So, you want to be a life coach

Getting laid off - especially if you're at a relatively senior level - sometimes comes with outplacement services. Or did when I was getting laid off from a relatively senior level position. Both times I had access to these services, I took advantage of them. 

I was used to going into work five (and even six) days a week. Going to outplacement provided some structure to the week that substituted for the office when the daily grind ground to an abrupt halt. It gave me the opportunity to continue to hang with my fellow pink slipped colleagues, which also eased the transition from work to looking for work. And I found that the outplacement counsellors - or whatever they were called - could be surprisingly helpful. 

The first time I was outplaced, the person I worked with helped me clarify my thinking about what I wanted to do next. In my case, it was to get as far away as possible from heading do-all, all-purpose marketing at a small, underfunded company. Next stop: head of product marketing - a more technically-oriented branch of marketing - at a larger, well-funded company.

When that job screeched to a halt - I volunteered for separation for what was a pretty rich exit package - I knew what I wanted. Which was out. I'd had it with commuting, managing, politicking, and la vie corporate in general, and wanted to start freelancing. 

I backslid for a while, taking a job working for a former boss that I knew would be short-term but which lasted 1.5 years, but for nearly 20 years, I've done freelance marketing writing. In my prime, I made an reasonably good living doing it, and now that I'm winding down professionally, the work I have lets me keep my hand in and make a bit of non-fixed income dough. I work very few hours a week, and only for folks (and on projects) that I enjoy. 

The outplacement person I worked with when I went solo wasn't actually instrumental in getting me to launch a freelance career, but she was supportive and, in that sense, helpful.

That was as close as I ever came to working with a life coach.

But I did know one.

Many years ago, I had a fellow in my group whose wife left her job to establish a life coach practice. 

Although they were both a bit overwhelming, I liked both members of this couple a lot.

They were a pretty golden couple to begin with: handsome, blond, gleaming, both from very well to do backgrounds. Her father was, as I recall, a big-time surgeon; his mother worked in advertising, and, if I remember this correctly, the Bill Cosby jello/pudding ads were filmed on location in his childhood kitchen. (Having Bill Cosby eat pudding at your kitchen table used to be a good thing.) The couple met cute, and their engagement/wedding story got The New York Times treatment. Their first home was an historic house in one of the poshiest of posh Boston suburbs, which they spent a kabillion dollars perfecting. They had a couple of beautiful kids. 

He left corporate tech marketing to become a serial entrepreneur. She left her job to be a life coach.

On hearing that she was hanging out her shingle as a life coach, my initial reaction was that people would line up if she could coach them into her life: rich, beautiful, nice-handsome-successful husband, showplace home, model-cute kiddos. 

She went on to make it very big: podcasts, TV appearances, motivational speaking, etc. 

So I do know that if you have enough ambition, drive, and sheer force of personality, you can hit the bigtime as a life coach.

For most life coaches, however, you have to wonder (at least I do): how do they make a living? And from the consumer perspective, how is it worth it? What, exactly, do they do besides help you make life lists and check in with you to make sure you're taking care of the items on the life list, holding you accountable in a way that, apparently, you're not able to do for yourself.

Not saying I couldn't have used a life coach along the way. Maybe I'd be a best-selling novelist. Or a plain old remainder table novelist. Or a famous marketing guru. Or Maureen Dowd, only a better one, and she would be just another, run-of-the-mill Maureen. But working with a life coach? I'm way too reserved and introverted to want to work with a pushy person who's job was to make me pushier. Just not my thing.

But I guess it must be someone's thing, because the number of life coaches is apparently proliferating. At least according to an article by Beth Teitell I just saw in The Boston Globe. 

Wherever you look, there’s a new life coach. In your Facebook feed talking about her “pandemic pivot.” In your inbox soliciting business. On the phone, chatting about his new endeavor.

“Life coaches are the new yoga teachers,” said Robyn Parets, founder of Pretzel Kids, a nationwide web marketplace for kids’ yoga classes and teacher training.

“If you are not a coach, your sister is a coach or your neighbor is a coach,” she said. (Source: Boston Globe)

The new yoga teachers, huh? I hadn't realized they were a thing, although a friend who's a quite experienced yoga person tried to show me the yogi ropes while on her way to becoming some sort of yoga instructor. Alas, my arthritic shoulder doesn't allow me to master even Downward Facing Dog.

And maybe it's because we're all getting up there, but I'm not a coach. Neither of my sisters is a coach. (Let me clarify: we're not professional life coaches. Amateur coaches, however...) And as far as I know, none of my neighbors are life coaches, either.

But I guess all the downtime during lockdown got a lot of folks thinking that maybe they could get paid for what they'd probably been doing for free for years for friends and family: providing advice that nobody listened to. 

What is a life coach, anyway? Oprah Daily defined the job as an “action-oriented mentor.” Self-help guru Tony Robbins calls them a “supportive friend and a trusted adviser rolled into one.” A blog on the Huffington Post says they’re “people who couldn’t be bothered to actually study psychology, and instead want to earn a quick buck.”

Now, if I were a cynic, I'd go with the third definition, but let's be open-minded here. But not that open-minded. I wouldn't trust word one out of the mouth of Tony Robbins. Guess that leaves me with "action-oriented mentor." 

Local coaches have told the Globe they have helped clients: “unlock secret talents,” “live a truly authentic life,” “explore their inner voice telling them they are destined for something greater,” “uncover repressed anger at God and church,” and “talk through why they are triggered by their mother-in-law and create a new mindset.”

Hmmm. This sounds like it's getting dangerously close to therapy or scam, so maybe I need to rethink that Huff Po definition.

Aspiring coaches can undergo 100 hours or more of training and earn certificates. But at the same time, the field is unregulated, so you could also just stop reading this article right now and hang a shingle.

Despite the good intentions of many coaches — of the people clicking on “Top 35 Life Coach Podcasts You Must Follow in 2021” and “27 Best Life Coaching Books of All Time” — there are charlatans, said Kristina Tsipouras, the founder of mycoachspace.com, which vets coaches to protect clients.

I'll just bet there are charlatans. (C.f., Tony Robbins.) But one person's charlatan may well be another's "action-oriented mentor," or "trusted advisor."

So caveat emptor and all that. 

And I'll take that caveat and not be an emptor at all.