The coaching industry has boomed in the last three years. With the pandemic playing a big part in businesses moving online, signing up with a coach or participating in a coaching programme has never been easier. And there was no longer any limits on your coach being in the same location as you either. You can hire people from all over the world and for all types of reasons. Mindset; sex; nervous system work; trauma; building your business; you name it, guaranteed you will find a coach for it.
So, why should you get a coach? If like many people there is something in your life that you want to change or are finding challenging, then what better way to attend to it than get help from someone who has been through something similar to you. Chances are they will be able to impart some wisdom that will save you a great deal of time, and potentially money from making your own mistakes.
I’ve had some type of coach on and off since 2020. It all started when I was trying to figure out how to quit my 9 - 5 job but I didn’t know what I wanted to do or how to decide what path to take. At around the same time, I was in the process of running and setting up an online yoga business. My social media feeds clearly knew something was up because I kept seeing advertisements for coaches and and coaching programmes. It was like the Universe was sending me a sign that coaching was something I should look into. So I did.
I’ve always been the person at work who trained and mentored the new starters. I was methodical in my own work and knew how to put training material together and my ‘happy to help’ attitude ensured that people felt welcomed and able to do what they had been hired to do. I’d never considered coaching as a career but it was essentially the same thing right? Helping others through my own experience and showing them what I had done to get to where I was. I did a little research and everything pointed towards me hiring a coach.
It didn’t take me long to find someone. I had been following a young woman on Instagram who had documented her own journey to becoming a coach and so I decided to take a call with her and then hired her.
My first foray into coaching was good. It was like having coffee with my friend but with the added knowledge that she would see things I couldn’t and also have the confidence to tell me about. Sometimes our family and friends can be great sounding boards but they don’t always have the capacity or willingness to show us our own bullshit! Coaches have no fear in that regard. My coach helped me to see things logically. She helped me to set goals and kept me accountable to tasks that were going to move me forward. I had gone to her with the purpose of getting my yoga business up and running but the deeper I went into the coaching, the more I realised that I didn’t actually want a yoga business and I wanted to be a coach.
It wasn’t long before I found my next programme to join. A four month ’transformational’ programme that promised that I would be a different person by the end of it. Was I? Yes and no. I learned a lot about myself but there wasn’t much I didn’t already know. And it was the most money I had spent on my own self development. It did however increase my confidence in myself and making decisions to move me forward in my life. And it led to another three month programme with my first coach.
This programme was specifically for women who wanted to work in coaching or healing spaces and was to lead us through setting up and promoting our own businesses. This was really helpful to me as it built on some of the knowledge I gained in the previous programme I had participated in. And so there I was with all this new found knowledge from a total of 7 months coaching, ready to put my own coaching business out there and ready to take clients.
And it tanked! I spent 2 months doing all the things I’d been advised to do. I’d spent money on services I thought I needed and that would propel me forward in my business. In that 2 months, I never signed a client. I started to wonder whether coaching was what I wanted to do. I started to wonder whether I would succeed at what seemed like an insurmountable industry. I was almost ready to give up when a guy I followed on Instagram (always the ‘gram!) announced a webinar he was doing titled ‘The 7 Mistakes New Coaches Make’. It was like his post was written specifically for me and he knew what was going on inside my head. This was what I needed to make my business and myself a success! So I signed up.
A week later and after 90 minutes of talking about all the mistakes I’d been making came the sell. A coaching programme to help me be the best coach I could be. It would help me to build my business and make money as a coach. There was a discount if I booked a sales call that day. So being naive and wanting a quick fix, I did just that! Take my money!
But it was one of the best investments I made in myself. This particular programme opened up a whole community for me. There were other people also on this path. All wanting to work in the coaching industry and on self development paths of their own. The programme showed me more of what I’d learned previously but on a much deeper level. And there was a part of me that felt short changed on some of the coaching I’d had previously. I felt as if the previous coaches would also benefit from this same programme. I have to admit, I didn’t sign any clients during the programme, but I watched as other coaches regularly made 5 figure sums during the 10 weeks we were together. It never put me off that I didn’t get my own results. It was also the first time I learned to truly celebrate the achievements of others.
Once the programme finished I felt a bit lost, but I still had access to a community of people who were ready to help and support if I needed them to.
These programmes though concentrated solely on my business. Although there were aspects of self transformation - I was constantly pushed out of my comfort zone, these felt like few and far between. These programmes were more to do with building systems to create a successful business.
My deeper transformation really came when I signed up to a programme called Stretch 22. It was a four month programme about radical expansion. And radically expand I did. I learned so much about myself. It was fast paced and every week we had a new module to look at and homework to do. Along with coaching from a small group coach, the breakthroughs were something I’d never experienced before. I left that coaching programme a different person. More sure of myself. Trusting myself in a way I hadn’t before. A clearer path of what I wanted to do. And it also set me on the road to writing the book I’d always wanted to write.
I had a choice to make after that programme. I could enrol in another coaching programme that essentially would help me to become a better coach. It would be a 9 month and USD15,000 investment but something was holding me back. Then I found out what. The opportunity to shadow coach in Stretch 22 became available and I jumped at applying. After an interview process, I was accepted. It meant mentorship and coaching for myself as well as the regular participants and again it expanded me in ways I hadn’t realised it would. Deeper self development again.
Then I was invited to apply for a 6 month programme in Nervous System and Leadership. I signed up because I had no idea how it would help me but I believed in the coach so much. She is someone who led by example. Gave opportunity and put trust in others. So I took the leap and again spent more on myself than I ever had.
I would say that this programme is the one that changed me the most. I have always been pretty chilled out, but there was a part of me wondering whether I was as relaxed as I thought or whether I was bypassing any emotion that entered my space. Guess what? It was the latter! The work was different to other programmes. It was at a slower pace. There wasn’t as much homework, but more reflection and noticing of what was happening in and around me. I realised that in order to survive and get on in the world, I’d been suppressing and bypassing every emotion that had come up in my body. I didn’t feel safe to fully express myself. It didn’t matter whether the emotion was joy or anger, elation or sadness, they were all bypassed.
And this is the thing about being a coach. You can only take people as far as you are willing to go or have been yourself. If you have only done surface level work for yourself, how can you possibly take anyone any deeper? After doing the 6 month programme I knew I wanted more. I wanted 1:1 coaching. I didn’t want to be in a group programme. I wanted someone to really attend to me. And that’s what I decided to do. I made the biggest investment ever in myself, both financially and time wise. It’s only been about a month in and I can say that my beliefs, limiting and otherwise, have already shifted. My perspective on certain things has shifted. My decision making is coming from a completely different place. It’s not coming from fear. It’s coming from safety and desire. I am making different decisions in my business. Decisions that will benefit my clients as well as myself.
My relationships have improved. Relationships that I used to avoid because I didn’t want to enter into conflict. Relationships where I was giving more than the other person. People would always tell me how grounded I was, but now I can feel it so much more in my body. I know that the way I show up in every area of my life is in a more grounded and centred way. And that is good for everyone around me.
So let’s circle back to the original point of this blog post. Why should I get a coach? Well really the question is do you want a coach? Because the other thing about this industry is that once you are coached, you will find more layers to look at. More areas of your life to look at. It’s a bit like plastic surgery. Once you change one thing to make it look more ‘perfect’, the more other ‘imperfect’ parts of your life will stand out wanting your attention.
And I do want to give you a word of caution here. Having been in the coaching industry on both sides for 2 years, I’ve seen a lot of behaviours and sales techniques and promises that are not looking out for the people we are wanting to serve. I’ll go back to that plastic surgery analogy. I’ve seen people enter coaching programmes and leave needing something more because they didn’t get the result they wanted to or were promised they would get. I’ve seen people having their nervous systems activated in a way that wasn’t safe, and then no preparation for how to best support them through that.
Sometimes as coaches we learn modalities in the hope of healing ourselves and then helping others to also heal. But, and this is a big but, we can also do a client more harm than good by introducing someone to something we have not yet mastered ourselves. And because we only spend a limited time with that person, we may end up leaving them with the need to sign up to an extension with us for coaching or for them to find another programme or coach who will pick up where we have left off. Where is the integrity?
I’ve jumped from programme to programme, as you have read. And this isn’t to say that I didn’t gain anything from those programmes and coaching. But I was always looking at someone else to provide the authority and tell me what I needed to do. Even now when it comes to marketing and promoting my business, I’m being told different things by different people. It’s ok for us to take in information and then decide what works for us and what doesn’t. We don’t have to do things exactly in the way that others tell us. We are the creators of our own destiny. We get to decide. You as a coaching client also get to decide. You get to make the choice of the direction you want to go in. Your coach, should you choose to hire one is not the person who will tell you how to live your life. They will be there to support you and guide you based on your own intuition. They are there to help you trust yourself and the direction YOU choose to go in. They are not there to tell you how to do anything.
A lot of our resentments and frustrations in life come from others who are either telling us what to do, or not doing things to the standard we would do them ourselves. So why would you hire someone to coach you and expect them to tell you how to do things? It doesn’t make sense. We want to live as sovereign beings, yet here we are giving over our power to other people and asking them how to make our life better.
So the question again. Why should I get a coach? Because they will help you to realise your full potential. They will help you to start living the life you came here to live. They will help you to find the joy and happiness you had when you were a child and before it was coerced out of you. They will help you to live a fully expressed life, where all of you is welcome. But in order to do so, you are the one who gets to choose. The choice is yours.
If life coaching is something you would like to know a bit more about, or discuss how it could help you, book a free discovery call with me today.
Much love,
Harmesch x
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