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XHolly Worton E-mail: holly.worton@gmail.com Info: Posts by the author (7)

Don’t Be Afraid to Think Beyond Life Coaching

When people think of coaching, they likely think of either life coaching or executive coaching. But the skills we learn at The Smart School can be applied to a number of different areas. Just look at Nick Hardy and Nami Haghighi working with small businesses, Claire Habel with marketing, and Sonia Gill with head teachers. They’ve all been through The Smart School because they wanted to train as a coach, and then they applied their coaching skills to a very specific niche, which was more business-related, rather than personal development.

I decided to train as a coach primarily because I wanted to help people. I knew from the very beginning that I wanted to work with women to help them find their life purpose, and I wanted to run weekend and week-long retreats. I was very much focused on training as a life coach, and very determined to become a life coach. Yet as the time went on, and I finished my diploma, and continued to struggle with my business, Nick and some of my colleagues helped me realise that my true niche lay not within life coaching, but within business-related coaching…specifically, in the area of social media.

Detachment is always something that I’ve struggled with in life, and despite it being an area that I consistently work on, it was challenging for me to let go of my beloved dream of becoming a life coach. Yet at the same time, I knew that social media, specifically social media for business, was a huge passion of mine. After a year of battling to make my life coaching business work, I decided to focus on social media.

And that was when my business took off. I accepted a job in social media on a short-term contract while I continued to set up my social media business. And during that time, I found my first big client: a five-month project.

Now that I’m deeply focused on my work with this client, I have no doubts about my niche. Before training as a coach at The Smart School, I had a business in the hospitality industry. My role within that company was in the area of online marketing. So it was just an issue of putting together my background experience along with my new coaching skills.

I may be focusing more on a business-related niche, but the coaching skills I learned are invaluable. I now know how to ask the right questions to get the information I need to best help my clients. And I’m comfortable with pushing for further information, with digging deeper, and with not taking the information they give me at face value.

If you’re thinking of training as a coach, don’t be afraid to think beyond life coaching. The skills you learn in the coaching diploma are useful far beyond the area of life coaching. And if you’re struggling with your niche, open your mind to options other than life coaching. I never would have guessed a year ago that I’d be doing what I’m doing today…yet, it all makes sense.

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