Being a psychologist and a life coach is the best spectator sport in the world.
Maybe you've wondered what would it take to become a life coach. I'm Dr. Paul,
we're talking about that today at Live On Purpose TV.
Common question that comes
up for me, Dr. Paul, how do I get myself in a position to do what you're doing?
I'm not even sure what they mean by that, do they mean they want to become a
psychologist? Because if you want to do that, you get to go to school for a long
time. There's four years of undergraduate, and then there's a doctoral program,
whether you go to a master's program before that or not is kind of variable.
I didn't, I went straight into a PhD program, that means I went through the
twenty first grade, that's how my kids understood it back in the day. That's a
lot of school. Is that what you want to do? Because if you want to become a
psychologist, that's what it takes. You get to go through a doctoral program,
that's usually not what people mean because they see that what I'm doing is
not really psychotherapy and it's not, I used to practice psychotherapy, I had a
traditional psychotherapy practice for about 12 years and I would bring in my
clients and I would give him a diagnosis, we'd work through a treatment plan, bill
the insurance company. At some point, when I made a transition in my practice and
just to give you the context about this, I was busy in my traditional
psychotherapy practice. I was seeing mostly children, adolescents, parents,
families, kind of a family psychology approach and I was busy, I was booked out
solid for five months, she couldn't even get an appointment with me in about five
months. That's how busy I was and I had negative cash flow. There's a lot of
reasons for that. Some of that had to do with practicing in a model that wasn't
conducive to the way that I really see people. I made a big change over to
positive psychology and instead of doing therapy,
now what I do is, coaching. That's one word for it. I think of it as positive
psychology counseling and mentoring. I'm a coach basically, a personal
development life coach and that's usually what people are asking me about
because they don't want to go to school to become a shrink but they do want to
be in a position to coach people and make a meaningful difference in their
life from a standpoint of personal development and positive psychology, not
from a therapy standpoint and there is a difference between coaching and therapy.
We'll handle that in a different video. How do you become a life coach? How do
you get to the place where you can have clientele that actually pay you money to
guide them through processes that are going to improve their life? Not as a
therapist but as a personal development life coach consultant. Well, there's a
process that you get to go through. This isn't quite like going to school and
getting a doctoral degree but there are some very important considerations. The
first one, I think back to my friend, Ty Bennett, he's one of my speaking
colleagues here in the MSA Mountain West chapter. He's a past president of our
chapter and an amazing leadership speaker and trainer and I remember Ty
telling a story about a woman who had confronted him once.
Now he's younger and doesn't appear to have a lot of life experience when
you first meet him. What people don't understand is that he's coming from a
background of some powerful business experience. Ty is a high demand speaker
and trainer, he's the author of books like The Power of Influence and The
Power of Storytelling. This guy knows what he's talking about.
Anyway, Ty was being challenged by a woman who was actually a CEO of a
company who might become one of his clients someday and she asked him,
"Are you traveling for business or pleasure?" He's like, "Well, I'm traveling for
business." "Oh what do you do?" "I'm a speaker." And then her question something like
this, "Why would anyone hire you to speak? Why would anyone
listen to you?" Now Ty is a very good-natured person who didn't take any
offense at this, in fact, he had some fun with it. He said, "because I'm awesome,
because I'm amazing, because I can change your life." Right? I love that confidence.
This is a question we all have to answer, why would anyone hire you to be their
life coach? Now until you have an answer to that,
they don't have any reason to have an answer to that. Does that make sense to you?
You got to answer that. Why would they listen to you? Now, there's a pitfall that
we often run into at this point because when that question comes up, it's easy to
go to a space of "Oh, they wouldn't listen to me.
I'm just not, you know, I don't have.." No I don't want that to be the effect of the
question. It's a serious question and there is a good answer to it because you
have some life experience that has taught you principles that will make a
difference for other people if we can get them out of your head and into their
hands okay? You've got something to offer, get clear about what it is and it
doesn't have to be the same thing that Ty Bennett has to offer, it doesn't have
to be the same thing that Dr. Paul has to offer, it has to be what you
personally and specifically can offer that will create value in their life.
Now it's not always easy to discover that so you might want to get some of your own
coaching and mentoring to hone in on that question. I have paid thousands,
maybe tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for my own coaching and personal
development over the course of my career. It's an absolutely essential step, hire a
coach or a mentor who can help to walk you through the process which in turn
puts you in position to do that for other people. Probably of
equal importance is next to get clear about who your audience is and if you
think that your clientele, your audience is everybody on the planet, then you
don't have an audience yet. You need to be more specific about who it is.
Now think of it this way for just a minute, the only reason anyone would ever hire
you is because you solve or help them to solve some unresolved problem. What are
the unresolved problems that you have the ability to solve? And then ask the
next question, who has those problems? Who has those problems? One area of expertise
that I have comes from my experience in clinical psychology when I got to be a
custody evaluator for the court. Some of the videos that I've put up about child
custody have gotten more views than any of the others. Why? because there are
people who have that problem and that's a problem that I can help them to solve.
That's how they became my audience. Now I don't practice in that area much anymore
but because of my expertise and experience, I still have something to
offer them and that's why I created the videos. Who has the unresolvable problems
that you can uniquely solve? That's your audience. So getting clear
about who your audience is is next. Right on its hills is understanding, that this
is about them, it's not about you. Coaches who go into this feeling like
it's all about them and they want the prestige and they want the fame and they
want all the sense of importance that they get from being a life coach, no,
we're missing the mark, it's not about you, it's about the people whose lives
are enhanced and changed and blessed because you showed up with your unique
solution to their unresolvable problem. It's not about you, it's about them, you
get clearer about that and this is going to be a whole lot
easier to set up. Now let me hit a few practical things and obviously, in a
short YouTube video, we're not going to get to all of the ways that you can
create a coaching practice. Let's create some possibilities in your mind and then
you'll know what to follow up on. I think it's important for you to associate, to
set up relationships or mastermind groups or associations with people who
understand what it is that you're trying to do and can support you in your
mission. Join a group or an association, there's lots of coaching associations
out there. I belong to the National Speakers Association and while that is
not necessarily a coaching organization, a lot of the professional speakers that
you'll hear giving the keynote at the at the Association meeting or at the
convention also offer coaching services and so I've found an enormous amount of
value associating with people like Ty Bennett that I referred to earlier and
the power of influence, who get what I'm trying to do and they can provide
support and encouragement for me to do that. I also get a lot of good training
that way but find your group, you know, whatever your group is that is going to
support this endeavor. That kind of goes along with making sure that you have
appropriate training, there are groups that credential or license coaches and
they typically have content that you can also use as you do that. I'm offering a
course like that in the month. I'm not here to sell you that course but
understand that there are things like that that are available to you that can
give you both content and training so that you can raise your level of
expertise in delivery of those principles. That brings me to the next
point.. Teach principles rather than giving advice.
I get paid to give people advice, that's what they want from me
and I still avoid giving advice unless I'm really clear about what the
potential consequences of that could be. I would encourage you to
refrain from giving and advice and instead, turn your focus toward the
teaching and sharing of principles because principles determine all of
life's outcomes and as people understand those principles then they can find an
appropriate application for those principles in their own life.
So rather than advice, lean toward principles. One final thought if you're
considering going into business as a life coach, you want to make sure that
you continually practice within the boundaries, okay, stay in bounds as
they say in this sporting analogy. Meaning you have a specific set of
experiences, expertise, qualifications, knowledge, this is what you're offering
to the equation.Please stay in bounds. In other words, if you don't have expertise
in that area, that's probably not a good place for you to offer some coaching.
Keep it limited to whatever it is that you particularly have some expertise and
skills and practice within those bounds. There are some other boundaries you need
to be aware of. I was talking earlier about how when people say they want to
do what I do, they usually don't mean they want to become a psychologist and
some do and that's fine, psychologist is a licensed title, meaning you cannot call
yourself that unless you are licensed typically by a state agency in the state
of Utah's the division of occupational and professional licensing for the state
of Utah. The word psychologist is a licensed title, you can't call yourself
that unless you have met the qualifications for licensure. Coaching is
very different from that, there is not a specific license title for coach. There
are organizations who will certify and train coaches but it's not a legal issue.
You see what I'm saying? So having a coaching practice is not something
that requires you to have licensed with the state.Make sure that
whatever you are practicing does not violate the licensing laws of the state
where you are, state or country and we have viewers all over the place, make
sure that whatever you're doing is consistent with the state or local laws
where you live. I say this as as a friendly warning because I know people
who have been arrested or prosecuted for practicing without a license.
Practicing what? Well if it's medicine or psychology or social work or other
licensed professions, you're going to run into that possible problem so make sure
that whatever you're doing is consistent with those laws and organizations.
Coaching is an amazing opportunity to interact with people and to have an
experience that is so rich. I think of my practice is the best spectator sport in
the world because I get to observe people's lives and see the amazing
things that they're accomplishing and it's just so fulfilling to know that I
might have some small part in helping them to have a greater life. It's a neat
thing to do and there are a lot of opportunities as long as you approach it
in a way that allows you to do it consistent with principle and in a way
that's going to bless your life and the lives of other people. Life coaching?
Fun activity. Did that give you some ideas about what you could do to move forward
with your goals? I hope that it did. Stay tuned, we'll give you some more tools to
become a life coach as we move forward with Live On Purpose TV together.