growth - Inner Firewalking

The Coaching Market

The following is an excerpt from the CoachStart Manual.

Ten years ago, no one had heard of life, business, or corporate coaching. Today, it is featured in The New York Times, Fortune Magazine, Oprah, and CNN. And still, most of the world’s population has not heard of it. Demand for coaching is expected to continue to grow and may accelerate. What will happen when the first major movie featuring a life coach hits the street? Corporations are jumping on the band wagon: they want to hire corporate coaches, but even greater is their desire to have their managers trained in coaching techniques, and to develop a “coaching culture” within their organization.

There are an estimated 10,000 part-time and full-time coaches worldwide (ref: ICF). The number of people entering the emerging field of personal and business coaching has doubled in size each of the past three years (ref: CoachVille™). Several hundred articles, TV and radio shows have been done in the past three years. Coaching has been written about in Newsweek, Business Week, Fortune, Money, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fast Company, New Age Journal, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, Bloomberg Personal, Newsday, etc.

The number of corporations using coaching is increasing. Fortune magazine has referred to coaching as: “one of the hottest things in human resources” and “a grassroots movement that is spreading in some of the unlikeliest corners of corporate America, including IBM, AT&T, and Kodak.”

Coaching is strongest in the US, followed by the UK, Japan, Canada, Australia, Singapore, and New Zealand. Coaching is reaching more and more countries all the time; my newsletter subscribers now come from more than 90 countries.

Improvements in technology including teleconferences, cheap international phone calls, and the reach of the internet are making it even easier for coaches to build a successful practice with low overhead.

One Reason Not To Become a Life Coach

The following is an excerpt from the CoachStart Manual.

If you don’t enjoy seeing and being part of someone’s growing, then don’t become a coach. If you don’t get a kick out of being part of someone learning something new, bursting through a barrier, having FAR more than they ever thought they could have then this is not the career for you.

Having said that, I don’t believe there is a human being on the planet who couldn’t learn to enjoy that!

Is it Okay to Make a Lot of Money?

The following is an excerpt from the book Get Paid For Who You Are:

Deep down you may not want to start a business for fear that people will think you’re greedy or involved in a “get rich quick” scheme. if that’s what you’re worried about, is it really more noble for you to hide your gifts and talents than to make them available to others?

Here’s an example. Let’s say you’re a counselor who’s really good at helping women over 45 move through the process of divorce. a woman comes to your website lost, anxious, depressed and panicked about what life might be like after divorce. even though she knows it’s the right decision, she doesn’t have the courage to divorce because it’s too scary and she can’t see the way forward. as she gets information from your website she begins to feel some comfort, peace and optimism; she begins to create some goals for herself.

Then, she subscribes to your newsletter and after two to three months she has received so much from your free tips that she’s ready to proceed with her divorce. So, she spends $47 on your ebook, downloads it and devours it in about five hours. She’s so excited and happy, she follows your action steps and she starts putting them into place. She’s empowered. a month later, she calls you up and says, “I’d like to hire you. i’ve saved up the money and i’d like to work with you.” So you work with her over the phone and support her through the process of achieving her goal.

Perhaps making money is a normal, healthy byproduct of helping others.

men get breast cancer too

who knew?

I found a lump in my breast back in November, and after a couple of months started getting a little worried that it wasn’t going away. A Doctor told me men get breast cancer too and I should have it checked out. (when the correct response, as every Costanza knows, is “Get outta here! Are you kidding?”)

It’s not easy to get checked out when you’re in a new place very week. But now that I’m settling in I got a mammogram, sonogram, and this morning a biopsy. When something is sore and tender, sticking a needle into it and rummaging around is not my first request (unlike a couple of people I know). It’s actually kinda funny. At least I’m laughing now.

She’s pretty sure it’s nothing, so I’m feeling a weight off my shoulders.

At the same time, it was a great experience in opening; surrendering. I decided my body is not my business, and what happens to it is out of my hands. Felt surprisingly calm (well – except for my screams of pain – just kidding 😉 as I opened up to whatever was supposed to happen.

And – it makes any worries I had about business issues or the cat peeing on the cushions seem not so important.

David