The coaching industry has changed dramatically in the last 10 years, but there has been an interesting shift since COVID.

It seems like people are a little skeptical or leery about hiring a coach.

If that is you (or maybe you’re brand new to coaching and you’re wondering how to hire someone good) THIS episode is for you.

I’ve invested a small fortune in coaching and share the things to look for and the steps to take to make sure the coach you hire is a fantastic fit for you.

I share all the details inside! I’ll see you there!
xo, Janeen

>> CLICK HERE to Watch on YouTube

TRANSCRIPT:

[00:00:00] Janeen: Well, hey there, you guys. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. I am Janeen Alley, and you are listening to becoming the c e o of your life today. We are talking about how to hire a coach, and I’m gonna get into all of the fun, amazing details about how to do that in just a second. I just wanna make sure that you are in the right place.

[00:00:20] This podcast is specifically for women who want to rise above the mundane. They wanna get out of the weeds and the details of their lives so they can reignite their passion for life and make an impact. So if that’s you, you’re totally in the right place. So what I wanted to talk to you about today on the podcast is how to hire a coach. And how to know if they are going to be a good investment for you, if they’re gonna be worth your investment and your time. So the coaching industry has really exploded over the last 10 years, I would say specifically since Covid and in a lot of ways [00:01:00] that has been really good and in a lot of ways, That has not been so great.

[00:01:05] So if you’ve been around for the last five or 10 years and have been in the coaching space in any way, shape or form, maybe you’ve listened to podcasts or maybe you’ve invested in a course or a coach, you may have been burned by someone who had no business coaching. They did not deliver on their services, and it has really given coaching a bad name.

[00:01:28] I feel like, I feel like Bon Jovi song coming on right now. So anyway, this is not in your head for sure. I feel like There are some bad coaches out there and you legitimately have had a bad experience. People who don’t deliver, people who don’t show up, they have had no training, they don’t know how to coach people at all.

[00:01:47] That, in my mind, would not be a very good experience, and I understand those are my thoughts about it, and yet I wouldn’t wanna be treated that way, and I wouldn’t want one of my clients to be treated that way either. So, like I said, [00:02:00] this has made people really skeptical, maybe a little leery about getting coached, and I can totally relate to this.

[00:02:07] I started paying for coaching and courses in 2015, and I’ve spent over a hundred thousand dollars in the industry, and I feel like I know way more than I did when I got started.

[00:02:19] I know what to look for in a coach, and I also know what works for me really well as far as what I look for when I hire a coach. And of course, I am a coach, so you wanna take what I say with a grain of salt. But if you have been burned by a coach, you’re definitely not alone. And unfortunately, This has probably left a really bad taste in your mouth.

[00:02:39] However, try really hard not to stereotype the industry as being something that you wanna stay away from, because there are some amazing coaches out there. I’m working with a few of them myself and I have friends that are really, really great coaches. So you wanna find somebody that you like.

[00:02:58] And the way that you do [00:03:00] this is you want to practice just consuming their content. Whether it’s their free podcast or whether it’s a, a download or maybe a, a low ticket course that they’re selling from their website or something. That is probably where I would start is to see what kind of stuff that they put out there for free.

[00:03:18] Another way to find a really good coach, and this is kind of, I’m kind of speaking on a 30,000 foot view. We’re gonna get a little bit more into the details in just a second, but I would look for somebody who comes high recommended by someone else. This is how I found my business coach currently is because she came highly recommended from someone else.

[00:03:36] Or you wanna look for someone who has done something that you currently want to do. So for example, if you want to lose weight, you wanna find someone who has lost weight and you wanna learn from them. For me, I would never take a business course, this is kind of along the same lines of what I just said, from somebody who doesn’t have a business, right?

[00:03:58] Just like you wouldn’t take a [00:04:00] weight loss course from somebody who hasn’t ever lost weight. Now, You wanna be careful because I am not somebody who has lost a ton of weight in my life, although I would never coach someone to lose a hundred pounds. But I have definitely overcome my struggles with emotional eating.

[00:04:17] So you wanna kind of listen to how they approach things. I used to do a lot of coaching around, I. And I still do around health and food and those kinds of things because that’s where my, that’s where my background is. But if you’re somebody who has 50 pounds or more to lose, I would look for somebody who is in that arena who has also lost 50 pounds or more and sign up to work with them.

[00:04:40] But that’s not the only thing, that’s not the only criteria that you wanna check for. So another thing is you kind of wanna look to see where they’re at in the process. Just because they’ve built a business doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to be the perfect coach for you because they might not be where you are currently in your business. [00:05:00] So if you have already reached a certain financial benchmark.

[00:05:04] Let’s say you’ve made $500,000 in your business and you wanna scale to seven figures. You would want to be looking for somebody who does that. If you are working with somebody who just talks about it and hasn’t actually done that in their life, they’re just copying somebody else’s process. To grow your business and to scale to different milestones or different benchmarks, it takes a different process.

[00:05:28] And so you wanna be looking for somebody who has actually done the process that you want to do for the next step towards that goal. Otherwise, they’re not gonna know how to troubleshoot or they’re not gonna know the mindset or practical strategies in order to help you to get there. Okay. One thing to know though about life coaching in general is there isn’t an industry standard. Okay? So, for example, I’m a yoga teacher and we have yoga alliance in the United States that helps to standardize the [00:06:00] yoga teacher training experience for people.

[00:06:02] So if, if people have had a Certain exposure to the practice, then they would be somebody who Yoga Alliance can back and say, yeah, they’re, they’re ready to teach for your studio or for your gym, or whatever. And medical professionals of course, like doctors and nurses also have an industry standard that they need to reach, right?

[00:06:22] They have certain tests that they have to take. They have to be board certified in certain things in order to practice and be legal to do the things that they do in the business. However, there are some other industries that don’t necessarily have to be licensed in order to do the things that they do.

[00:06:41] So yoga teachers, I know that I just told you there is an industry standard, but you don’t even have to go through yoga teacher training in order to teach yoga, right? It’s not the same kind of thing as like a doctor having the education and the training and passing the tests and all those things [00:07:00] for yoga teachers. Same with hairdressers, and same for life coaches. I think sometimes people think that life coaching is very similar to therapy, but we actually don’t have tests that we have to pass in order to stay legal to continue to practice in the United States.

[00:07:16] However, I do have to say because I am certified through the Life Coach School, there is a test that I have to take and criteria that I have to meet in my business in order to stay a member of that community. But there isn’t a standard. So I want you to know that before you hire just any coach. You wanna be checking out and finding out, okay, where did this person get trained? What does that school look like? And I, I am biased, I think the Life Coach School is the best school. It’s one of the reasons why I got certified Through that school. I joined Self-Coaching Scholars, which is their membership program,

[00:07:55] back when Merril was coming home from Turkey. I knew I needed help with that transition. And [00:08:00] so I joined the program because every single week you could get a one-on-one session with one of their coaches. And I thought, okay, well, I was kind of thinking maybe 50% of the coaches we’re gonna be okay, but I was blown away.

[00:08:14] Every single coach that I got, Was so helpful and so professional and so good at coaching. And I knew that I wasn’t currently coaching like that. I was a certified health coach at the time but I was trying to help people do similar things and I’m like, yeah, I don’t coach like that. And I want to be able to coach like that.

[00:08:33] And so I became certified Through the school, because I knew that I was gonna get top-notch training from the life coach school. Okay. So another thing here is you have to understand that programs are run by imperfect people. And if you’re hiring a new coach, they usually have fewer people on their team for customer support and things like that. And so there are things that slip through the cracks, even if the coach is super on top of [00:09:00] things, and I’m just

[00:09:01] speaking from personal experience. We’re all human beings, right? But you have to understand new coaches, not only are they learning how to coach, but they’re also learning customer service, and they’re understanding business things, and they’re understanding platform software and all the things that go into usually a client experience, and so you wanna kind of take that into consideration when you’re hiring somebody. However, just because they’re a new coach doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re not gonna be good.

[00:09:27] It also depends on their training that they’ve had. But when coaches are newer and they’re just building their business, you usually have a little bit more access to the coach because they don’t have as many pieces to juggle as in a practice that’s been built up to a certain level. For the most part, I would say that they are kind of experimenting with pricing, and they’re usually a little less money to hire a newer coach than it would be, of course, a well-seasoned coach.

[00:09:58] Older coaches, [00:10:00] however, are going to have certain systems in place to make the customer experience a little bit easier for you. So there’s gonna be less glitching, there’s gonna be less issues with tech, those kinds of things, but you’re going to have less access to them. So I know for example, that Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi, I know a few years ago had

[00:10:21] a mastermind that they charged $250,000 to be a part of. I know a few of the entrepreneurs who were there just because they posted about it on the social media, but only a few people can afford something like that. Right.

[00:10:32] So you’re paying for their expertise and you’re paying for the opportunity to be close to them and to learn from them. So here are a few things that you wanna know before you hire a coach. Whatever the program is, whatever you are hoping to invest in, whatever outcome that you want, you have to understand that you’ve gotta do the work. In order to create a transformational experience for you that has to come [00:11:00] from within you. So you can have the best program in the world, but if you’re not showing up or doing the work, you’re not gonna end up getting any results from that. So you have to take ownership for that as well.

[00:11:12] You can invest in a course and have it sit there on your shelf and you can be really sad about that, but that’s not the coach’s fault, right? So you also wanna be aware of people promising really big results in a really short period of time. I get this all the time because Facebook and Instagram have pegged me as a business owner.

[00:11:32] So I get pitched a lot from people Who have ads running for courses or for coaching, or whatever. And a lot of these folks talk about a big outcome or a big success in a really short period of time. And every single time I get an ad like that, I completely ignore it because I know that there are no overnight successes.

[00:11:53] Transformation takes time. Okay, so if you’re hoping for that, I wouldn’t invest in [00:12:00] coaching because nobody can deliver that to you. You have to understand that it just takes patience and it takes failing and it takes trying things out, and it takes showing up in order to get what it is that you want.

[00:12:12] So if you have gotten into a bad program, like I said, sometimes it’s them. Sometimes it’s you, and not just because you didn’t show up to do the work. Sometimes you may have picked a program that you might not have been ready for. So for example, if you jumped into a program to scale a business where you don’t have a course or a scalable item, then you’re not going to be able to scale your business because you have nothing to scale.

[00:12:40] Does that make sense? I mean, even if you’ve been coaching, if you don’t have something that you can repeatedly sell in an automated way, you cannot scale that item. Another example would be

[00:12:51] you may have jumped into a course that’s requiring some work for you to do during the week. I mean, your coach might want you to be spending five [00:13:00] to 10 hours a week on their program or in their mastermind or whatever it is, and if you don’t have that kind of time, Then it wouldn’t be a good fit for you.

[00:13:11] Whether you’re working or you have little kids at home or whatever your schedule’s a little bit more unpredictable. But if you do have the time, then that might be a good fit for you. One of the things that I love to do before I have people sign on, and this currently is the way that I sell anything in my business, is I get on a call with people. Because I don’t want people to buy something that they’re gonna regret buying cuz they’re not a good fit. I can tell immediately, almost within five minutes or something from talking to someone, maybe that’s not immediate, but really quickly whether or not someone is going to be a good fit.

[00:13:43] So I want to talk to the people who are thinking about becoming a coach. I’ve actually had a few clients who have said, I just wanna do what you do. I just wanna be a coach. So the first thing that I would say is you wanna focus on getting lots of experience first. [00:14:00] My husband is a dentist and before he applied for dental school, he had to do a few things where he was shadowing other dentists because they didn’t want him to get into dental school and be like, What is happening here?

[00:14:12] This is not what I signed up for. Right? So you want to coach people. You want to, you want to do your best in trying to help someone out. If you’re looking seriously into a program, I would hopefully hop on a sales call with somebody who’s selling that specific coaching package to ask them questions about things.

[00:14:32] When I signed up for my yoga teacher training, I did this very thing. I, I got on the phone with Derek and I asked him about what his yoga teacher training was like and who it was a good fit for, and who it was a good fit. Not for, if that makes sense. I don’t think that came out quite right, but I hope that you understand what I’m saying.

[00:14:51] You wanna make sure that you’re clear on who it’s for and who it’s not for before you sign up to make sure that you feel like, okay, this is a good fit for me. [00:15:00] And I wanna encourage you to coach people who are not family members or who are not best friends of yours because these people are actually the hardest people to coach. So I would ask for references for other people. Also, this gives you an opportunity when you are coaching other people to know who you like to coach. I know exactly who I like to coach and what it is that I wanna coach them on, but I didn’t know that on day one. So you wanna give yourself time to just really understand and kind of play around with that.

[00:15:35] And this is something that’s always going to be evolving for sure. And you guys can see that in my journey as well and where I started and what I’m doing right now.

[00:15:43] So one of the things I will say is, if you want to be a coach and you’ve had experience where you didn’t like a coach that you invested in, or a course that you invested in, learn from those experiences. This is something that I feel like has really helped me to create the [00:16:00] experience that my clients have with me is because I have learned from things I didn’t like. And I have made sure that my customers don’t have those same experiences working with me. Now, not to say that my programs are perfect cause I’m still a human being, right? But I have gone to great lengths to think about, okay, what is my customer’s experience from day one?

[00:16:19] How do they feel supported working with me? And how do I want to show up for them and all of those things? So the last thing that I wanna say here is, if you were a coach, be ethical in your business. How do you want to be treated in a program? You wanna create that same experience for your customers. I like.

[00:16:40] Getting a lot of one-on-one time, and I also like getting to know my customers. I also really, really love small group masterminds because I get to know the other people in my group and I want to do the same thing for my clients. So that’s what I’ve created in my mastermind, and it’s also what I invest in.

[00:16:58] It’s also what I pay [00:17:00] for when I’m looking for a coach, because I love it. I like to have that one-on-one personalized experience when I am working with someone.

[00:17:08] All right, so if you want to hire a coach here, a few little tips for you. You want to make sure that you do your due diligence. So get on their website. Ask for references from past clients. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re asking to speak with somebody but what you can do is you can ask to read testimonials from people.

[00:17:30] So investigate, like where have they been trained? Who are their mentors? Do they invest in coaches themselves? You can either ask them or just listen to the things that they say. I talk about my coaches all the time. I love getting coached. I love to work with coaches. It’s one of the reasons why I like coaching is because I’ve had good experiences with people too.

[00:17:49] And again, you wanna consume some of their free content, whether it’s their podcasts or their webinars or their free workshops that they’re doing. You wanna get a feel for who it [00:18:00] is that you’re working for, and that’s the best way to do it, is just to consume their free content.

[00:18:04] Be really clear on what it is that you’re looking for and how you like to be supported, whether you want course material to go through, whether you

[00:18:13] like group coaching settings or whether you like being coached one-on-one or in large group or small group settings, like whatever it is, you wanna get a feel for how you like to be supported. And sometimes that’s just trial and error,

[00:18:25] but that kinda leads me into the next section. When you pay for intimacy with a coach, whether that is working one-on-one with someone or working in a smaller group, you are going to be paying a bigger ticket.

[00:18:39] But there is power in investing in what works for you. I think we’ve all had experience trying to consume free content and hoping things will change. I, I did a podcast just I think it was last week or two weeks ago, about hope. And how hope really isn’t a strategy for change. You want to invest in something that [00:19:00] is going to feel like you got some skin in the game, because otherwise you’re not gonna touch

[00:19:06] the content, it’s not gonna actually change you. Even though it can be the best content in the world, if you haven’t actually invested in it, you’re not invested emotionally in the content, you’re not going to consume it. It’s not gonna change you sitting on your shelf. Right. I had a coach one time tell me that he actually canceled the cheap membership.

[00:19:26] Because he never went and he invested in the super posh gym membership because the increase in investment for him was what got him to go. So sometimes that initial investment, a little bit more money into yourself can be the thing that pushes you over the edge to take action.

[00:19:44] I know for me, just investing in the coach that I’m working with right now, the investment for me was part of the transformational process. In the first four weeks that I worked with her, I took so much massive action I completely changed my business model and [00:20:00] what it is that I. I was selling. I was selling something totally different from what I’m selling now.

[00:20:05] I should say totally different, but we changed a lot of the strategy and the structure of my business, and I wouldn’t have been able to do that without making the investment, because that investment got me to show up. A lot of the things that she was asking me to do felt scary. So I’m like, no, I paid for this.

[00:20:21] This is what I want. I’m not gonna let my brain talk me out of the thing that I want the most. Okay. What I want you to understand is when you’re investing in coaching, you’re paying for an outcome, okay? You’re paying for hopefully a transformational experience, something that is going to last through time. Okay, so it is not just like a 50 pound weight loss just for you to get all the weight back.

[00:20:44] You’re, you’re paying for the transformational experience. So you want to be aware of that. You also wanna be working with somebody who understands what their value is. And the value that they’re providing for you, and they take that very [00:21:00] seriously. Okay? And that can be delivered in a lot of different ways. It can be delivered in the course material. It can be delivered in a group setting that they provide for you, whether that’s large or small, a one-on-one coaching session with you.

[00:21:14] There’s a lot of different ways that this can be delivered, so you wanna be kind of paying attention to what is it that I am getting from this experience and how is it in alignment with the investment that I’m making? So in my mastermind group, for example, I offer those clients, the Mastermind, which is a small group,

[00:21:33] and then I also have opportunities to work with me in between our group coaching session, so they get one-on-one support with that group to get them to where they wanna go. And that allows them to get coaching on things that they don’t wanna bring up in the group, or allows us to go really deep on their thing for 45 minutes when we’re together. So yes, you’re paying for the outcome. You’re also paying for someone’s [00:22:00] expertise and experience that they’re going to share with you during that time that you have together. I am currently working with a business coach, Laura, that I’ve mentioned a couple times already on the podcast, who has done over 43 million in sales.

[00:22:16] And I’m working with her because she knows how to sell stuff. That’s why I’m working with her. She knows how to build a business and she knows how to sell things. If I wanted to build a course I would work with, with someone who was really good at that. I already have a course. I feel like I’m really good at building courses, so I didn’t want to hire somebody who was gonna focus on that.

[00:22:37] Laura is super good at sales and she’s really good at business and she came highly recommended from a dear friend of mine. Laura, has built her business around referrals.

[00:22:46] When people love working with her, they tell their friends, Hey, you gotta work with my coach. She’s amazing. And she has just built her business that way.

[00:22:54] Working with a coach who’s worked with a lot of people doesn’t necessarily mean they’re good at [00:23:00] what they do.

[00:23:00] They might be better at sales. If they’re good at selling a lot of things, and they’ve sold a lot of things they might be really good at sales. But they have poor client experience. They have poor customer care. Or they don’t know how to coach very well. And those are the things that I care more about than the volume of their business.

[00:23:20] And that is one of the things that’s true about Laura’s business. Like I said, she sold over 43 million of stuff of coaching and business expertise in her life. Of course, she didn’t start there, but that is where she’s grown her business to. And it’s all done through referrals. Not bro marketing, but true referrals of people saying, Hey, You’ve gotta work with my coach

[00:23:43] she’s really, really good at what she does. I don’t have a large business as far as like I’ve coached thousands of different people. I have spent thousands of hours coaching, and I actually like my business to be a little bit smaller and to work with [00:24:00] relatively fewer people because I really like the personal aspect that I get with my clients.

[00:24:06] I know what their kids’ names are. I know where they live. I know what their lives are like, and I like that. I like that about the way that I’ve built my business. I feel like I’m a good coach because my clients like working with me. They like to buy things from me. They like to stick around and hang out, and I love that.

[00:24:22] So if you’re looking for a coach, I would love to be your coach. If you feel like what I do is a good fit for you, and if you’re not sure, just book a call and we’ll be able to figure it out together. There are a few different ways that I work together with my clients. If you’re local, I actually have a live local free event coming up where we actually get to hang out, you can find the link to that right on my website.

[00:24:46] It’s right there. It’s in the blue bar. As soon as you log onto my site, and it’s just for people who are local. So if you’re local and you wanna come, please come. It’s in the Denver area.

[00:24:57] So if you’re close by, I’d love for you to be there. But you need an R [00:25:00] RSV P on my website so I know how many people are gonna be there. So I have two things. I have the Mastermind becoming the c e o of Your Life Mastermind that’s happening. It’s starting this fall and it’s gonna be amazing and that will be really fun. and then I also have the Burnout Breakthrough Course to help women who feel like they’re just, they want to kinda get outta the weeds of their life . There is a group coaching component with that. So, Those are the ways that I work with my clients. I really love to help people get things done that matter to them, and that are the two ways that we do it. So if you have any questions about either one of those things, reach out to me, janeenalley.com to book a call with me.

[00:25:44] There’s lots of links on my website in order to connect with me over there. So that is what I have to say today. I hope you guys have a beautiful rest of your day, and we’ll catch you guys soon. Take care. Bye.