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How the "Right" Coaching Niche Will Find You When You Are Ready - Versus Trying to Hunt it Down and Figure it All Out . . .Some Tips For New Coaches or People Wanting to Get into A Life Coaching Practice Who Don't Know Where to Start
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I see a lot of people wanting to be a coach or going out and trying to find the "right niche", seeing if the idea is financially viable before trusting, jumping and taking acton. . .having to deal with their mind analyzing everything - trying to figure out if it will work or not, going on other people's websites analyzing what everyone else out there is doing and seeing if there is a unique niche, analyzing search keywords for a viable business idea, how much it would pay to market certain keyword phrases and be search engine optimized, finding a strategy for something unique to market, etc. etc. and I can relate to how challenging it is to go about doing things this way. . .

Looking back at how my coaching practice started, I can see that my niche I ended up doing wasn't something I could go out and find in this way. . .it was more like when I was ready, it showed up as the right thing to do. . .and all I had to go on was a hunch - and not even knowing if it would work out financially or not.

I realize that many might not want to hear this thinking they can go and get this done through sheer intention - finding the right idea - and I suppose you could for sure. But I find it so often leads to a business that is designed around making a profit first and serving people second (which you can see by how people got into it). . .there is nothing wrong with this incidentally and nothing wrong with making money. . .but there is another way at the same time where you could actually serve people first trusting and following your intuition and get supported financially as well with "enough" money to have a really good life.

There's something extraordinarily brilliant to learn and discover from this . . . and something way way way more rich an experience than anything I could have ever thought up or put together in my head / with my mind. I wanted to share my story about how I got into health and life coaching because it had nothing to do with any of the conventional ways that people go about it - and perhaps something a few people here might find useful.

What I am doing for my coaching practice I couldn't have ever dreamed of doing in a million years. . .

I was most like anyone else - I didn't like my job, I wanted to do anything else . . .I was confused about what "niche" to pick for coaching, what direction to go in. . .I knew I had hidden talents untapped potential. All coaching ideas looked hard to get into. Was was there to do?

A mentor of mine told me "if you want more in life, you have to first get right with (or want) what you already have".

I hated him for saying that . . .I didn't like my job. . .I desperately wanted out and I honestly thought - if I got right with my job - I might get stuck there doing that for the rest of my life - which is more than I could bear or tolerate.

Yet, when in hell, all roads out of hell look like hell - I couldn't see any way out. . .I am not sure what finally had me to come to this realization, but I did have a flash - "maybe being in hell right now is what's on the menu and maybe what there is to do is surrender to being in hell versus resisting or distracting myself from the feelings I didn't want to feel that came with being in hell - anger, fear, resentment, etc.".

Prior I'd been thinking - when I get someplace else in life - when I get the right business, making lots of money, have the right partner, right circumstances, etc etc, then everything will be better. I can see that that line of thinking had me NOT be present with the hell I was in right now (and what there was to feel with that).

I realize this might be a really unpopular viewpoint but consider that life isn't all just about feeling good all the time. It's a normal and natural part of life to have feelings of anger, sadness, fear, grief and if we suppress or resist those or distract ourselves from (which I think is the knee jerk reaction that most everyone on the planet is doing), then life starts to look strange, suppressed or flat.

Anyhow, I surrendered and got right with being in hell - which was really hard to do (although no one really cares if you're in pain I found). However . . .gradually the hell of my work didn't seem so bad when I stopped fighting / resisting it.

I was also able to hear something else my mentor said - if you want to be of service or "used" for service in the world with others, start being a demonstration of that out in the world RIGHT NOW wherever you're at. . .you don't have to be doing anything special or even have a special business to be doing this.

Prior to that, I thought I had to have a business where I was going out and making a difference for thousands and thousands of people out in the world. . .this dream of becoming like some of the big superstar or someone famous. The dream however was also a technique of my mind to not have me be present with how my life was right now and the unpleasant feelings it evoked.

Fortunately, when I got right with this is how it could be. . . that there might not be fame and fortune coming around and making a difference for huge numbers of people out in the world, getting right I might be doing the job I was in for the rest of my life and I could surrender to that - I just started looking to see how I could start with the people around me at my workplace. I would go around the office asking "is there anything I can do for you?" to everyone randomly.

I think a lot of women especially were taken aback that a guy would come up and ask them such a question and mostly the answer was "no. . . but thank you for asking". My manager loved it and started giving me more responsibility and offloading things she had to do so her life got better.

Gradually, my workplace didn't seem so bad and that's when something came at me, unexpectedly completely out of left field and something I couldn't have predicted in a million years or "figured out in my head / with my mind". . .

I was working as a software sales executive at the time and had clients like Burger King and Altria Phillip Morris. I actually even sold these companies about $350,000 - $500,000 in software to sell more Whoppers and cigarettes.

Anyhow, a close friend forwarded me an intriguing YouTube of a naturopathic doctor in the US with the most brilliant profoundly game-changing health awareness piece I'd ever heard in my life - something I'd never heard from any doctor or naturopathic doctor or alternative health practitioner and it was so common sense and obvious, that I was literally floored and mind-blown that something so blatant right under our nose was something we'd all missed.

He was quite popular and it took a number of months to get an appointment with him which I did and went through his program, partly in disbelief, but when I saw it worked, I was hooked instantly. He was offering training programs at the time and I had this strong hunch to fly to Florida and start training with him. When I got there, and took his programs, only a few people had incorporated this into their practice but no one with any success.

I had a hunch / inner sense - "no one is doing this health coaching work". . .I wonder if it can fly and is viable? . . .maybe I'm the one who is supposed to be doing this. So, when I came back to Canada, I got a couple more certifications as a practitioner taking accelerated courses which didn't take long to complete at all so I had a little more credibility and without really knowing what I was doing - no years of qualification in medical school or fancy degrees - and I started doing public speaking on these pieces of awareness not really having a clue if it would work or not to anyone who would listen.

Some people loved it and would come up at the end of the talks saying "I've been to my doctor, naturopath and not got results. . .can you help me with my health problem?" The game was on and I would be on the phone with the doctor from Florida in the evenings and his clinic by day, reading a ton (he had given me his cell number to call when I needed help) and would be going through medical records with him, reviewing their case and he coached me through what I needed to do with them and people I started working with got results. Of course, I made a ton of mistakes as anyone new in a business / practice and having to be ok with looking like and being a loser / failure - but the program had nothing to do with curing anyone - but rather about them learning their own blindspots about what they were doing that had their health go sideways and then taking responsibility for their own health . . .I wasn't doing the curing for them.

Within a year and a half - I was working with people with conditions up to late stage cancer all over North America, doing talks in health food stores and even hospitals eventually. . . I had enough income coming in from this to leave my sales job and have a full time health coaching practice. . .I even started picking up naturopathic doctors, osteopathic doctors, functional medicine doctors as clients which was really bizarre - although that didn't happen until several year later. . .Anyhow - the health coaching eventually turned into a life coaching practice by a similar process by a similar sort of process (with other nuances) but that's another story for another day.

That might seem outrageously fast for such a huge profound shift - to go from selling software in one year to working with advanced medical conditions without 5-10 years of medical schooling and background. and it was. In retrospect, I can see that it had nothing to do with me figuring anything out in my head / with my mind - trying to find the "right niche". If you had asked me if I'd be doing what I am doing now, not in a million years would I have guessed it. . .no way - and it's a way richer and more profound ride than anything I could have ever have come up with in my head / with my mind - learning to trust, follow and take action on deeper intuition.

It had a lot to do getting right first with where I was at and what I had (versus resisting, struggling, distracting myself from not having the feelings / emotions I didn't want to have). . . even being ok with that I might have to do that for the rest of my life (and that big dream of being a personal development superstar, having tons of money, helping thousands - was actually a trick of my mind that kept me distracted from just being with the feelings of what there was to feel right now). It was about willing to be of service even if it didn't bring in any money and being a demonstration of that. Most importantly - it was about following a hunch / intuition even when it wasn't clear at all if it would be profitable or something that would take off and ok with failing and being a loser in the process and trusting I'd get "enough" money and taken care of financially (which happened).

I know the tendency might be to want to turn this into a formula. . .this isn't an easy path in life by the way. . . but some people who come across this might be at the point in their lives where they're ready to take on this piece of really getting tight with their connection with their "higher heart" (others might call it "your relationship with God" or "listening to, trusting and following your intuition", or whatever). I think it's about rising to one's full potential and being "used" for one's gifts this lifetime. I find things work out really well when I follow my hunch / intuition . . .it's only when I succumb to fear, doubt, etc and not listen to myself intuition that things go sideways.

Any one last thing. . .I discovered when you have a life of following your intuition, you end up getting "enough" . . .enough money, enough support, enough whatever to be supported and have a really great life.

Anyhow - I just thought I'd write this post as something someone new to the game of coaching / life coaching might find useful on their journey.

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