FREE COURSE

Can You Really Turn Your Skills Into A Coaching Career?

Many of us are not even aware that we may be blessed with the exact skills required to be a great coach. If you are the kind of person who your friends turn to for advice during turbulent periods in their relationship, then you may become an amazing relationship coach.

If you are the person who your friends turn to for help from addictive behaviours then you may have an addiction coach growing and thriving inside you.

Just having those skills are not enough though, you need to know how to channel them and whether you are channeling it towards the right people. In this article, I will show you how exactly you can use your skills and turn it into a coaching career.

My name is Sai Blackbyrn and for the last decade, I have been a coach. I started out as a dating coach before moving on to becoming a mentor for coaches. As you may have guessed, I know a thing or two about creating a coaching career from scratch.

What is a coach?

Person in black pants and black shoes sitting on brown wooden chair
Image from pexels.com

A coach is a person who works with their clients on the areas that they are deficient in and empowers them by being a guide and a mentor to get good at that area.

A coach helps their clients by making them unstuck and helping them manifest the reality that they want to live in, no the one that they are living in right now.

A coach is a mentor, a guide, a teacher, and a friend.

What skills are required to be a coach?

There are a lot of Coaching Skills that you will need to be a great coach but in this

article, for the sake of conciseness, we will focus on the most important ones.

Ready to Create
Image from unsplash.com

If you just have these skills, then you have what it takes to become a great coach.

Skill #1: A thorough understanding of your client’s needs

Let me explain this to you by giving you an example of how my friend tripled the sell rate of his client’s weight loss program.

My friend’s client had a weight loss program aimed specifically at women aged 50-60. The idea was that by using the program, they will lose their weight with minimal fuss and feel and look young again.

Sounds like a very decent strategy and nothing sells like human vanity. So they went ahead with the campaign and, while they were selling their programs, they were not getting anything close to the profits that they were expecting.

My friend was losing his sleep because he knew he had a killer program, that’s when he decided to interview some of the women in their niche.

What they found out blew his mind. He stayed up the next 2 days working tirelessly on amending the campaigns.

The program generated profits of $175,000 in the next month, needlessly to say my friend pocketed a very healthy bonus (which he promptly blew up in the casino, but that’s another story.)

So, what did my friend realise?

He realised that they weren’t aiming for the correct market, women aged 50-60 are not as enthusiastic about looking young as they are about losing weight and living longer.

Overweight women in that age range tend to be very susceptible to heart diseases, and if they don’t work on losing their weight they will have to face potentially fatal consequences.

By understanding this need, my friend was able to tweak the campaign enough to make the weight loss program a success.

So, remember, know what your clients want.

Skill #2: A basic understanding of the human mind

You don’t need to be a PhD in psychology to become a coach but you definitely need to know how the human mind works and how the process of healing the scars in someone’s psyche works.

Being a client and working with your coach is a very sensitive process. You have to understand that most of your clients are coming from a place where they have suffered severe mental trauma.

This mental trauma works in various ways, it could be a lack of self-esteem, crippling self-doubt, not able to maintain healthy relationships etc.

Working with clients can be a very gentle process and you will need to guide them through the various obstacles and limiting beliefs that they have ingrained in their psyche.

However, this definitely doesn’t mean that you need to gentle throughout.

Skill #3 Not sparing the rod

We all hate being the tyrant.

Nobody wants to be “that gal/guy” who has to be the one delivering the bad news. They say “don’t kill the messenger”, the truth is that no one wants to be the messenger in the first place.

But, if you truly want to be a successful coach and you really do care for the well-being of your clients, you will need to set the record straight from time to time.

My mum used to tell me: “Spare the rod and spoil child”, you cannot afford to spare the rod with your clients.

Here is the fact of the matter, your clients didn’t hire you to hear you say nice things about them. They have hired you because they are tired of mediocrity and they want to grow.

By not telling them when they are messing up and by encouraging their negative and self-destructive behaviours you are doing you both a huge disservice.

If your clients are not taking the required actions, then you need to put up a mirror in front of their faces and make them realise their missteps.

Skill #4: Knowing the Ins and Outs of your niche:

My aunt used to love telling me this quote whenever I used to fuss about reading a particular book (Jane Eyre..urgh). She used to tell me “A tree that doesn’t grow dies.”

That quote has stayed with me all these years (I still didn’t have the patience to sit through Jane Eyre though). I have tried to live my whole life according to that principle.

Over the last 5 years alone I have spent more than $200,000 on my education. It could be courses, mentors anything. I have realised that the knowledge that is out there is humongous, and if I don’t constantly read and update my “data bank” I will become irrelevant.

Right now, I can confidently tell you that I know exactly what you need to do to start a 6 figure coaching business from scratch. In fact, if you follow what I tell you I will help you generate profits from the first month itself.

That is not arrogance, that is confidence.

The reason I know this is because I have spent years studying and constantly gaining knowledge. I can confidently tell you that I am an expert in chosen niche because I have put in the work needed to do so, and I still do.

You need to do the same as well. You must constantly educate yourself to become more and more knowledgeable in your niche.

Never be arrogant about the knowledge that you have accumulated and always be humble enough to realise that there is still room for growth.

Skill #5: Great communication skills

Another skill that you need as a coach is great communication skills.

You are probably thinking “Duh Sai! Of course, I need it.” but here is a little surprise for you. Most people misunderstand “communication skills”.

Here is something that I have noticed about coaches, they are in love with their voice. They just love to talk and talk and talk and talk. Mostly what they are talking about is themselves and they just love to make speeches about their own greatness.

They feel that by sucking their clients in into their own reality they will make them giddy eyed enough to sign up for them. The problem is that most clients will see through this act.

The chief component of any communication as your granny used to probably say is “listening”.

Most coaches don’t even bother listening to their clients on call, which becomes a problem because most of your clients will be the kind of people who don’t get anyone to listen to them anyway.

By not giving them the attention that they are craving for you are simply making them feel worse. That is the last thing that you want as a coach.

Skill #6: Being a smart business owner

Yes, I just said that.

For some reason, coaches hate mixing the words “coaching” and “business” together. They feel that they are cheapening the impact of what they have to teach by bringing in the business side.

These coaches have the wrong mindset, and I can tell you without a doubt that if they don’t change their tune then they are going to fail horribly with their coaching.

Here is something I say to all my prospective clients: “Stop thinking about your coaching as a hobby and start thinking of it as a business”.

This simple mindset shift is going to be enough for you to become a successful coach.

Now how exactly do you go about building your coaching business from scratch? There are 2 options:

  1. Learn everything from scratch, even technical things that have nothing to do with your coaching and spend 1-2 years building up your business which may or may not work.
  2. Follow a proven guideline and template geared specifically for coaches which has, time and time again, delivered results and start generating revenues within a month.

If the former appeals to you then I wish you all the best and I hope you have gained knowledge from this article.

However, if you understand the importance of your time and you understand that the sooner you have your coaching business up the sooner you can help the clients around you and the sooner you can achieve your dreams, then scroll down and check out my free webinar.

How to find the perfect clients/niche?

two men facing each other while shake hands and smiling
Image taken from unsplash.com

As much as your knowledge is important, finding the right set of people to direct your knowledge to is equally as important.

Most of the coaches fail not because they don’t have the knowledge, they fail because they are imparting their knowledge to the wrong crowd.

Let’s go back to my friend once again. When he was marketing the weight loss program he was marketing it to the wrong niche.

It is only after he corrected the niche that he made the profits that the program deserved to make in the first place.

Choosing and, more importantly, validating your niche and making sure that you find “high-ticket clients” i.e. clients who will pay at least $2000 for your coaching is something that I have covered in the free webinar below. Scroll down and register for it.

If you want a run through of how to analyse and search for niche, then watch this video:

Should you become a coach?

After going through the skills that are required to become a coach do you think your skill set and inner beliefs are congruent to all that is needed to become a coach?

Do you think you have what it takes to become a coach?

Are you the absolute go-to person for your friends when they are stuck somewhere and want to achieve greatness in a field that you have expertise in?

Do you feel validated and proud when someone achieves their goals after following your advice?

If this resonates with you then you should definitely become a coach.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is coaching?

Coaching is one of the most effective ways to achieve personal and professional growth. Coaches provide feedback, advice, and counsel to help you achieve your goals.

Coaching is a process in which one person (the coach) provides another (the coache) with advice or feedback in order to foster their personal or professional development. Coaches provide feedback, advice, and counsel to help you achieve your goals.

What skills are required to be a coach?

It is not uncommon to find people who are looking for a career change. They are often not sure about what they want to do, but they know that they want something that will make them fulfilled.

Those people may be considering careers as coaches.

If this sounds like you, then it is important to understand what skills are required in order to become a coach. This can help you better understand whether coaching is the right career for you or not.

As of now, there are no specific qualifications required in order to become a coach. But there are certain skills which most coaches have developed throughout their life and which can be developed by anyone with enough time and patience on their hands. These include the ability to listen well, empathy, self-awareness, and many others.

How do I start a career in coaching?

Coaches provide an unbiased perspective to help you make decisions and set goals for your future.

Coaches help people make a change in their life, whether it is a personal life or a professional one. They can help you get motivated and fulfill your desires. There are many different types of coaches who work with people from all walks of life.

It is important to know how to start a career in coaching. There are many different routes that one can take to become a coach – from having qualifications, to becoming an apprentice with an experienced coach, or opening up your own coaching business.

Can anyone become a coach?

Yes, anyone can become a coach with some prior experience in a specific field. Coaching is not just about transferring skills from one person to another, the coach also needs the proper skill set to be effective.

Some people might think that coaching is just about transferring knowledge from one person to another. In reality, the coaching process requires more than just transferring knowledge and skills from one person to another – it also needs for the coach to have the skill set of being able to transfer their own knowledge and skills onto someone else.