Life coaching can be an invaluable process to go through if you’re looking to level up your life. Whether you’re searching for a goal to bring you success, or you don’t even know where to start you’ll find coaching helpful.
Key Takeaways
- Life coaches help you find your current objective in life and provide you with actionable steps to achieve them.
- While similar to a therapist a life coach won’t help treat self-destructive behaviour.
- Life coaching can be expensive and there’s no regulatory entity to check who’s actually a life coach and who isn’t.
What does a life coach actually do?
Also known as life gurus, many people confuse them for a less educated therapist. And while there is some overlap, life coaches are a bit different.
While a therapist will focus on your past traumas to help you redefine the way you look or approach triggers, a life coach deals with more concrete things. With the help of a life coach, you can discover current roadblocks and how to deal with them, for example. You’ll work together to guide you and help find what you feel your current life objective is. This can be at work, in your personal life, in terms of your fitness – anything you can think of. Contrary to therapy, however, a life coach can and will tell you exactly what actionable steps you can take to reach said goal.
A life coach is also (similar to a therapist) someone you can rely on for advice and emotional support when needed.
What should I look for when hiring a life coach?
Hiring a life coach can be a very personal process. After all, this is someone you’ll be working with when facing stressful and difficult roadblocks. You probably don’t want to tell someone you don’t vibe with that you failed, again, in securing funding for your business.
You should look for someone you can trust, and someone you enjoy working with. With that in mind, here are some things you can look for when hiring a life coach:
- Testimonials or reviews. This one is pretty straightforward but it’s important to see what other, unbiased people, are saying about their experience with this coach.
- How long they’ve been in business. While this shouldn’t be a deal-breaker (you can find amazing life coaches that are just starting out) it’s certainly something to look into. More time on the job means more time they’ve had to learn and improve their craft.
- Notable people or companies they’ve worked with. Similar to the idea of testimonials, if other big names have chosen them then they’re more likely to be knowledgeable and capable.
- Their methodology. Different life coaches have different styles of working. Some are more distant and won’t build a friendship with their clients. Others will. Find one that works for you.
- Their personality. As we mentioned above you want someone you vibe with. Someone that won’t make you feel self-conscious if you mess up or are feeling resistance to the process.
How much does a life coach cost, on average?
Pricing will vary greatly depending on your coach’s experience and knowledge. That said, an average life coaching session with a Canadian coach can set you back anywhere from CAD$100-$300 a session.
To break that down a little further, the lowest side of the scale will be around $80 a session. This is for those coaches that are just starting out. Mid-range coaches will cost around $200 or so per session. The highest paying coaches with the most experience will cost around $500 a session.
2 Famous life coaches
While life coaches might not be huge celebrities like your favourite actor or actress are, there are some of them that have really made a name for themselves. Here are 2 of the biggest life coaches out there:
Tony Robbins
Cost – $650 for regular access to one of his in-person seminars.
As the sweetheart of life coaching, Tony Robbins’ name will come up once or twice (or 5 thousand times) in your life coaching research. Born in the USA Tony is a best-selling author, speaker, philanthropist, business owner, and life coach. Rising from a troubled home into a multi-million dollar brand wasn’t easy. But Tony’s magnetism, honesty, applicable and relatable advice made him huge. He’s coached huge names like Oprah, Bill Clinton, Serena Williams, Nelson Mandela, and even Princess Diana.
He offers dozens of free lessons through his YouTube channel you can check out to see how he works. Our personal favourite is this 5 minute one where he shares how changing your perspective can change your life in under a second.
Robin Sharma
Cost – USD$177 for a one-month access to his online mentorship program.
Robin Sharma has written some of the biggest self-help and motivational books of the past 20 years. The Canadian author and life coach is a former litigation lawyer with best-sellers like The 5AM Club and The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari under his belt. Today, he’s renowned for his business coaching skills and his lessons on leadership. He’s worked with brands like FedEx, HP, Nike, Microsoft, and NASA.
If you’re not ready to pay to work with Robin just yet, you can still access some of his lessons. He shares his knowledge on YouTube, and on his Instagram and Twitter accounts.
Get started on achieving your goals by taking our free course on Building Your Personal Annual Plan!
What qualifications are needed to become a life coach?
Unlike other professions involving the type of work a life coach does, there are no legally required qualifications to become a coach. While this is great if you’re looking to make a career change, it also means that coaches need to fight harder to prove their skills.
That said there is a non-profit organization that has tasked themselves with somewhat regulating coaching courses internationally. The International Coaching Federation offers a list of accredited places you can study at.
Is a life coach actually worth it?
It truly depends on what you’re looking for and what your overall goal is. As a more short-term option, life coaching is great for someone ready to hit the ground running. You’ll be working with a person who’s ready to look at your life from an outsider’s view and give you actionable steps you can take to reach your goals. Not sure what that goal even is? They can help with that too.
On the other hand, if you’re looking for someone to help you deal with things that happened in your past a therapist might be better. While you might leave therapy sessions having talked about your life goals in the present, most of the work will be based on things that have already happened. This is a great option if you find yourself repeating self-destructive patterns you want to change.
Related Readings
Getting People Right (GPR) is an educational website providing professionals from all types of businesses with practical education in entrepreneurial leadership. To keep evolving your leadership toolkit, additional GPR resources below will be useful:
