I was reflecting on this recently and seeing the similarities and parallels between the experience of looking for a potential partner on an online dating website and looking for a life coach or a mentor to start one's life coaching practice in the online life coaching forums or life coaching directories. . .

In the last year, I've been making the transition to working with a smaller group of mainly long-term life coaching clients and exploring different ways to connect with people - which brought me to this forum to see what's going on here as well as looking at what other life coaches are doing on their websites to attract clients.

Coming on here felt strangely reminiscent of my last few experiences on online dating websites - lots of misrepresentation, guarded responses, messaging that goes nowhere and ghosting, and I can't imagine what it would be like for someone new to all this looking for clients or looking for a mentor. . . I'm just happy to not have to navigate the initial stages of setting up a practice once again (since I was able to quit my day job close to 8 years ago with enough business coming in from a full-time health and life coaching practice).

I wanted to share my experience when I started picking up enough clients to sustain a business because it falls outside of the current wisdom and perhaps a way more sane take on things and give a whole other cut on the magic of life coaching. . .I hope someone benefits from this. . .it's hard to come across good information these days and kind of a minefield out there. I find if hugely refreshing when I do and like a breath of fresh air. . .

The current wisdom when you start your life coaching practice is get accredited through a course, get your marketing plan in order - website, social media, blogs, presentations, write a book for credibility and start soliciting clients and this is all good. . .but this approach isn't guaranteed to work, doesn't always generate results - or get the results or clients you would expect.

Years ago I discovered a whole other element to building a coaching practice - something that I stumbled into and rather delighted that I did.

Through working with some brilliant mentors, I was able to see that maybe I'm not the one who is putting clients in front of me or having them say yes. . .sure - I can set up events for people to come to or marketing efforts but the question I started to ask is "what is it that has them actually show up for the events and am I really the one that has people say "yes" or "no" ?. . .I liked to think it is all me but realized that maybe it's more like the Universe / Spirit / God (or whatever) handling the logistics in all this in the background at least. . . . but if that is the case - what is my role in all this?

There was a very famous man in the 20th Century by the name of Buckminster Fuller - who invented the most efficient car ever in the 1930s and most efficient house ever in the 1950s (but these ideas were way too far ahead of their time to be implemented). He eventually patented the geodesic dome which is a well known design all around the planet and wrote dozens of popular books. He was friends with Henry Ford and Dale Carnegie, presidents and prime ministers of countries and had dozens of honorary doctorate degrees. Needless to say he was a huge force on the planet and an extraordinary human being.

Anyhow, he realized in his early 30s that he his degree of usefulness in the world (and the degree he could be used for his full potential) was correlate with the the degree to which his mind was a clean slate. Mostly people have a lot of crap in their head / mind - inaccurate and limiting beliefs, jammed up with negative emotions (fear, anger, sadness, etc) and these cloud one's intuition and ability to trust and act on their intuition. He realized that if he could clean himself out of these things and become more of a "clear conduit" or "useful tool" saying that he would be in service of the Universe / Spirit / God - he then could be "used" for/by higher forces for different projects way beyond his wildest dreams. He spent three years not talking to anyone examining all the beliefs, thoughts in his head to see if they were true or not. He said that as long as the mind is filled with this stuff, nothing new can come in and it's much more difficult to ''hear" and act on one's intuition. Of course, the more he cleaned himself up - the more he was "used" for his full potential to produce miracles on the planet.

Looking back I can see the same phenomena happened with me in a way and why it was so hard to get new clients in the very beginning and much easier later on. . .when I started out, I was all worried about money and survival - people could feel my neediness. . .which is a scarcity point of view and I was jammed up with fear and anger (which repels potential clients) or colours one's business. . .It wasn't until I really cleaned out a lot of limiting beliefs did a lot more clients start showing up like clockwork and it was almost effortless when it happened . . .they just came around as a "yes". Did I still have to get out and talk to a lot of people and do a lot of marketing - absolutely . . . but in the beginning where I was talking to a lot of people and had next to no clients - I would do a presentation with 10 people and maybe have one client from that. . .as I cleared out more of the inaccurate beliefs, worries, concerns, negative emotions - I could get in front of a group of 10 and have 3-4 people become clients. Gradually, the clients stayed longer and longer as I continued letting go of inaccurate beliefs and "processing out" fear, anger, grief, sadness and able to hang with people to a much greater extent and listen to them fully - and much safer to open up and share more with - which is really what life coaching is all about. I now have a practice where I have much fewer people than I ever had before, but we go really deep, they share about pretty much everything that's going on in their lives and I have "enough" coming in to have a really great life. . .looking back I can see that it had more of a commitment to examine life more closely and let go of beliefs that weren't serving me. . .

Anyhow. . .if you've read this far, you might be thinking - that's cool and wondering "how do I do that?" . . .well - it's not something you can learn from reading a book or talking a course where they teach you something. . .probably has a lot more to do with cleaning out the unexamined stuff and feeling stuff you don't want to feel (which is counterintuitive). . .someone else can't really do the work for you (it would be nice if it was that way but it isn't I found) - you have to do it for yourself. . .but it can happen way faster if you're working with the right person or people for sure to assist guiding through the process. A good life coach can assist with this who understands the process as well.

Anyways, hope that helps and all the best!