It's the start of a new month for CLCI Live and a new month means a new
theme. For this month's theme the team will be focusing on Marketing & Business and how you can take your coaching practice to the next level.
We spend much of our time honing our skills as a coach. In fact, to just become an ACC with the International Coaching Federation (ICF) you need a minimum of 60 hours of training and 100 hours coaching experience. This only increases as you work towards a PCC and MCC but for all the hours set towards being the best coach you can possibly be, we often overlook one thing... coach training ≠ running a business.
Many life coach certification programs will teach you the ins and outs of coaching over the course of months but leave you clueless when it comes to actually starting, running, and marketing your business. We at CLCI understand the realities of working as a professional life coach and part of your education with us does include business practice and marketing. Even more, we have a playlist on YouTube with a series of Lunch & Learns hosted by our marketing expert, Brooke Adair Walters, MCPC, where students take time out of their lunch break to ask questions in front of a live audience across multiple subjects. You can probably guess what the most common theme is to most of these questions: business & marketing!
Now business & marketing can cover a lot of ground and are whole fields of study in themselves. Our goal This month is to give you tried and true foundational principles, tools, and techniques to help put yourselves out there and run successful coaching practices.
We start off light this week with Lisa Finck (A.C.C.), Brooke Adair Walters (M.C.P.C.), Jerome LeDuff Jr (M.C.L.C.), Daniel Olexa (P.C.C), and Anthony Lopez (M.C.L.C) and open the month on how to be unique and set yourself apart from the competition. How can we stop being generic and start being distinct, interesting, and maybe a little weird?
Lets Get Weird
What makes you weird makes you money
Wise words spoken by a friend of our facilitator Daniel Olexa. When you embrace your inner weird you individuate yourself, you stop being a part of the crowd by setting yourself apart.
Being a bit weird though can be uncomfortable sometimes. Especially when you are in the public eye making YouTube videos, creating advertisements, and interacting with potential clients. You feel vulnerable to all sorts of criticisms and comments. Vulnerability can work towards your advantage though if you are both weird and authentic. So no, you don't need to create TikTok videos of yourself rubbing peanut butter on your face for weirdness sake (trust me, I've done the research), but leaning into your quirks or eccentric coaching style tells people that you are a genuine human being, not a nameless face in the crowd.
Speaking of weird, you knows what's weird? Being a life coach.
Even though we are a growing industry not many people know or have been coached in a professional manner and that leads to an extreme amount of opportunity.
The market for life coaches is far from being saturated and that leaves a lot of room for growth as a professional coach. So what does being weird do for you in conjunction with having room to grow?
It says you are extraordinary, that you offer something valuable that people can't get just anywhere.
It helps you become noticed. Simply being noticed as standing apart is one of the best ways to get clients.
It lets you be memorable. People tend to talk about memorable experiences and word of mouth is priceless
It starts to define your niche. Finding your niche as a coach gives you the clearest idea of who you are looking for in a client and what your specialty is.
It allows you to set the standard for everyone else playing catch up. Would you rather be the one who imitates or who is imitated?
Like Attracts Like. Weird Attracts Weird.
You may have heard the saying "Like attracts like" in conjunction with "The Law of Attraction". Extremely large doses of skepticism aside, its hard to deny at least on a socioeconomic level that this isn't the case. People tend to seek out things, people, and environments that match their personal identities and ideologies.
What if by embracing the parts of ourselves that are eccentric, offbeat, and weird we attract clients who are just as varied and defined? Now coaching that seems exciting to think about as a dedicated profession. This isn't to say the average person isn't interesting in themselves; coaches should always be curious and approach coaching with a mindset that encourages our client's to bring their distinct perspectives into play. The best weird coaches encourage their otherwise "normal" clients to let loose their unique personalities that society often tells them to keep private.
What Makes You Unique?
Finding out what makes you unique goes hand-in-hand with defining your niche. If you don't know, then ask yourself a few questions. Really think about the answers.
How would I describe myself? How would my closest friend? My significant other?
What am I strangely good at? What are my talents? Skills?
What am obsessed with? What do I absolutely hate?
What social norms seem silly? What laws would I break if I could?
What raises my self-esteem? Where am I insecure?
Who am I most passionate working with?
What would I do with an year to do whatever I wanted?
What do I want to do that's out of my comfort zone?
We all have things that make us weird and uniquely define us, why waste our personalities by not showing it to the world and through our coaching? By tapping into what makes you weird you can better understand what it is you can contribute to the coaching profession, to your business & marketing strategies, and to your vision of what it means for you to be a life coach.
Thank you,
Lisa Finck, Brooke Adair Walters, Jerome LeDuff Jr., Daniel Olexa, and Anthony Lopez
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