If you're thinking about becoming a coach, you're probably wondering whether you should take an online coaching course or a life and business coaching course in person.
This is an extremely important question for you, as it impacts your career, your passion and your ability to earn a living. So make sure you get it right.
I may be biased, but I have experienced coach training in almost every possible format, so I have a useful perspective to share with you and I have concluded that online coach training is best for the following reasons...
REASON #1: MONEY.
Most aspiring professional coaches are concerned about the money they spend on their training, and rightly so. However, at the end of the day, you should also be concerned about your return on investment (ROI), i.e. how much extra money you will make as a coach and in what time frame. Indeed, depending on your training, your salary as a life coach can range from zero to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. That's a lot of money.
In-person coach training almost always involves travel and accommodation costs in addition to the training itself. And because hotels and classrooms are expensive for coaching schools, in-person coach training almost always involves higher tuition fees, sometimes up to $20,000 or more.
In addition, in-person business and life coach training tends to be offered as short workshops and seminars, lasting only a weekend or even a day. The event itself can be great, but if you've ever been to a seminar, workshop or conference, learnt fabulous things and were sure it was going to change your life - only to go home and find yourself living the same life as before a week later, then you understand the 'extinction principle' which says that even great training fades massively if it's not followed by systems and environments that support change. In other words, your $20,000 coach training may leave you "inspired" but without a viable coaching business. This is a poor return on investment.
In contrast, online coach training usually costs less and involves no travel, no downtime, no accommodation costs, no traffic jams or other delays. All you have to do is turn up to the course, wherever you are. And because online coach training is usually ongoing, you'll have support systems and structures to help you succeed built into the process. You're likely to spend less on training, start earning money as a coach sooner, and make more money overall. That's a great return on investment.
REASON 2: TIME.
I touched on time above, but here are some other time-related issues to think about: While it's important to optimize your training time, your brain will absorb what you learn better and you'll learn to apply what you learn faster if you spend a few hours a week in the classroom, then apply your lessons to your own coaching activity during the week.
It would be great if you could attend a weekend seminar and come out ready to be a successful coach, but as a smart and savvy person, you know that transforming your life means changing a myriad of old habits into new ones. It takes time.
A few hours of learning a week, spread out over a few months or even years, will allow you to apply what you've learned to your life and business, especially if your coaching school includes reinforcing structures, such as study groups, mentoring, online forums, and, most importantly, live online classes with homework. (By the way, this is exactly how effective business and life coaching works: you have a live conversation with a client, who experiments with life-changing ideas with you. Then they apply those ideas to their life or business and report the results back to you.)
As Aristotle said, "We are what we habitually do. Excellence is therefore a habit, not an act.
REASON 3: LEARNING.
Most people assume that they will learn more in face-to-face training, but this is usually because they have not experienced quality distance learning. I'm not talking about handing in written assignments online, or audio CDs and MP3s. While these tools can be useful adjuncts to training, nothing beats live classes and conversations to learn coaching. Let's face it: coaching is about live, in-the-moment conversations followed by strategic action. That's also what effective coaching training is all about.
I'm not talking about tele-classes either, which are still a popular training format in some of the older coaching schools. And I'm not talking about standard webinars, which usually involve little or no classroom conversation. Today's technology allows us to do everything in what I call a "tele-webinar" that we can do in person, except shake hands (or get stuck in traffic).
Tele-webinar training is perfect for learning business and life coaching because it allows you to sign up from anywhere, using your iPad, computer and/or phone, and take a highly interactive conversation class that allows you to learn in the learning style that works best for you: audio, visual (in the form of slides, live demonstrations, co-browsing, videos, etc. ), questions and answers, live practice and feedback, uploading material before, during or after the course, body movement, note-taking, instant testing, practice with classmates, whatever learning strategy suits you best. Little by little, you learn new habits of excellence and you are inspired by your own successes and those of your classmates.