Life coaching is immensely difficult to sell to members of the general public who – paradoxically – need it the most. Why?
If the public doesn’t know what life coaching is, of course it is difficult to sell!
The superficial usage and the confusion surrounding the term life coaching is still disturbing even in this day when coaching has been on the increase for decades. I explained the differences between coaching, teaching, counselling, consulting, training and guiding, teaching, mentoring, sponsoring, and awakening. Whenever I hear someone say that their friend is a life coach, I ask to learn more. And then I’ll hear that the “life coach” did some course and has been counseling for just over a year…. And even worse is when people ask me what I do, I say that I coach people, and they ask ‘so you’re a shrink?’. No! The horrible word shrink is a slang for psychiatrist! The difference is that a life coach helps mentally healthy people refine what they do while a psychiatrist cures mentally ill people.
And even if the public knew what coaching was, coaching would still be difficult to sell because…
There’re life coaches and there’re life coaches. The challenge of a person looking for a life coach is to distinguish which is which. As if the confusion around what life coaching is wasn’t enough, I hear from every direction that “my friend is a life coach” or somebody’s somebody is a life coach.. And the internet is full of people who sell themselves as life coaches… It seems as if the sack with life coaches has ripped and they’ve all fallen out. Many folks even sell life coaching, counselling, consulting, and therapy interchangeably! So how is a person looking for a life coach to distinguish who is a life coach? And who is credible? What will sell you life coaching?
Unfortunately life coaching is being practised today by many who have not studied it, do not have credentials, and sell traditional counselling, consulting, training, and pop psychology advice as coaching. And people who think that they practise life coaching are very often caught in the same epistemological trap of thinking as are the clients to whom they sell themselves. Learning still does not respond to the demands of our times and what and how we learn is part of the problem, not a solution.
Many people in the western culture believe that more information will bring them wisdom. When we confuse having information with knowing, we leave out the emotional, intuitive, and aesthetic dimensions of knowing and the intimate and spiritual aspects of our connection with the world. Our current learning practices pursue more information. Most people need to change them to include what there is between the lines to illuminate the path to wisdom and effective living. Knowing is far more encompassing than having information. Knowing requires far more awareness and attention to where and when we do what, how, why, with whom than does having information.
The intangible is harder to sell than the tangible
When someone sells cars, we know what cars are. They’re tangible – we can imagine and touch them. And we know exactly what we’ll get if we buy them. When someone sells accounting, we know what accounting is. It’s intangible – we cannot touch it, but we know what we’ll get. When I sell life coaching, it’s intangible. We can’t touch it and don’t know what we’ll get, because every person who has life coaching will get different things. So how does one sell life coaching to someone who has never had it? The first question people will usually ask will be what guarantees I can give that coaching will work for them. I wrote about that subject in this article. Judge for yourself.
The second question often is whether people hire life coaches when their lives are falling apart. Sometimes yes. And sometimes no. If a person let his life fall apart, he has left it too late. He should have acted sooner. No, life doesn’t have to fall apart for someone to hire a life coach. A person can hire a life coach for one context of life. I coach on health, relationships, work, money, and success. If someone hires a life coach for, say, a problem in his relationship, his life isn’t necessarily falling apart. His problem is in one context of life. Of course, the problem will surely impact his health, work, money, and success. But it’s not the same as life falling apart.
Money money money…
The third question will often be whether the sometimes high fees are worth taking the risk for when we don’t know what outcome we’ll get from life coaching. We all have things to pay for. Hence this is understandably an important question for people in all societies around the world. And I addressed this subject too.
And finally…
Regardless of whether coaching is tangible or intangible and whether we know what we’ll get out of coaching or not, one thing is absolutely certain. Every person who has life coaching will get immensely deep value from it. Value is also intangible, yet we rarely think of it like that when we buy real estate, jewelry, and other valuables. In these cases we somehow see value in the amounts we pay for those things. And we somehow even imagine the value of those things in the long term… But this perception of value still doesn’t make value tangible! Yet when I sell coaching, most people immediately scrutinisse the value for the money they are to pay for coaching. Isn’t it fascinating how human nature can work? Why not look at the long-term value of coaching the same way?
The value of life coaching is that it shifts people from problems to resources or from problem states to what they want. Of course, the person getting coaching has to do the work, but the more he puts in, the more he’ll get out. If a person’s relationship is falling apart, coaching surely will bring value to the person’s life. And the value will ripple from his relationship to his health, work, money, and success. Everything is connected.
But the highest value of coaching by a professional coach, not by a friend, family, member, etc., lies in the fact that a coach will give you the objective view of your problem, while you, family members, friends, etc. have the subjective view. So if these words inspired you or finally sold you life coaching, let’s talk.