process and give you a network of support upon completion.
- Support you to craft or refine your coaching offerings.
- Ensure you have clarity about how to run a successful and fulfilling. coaching business.
If you want to check out what we offer to facilitate such outcomes, please reach out to us for a discovery call or check out our Creator Coaching Program.
Whether you’re in touch with us or not, we wish you the very best with your coaching aspirations.
Humanity is going through massive, challenging changes and is in need of coaches who are equipped to support people to reimagine personal and collective possibilities. May you play a powerful role in the coaching movement and help to transform lives and the world, one conversation at a time.