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Don't Start Over: How to Become a Life Coach From Your 9-5 · Six Figure Certified

0:00
[SPEAKER_00]: If you've been thinking about changing careers and becoming a certified coach, I want to start with something that I think a lot of people need to hear first.
0:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is that you are absolutely not starting over.
0:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Not completely anyway.
0:12
[SPEAKER_00]: No matter where you're starting, you're starting with some level of experience.
0:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's a massive difference.
0:19
[SPEAKER_00]: So I've been in the coaching industry for over a decade and I have watched women come into coaching from completely different avenues of life and careers.
0:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Teachers, therapists, nurses, doctors, recruiters, HR professionals, executives, military, veterans, personal trainers, personal stylists,
0:39
[SPEAKER_00]: stay at home parents, we've seen it all and one of the biggest misconceptions I always see is this idea that becoming a coach means like throwing away everything you've ever done and becoming a completely different person when the reality is that it doesn't and I think when you realize that it makes this whole transition a little bit easier because in many cases your previous career is actually what makes you super valuable as a coach but this is important like your experience
1:08
[SPEAKER_00]: So there are actual coaching skills that you will need to learn.
1:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to talk today about both so that if you are planning some type of career transition, you're going to know how to get started and how to do it kind of in a way that like make sense, but also in a way that probably yields you a better result than just like wishing one during and worrying, which is never my personal recommendation for how to proceed with life.
1:32
[SPEAKER_00]: So ultimately, we're going to cover two things like how your previous career can impact you becoming a coach and what you need to learn in order to become a legitimate, well-paid coach and like turn this into a real career.
1:46
[SPEAKER_00]: First, in the most untraditional advice, I'd like you to toss out your resume.
1:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just kidding.
1:51
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the other mistakes people often make when they're considering a career change is like only looking at their resume and then asking like, what jobs am I qualified for?
2:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And I do think that that's a reasonable question to ask.
2:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm an unreasonable person though sometimes.
2:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that should be the first question.
2:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I really don't think you should start with like, what am I qualified based on this piece of paper?
2:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Because I really want you to go into like, what do I actually want?
2:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like a broken record.
2:18
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like every single episode, I'm talking about, what do you want?
2:21
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you want?
2:22
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you're coming to a coaching podcast or a coaching channel, my job and my job as a coach is not to tell you exactly what to want.
2:31
[SPEAKER_00]: It's for you to decide what that vision is, decide what you want your life to look like, decide what your average Tuesday consists of, and then we build it backwards from there.
2:41
[SPEAKER_00]: When you say, yes, Olivia, I'm going for this, I'm becoming a certified coach.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to start my business.
2:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm then going to look at the resume and be like, okay.
2:51
[SPEAKER_00]: How does this kind of help us figure out our niche?
2:54
[SPEAKER_00]: How does this show that you have a lot of value and experience and a lot of expertise in certain areas?
3:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not saying, well, based on the fact that you've been in the medical field for the last 15 years, you can only do health coaching, that ain't me and that is not what I believe and that is not what I think you should do.
3:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway.
3:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Alright, think about what you want.
3:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you want to work remotely?
3:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you want flexibility?
3:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you want to work with individuals?
3:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you want to lead groups?
3:20
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you want to be inside of organizations?
3:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you want to teach?
3:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you want to facilitate?
3:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you want to design different things or build something?
3:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you want to make $100,000 a year?
3:30
[SPEAKER_00]: a month a day.
3:32
[SPEAKER_00]: What kind of money do you want to be making?
3:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you want your income to be tied to a salary like work inside of a corporation or an organization or a coaching side of a company or do you eventually want to start your own business or maybe you want to keep your nine to five and start the business on the side at first what do you want to do?
3:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we're going to figure out what skills and experience you actually need to get there.
3:53
[SPEAKER_00]: because your next career doesn't necessarily have to be like an obvious continuation of your last one, your old career may be your advantage, and it definitely can be a value add, but it does not have to be a cage that you are stuck inside of.
4:09
[SPEAKER_00]: So I've watched this happen over and over again, where someone comes into coach training, thinking that their previous career either has everything to do with coaching or nothing to do with coaching.
4:18
[SPEAKER_00]: So we start connecting the dots.
4:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So like maybe you spent decades in corporate recruiting, so you understand hiring, you understand leadership, you understand organizational dynamics, career transitions, effective communication, and you then
4:35
[SPEAKER_00]: learn the professional coaching skills and move into executive and leadership coaching.
4:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
4:43
[SPEAKER_00]: That makes sense.
4:44
[SPEAKER_00]: We see people do this inside of IGC all the time and sometimes that connection is obvious and then other times it's like not so obvious.
4:52
[SPEAKER_00]: It's maybe
4:53
[SPEAKER_00]: something that you've been passionate about for years but you pigeonholed yourself or caged yourself in this career path that you chose at 18 when you chose your college or university and then you just kind of kept like ending up here like if you're new here part of my story goes similarly to that like my parents said I would be a great teacher my teachers said I would be a great teacher so I decided to go to college and I'm like I guess I'll become a teacher so I go to teacher
5:18
[SPEAKER_00]: teaching college and I learned how to be a teacher.
5:20
[SPEAKER_00]: And then people said, Oh my guys, you're such a great teacher.
5:23
[SPEAKER_00]: You should become a principal.
5:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Now this night, my master's degree in educational administration.
5:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, wait, what just happened?
5:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me catch my breath.
5:30
[SPEAKER_00]: But I had built this more on my past and on my future.
5:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, nothing is wrong with doing any of this.
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[SPEAKER_00]: These are very normal things to do.
5:38
[SPEAKER_00]: But the chances are if you are watching this or thinking about coaching or on this channel, you actually want something different.
5:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So if we want something different, not only we have to do differently, but we have to start thinking differently about our lives and our experiences.
5:51
[SPEAKER_00]: There are aspects of every role you've had personally and professionally, or I should have said professionally
5:59
[SPEAKER_00]: that make up how you might want to coach and who you might want to coach.
6:05
[SPEAKER_00]: The real thing is is that you got to start with what you want and you have to have this realization that just because you've done it in the past does not mean you are locked into that forever and ever and ever in the future.
6:19
[SPEAKER_00]: But I do think it's important to recognize the experiences and the skills that you've had in your current career that can benefit you as a coach or add value to your clients.
6:31
[SPEAKER_00]: So when I first was trying to get out of teaching and I didn't really know what to do with my life, one of the exercises that I did was an audit of my life because I knew that I loved
6:42
[SPEAKER_00]: how I felt after, like, teaching a really good lesson.
6:44
[SPEAKER_00]: I knew I loved how I felt and how I experienced really working with the kids and, you know, hosting workshops are doing more creative projects with them.
6:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I hated standardized testing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I hated the rigidity of the public school day and all that, but what I was looking for was what I loved.
7:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And so maybe you're at a point God bless you where you're not like oh my God I have to get out of my job tomorrow I hate it so much and you're kind of just in this exploratory phase This is a great time to do a little audit of your life like instead of just going home from work every day and being like I'm depleted I'm exhausted and burnt out make it a an activity and exercise for yourself to actually figure out like
7:26
[SPEAKER_00]: What parts of your day do you actually love?
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[SPEAKER_00]: Even if it's simply talking to your coworkers or maybe you're working somewhere but you're also creating content on the side.
7:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you love that, maybe you love mediating conflict.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's not so much
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[SPEAKER_00]: the actions of your job title, but kind of complimentary skills that are required for you to be successful at what you're doing because some of those skills and interests and things that bring you joy actually really lend itself to like A, why you'd be an amazing coach and B, what you really want to be doing and how you really want to be growing your coaching practice.
8:06
[SPEAKER_00]: though I remember thinking like I loved teaching.
8:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I never wanted to stop teaching.
8:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So I knew that I didn't only want to coach, you know, individual clients, one-on-one.
8:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I also wanted to be able to have this like hybrid situation where I could teach and coach.
8:22
[SPEAKER_00]: and be in groups.
8:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And speak, like those were some of the things that I loved doing.
8:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I loved watching people have a ha moments.
8:29
[SPEAKER_00]: You want to do that audit and figure out what experiences you have in your current career will actually make you an amazing, amazing coach.
8:38
[SPEAKER_00]: None of your years and I've had to really reconcile this with myself.
8:41
[SPEAKER_00]: None of the years that you've spent already in a career that you chose, however long ago, are wasted.
8:47
[SPEAKER_00]: You can absolutely build a successful coaching business at any point in your life.
8:52
[SPEAKER_00]: I've certified women as young as 18 and as old as in their 70s.
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[SPEAKER_00]: I've seen success at every age level and from every background.
9:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Your job.
9:02
[SPEAKER_00]: No matter what I say, now you can borrow my belief.
9:05
[SPEAKER_00]: If you want to borrow my belief from this episode that you can be whoever you want to be and you can become the person on your vision board, borrow it.
9:13
[SPEAKER_00]: But the only person that's actually going to do all of these things and really embody it are the ones that are going to be successful at it.
9:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And I like I can't make you believe that for you.
9:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Most people, to this day, other than a few,
9:29
[SPEAKER_00]: 18 to 25 year olds that we've worked over the last decade are choosing coaching as a second career.
9:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Most people in 2026 have done something else professionally.
9:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So this isn't some crazy thing for you to want to transition from a career that maybe you've always known and maybe it's on the resume and into,
9:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Coaching.
9:51
[SPEAKER_00]: That's pretty much everybody.
9:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Although I have seen a lot of universities adding Coaching degrees.
9:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it might be becoming more mainstream.
10:01
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll see.
10:02
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're not throwing away your background.
10:03
[SPEAKER_00]: You are expanding your professional tool kit
10:08
[SPEAKER_00]: how are we gonna do that?
10:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's get into it.
10:10
[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to think of your career as like capital.
10:12
[SPEAKER_00]: You've been accumulating it.
10:14
[SPEAKER_00]: You're just adding another professional skill that you can monetize potentially outside of your current career if that is what you want.
10:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is a part that I don't want you to skip.
10:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I've talked about this before, but you have to learn how to coach.
10:28
[SPEAKER_00]: The coaching industry gets a little bit of a bad name because a lot of people just
10:33
[SPEAKER_00]: they want to get into coaching but then they don't really do it fully so it's kind of like I'm a coach and then the next day it's not and like you see a quick Instagram bio update and a bunch of social media posts and then it goes away that is not the kind of coaching that we teach inside of IGC we teach a you know a skill based model where you are not just learning coaching skills but you're also learning business skills so that you are treated like a professional you're respected like a professional you have job and business opportunities
11:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, like a professional, all right?
11:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So when you learn those skills and you couple them with your previous, the other versions of yourself, all the lives you've lived before, that's where the magic happens.
11:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you want people pay you real money, if you want referrals, if you want repeat clients, if you want a legitimate business where
11:21
[SPEAKER_00]: organizations might want to hire you or you might get actual jobs with real paying clients.
11:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you just have to be excellent at the skill that you are selling and you have to be able to fulfill on the promise of the transformation that you're coaching package.
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[SPEAKER_00]: offers.
11:37
[SPEAKER_00]: What is learning to coach actually mean?
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[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're sitting in your current career right now and you're thinking about getting into coaching, I'm going to give you a little bit of like what you would learn or what you would get really great at in coaching.
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[SPEAKER_00]: So number one, active listening.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Number two, asking questions that create awareness.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Again, not just giving advice.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Number three, you're going to be identifying what a client actually wants inside of a conversation without all the noise and without all the distractions, what else are we going to do?
12:06
[SPEAKER_00]: You are going to be noticing patterns, both spoken and non-verbal cues.
12:12
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to be helping someone go from awareness to action.
12:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So having that aha moment, but not stopping there.
12:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And then my favorite thing is really like the awareness to action to accountability pathway.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That is what you are going to be practicing and darn near perfecting in order to be excellent at this work.
12:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And ultimately, you are learning how to stay in a true, coach role instead of slipping into years when I would do, or consulting, or therapy.
12:41
[SPEAKER_00]: God forbid, don't be a therapist if you don't have a mental health degree.
12:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Next, you know, want to mentor them and you really don't want to end up being like the raw raw cheerleader coach.
12:51
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, maybe you do.
12:52
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not for me.
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[SPEAKER_00]: But you want to learn the true skills of the profession and the only way to do that is education, practice, feedback, repetition, that is how the confidence comes, that is how the clients come, that is how the money comes.
13:06
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a very, very normal pathway to success in any single industry.
13:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, most people are transitioning from a current career into coaching, which is why instead of saying go back to college and start over, I'm saying let's work with what we've got while building what we want, and I know people are going to ask me when this episode comes out around like the niche conversation.
13:29
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I have found again and again from training and certifying thousands of students is that,
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[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of time the niche just reveals itself as you start working with people.
13:40
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reality is you have to learn the coaching skills because no matter what niche you choose, people are going to come to your coaching calls with all sorts of requests, all sorts of breakdowns, all sorts of problems, all sorts of situations that may be weren't on your perfectly curated website of
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[SPEAKER_00]: bullet pointed things that you work with people on.
14:00
[SPEAKER_00]: I always think about being a career coach in DC and my 20s and all of my clients would come to me because they wanted to find a new or better career and most of our sessions.
14:10
[SPEAKER_00]: We're about other things that were impacting their ability to find a new career or figure out what they wanted to do.
14:17
[SPEAKER_00]: A niche is really used for marketing.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think when you start coaching, so an IGC you have practice clients that you work with, for example, when you start actually coaching people,
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[SPEAKER_00]: That is also how you reveal to yourself or how it is revealed what you actually love talking about.
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[SPEAKER_00]: And when you won't go watch that niche video next, I say that I'm like, your niche has to be something that you love talking about.
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[SPEAKER_00]: It has to be something that you want to talk about all the time that's marketing, right?
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[SPEAKER_00]: So, the best way is not necessarily to wait to start coach training until you find the perfect niche.
14:55
[SPEAKER_00]: It's to start coach training so you can start actually coaching because that learning those skills and having that coaching experience is how this stuff is revealed.
15:08
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how else to say it.
15:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to think of a good analogy for you, but it's like going into a dressing room.
15:13
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a vision of what I want my outfit to be, but after I try on a bunch of things, sometimes it's exactly what I had in mind and sometimes it isn't.
15:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And know that seems like I kind of frivolous analogy compared to like, uprooting your whole life and starting a business, but I do think it's important to note that you don't have to wait to get started
15:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, until you have all the answers because you're never going to be there.
15:37
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been coaching for 12 years and I'm still like, What's my niche?
15:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Am I in a change my niche?
15:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Am I in a workin' with dip?
15:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I've changed my niche my niche has evolved many times.
15:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me just summarize it real quick.
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[SPEAKER_00]: What you're really looking to gauge from having some type of coaching experience is what problems are you genuinely, genuinely interested in helping people solve?
16:00
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what you're looking for, and until you really start working with people and helping them solve problems, sometimes you don't know that yet, and that is okay.
16:08
[SPEAKER_00]: There are clues in your career history, but your coaching niche does not have to perfectly match your old job.
16:16
[SPEAKER_00]: What I've also seen is some people do match it because you already have people in that field that know like interest you and so it's really sometimes easy to kind of stay inside of that realm a little bit like I use the corporate or HR or leadership transition to executive coaching or career coaching or leadership coaching.
16:35
[SPEAKER_00]: That is such a, it's a pretty smooth transition and often you already know a lot of people who would potentially be your first clients or know, you know,
16:45
[SPEAKER_00]: But, like, as a teacher, I didn't become an education coach, right?
16:51
[SPEAKER_00]: So it doesn't always have to be that way.
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[SPEAKER_00]: A nurse doesn't have to become a health coach or recruiter doesn't have to become a career coach.
16:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Your past is data.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Look at your skills, look at your interest, look at the problems people are already coming to you with.
17:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And then look at the kind of work that you actually want to spend your days doing.
17:11
[SPEAKER_00]: That's really where the goal is.
17:13
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're sitting here thinking, okay, live, I still have no idea what kind of coach I would want to be.
17:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Just go take the niche quiz assessment.
17:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to tell you, when you take this assessment in ourglosserkle.com slash niche,
17:26
[SPEAKER_00]: You may want to take a more than once.
17:28
[SPEAKER_00]: The more specific you can be, the better.
17:31
[SPEAKER_00]: The more answers you choose, if they're kind of all over the place, they're probably going to bucket you into life coaching, which is fine.
17:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Life coaching is very popular niche growing by the minute.
17:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you take it, you're going to get a full workbook to create your first coaching offer.
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[SPEAKER_00]: That's also going to give you examples of like sub-neasures in that category, but the more specific information, you feed the assessment, the more specific information you will get out of it.
17:56
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's just a little...
17:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Coaching niche quiz hack.
17:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to link it below, put it in the show notes.
18:02
[SPEAKER_00]: It'll ask you some questions about your background, your strengths, your interests, your goals, and help you identify what coaching niches might make sense.
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[SPEAKER_00]: If that makes you feel better about getting started, then go do it.
18:13
[SPEAKER_00]: But finally, before we go with the supposed to be way quicker, you don't have to blow up your whole life tomorrow.
18:19
[SPEAKER_00]: you don't know to quit your job tomorrow.
18:21
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to like become an entirely different person overnight.
18:25
[SPEAKER_00]: This happens for some people.
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[SPEAKER_00]: Some people like tell me they googled life coaching last day and then signed up for my course the next day and I'm like, wow, that is, that is the kind of person I want to be, big decision maker, quick decision maker.
18:37
[SPEAKER_00]: However, there's a lot of space between sitting on a dream for three, four, five years and making a rapid decision overnight.
18:47
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you have been contemplating this, if you've been feeling drained, if you've been mentally drifting into the vision of what your life could look like as a coach, take action, take the quiz, do the coaching template that comes with it.
19:06
[SPEAKER_00]: sooner rather than later.
19:08
[SPEAKER_00]: The time is going to go by anyway and you can have a successful coaching practice in less amount of time than it would take you to go back to school and get a whole another four-year degree.
19:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I hope this is helpful.
19:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope you feel like, you know, maybe if you're at this crossroads, you're less alone.
19:24
[SPEAKER_00]: It's literally like 100% of the coaching population is
19:28
[SPEAKER_00]: got here because of some type of transition, but if you don't know what you want, you've got to start there and then we can figure it out together.
19:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to leave all the links in the description or the show notes.
19:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Take the next step.
19:42
[SPEAKER_00]: That's your job today.
19:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you can start coaching that'll be your next job.
19:45
[SPEAKER_00]: That's cool.
19:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, cheers.