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Wendy Buckingham / Creator, Life Coaching Professionally
These Life Coaching Resources and coaching processes will support the growth of your professional coaching career. Many are free or for little investment and will really enhance the development of your life coaching skills and help grow your business.
FYI: I may receive commissions at no cost to you. Please see my affiliate disclosure for more.
You may feel your coach training should have given you everything you need to start coaching and building your business, and that’s fine.
However, as you begin the coaching journey, you may discover that you either need to fill some gaps or increase your professional toolbox.
Many of the coaching tools I recommend are free for you to benefit from.
Others will require some investment from you but have been carefully chosen to provide value to the growth of your coaching practice both skill and business wise.
Take some time to explore and please contact me if you have any questions.
The Coaching Tools Company has some fabulous life coaching resources, processes and templates that you can brand to your name.
I have checked them out and can highly recommend them. These toolkits will save you time and can really enhance your coaching scope.
This complete guide to the tools (many of them free) and how to use them will help you choose the tools you will find the most useful in your coaching practice.
I'd also recommend you subscribe to their monthly newsletter which is packed with great articles about coaching, special offers and a free monthly coaching tool .
Cindy Schulson, of Marketing With Heart, is one of the most authentic and best marketing authorities I know when it comes to helping coaches clarify their niche, create their message and market with authenticity and heart. And isn't that the best way to attract clients?
Many visitors to this site have found joining her mentoring program is a wonderful way to get ongoing support in crafting your message and getting it heard.
Discover more and how to join her program...
I created these eBooks from my 20+ years life coaching experience, to pass on valuable information and skills to both new and experienced coaches.
The books (four in the series so far) are about creative ways you can raise your profile and promote your services and attract those ideal quality clients.
They are:
Do check them out - they are full of useful information, hints and checklists geared to your success. There is a big discount if you buy more than one.
In these days of litigation, it's really important to have in place firm agreements, disclaimers and refund policies for your coaching.
Also to ensure protection for your coaching content, such as website content and any webinars or online courses you offer. You can read more about what you need at Life Coaching Agreements.
There are so many ways to get paid - direct debit, Paypal, Stripe and so on.
But if you are aiming to have an international client base you want to find a payment system that is easy, efficient and importantly doesn't cost you a fortune in exchange and/or bank fees.
I found that Wise (previously Transferwise) was the one for me, both for clients and my products. The reason was with because wherever you are in the world you can set up a bank account in your preferred payment currency at a significantly cheaper rate than Paypal.
You can read a lot more about avoiding hidden international payment expenses on my Life Coaching Fees page.
These days, more and more coaches recognise the need to have an online presence through a website that fulfils its purpose of attracting clients from any location.
I recommend these specific website-creation resources for life coaches because they are supportive, practically, useful and reliable. Please be careful you are not taken in by website offers that look good and are cheap but don’t provide what you need to help you to get new clients (without a lot of extra investment).
As a life coach in the 21st century you are more than likely going to want to create a website to showcase who you are, how you coach and all your great client testimonials.
This is especially true if you are planning to coach nationally or internationally online, rather than just locally. I chose Solo Build It! to create this site, Life Coaching Professionally and my previous coaching site because it met all my needs.
Of course you can get a basic free "brochure" website up and running with Wix, Weeby and so on, even Wordpress and that might be sufficient for what you want initially.
But with these platforms, you can end up paying a lot of money for all the plug-ins you may want, to make your website really efficient as a business building vehicle. And, unless you are really tech savvy, you may need additional technical help to make the site really do it's job of attracting clients..
If you want everything you need in an online business building website in an all-in-one-package without spending a fortune, I suggest you include Solo Build It! in your research.
It has a unique step-by-step Action Guide for building a business online, design templates, safe and secure hosting, SEO brainstorming function to find the best keywords and a community forum where you can get advice about your site from website experts.
SBI costs $299USD annually for everything and you can even trial the system it for free. However, while the Covid pandemic is raging they have a fabulous introductory $100 off offer AND a 2 for one opportunity.
If you already own a Wordpress site, you could consider investing in Solo Build It! for Wordpress. This provides some of the most important features of SBI! including the Action Guide business building education package; the unique keyword brainstorming tool and the fabulous free support.
So again, before you choose a website provider, do take into consideration real cost and usability of what they offer and include SBI! in your research.
Reading this book, I was really impressed by the way its author Kenn Schroder has covered every aspect of creating a coaching website that will engage and attract clients from content to navigation and SEO (search engine optimisation) in an easy to understand writing style.
The book is in PDF form and has links to the various chapters so it is easy to dip in and out of and find whatever website related content you are looking for including how to write an engaging "about" page.
At $129, The Coaching Website Guide may seem like a big investment but in reality, it will save you a vast amount of time and could save you a fortune in time and costly website mistakes. Check it out - you can review the first chapter for free and Ken often has special offers!
Especially when you are new to coaching you'll find yourself hunting around for life coaching materials that may go beyond the scope of your training.
I'm delighted to freely share with you six of life coaching tools and techniques that I have found so useful in helping my clients.
Take some time to become familiar with these processes and do contact me if you have any questions.
A really valuable free life coaching process from Emma-Louise Elsey of the Coaching Tools Company is The Wheel of Life.
You can use it with your clients to assess coaching priorities but it is much more than just an assessment tool.
It helps clients become more self-aware AND more motivated to set authentic goals and make changes towards creating their best life.
The life wheel technique gives clients a helicopter view of how satisfied they are with their life in key predefined life categories such as health, finances and relationships.
Be Do Have is an interesting and vital tool for any goal planning and coaching success.
It will help your clients discover how they will need to operate and behave (BE) in order to DO what is needed to achieve their goals and/or HAVE life as they want it. It will help reveal behiours that may not have been serving them.
The process is often a confusing and misunderstood life coaching modeI so I simply explain BE DO HAVE and how to help your clients (and yourself) apply the model to their own goals and outcomes with some useful examples.
Once you have enrolled a client and organised the first session, using these 18 life questions as part of your intake process will give you (and your clients) valuable insight and a powerful beginning to the coaching journey.
The feedback I've had from clients is that answering these questions was really valuable in helping them get clarity on where they are and where they want to go with coaching and compliments what may have discussed with you during their Discovery Session.Preview my eBook on how to turn prospects into committed paying clients in Discovery Session?
Often at the root of a client's challenges is they lack the skill to set boundaries.
They end up doing stuff they really don't want to do or don't really have the time to do and don't get around to what they need or want to do for themselves.
Coach your clients how to say NO elegantly to things they don't want to do or get involved in, without causing offence or burning their bridges is a really useful coaching tool.
At the end of a coaching series, it's important to make sure the client is complete with you and the coaching.
These evaluation questions enable your clients to provide feedback about how your coaching has worked for them and any improvements you could make. It's also a great way to note the nice things they may have to say about you.
The
question and answer format helps them identify their wins and what they have gained from coaching so
they can give you a great testimonial!
Sometimes in spite of all good research and intention, the client turns out to be a uncoachable, at least by you.
You may want out because they are draining your energy and confidence.
The information and tips in this article, How Elegantly To Fire A Client can be a life saver and examines why you might want to let a client go and elegantly and without drama, when coaching them is not working for you.
As a new subscriber to my regular Life Coaching Accelerators, you get to download free "10 Easy Ways to Jumpstart Your Coaching Practice".
Of course you can unsubscribe as soon as you get your gift, but I’d encourage you to stick around because I provide more regular insights and tips about coaching that most life coaching schools may not cover.
You’ll get to learn coaching skills and strategies that have developed from my 20+ years as a life coach on personal, career and business related issues as well as ways to authentically grow your practice.
A heartfelt thanks for sharing your extensive experience on your website and through your Life Coaching Accelerators. Can I say that you bring clarity and understanding to me that I really appreciate. I also found “10 Easy Ideas to Jumpstart Your Life Coaching Practice” very useful.
Brenda Van Rossum, Leadership Coach, Toronto