How to Become a Successful Life-changing Coach (and Start for Free)

The personal growth and coaching industry is booming. More and more people are investing in their personal development by hiring professional coaches to improve their personal health, relationships, and careers.

As demand for coaching increases, so does the number of service providers in the industry. More and more people are realizing coaching is a great opportunity to translate their life and work experience into positive changes in people’s lives.

While the coaching industry is still relatively young, some estimate its market size is between $15-20 billion - and growing! There are new coaches entering the market every day in every domain, from general life coaches to business coaches and executive coaches to mental health coaches and personal growth coaches.

The good news about the coaching industry for new coaches looking to start a coaching business is it’s relatively easy to get started.

The bad news is you can get started wrong.

Because the coaching profession is so young and growing fast, there are plenty of hustlers looking to make money off new coaches. Many of them draw you in with free classes and empty promises about how much money you can make as a coach. There is no shortage of get-rich-quick online courses for coaches distributing free materials and selling fancy new websites, marketing plan templates, tips to go viral on social media, unlimited access to potential clients, and the latest life coach certification course.

But they neglect to train you in the foundational element of successful coaching: how to deliver transformational impact on people’s lives.

As a result, these life coach training programs have left a lot of very capable coaches with beautiful websites but struggling to succeed.

Having a clean, clear website is important. Sharing your insights and services publicly on social media and other platforms can be valuable. Generating a pipeline of clients is crucial. Being a part of a community is healthy.

But if you don’t learn how to impact people’s lives, then you won’t be able to build a successful coaching business.

If you're looking for a certification program that will magically make you a successful certified life coach, you're not going to find it. (And you don't need it.)

If you've been through all of the life coach certification programs and are still struggling to succeed, then you've come to the right place.

What you really need is to learn the most effective way to deliver transformational impact.

It’s not too late to get started and it’s not too late to get things turned around. You just need SightShift™ to make it happen.

5 Actions to Coach For Life-Changing Impact

The International Coach Federation has created one of the most well-known and respected coach accreditation programs. Coaches go through hours of training to learn best practices, industry standards, and to become ICF-accredited coaches. But you don’t need ICF accreditation to become a successful life coach or to make an impact in your niche of coaching.

SightShift™ is the quickest and most effective way to become an impactful coach. And it starts with learning the five most important coaching skills to deliver a life-changing impact.

1. Coach with a focus

Most coaches focus on the wrong thing. Most coaches focus on the finances and the business plan. They believe that once they have their coaching business fully planned out, then they will financially succeed.

Or they focus on getting glowing testimonials and referrals. They believe if they can make happy clients say nice things about them, then they will have an endless pipeline of business.

Both of those things are important, but they are not the priority. They should not be the main focus.

The key to creating momentum in your coaching business is to consistently change lives.

It’s not enough to slightly improve people’s lives. And it’s not enough to just give clients a place to express or have a conversation.

To be the kind of coach that has clients say years later, “Working with you was one of the best decisions of my life,” they have to experience a before-and-after transformation.

If you can’t change someone’s life, you won’t be able to build a sustainable, thriving coaching practice.

2. Coach with a purpose

Coaching with a focus on changing lives creates momentum for your business. Coaching with a healthy purpose sustains that momentum.

What is your purpose in coaching?

What is your motive?

Are you coaching to get something from the interaction with your clients? Are you showing up insecurely trying to prove how great you are? Or do you hold back in your sessions, not believing greatness is within you?

The mindset behind your motive for coaching affects everything else.

There is a difference between impressing your clients and impacting your clients. When you coach to impress your clients you try to put your image into them. You make an impression. But you won’t deliver transformational impact by making your clients a carbon copy of you. You have to unleash the best of who they can become.

Coaching to impact is about helping them find their next best step even if it’s different from what you would do.

Coaching isn’t about you. It’s about being a humble servant for your client and helping them discover who they are.

When you know who you are, where you’ve come from, and where you are headed, you can coach with the purpose to serve others. You don’t have to do it for what you will get out of it.

3. Coach with an understanding

Coaching tends to draw from many different scientific disciplines like psychology, biology, or neuroscience. As a result, new coaches often feel like they have to become an expert in those fields before they can deliver life-changing impact.

The lie new coaches believe is that they don’t know enough yet to have an impact. They feel like they have to obtain more certifications, collect additional credentials, and gain more knowledge before they can get started.

The truth is all of those certifications and disciplines can actually distort the way you show up in your coaching sessions. They can make you feel pressure to apply all of the knowledge you have gained to fix the client.

Your client is not a problem to be fixed or a blank slate for you to write on. Your client is a person to be studied; a painting for you to discover.

The first step to becoming a life coach of transformational impact is to experience transformation in your own life. When you no longer feel the need to prove your expertise in your coaching session, you will show up with curiosity and interest. You will learn to understand your client’s uniqueness and engage with them where they are rather than where you think they should be. You will help them make their own meaning.

Looking to have your life transformed? Register for the next Figure That Shift Out 2-day event, exclusively for coaches to experience the transformation you can deliver.

4. Coach for the outsiders

As you step into the coaching industry you will step into some crowded spaces. You will feel pressure to stand out from the crowd or be chosen and accepted by the “right” community.

The problem is clients can smell your insecurity and desperation. They notice when you show up to get validation and this will turn them off. You won’t attract the right clients and you won’t deliver transformational impact to the clients you do attract.

Instead, notice what captures your heart based on your experience. Whose pain do you understand and feel the deepest? Whose suffering do you seek to end?

Instead of seeking validation from a certain community, seek out the people you know and can help the most. With an understanding of your own story, notice who is being left out according to what captures your heart.

The community you will impact the most is not the one that you are seeking validation from. The community you will have the biggest impact on is the one that captures your heart because you feel their pain and find your joy as you deliver transformation.

5. Coach through transitions

One thing will be true for every client you coach: They will experience change.

Some of your clients will actively seek out change. For others, change will be forced upon them.

Unfortunately, most people operate with a belief that they will eventually reach a point where they can finally coast. But that’s not how change works.

We are constantly evolving and growing. Change is an ongoing, dynamic process. And how we interact with change will shape the trajectory of our lives.

Our greatest transformation happens in the midst of change; in the in-between or wilderness moments of our lives.

If you can’t coach others (or yourself) through transitions, then you’ll miss the most important moments of their lives (and yours).

Don’t be afraid of the wilderness moments you or your clients experience. They are a gift, inviting you to grow. And if you want to be a successful coach, you have to be able to guide people through their darkest moments.

When you understand how the process of change works, you can consistently position yourself and your clients for continual breakthroughs.

How to get started

Ultimately, successful coaches can deliver on one promise: they can change people’s lives.

The best way to learn how to do that is with SightShift’s free online coach training, Coach For Life-Changing Impact.

This free course covers in depth the 5 actions needed to deliver a life-changing impact. It makes no empty promises or false fantasies. It simply delivers the truth about what it takes to coach for impact.

It’s perfect for new coaches looking to start a successful coaching career on a strong foundation as well as professional coaches who are trying to grow their coaching business.

Do you believe greatness is within you?

Are you ready to unleash that greatness to deliver a life-changing impact on the people you coach?

If so, sign up for the free on-demand course now at www.iwantimpact.com.