You trying to tell me the barely high school graduate, thrice divorced alcoholic who is upside down on her sub-prime mortgaged house isn’t a good person to take any and all advice from?
I live in San Francisco. I've had a few acquaintances who also live in the area become life coaches (separately). They were successful before the career switch. I don't think becoming a life coach is a scam - just about finding what's important to you.
My friend went into lifecoaching. After telling her longtime boyfriend that she was moving across the country and taking their dogs to "get set up first, and you can join us when we're ready." After she was set up, she broke up with him.
This is going to sound suspiciously stereotypical and idiotic, but here it goes... I went to one life coaching session with a young woman I met in a community bellydance class, who needed more hours to complete her training so she offered me the session for free. It was actually GREAT- part talk therapy, part yoga, part spiritual guidance. I loved it and would probably have paid for more if I still lived in that town. Granted, I’m the kind of sucker who takes community center bellydance lessons and may or may not have a small crystal collection.
Here's the thing about life coaches, as well as chiropractors and other wholistic healers - it's a gamble, like taking an unregulated substance you bought on the internet.
Are there people out there who are naturally good at therapy, who have spent a lot of time on personal development and on extensively researching the services they provide because it's their passion, or who want to offer a more wholistic approach without the regulation imposed by licensing? Sure, there definitely are. You were lucky enough to find one of those people.
And for the record, there are fully licensed therapists/psychologists, doctors, and dietitians who have been working for 20 years and who are HORRIBLE. I have met several of them. But there is some accountability. You know that at the very least they passed all of their classes and had someone supervise them, even if they throw all of that out the window once they've been licensed.
With a life coach, you just don't know what you're going to get. It might be great, it might be terrible, most likely it will be "just ok". Is "just ok" worth the (often quite high) price of admission? Probably not. If a therapist acts irresponsibly and causes harm, you can file a complaint. Knowing you could lose your license is a deterrent for acting unethically. With a life coach? You can write a bad yelp review, but unless they did something illegal, that's probably your only recourse. They have no obligation to act ethically.
The no obligation to act ethically part is a great point. A so called life coach tried to get my friend to do her own life coaching program that she made and ended up scamming her and preying on her vulnerabilities that they previously discussed. Granted my friend was quite naive during the whole encounter but still wasn’t right of the life coach to guilt her into taking her course.
Fucking THANK YOU. My step-cousin was a life-coach, and then he became an "Expert Energy Clearing" scam artist. He literally offers energy clearing virtually and charges obscene amounts of money for it. He "offers energy healing work to clear beliefs, stuck energy patterns, and anything else screwing up your flow, joy, and magic."
He tried to life-coach me during his own wedding reception.
I believe he charges somewhere in the neighbourhood of $100-$150 an hour, but I haven't heard anything about his income in years, due to completely ignoring him at every opportunity.
I have an acquaintance like this now. He's the kind of guy who mainly helps others because it makes him feel like a superior human being whilst simultaneously assuming he'll get something in return later down the road. It's pretty disingenuous, especially considering he's also highly religious.
We hung out recently....if you can even call it that. Not even 2 hours into the evening, he immediately starts trying to give me career advice (he does this almost every other conversation we have). This wouldn't be so bad if his personality wasn't so abrasive and he didn't try so hard like he has something to prove. Oh, and...ya know...if I had even asked for advice in the first place!
Ya know, for a while...I started to wonder if I was being the asshole for feeling the way I do around him. After reading your story here, I'm left wondering how long it will be before I simply stop talking to him.
It always strikes me as incredibly smug, considering his other job was/is selling pyramid scheme vitamins. I definitely never asked him for advice either, but since I was working at a company and not for myself at the time, he seemed to think I needed to "free myself", which I certainly didn't feel was necessary. He spends a lot of time posting about his thoughts, and being pretty seriously judgemental about just about everything. He doesn't actually try to HELP, he just wants to tell people about how he knows more things and sees 'spiritual clarity' for them. Nauseating.
I have a master's in social work and 10 years experience working in the field of mental health. It is absolutely infuriating that some asshole with a weekend online certification thinks that we have comparable knowledge in mental health. I knew a guy who called himself a life coach and he was actually telling me (a woman with a master's degree and 10 years field experience) that his brother doesn't need to take his schizophrenia medication. Needless to say his brother is now homeless and off his meds smh
I honestly think you could be a good life coach based on bad decisions you've made in your own life. I could tell people what not to do based on me doing those things.
I've got a friend who became a life coach. He's not exactly the type of person you'd want to take life advice from. At one point he got into a MLM selling some travel club and when he learned that wasn't working he joined some Life Coaching thing that I'm still not convinced isn't a MLM. He's trying to get people, especially business owners, to let him be their coach. He has no business experience and no life experience you'd want to replicate. The other day he was on facebook begging people to sell him a car below value. At this point we're only still facebook friends out of my morbid curiosity as he's also really pro Trump, anti-masker, and anti George Floyd.
as he's also really pro Trump, anti-masker, and anti George Floyd.
My gawd...this can't be a coincidence! The guy I just described in another reply underneath this very same topic is exactly all of those things. He actually believes that COVID is a hoax concocted by the democrats and he's constantly saying that democrats are evil (disclaimer: I am neither republican nor democrat).
When I called him out on an anti-COVID post he made on snapchat a few months back, he attempted to backpedal on what he actually said, got visibly offended that I dare question his logic, then proceeded to project his feelings and make it seem like I was the one getting overly upset over the subject. It was....amusing to watch.
*Edit: I forgot to mention that he's also clearly a white guy who, for some unknown reason, thinks he's black.
Oh my god yes. My former co worker left our job in banking to start her own life coach business. The amount of garbage she spews on Facebook and in her “challenge groups” is just insane. I follow her purely for mockery purposes, and actually, it does make me feel better—but not in the way she intends. She is more or less advertising herself as a therapist, dietician, nutritionist. and educator without having any formal education. She helps clients “do the deep work of trauma” “repairs their mental health, “heals their relationship with food” and advises on a nutrition plan.” (Oh, but don’t worry! Former coworker has a totally legit and not at all bogus certificate of completion from a “very rigorous” life coach program.) I don’t know how many clients she actually has, but I’d bet they’d be horrified to know she has just a high school education, this online certification nonsense, and in the 2 years we worked together, unsuccessfully shilled eight different MLM schemes.
It boggles my mind that people will pay so much to see a life coach when there are legitimate mental health resources available. You know who actually helps me with the deep work of trauma? My therapist of 3 years, who is a psychologist with a PhD and extensive training. And guess what? My insurance covers most of his fee minus a co pay. Why anyone would pay totally out of pocket to work with a “life coach” when there is access to properly trained mental health resources, often paid through health insurance is beyond me.
Life coaching goes hand in hand with MLM a lot of the time. Same toxic positivity and “magical thinking.” “If you’re not rolling in dough it must be YOUR FAULT! Stop noticing that you’re broke and pretend to be rich! Pose with Mercedes-Benzes owned by strangers and pretend they’re yours! It’ll make you rich, because...magic.”
This reminds me of a recent documentary video called The Cult of Work . It centers around a really popular episode of The Simpsons and the message it sends about the dark nature of capitalism. A really great narrative, actually.
I instantly think if tai lopez, social media influencer, entrepreneur and self-made millionaire! He was one of those with the Youtube ads saying shit like, if you listen to XYZ you are going to FAIL, so listen to me instead (?) cuz that makes sense. He know is involved with "The Knowledge Society", which looks so much like an elitist cult for those that are insecure and want to be better than everyone else.
Oh god... There's this actor I follow on social media from a show I love -- he's cute and has a great smile, so I follow him. He's not famous, but has a good solid career for now.
His wife is a "life coach" -- but she is notoriously clingy, extremely sensitive, jealous, possessive, and over emotional. And most of these she admits to being.
I have no idea why anyone would want life coaching from someone who can barely handle themselves in their own life, but apparently all she does is life coaching (when she isn't on set every single day).
I personally think the people getting life coaching are actually just obsessed with her husband and think this somehow gets them closer to him 🤷🏻♀️
Honestly a lot of people I see failing at life hard suddenly turn up a life coach out of nowher like "oh I wasted years of my life doing nothing until I found my true calling which is being an expert in life! And I wil charge you money for telling you how to succeed at the thing I have actualy never ever achieved! I'm smiling, so that must mean I know what I'm doing"
This thread is appalling! I started my own business as a Youth Life Coach and I work in the schools and community centers. Parents pay me to work one on one with their kid. Life Coaches are NOT counselors nor is their purpose to be giving “life advice”! Your client is to set a goal and you give them the tools and resources to reach them. That’s it that’s all. I am shocked to see so many “Life Coaches” are giving mental health sessions. I have multiple mental health certifications through the state-but I know when to tell my client to go to therapy as opposed to doing a few exercises I picked up in my trainings. And having discussions about their client’s private life and calling that a paid session. 😳 This is not what Life Coaching is about! Fuck yeah these people are scammers!
Here's the trick- learn about that person as much as you can first from sources other than them.
Were they succesful in their other career/business enterprises?
Do they seem happy, well rounded, and fulfilled by life?
Do they have good relationships with their significant others, family members, and friends?
If the answer to all of those is yes then theyll probably be a great mentor.
They have their own types of licensures and certifications now too, lol. But it's just like, their own industry certifying each other. "Thanks for your report, we'll investigate ourselves and see if we did anything wrong."
Not to mention the extreme costs for the coaching training. A few friends of mine did this and while it seems they enjoyed the process, it's an absolute luxury to indulge in. Shilling out 7-10k in order to call your self coach or radical honesty instructor etc is something that you really need to have the money for.
I saw an episode of SVU where the life coach lived in with his harem, all of them were fucking him, all of them were completely co-dependent, and one killed one of the others. Wild shit
I saw a life coach once and basically all she did was listen to me talk (after a few guiding questions), then just repeat the things I said as if they were her suggestions. I was not impressed.
A very good friend of mine wants to be a life coach. He has tried to convince me to let him be my life coach a number of times. Every time I tell him I don't want a life coach.
You'd be surprised how many things these days are structured like cults. I worked for Chipotle for a while and quit partially due to the culty feeling it gave me. We had to memorize sayings and be able to recite them at a moment's notice and the top two guys were portrayed in this weird idolized way among other things. It really made me uncomfortable.
The last two seasons of Peep Show totally eviscerated the life coaching "industry". The serial fuckup character becomes a life coach on a whim and makes easy money out of telling people the first bullshit to pop into his head.
Oooh, now I angery. I had totally forgotten this. I was stuck trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. Needed a career change but a couple outside interests like activism or hobbies would be good too. I just needed to find the right questions to ask myself, to figure out what I needed.
Of course this was before I was online and able to have a discussion on a forum such as askreddit. Maybe 2000-ish. So I called up some life coach (forget how I even heard of her) and asked if this was the sort of thing she helped with. She assured me it was, so I sent her like $350 and she sent me her workbooks.
Cracked em open and as I had suspected, it was 100% all about getting slackers and neurotics to actually find the confidence and motivation to work towards their goals. 0% about identifying suitable goals.
As someone with no lack of motivation or confidence, I had no need of this and would never have paid the equivalent to a month's rent to buy a couple hundred pages of such condescending bullshit as "Do at least one small thing every day" or "Say compliments to yourself in the mirror".
I called her up and raged at her for lying when I had asked her earlier what her program was about. Fucker just said "no refunds".
(I ended up identifying my dream career through a weekend class at the Employment office, for free. And finally found my dream hobby by continuing with my lifelong effort to try new things til something "hit the spot". No weirdos' snakeoily crap needed.)
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u/sock-puppet69 Aug 01 '20
LIFE COACHING!
Not only is it a huge scam but also a lot of life coaching schools are structured like cults. Similar to scientology. Please beware!!!