What is a life coach? Certifications, courses and making an impact

In this episode, we explore the role of a health and life coach with certified coach Tom. He shares insights on how life coaching differs from therapy, his journey from personal training to coaching, and the small, actionable changes that lead to big transformations

Participants

• Emily Slade - podcast producer and host, Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ»ÆƬ
• Tom West - life and health coach

Transcript

Emily Slade: Hello and welcome back to Future You. The podcast brought to you by graduate careers experts prospects. I'm your host, Emily Slade, and in this episode I chat to Tom about being a life coach.

Tom West: I'm Tom and I'm a life coach. Health and life coach.

Emily Slade: Amazing. So, what is a health and life coach?

Tom West: So, very similar to how we're sat now. I host sessions where I'll talk to someone about whatever is that wanting to achieve in their life. We'll start with a big, broad goal. And my job is to help you get there in the simplest way possible. Breaking down the steps that by bit to see how we can get you closer to where you want to be. That's the simplest terms.

Emily Slade: Okay, so what makes you different from a therapist?

Tom West: I won't sit there and talk to you massively about your feelings, or try and give you massive techniques to coach you on your feelings. That's not what I'm qualified to do. Therapy is a whole different ball game where we're talking about trauma and things that have happened in your past to be like, why are you the way you are? My job is to give you kind of daily actions that can kind of maybe change the way you look at things, at you closer to either a small goal or the big goal. So we'll talk about how maybe we could wake up a little bit earlier and the small things we could do on a daily basis. Get us to do that. Whereas your therapist might talk a little bit more about why you like this. If I don't really deal with the why am I like this? I accept you're like you are who you are, and we just try and find a way to make you a little bit more streamlined in your daily life.

Emily Slade: Okay. So what you mentioned you're not qualified to be a therapist. What are you qualified for?

Tom West: Myself, I'm a certified health and life coach. So that is a protected term in any way. So there's nothing that I can do that someone on the street wouldn't be able to do. However, I've got the techniques and the learning to back that up. Whereas anyone could call themselves a life coach, but I want it to go down and actually learn what I was doing. My background is sport and exercise science as well. So when it comes to the exercise power of lifestyle and the nutritional part, I'm certified as a spawn exercise scientist so I can give that expertise when it comes to the exercise and the health side of things. Other than that is nothing. I won't touch anything if I don't feel qualified to, so I will very much try and stay in my lane around. Right? Can you do this a little bit better? Rather than saying if you do this, you will get this result? It has to be worded in a very specific way.

Emily Slade: Okay. But you've done no like official certification.

Tom West: So I've done a health and life coaching certification through the Health Coach Institute, which is an American based company. I did that that was a yearlong course where we did loads of work experience, like face to face zooms. We did loads of online learning and that gave me a qualification with them. The term life coach hasn't got a national governing body or anything like that. Personally, I don't think people should go in, and see a life coach or a health coach without them having had some sort of official training. There's, I think you'd learn so many techniques on how to talk to people. What you should say, what you shouldn't say, what you topics you should try and steer to, rather than just someone who's lived a full life and thinks they should be out, taught people about anything. I think having that background, that qualification to sit behind, also gives you a little bit more credibility as well.

Emily Slade: That's an interesting point you made because you're quite young.

Tom West: Yes.

Emily Slade: If you'll allow me to say. And so there might be an argument that you, because you haven't lived as long, you don't have the experience to pass on, but it's not about like wisdom of the ages. It's about understanding how to approach topics.

Tom West: People will come to you with topics that you haven't lived and experienced, and that shouldn't ever be a problem. I would, kind of put across my point on this is that if someone has lived those experiences that you're coming to me with, then I'm going to be blinded in a certain way, saying oh well this worked for me. Maybe this will work for you as well. Whereas someone who, I'm 27 years old, I haven't lived these lives where I'm working with 40 year old women wanting to lose weight, who have been stuck in the Slimming World cycle for 20 plus years. I haven't lived that life. I can sit at it from a completely objective standpoint and look at their lives as they are and hear what they're trying to say with no kind of preconceived thoughts on what they should do, what they shouldn't do. And that kind of opens up to across all aspects. So no matter what someone comes to me with, it feels nice for me to not have experienced that, because I can give some feedback based on how I see that situation, that it's going to be a completely different compared to what they might have thought. Because if I've lived that they don't have those same sort of experiences, it's nice to come from a fresh perspective.

Emily Slade: Absolutely. So I assume then you're not part of any wider agency. You are a sole freelancer.

Tom West: Yeah, a hundred per cent. And so I do all of myself and I always have done. It was kind of a smooth transition from personal training into life coaching. It was nice and easy for me to stay self-employed. I could do a little bit of personal trainer. I could do my life coaching until one took over from the other, and it was really simple. Where the life coaching starts getting busier. I was able to cut down the personal training. I think there are a few places now that will hire a big corporate companies, where they'll hire a life coach to help with their staff, usually from an HR aspect or a wellbeing aspect. But that's not something I ever kind of went into. There was a couple of times where I did talks for corporate companies just on a lunch break, talk to their member of staff about if there were three things you could do better to make your lives better, what would they be? And give them a little 45 minute rundown, but not it's always been kind of mainly 1 to 1 coaching is what I've enjoyed.

Emily Slade: What do you enjoy about it? What got you into life coaching?

Tom West: Well, life coaching started for me because I was personal trainer. I was seeing the same path. Either people would come to me and they're like, yes, this is amazing. Losing those away. I'm doing everything Tom tells me to. So I'm gonna keep doing this or he will come to me and I'm trying to. Or Tom's telling me, but it's not really working for me. I'm struggling to stick to what he's saying. And that got really frustrating where people were like, I really want to lose the weight. I really want to get fitter, and I've given them all the tools that they could need. They've got all the knowledge and then they go away for the week and come back. Each do this. The three things we ask you to do and I. So for me, it was I wanted to start understanding why people were like that. So they became more of an intrigue to me because I had never struggled with that personally. So it became more of an intrigue where it's like, why are people paying me for service and not implement in the things from someone who's a professional in that field? So it got me looking into kind of coaching people about their lifestyle more, and how we could delve a little bit deeper into the smaller aspects of how to get someone closer to their goals. So that's when I started doing the coaching course, and from that I was okay. I'm seeing people make these small changes more often than not. So that became really rewarding. And seeing then massive changes over a 6 to 8 week period from something to being a simple was almost heaping, glass of water to their hand at all times throughout the day. Something this city, and simple as that, started making massive changes. So I really like that, butterfly effect of the coaching.

Emily Slade: Oh, brilliant. So are there any myths about being a life coach that you would like to debunk?

Tom West: I think the biggest one we touched on is you have to have the lived experience of it. I couldn't disagree with that more. I could see that. Why people would have that thought of. How can someone talk about like this aspect without having any experience of how can someone talk to me about, an addict, a food addiction even, or, a chronic fatigue when they haven't lived that themselves? I think that is the thing that sticks to me the most, and kind of the challenge I had the most when getting into it was, how can someone do this when they don't know how I feel to get around that? It was more about showing people that when someone listens and takes in what you're saying, then there's so many different avenues you can go down. It doesn't have to be, well, I did this, so this is going to this is the fix for you. Everyone's so individual is definitely no one wants to fail.

Emily Slade: So is there no one client fits all as well. Did you have to deal with a variety of different like.

Tom West: You definitely find your niche 100%. I definitely found one issue was more down the health and the lifestyle route. I remember having clients who wanted to work on their confidence to be able to speak better at work or how to, maybe find the next step in their career. Well, that come to me thinking, wow, I just feel flat. And people would use those words. I just feel depressed etc. And i'd say, I'm not a psychologist. I'm not going to get you out of your depression. That's not me. But how can I give you an extra 10%? Maybe 10% feel better. Where in your life are you feeling less fulfilled? How can we make that easier for you? So you feel that little bit happier? Yeah, definitely. I ended up down more of the health and the lifestyle side of things. But I think it was more my environment of where I was. I was set up in a gym, so I had a office in a gym, and I think that definitely attracted a certain type of person to me, for sure. But, yeah, when you work with one type of person, you definitely get better at, dealing with those things. You get in the same sort of topics come up and you saying, well, that sort of topic didn't really that conversation how I handled that didn't land well for that person that's tried different avenue with this individual straight away and see how about that. And so you kind of learn how to approach certain conversations because you'll see in the more.

Emily Slade: Do you have a fixed time that you see them for. Do they sign up for sort of 6 to 8 weeks or is it could they be ready for the year, two years, two days?

Tom West: How I would structure it was we'd do an initial 6 to 8 week. So depending on a consultation. So I had the consultation first of all, and we would then decide if it was something kind of lifestyle. I've always felt confident six weeks will talk about this given topic. If it's something that was sound a little bit more complicated or had a few more layers to it, then we'd do it like an eight-week package instead. After that, we would have a conversation at the end of the of whatever package and be like, okay, how are we feeling in this? What have you achieved so far? What do you feel like you would still like to achieve? And then I'd go into rolling sessions kind of on a biweekly basis, with people depending on if they felt that was necessary. It always felt like I was just trying to help people rather than than trying to do a hard sale, which was always nice because you got the best out of me as an individual. You so much better at your job when you're not focusing. I really need this person to stay on and sign up. It's so much better at your job that way, and then people can see that as well. So then you don't have to worry about money so much as well.

Emily Slade: What kind of person do you think would suit going into the life coach lifestyle?

Tom West: A patient person,. Patient, calm and open. Openness has to be the key to all of it. If you're not open, then people are going to see all over your face when they're sometimes divulging really personal and sensitive things about whether it be addictions or depression or anxiety. And if you've got a slightest bit of judgment on your face, they are going to close up and you're going to get nothing out of them. So I think being open's the biggest one patience as well, because sometimes it'll take three sessions before someone feels comfortable enough then to open up to you and you have to, ease into that. Not every time. Can you just keep pressing and pressing? Sometimes you can have a session where you know there's something they want to tell you, but you just can't get it out straight away. You got to take your time and build that rapport. But yeah, the two biggest things that I think are really important for a life coach.

Emily Slade: And what advice would you give for somebody looking to enter into this industry?

Tom West: Go into it and take the plunge. If you feel like a job for you is something that you're going to benefit from, it feel like you're helping others. If you haven't got that one and need to help others, then it's not a job for you. It's got to be something that's at the really forefront of your mind. Is I want to help people make a change. I want to see people leave with a smile on their face, sometimes tears in their eyes. Get yourself educated, learn something new. And even once you've done your qualification, if you decide to take that route because it's loads of courses out there now is to learn and then self evaluate. And even now I will spend a little bit of time each week where I just go over the sessions. I've had to see what I've done well, and I think it can be quite hard to do that when you're in like, a solo working environment. You have to be self-analytical. Because there's no one there to say, you could have done that a little bit better. You haven't got your boss over your shoulder the whole time. You don't have that in this environment. So I think really take pride in your education in terms of learn the right things and keep learning the right things, and make sure it's something that you think you're going to care loads of personal joy from, because it can be draining. It can be quite emotionally draining. So it's got to be something you feel like brings you some joy and has some happiness to it as well.

Emily Slade: And does it come with boundaries? Are you available to your clients 24/7 or only during your sessions?

Tom West: It's not that it's 24/7. It's primarily in that session now, for example, I would allow people to message me and I would set those hours out of the start. So, you've got my number, you've got my contact, you're able to message me between these times and you'll get a response within 24 hours. You've got to be very clear on that. Otherwise, people are messaging you and oh, my God, I'm really struggling with this. It's like I'm trying to eat my dinner. I'm trying to wind down for bed. It's you can't have that. Open ended like communication with someone or it will never stop. So being very clear on your boundaries whatever they might be. Though some people will turn around and say, yeah, you can talk to me in the session and that's it for me. I didn't feel right doing that. I'm not say those people are wrong for it. I think the most important thing is with any relationship when it comes to having appliances set clear boundaries right from the start and make sure those boundaries are respected. So if someone does message you out of those times, fine. Just bring it up. Next time that we set out these times, I'll get back to you. I've given myself a 24-hour window to do so. So you just set clear, clear boundaries.

Emily Slade: Was there anything else that you wanted to mention?

Tom West: I think the thing that I want to mention most about it is how rewarding it can be. And that reward doesn't just come on like oh yes. They've hit that one goal. You've seen a lot, so many small personal developments in people and that can really stick with you in the future. There's been times where I've seen posts on Facebook, like a year or two later from working with someone that is still like, oh, I know I've played a part in that, and I think it just takes the right person. And for anyone out there that's thinking, oh, I could do a full life coaching and find different people. Not everyone's the right fit for you. And, make sure you have a good connection with some of them, because I might not be right for someone. And also, some of them might not be right for me as a client. So finding that balance about finding the right person and is the most important thing about being a life coach and just being the right person for someone.

Emily Slade: Thank you so much for your time today.

Tom West: Thank you.

Emily Slade: Thanks again to Tom for their time. For more information on becoming a life coach, head to prospects.ac.uk or check out the links in the show notes below. For a full-length video version of this episode, check out our YouTube channel @futureyoupod. If you enjoyed the episode, please feel free to leave us a review on Apple or Spotify. Thank you, as always for listening and good luck on your journey to future you.

Notes on transcript

This transcript was produced using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. The audio version is definitive and should be checked before quoting.

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• Learn more about being a life coach.
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