I'm looking for some opinions from a cross section of the UK population, albeit a doggy daft cross section!  I'm looking into setting up my own life coaching business and wondered what you all thought about it and what sort of person you think would use a life coach.  All comments welcome as I'm trying to do a bit of market research before I get my business plan sorted.  i'm still in the very early stages so definitely not on here touting for business, just wondering if any of you have thoughts about coaching and what sort of person a life coach would be? 

Hi Cheekychow

I dont know much about life coaching myself but I have a friend who has her own lifecoaching business, she is one of those rare absolutely lovely people and im sure she would be happy to give you some pointers if you would like me to put you in touch with her :)

Claire

I'm not 100% sure what a life coach is? :o But if people need coaching to get through life i would imagine you would be seeing insecure,uncertain people with a nice disposable income walking through the doors??

What do life coaches actually do ,are they expensive? :)

Is this yet another "new" title for what used to be called "mentors", "gurus" etc etc etc? :rolleyes:

I think the rise in their popularity, as well as various "therapists" has increased with the decrease of a) common sense and b) extended families where support, information, help etc was de rigeur; (not that I am at all cynical or sceptical you understand) :D

Never found the need for one myself............ ;)

One of my least useful academic qualifications is a post-grad certificate in Strategic Management. In the course of getting it, however, we were split into groups and did an awful lot of mentoring and life-coaching each other. Being one of life's cynics I was very iffy about the benefits of this and was planning to sit at the back being quietly sniffy! As it happens the experience was very valuable to the members of the group who had never really taken the time (or indeed had the chance to take the time) to think about themselves and the direction their lives had taken.

As part of my course - which had a heavy concentration on "leadership skills" - we had a number of external consultants who came in and also did life-coaching and if you can make appropriate corporate contacts I'd suggest there was an earner in there for you doing similar.

Having retired from a career which you could say was heavily "leadership biased" the organisation never felt the need for these type of courses, exisiting skills were developed and individuals chosen for their obvious strengths, its difficult to build on something that isn't there, sadly the university of life doesn't seem to be recruiting these days.

Too much emphasis is put on qualifications, and those holding them presume superiority from them, not enough store is put  on common sense and abillity.

Having said that I wish you luck in your venture.

Thanks to you all for your input.  My main reason for asking about this was to see what people's general perceptions of coaching are.  currently I work as a youth worker specialising in substance misuse, sexual exploitation and challenging behaviour and I developed an interest in coaching a few years ago when it first came out as 'the new big thing'.  The more I looked into it the more I realised it was techniques and tools that I use everyday in my work to motivate and encourage young people to meet their potential so it seemed daft to me to be working for someone else when i would love to eventually be self employed.  If for whatever reason I do not make a success of running my own business I can use the qualification as a bargaining tool to my advantage in employment e.g. for a higher salary or a 4 day working week or whatever else takes my fancy
Tohme you have a point about people not necessarily having an extended family and the common sense bit too as I see champdogs (sometimes) as a bit like coaching e.g. when people use the forum as a sounding board when they know the answer to the question they have asked but just don't realise they already have the solution e.g. to a behavioural issue with their dog.  Asking the question and having other people confirm their suspicions so they can take action to move forward with their problem is similar to some aspects of coaching.
thanks again for your input

I do think that people are too prepared to pay for someone else to do things for them/sort their problems out. There seems to be a plethera of services offered now and people prepared to pay for them - personal trainers, counsellors, various beauty treatment 'technicians', etc etc etc . How many of these are actually necessary, I don't know :) Apart from my hairdresser, I've never used any of them - I've never felt the need - a long walk with the dog would probably cure most of these problems :)

It's probably true that friends and family can do as good a job in helping people with problems :)

Daisy

Life coach? Yeah right!

the best thinking tool for me is a long dog walk and the best planning tool is a to-do list but thats me personally - each to their own and if we were all the same it would be boring. 

Hmm, call me an old fashioned stick -in-the-mud whatever but i had a woman last year who contacted me re: having a pup & put her on my "list". When we finally got around to talking properly & sussing her out a bit, i have to say the whole thing gave me the creeps...she was a "life coach" & I have to say the whole thing made me want to slap her & tell her to get a proper job!!!!! (I certainly couldnt sell a pup to her she was irritatingly patronising & wanted to analyse every breathe the poor pup was going to take!) She waffled on incessantly & I canot believe there are folk out there who make a living from it & likewise that their even more idiotic people prepared to pay money to use her services!!!!!! Like I said, I am a bit old fshioned on such things & group it in the same boat as "councilling" and "stress management" & other such idiosynchresiies I have neither time nor patience for. Just my thoughts, as requested, sorry!

One of Cheekychow's original questions was what kind of people would use a personal coach. Another was what kind of person should a personal coach be.   In another post Tohme said there is a decrease of common sense and family support, nowadays. I would like to add lack of time. Time to listen, time to at least seem to care about other peoples doubts and worries.
So, the answer might be anyone who's needing someone else to listen to them, and willing to pay for it, would use a personal coach. So to be a good p.c. you need to sell time, I think.
The man who lives two houses down the road from me, earns a living placing hot pieces of rock on people , lightening candles, giving light massage and talking. He calls himself therapist of something or another, can't really remember. But the point is, people keep consulting him to get help with all kinds of problems, illnesses in body and in mind. He seems to be able to cure them all . Or maybe he's selling his time, mainly, and his clients are willing to pay for it :-p .
So to help in the market survey; I think time is a vital ingredient in personal coaching.
Best of luck in your new profession,
Karen

>Time to listen, time to at least seem to care about other peoples doubts and worries.

I'd second that! You see when I did my course, one of the main things that kept emerging was that people never felt they had time to think about things. The chance to spend a day a month away from the normal pressures of work and family was invaluable as was the chance to express their feelings in an atmosphere where nobody was being judgemental.

I still think there's too much emphasis placed on management jargon when a lot of the "solutions" involve commonsense rather than anything more scientific - and for sure, one of the people who came along to give a presentation was hilariously awful in his determination to baffle with bulls**t - but as a complete cynic I was surprised to see how useful some of the life coaching was. You've got to combine it with reality and commonsense but nowadays I'm nowhere near as contemptuous about it as I was before I actually experienced some of it!

"Time to listen, time to at least seem to care about other peoples doubts and worries."

I can understand what you are saying but the thing is there is another side to this - when you do give the time to listen and give help to someone in need in invariably ends up becoming a habbit from the other person.  e.g  You listen to people with a problem, they call you needing help to which you gladly give, they call again needing more help again you gladly give (even though you feel pretty down and ill yourself) then they catch you again asking for yet more help fro no other reason than they have simply overstretched themselves and can't do the thing that they should be doing, unfortunately you are unable to help this time as you yourself have made plans and if you did help the other person you would be letting your own family down - what happens at this point ?  The so called friend in need gets the blooming hump, storms off and you then get the third degree because they have had to be put out and cancel the additional plans that they had made !!!

Sorry, rant over :)

Strategy is to help them help themselves.  Don't 'do' anything for them but ask them what they think they should do, ask them what options they have, ask them how they would carry out actions etc etc.  They learn how to work out strategies for themselves otherwise like you say they become needy or to put it bluntly a pain in the ar*e

Of course friends that offer practical help when you are in a fix are invaluable but this should be a two way street

Hmmm.... me and you that would work (if we were ever in the need that is) but for this particular person I'm afraid not, she is needy to the extreme, doesn't want to help herself but just moan at others as to what she has to deal with.  Give you a recent scenario - she has divorced from her hubby with two kids (age 8 and 11)  now the 8 yr old had a school play - one performance in teh afternnon which clashed with the end of school day for the 11 year old and one the following evening - now, instead of just going to the evening performance (which she had to go to to drop her kid off for anyway) she decided to go to the afternoon performance and assumed that I would pick up her 11 year old and meet her back at the 8 yr olds school - I had a car full already, was going straight out to the cinema with my three kids and OH but that wasn't ok with her and she sulked and stressed about it - washed my hands off her now, can't be ars8d :( :)

Sounds like she's got her strategies worked out - you!  If you've washed your hands of her then fair enough, let someone else be her lackie.  Sounds like you've offered your services a bit too readily in the past and she's come to depend on you.  People like that need clear and firm guidelines as to what you will and will not do, as in will not pick up kids unless arranged in advance and confirmed on the day.  It's easy to get caught isn't it, especially with the school run scenario. 

You've got it spot on CherylS about motivating people to help them help themselves and find the answers from within.  Thanks to everyone for your responses, and to the people who apologised for giving what they felt was a negative opinion, I asked for an opinion not for people to tell me what they thought I wanted to hear so I was looking for a good mix of opinions which I got so thanks for your input everybody. 
Like the other people who responded about feeling sceptical until they got some coaching I felt the same way about counselling and had only dabbled in it because I thought it was huggy, hippy crap but when I did an intensive counselling course I found it so useful to be on the receiving end as well as learning the techniques and tools and it totally changed my opinion of it but at times its still a bit too fluffy for me - but I suppose it depends on the practitioner.
Thanks to you all I'm another step closer to working from home and having my dog with me all day - hooray

I would need to get a life first...