Become a Better Coach
Everyone can be a coach. Sharing what I know here 👉
This is an article for all aspiring coaches (and new & old people leaders) out there.
I know what brought you here.
If you have decided to become a coach, you have two thoughts:
- I want to help people
- I want to be the best at it
I will be building up a full library of resources for coaches HERE. So consider subscribing and stay tuned for more.
Today, I want to give an outline on how to build a foundation for starting coaching immediately.
These are the elements that I see as Coaching Foundation:
- Coaching Habit
- NLP
- Psychology
- Neuroscience
- Personal Development
- Philosophy
- Taking an online course on coaching
- Hire a coach
- Meditate daily
- Begin
Let’s start.
1. Coaching Habit by Michael Stanier.
This is a foundational book. Read it.
The author gives a super-useful framework of 7 coaching questions that you will be using in your coaching practice. A LOT.
TLDR for you:
1. Opener question: What is on your mind?
Use this to start your coaching conversations. It is an open-ended question and lets your client “paint the big picture” in front of you. You then will be able to “zoom in” on the parts.
2. AWE question: And What Else?
As a Coach, your job is to cut through the BS. I am not saying that what all your clients say in the beginning will always be BS but very often it will. The mind is very good at coming up with excuses and rationales. You will have to learn how to “peel the onion”.
You have to dig deeper and deeper until “your shovel hits the bottom” and there is nothing else to say. They will feel liberated just by talking things through and dumping all that mental noise into somebody else’s mind.
Your mind is a tool of self-reflection for them. Your voice is the voice of their reality speaking to them. Accept the information without judgment. Let them empty their minds.
Cutting through BS is only one purpose of this question. Another one is that your clients just want to be heard. So listen. Actively. Many of them have never really experienced the level of presence and depth that you can bring in as a coach. Give them that space, and they will open up.
3. Focus question: What is the real challenge here for you?
When you ask about the problems that your clients have they can go on and on describing everything that is not working. You pull one thread, and the whole content from the dusty attic falls on you. In such moments, when your clients talk a lot and are very vague about what’s truly bothering them, you will need to make them focus. Focus them with this question.
So what is the real challenge for you?
You can upgrade the question and ask: “Formulate for me please in one sentence — what is the real challenge here for you here?” This way they are forced to think about how to be more concise.
4. Foundation question: What do you want?
Your client can lose themselves in their thoughts especially if they lack clarity and go on a tangent explaining themselves. You need to establish an overarching goal for all your sessions. What are they trying to achieve and how you can help them build systems that will get them there?
Ask them the same question at the beginning of each session to make sure that they are focused.
- “What do you intend to accomplish by the end of this session?”
- “What is your objective here?”
- “How will you know that you have achieved it?”
- “What will achieving this give you?”
- “Why is it important to you?”
- “What is the obstacle that stands between you and achieving your goal?”
- “What will happen next after you have hit your goal?”
There are many variations that you can play with. The point is to help your client to gain absolute clarity on what they want and what they don’t want.
5. Lazy question: How can I help?
As coaches, we always work from one foundational pre-supposition:
Our clients have all the answers and all the resources that they need to achieve their goal.
And if they don’t, then they have the resourcefulness to get those answers and resources.
Ask your clients the Lazy Question and they will tell you what kind of support they are expecting from you.
Another version of this question that I like is: “What is my role in this?” After you have identified what has to be done, and how it has to be done, your clients will inevitably come to a conclusion — that it is up to them if the transformation will happen or not. This question empowers them to take responsibility and it also helps to set expectations on what exactly will be your intervention as a coach.
6. Strategy question: If you are saying YES to this, what are you saying NO to?
This is another question that will help you to gain clarity. Your clients will say that they will do A and B and C. Your job is to focus them with this question, bringing to light of their awareness all the things that they should say No to if they want to succeed.
Opportunity Cost. This is an important mental model that should be in your coaching toolbox. You have said No to everything else right now to say Yes to reading this article (🙏 Thank you for that btw).
Your client’s success depends on whether they can stay laser-focused on their priorities. This means that distractions should be eliminated ruthlessly.
You can flip this question and use it in this form: “If you are saying NO to this, what are you saying YES to?” Apply it when they describe all the things they want to stop doing to get to where they want to be.
7. Learning question: What was most useful to you?
Aka Ecological question. You ask this at the end of the session.
This question forces the client to summarize all the insights and lessons learned in the session, and by summarizing them they consolidate them in their mind. When they talk it through they understand & memorize their insights at a deeper level.
Always ask your clients to leave a written reflection on the session. The more they write the better it sticks. Even a quick 5 min note on the session will be extremely useful for them.
These questions are foundational for any coaching practice. Career Coaching, Life Coaching, Spirituality Coaching, Financial Coaching. Doesn’t matter what niche you have chosen for yourself. Learn. Integrate. Experiment.
NLP
Neuro-Linguistic Programming will take your coaching practice to the next level.
The concept is simple. You program your Neuro (Brain/Mind) through your Lingo (Language that you apply to yourself and the world).
Here is a simple framework that I like to use with my clients to explain to them the concept of NLP:
- Your Brain 🧠 is your Hardware
- Your Mind 🧘 is your Operating System
- Your Beliefs 💭 are your Apps — you can install, uninstall, or upgrade them
- Your Language 🗣️ is the Programming Language that you use to write the code for your mind
- The client is the Software Developer
- A coach is a Debugger / QA
- Coaching is a Software Update — it might take 1 hour but the OS is running faster after you finish
To be a great coach you need to have great debugging (communication) skills, meaning:
- Being fully present with the client (active listening, not running the things you want to say in your head, staying empty and genuinely curious)
- Detecting the language that they are using towards themselves and the world (this requires full presence and self-awareness)
- “Seeing through” the language discerning what exactly is the nature of the experience that they are having. [Read this article to learn more about the nature of the experience]
- Knowing how to ask powerful questions that will lead to self-realization/personal insights
- Guiding through questions, knowing how to suppress the urge to give advice
- Understanding how to take what the client gives you and feeding it back in a clear and concise manner (which again should lead to a personal insight)
The main idea of the NLP is just to be very mindful of the language — the one that the clients use for themselves, and the one that you use to guide them.
Language is everything. It points right at the experience that the client is having.
Example. When they say “I can see the light at the end of the tunnel” — it shows that their experience has been like wandering in the darkness.
Another example. One of my clients asked: “When did you really go out of the shell?” You see. Their experience is that they are in some kind of shell that needs to open up so that they could “go out” and become their true selves. Change the narrative and you will change the experience.
There are many books on NLP. Here is one recommendation, but you can start with anything you want. They all talk about the same concepts.
In NLP, there are several concepts that will become foundational in your practice. Do your research on these:
- NLP presuppositions
- Representational models
- Meta-programs
- Locus of control
- Mental models
- NLP exercises
I will be writing more about those aspects of NLP but there is no lack of information. Just read some articles on Google. Leverage ChatGPT as well to get the gist. Once you understand the concepts integrate and practice right away.
Psychology
An understanding of psychology is needed to understand what is going on in the mind of the person from a more systematized, academic angle. Some things I recommend covering:
- Carl Jung — Archetypes
- MBTI, Enneagram, personality tests
- BF Skinner — Operant Conditioning
- CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy)
- Practical Psychology
- Logotherapy — Viktor Frankl
It doesn’t matter where you start. One thread pulls the other. Study something you are curious about.
FYI all bullet lists presented here are just suggestions for further research. I keep them short so that they are not so intimidating for beginner coaches.
Neuroscience
- Andrew Huberman Podcast
- TED talks on the science of the brain
Keep it simple. This topic is vast. Learn the bits that you can integrate into coaching. For example, neuroplasticity, the benefits of meditation, or the effects of breathwork on the brain.
Personal Development
- Willpower — Kelly McGonigal
- Flow — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
- Deep work — Cal Newport
- Habits — James Clear
- Essentialism — Greg McKeown
The power of your coaching depends on the power of your own mind. You can’t preach what you don’t practice yourself.
If you are a career coach who doesn’t network or lacks a sense of direction in life, you will show up for your clients lacking authenticity delivering weak and ineffective coaching. You don’t want that.
Build yourself into a productivity machine. Grow your physical energy first, it will bleed into everything else that you do. Rise early. Work on your business. Write. Read. Work with people who are smarter than you.
Theoretical knowledge is garbage. If you don’t practice it, you don’t know it.
Philosophy
- Socratic Questioning
- First principles
- Philosophical Razors
- Zen
- Stoicism
- Existentialism
- Subjective Idealism
- Transurfing
- Advaita
As a coach, your job is to help clients ground themselves in their truth. You won’t be able to do it if you are not grounded in yours.
This is a short list of things that have become foundational elements in my coaching. You do you.
Take a Course
Take an online coaching course.
I can recommend Achology Courses by Kain Ramsay. He knows his stuff.
Mindvalley — is another great resource for you to educate yourself.
Hire a Coach
No matter how much you study coaching alone there are some things that you will be able to work through only with a coach.
Primarily, breaking through the belief of paying for coaching.
If you have not experienced the power of transformational coaching you will feel incongruent and misaligned internally. You will struggle to show up and lead your clients from a place of confidence because you yourself will lack confidence that you can deliver value and that your coaching actually works.
Having a coach will make you grounded in your belief that everyone needs a coach.
Your communication with your clients will stem from that ultimate belief. Especially when you are talking about money and charging for your services. If you don’t truly believe that you can “put your money where your mouth is”, you won’t influence people and you won’t close deals.
A good coach will help you to break through the beliefs you have about high-ticket coaching and charging a premium for your services that might be conflicted with your desire to help people. You can do both — you can empower and enable your clients and you can get paid for your work.
Meditate Daily
Self-awareness is a superpower.
The more grounded and self-aware you are the more powerful your coaching will be.
Why?
To see dysfunctional or incorrect thinking in others you need to develop a strong ability to detect dysfunctional or incorrect thinking in yourself. It is impossible if thinking is everything you do all day long.
Observe your mind daily. Practice insight meditation the purpose of which is to understand the inner workings of your mind.
Build meditation into your morning routine. You need to have at least 30 min to yourself which you spend resting in your own being. Build up slowly. Start with a 5 min timer, and increase from there by 5 min increments a week.
Watch your mind.
At first, the thoughts will slow down. Later, they will slow down just enough for you to notice small gaps between the thoughts. Over time, the gaps will grow and will become a space of no thought. Eventually, this state of no thought will stabilize. You will be able to “stay empty” for longer periods of time. The very concept of psychological time will start to dissolve in you. Your ability to stay present and aware throughout the day even engaged in external activities will grow. You will be grounded in presence.
This presence will become the most attractive quality to your clients. They wouldn’t be able to tell what is it exactly about you that makes your persona so magnetic. You will show up with authenticity and humility because your mind will not be running an agenda on how to sell your services while you are listening to your clients. Your gravitas will grow just because you are always centered within your calm mind. Your ability to exercise good judgment which is absolutely crucial in coaching will increase exponentially.
The stronger your meditation practice, the stronger your ability to coach people. Correction: even the word “practice” is wrong to apply to meditation. There is nothing to do and no effort to exert during meditation. Meditation is just the art of doing nothing. You let the mind calm itself down, and you remain as an awareness.
You like so many others are looking for the same thing. You are not looking for peace OF mind. You are looking for peace FROM mind.
Meditation is the answer.
As a coach, you can only lead your clients to your level of depth of understanding. Their insight is a function of your insight.
Understand your own mind at a very deep level, master it, and you will be able to master any mind because the foundational principles behind how all minds work are true for any human. The only challenge is that few people are ready to develop the discipline to become regular meditators and ground themselves in the inner truth.
Find out who you truly are by demolishing everything that you are not. Your concept of self is a mental construct. Everything you think is true for yourself is temporary and can be reinvented. What you are as a professional. What you are as a coach. What you are as a human being. Once you find out who you truly are there will be no human you wouldn’t be able to coach. Why? Because at the core level, we have the same essence. Find it and you will be able to guide your clients to it.
Begin
The smarter you are the more sophisticated the excuses why you can’t just start.
- “I need to find my niche”
- “I need to build my website”
- “I need to plan out my content game”
- “I need to create a coaching program first”
- “I need a certification”
This is all BS and you know it.
The only way to start helping people is to start helping people.
Your confidence is a function of your competence. Get competent and you will be confident.
The only way to become great at something is to endure the discomfort of sucking at it.
Coaching, like any skill, is no different. You will push through the phase of learning to get to the phase of confidence to eventually get to the phase of mastery.
Here is a tip you will like.
Apply this coaching tool to yourself — the Hero’s Journey.
Identify where you are in the journey. Visualize where you want to be. Go there and slay your monsters — your fears, your insecurities, your self-doubt, your imposter syndrome.
Right now — you might be Mr. Thomas Anderson waking up to his new identity as Neo. One day you will be stopping bullets with the palm of your hand. In between these two states are hours and hours of deliberate practice.
Get to work.
How to start:
1. Understand what kind of coaching you want to do.
Eternal markets are health, wealth, and relationships.
Coaching industries: life coaching, life purpose coaching, career coaching, relationship coaching, dating coaching, financial coaching, etc.
Do your research. As a coach, you will be drawing from your life experience more than anything else. Chances are, you already have a lot of patterns in your life that will indicate what niche you should start exploring as a coach.
Watch closely the problems you care about. They will point you in the right direction.
2. Explore by doing.
Get as many 15 min research calls as you can. Understand what kind of problems people have. You need to start having real conversations. It doesn’t matter how much time you will spend intellectualizing about what the clients think and how the conversations will go. The reality is always way more complex. Trust yourself. Dive in. To learn how to swim you need to be immersed in the water.
The more conversations you have the more clarity you will gain on your “ideal client”.
3. Coach for Free.
Start coaching for free. Tell them it is free but not exactly free.
Don’t charge money. Charge value. Ask for testimonials and referrals in return. Collect your testimonials and build an aggregator (a simple website) where you will be able to send your prospects. Selling (creating an opinion about you) starts there. Once they book a meeting with you show up like a million-dollar coach.
4. Build Systems.
Set up your systems.
1. Marketing System.
- How do you get the message out there and generate interest?
- What are the best platforms for getting clients?
- What is your target audience?
- Who is the ideal client?
When you are creating content you need to ask yourself these questions:
- What problem am I solving?
- Whose problem am I solving?
- What benefits am I unlocking?
- What promise am I making?
- What emotion am I generating?
- What’s the next action my reader should take?
Content repurposing strategy:
Here is my content repurposing strategy for 2023:
- Write a long-form blog post on Medium (aggregate all my blog posts on my website)
- Use the blog post as a script for my podcast
- Condense the blog post into a Twitter thread
- Screenshot it for a LinkedIn carousel
- Write 3+ LinkedIn posts in other formats
- Turn them into 6+ shorter Twitter posts
- Revisit and repurpose content after 3+ months
You can have any variation of this but why this is important to understand.
Everything revolves around writing. Your success as a coach depends on two things:
- Your communication skills
- Clarity of thinking
You will develop both through writing.
- Great public speaking is a lot of private thinking (meaning: writing)
- Journaling/Blogging is written meditation (helps you to understand what is in your head and organize/reorganize it in the best possible way)
2. Education system.
Build an aggregator for your resources and materials. Make it accessible to clients.
It can be anything — a personal website/Notion/Google Drive/Medium article or a Google Doc with a bunch of links, it doesn’t matter. As long as it is informative and serves the purpose of showing your clients that there is a “method to the madness”, it’s good. Just make sure it is scalable and you can infinitely grow your knowledge base.
The education system is serving as a conversion system as well.
As your prospects browse your website they build a certain perception of you and your coaching style. They assess the value you give away for free and how much substance is in the resources you create.
And you need to give away 99% of what you know. Why? Because coaching is not teaching. Your clients pay for the personalized experience — they are looking for someone to help them assemble their personal puzzle. No matter how much information they absorb online it will never substitute the work with a coach.
Here is my aggregator for your reference:
3. Conversion system.
If your education & marketing systems are working, you will be getting inbound leads.
What happens next?
Well, you run them through your funnel.
Coaching is a lot like dating. Ever used Tinder? A similar mechanism here.
- You can start with texting to see if there is a potential fit + learn the big picture of what is happening in the client’s world
- 15 min Discovery call ➡️ If convinced, close them. If not, 👇
- 45 min Strategy call ➡️ If convinced, close them. If not, 👇
- 1-hour Free Coaching call ➡️ If convinced, close them. If not, release —and rethink your approach. Why are you not converting?
This funnel is just one example of what you can do. You don’t need to follow these particular steps to the letter. Experiment. Iterate. See what is working for you.
Watch this training by Alex Hormozi if you want to be a better closer. This is Liquid Gold.
Also, study books by Robert Cialdini. The foundation of your sales acumen.
Keep in mind — the best closing is not selling at all.
Your job is to deliver coaching that is so powerful that all they can say is:
People are very good at smelling non-authenticity. They will also feel that you want to sell your coaching too much.
Leverage reverse psychology.
If you are a successful coach, you have no shortage of clients. You have options. And that’s how you need to present yourself. If you are desperate to close the client, they will feel it and it will be a huge turn-off.
Don’t seek to sell. Seek to help. If helping others is not your primary driver, quit coaching. You are in the wrong profession.
4. Onboarding system.
My current system is very simple:
- Google Calendar
- Zoom
- Scheduling Automation software (Calendly or alternatives)
- Google Docs (to keep meeting notes)
- Google Sheets (I built a dashboard to consolidate all client data)
- SMS / LinkedIn / email support
- Get a good mic (sound is more important than the video as you will be guiding with your voice)
That’s it.
I am scrappy. Minimum toolset to get the job done. My experience tells me that your clients wouldn’t care much about the logistics. The value of coaching is your mind and 1:1 time with you.
5. Coaching Program.
Not much to say here. This is strictly individual and depends on what type of coaching you have.
I can talk about the things I know. For example, Career Coaching.
In your sessions, you should be covering the following:
- Identifying Life Purpose
- Values
- Long-term goals
- Short-term goals
- Challenges / Blockers
- Uninstalling Unproductive Mindsets
- Full skills-audit
- Effective job-hunting strategies
- Communication skills coaching
- Interview prep
- Personal branding
- Resume / LinkedIn
How you want to tie this together in a program is up to you. Again, the coaching program is only as powerful as the coach (meaning: your power is your intelligence, your self-awareness, and your ability to read and influence people).
Invest all your energy in Personal Development and Coaching other individuals on how to do the same. Everything else is secondary.
Last words
Some thoughts I want to leave you with:
- If you got into coaching looking for a quick buck, quit now. You won’t last because you are in it for the wrong reasons.
- Everything we do as coaches is to serve people. If you are not here to serve selflessly, quit now.
- You will do better if you teach yourself how to think long-term vs short-term. Coaching (like anything else) is a relationship business. Trust takes time.
- Personal branding is important but signaling virtue should not be your primary focus. There are so many coaches out there who are preoccupied (and probably mesmerized) by their own persona. Your focus should be to become a coach who is exploding people’s minds 10 min into the call. That’s it. The Brand is not what you build, it is what you do.
- One thing you learn very quickly in coaching — people change only when one critical condition is met. People change when the pain of transformation becomes less than the pain of staying the same. As long as the opposite is true, there is nothing you can do as a coach no matter what interventions you take. Yes, you can tell this to your clients.
- Charging $ for your services mindset: “We do not work with people who are not willing to invest in themselves.”
- Price objection mindset: “I am more affordable than any solid coach out there, but I am better than anyone who is cheaper than me.”
- Get obsessed. You can be successful at anything you want to be but it has to be one thing. Choose carefully. If you know in your guts that coaching is that thing for you, get obsessed. Throw everything in the game and leave nothing behind. The way you do anything is the way you do everything.
Hope this was helpful.
If it was, share it with your fellow coaches. And give me shout on LinkedIn, I am always there.
Now, go change lives! 🔥
Peace 🙏
