The struggle by coaches to market their coaching services has become a very competitive and misleading process. There are over 30,000 to 50,000 people who call themselves coaches. Anyone can call himself or herself “Coach.” What it means to be a coach is very confusing. In fact the term “Coach” can mean a host of different things, even after eliminating sports coaches, people carriers (busses) and high-end women’s handbags (Coach Handbags). There are many different opinions of what a coach does. Most opinions are generated specifically to benefit the people who call themselves coaches to suit whatever they want to do, and their marketing strategies.

The True Personal Coaching Precess

The true personal coaching process that was created, organized, and documented by Thomas Leonard and his group around 1991 is a very remarkable and effective human improvement process. Personal coaching works extremely well to assist people to achieve incredible coaching goals that were not previously attainable by using the nine other major human improvement processes available. Consequently, the personal coaching industry has grown from nothing in 1991 to an industry that has doubled and tripled in size every year since. The increasing number of very successful coaching clients provided shining examples of personal coaching, and enthusiastically attracted others to experience the wonders of personal coaching. Successes bred additional successes.

The true personal coaching process is so different from the other nine previously used human improvement processes that it has been much more difficult to explain to the general public than anticipated. People must be educated about what true personal coaches do and do not do, and how it works, before they will be able to know enough to make an informed decision about engaging a personal coach. In addition, there are four (4) key conditions that prospective coaching clients will want to be met to suit them before they actually engage their own personal coach. Most people will engage a personal coach only after they have learned the truth about personal coaching and what they will gain from it through an honest open truthful education process devoid of pressure or manipulation. Yet, the personal coaching process is not for everyone. Only people who voluntarily make their own highly informed decision to engage a personal coach under the right conditions will succeed at achieving their remarkable coachable goals.

The personal coaching process cannot be sold.

True personal coaches do not enter a coaching relationship where sales pressures or tactics have been employed. If people feel a need to be sold to hire a coach, they would be much better off NOT hiring a true personal coach. They would be wasting their money, because they would not achieve their potential coachable goals. Likewise, they would be better off NOT engaging anyone calling himself or herself a coach who applies even the smallest hint of sales pressure.

The general understanding of coaching has gotten more confusing

Thomas Leonard died of sudden but natural causes in 2003. Even though some people claim he was a very controversial and sometimes difficult person, he was dedicated to creating the remarkable personal coaching process and to educating anyone who would listen. He was not only able to direct attention to this newly created human improvement process, and educate so many people how coaching worked, but he was also superb at enlisting many others to spread the word as well and multiply the message.

Yet, success also attracted people who took advantage of the high quality of name of personal coaching. Unfortunately, the media, the coaching industry as a whole, and the many new people calling themselves coaches have been changing the landscape of personal coaching over the past four to five years. The general understanding of personal coaching has gotten so diluted, so confusing, so diverse, and so self-serving that it is very difficult to know what is what any more. Far more people have heard the term life coach for the first time during the past 5 years than ever before. But now they are being inundated with so many diverse and confusing concepts of coaching that they are probably worse off than before.

Examples of how the media changed the perception of coaching

Thomas Leonard and his close group of confidants called personal coaching “personal coaching,” because that is the best description of the process. It is very personal and for years that was the main if not the only term used. But the Hollywood produced TV show, called “Starting Over” that began airing around 2002 coined the term Life Coach, even though the supposed two “life coaches” they featured on their show were not conducting anything even closely resembling true personal coaching. Yet, the show implanted on the general public this very false, inaccurate, and demeaning thing they called life coaching. The general media (Herd animals to the fullest, who will follow anything controversial as the truth, that just one media outlet publishes, regardless of the facts) jumped on the term life coach and within a year the term “Life Coach” replaced “Personal Coach” as the generally accepted term.

Furthermore, too many people were led to believe by the “Starting Over” TV show that life coaches locked their damaged patients (According to the show, only people who had dramatic problems would hire life coaches) in a house and treated them to military boot camp conditions. These supposed life coaches controlled their patients and generated confrontations by barking orders and creating dramatic situations between the patients to create controversy whenever possible. Of course, true personal coaches would not participate in any such activity. And creating their own version of “Life Coaching” to sell their show, regardless if it was accurate or not, did not stop the shows creators and sponsors.

The media presented and legitimized the inaccurate and dramatic Starting Over version of “Life Coaching” to the general public. In addition the “Starting Over” version of life coaching became an excellent target of ridicule and humor, because, in truth it deserved it. Anyone who tried to present the differences between the newly adopted “Starting Over” version of “Life Coaching” that was created by writers to generate artificial drama and conflicts and true personal coaching was shouted down or disregarded. During this time true personal coaches and anyone associated with true personal coaches had to spend even more time and energy to educate the general public about personal coaching. They had to “unlearn” people who had heard about the “Starting Over” version of life coaching that it was not true or accurate in any way. So the job of educating people of the wonders of the personal coaching process became more difficult, not easier, because of the misinterpretations presented by “Starting Over” and their fellow media moguls. I believe the show ran for about three years.

The cancellation of “Starting Over” brought more clarity and more coaching successes

After the “Starting Over” show was canceled, there was a period of less attention by the media, which caused the public far less confusion regarding true personal coaching. These media free years offered people in the personal coaching fields more opportunities to educate the public about true personal coaching with less interference and confusion. I believe the discovery of, the acceptance of, and the effective use of personal coaching grew very rapidly during the years after Starting Over ceased airing and the general media went on to other subjects to confuse the public about. Thank you!

Media driven newcomers now confuse everyone by posing as coaches

But now there are newcomers who are representing themselves as coaches but who rarely are. They are grabbing the attention of the media to bamboozle the media again (not a difficult thing to do) to create even more misleading versions of coaching for the media to publicize as being the truth. The media seems to be competing against itself to find, and report on all sorts of different types of niche coaching. The more outlandish types of niche coaches get more media attention and they get legitimized more than real personal coaches. I call it the Paris Hilton media legitimization method. Paris was a media creation. The media also legitimized her as a worthy celebrity. The media fought all over themselves reporting her activities. The more absurd or controversial her actions, the greater the publicity she received. She took full advantage of the media by providing them with ever increasing eccentric behavior to seek more publicity, and by default more legitimacy. The more controversial she became the more they legitimized her, regardless of the truth. She created a very wealthy industry by using the media.

It appears that there are an ever-growing number of supposed niche coaches who are seeking and getting media attention by claiming to be exotic and even outlandish specialty coaches. The media is perpetuating this new inaccurate portrayal of coaching by publicizing even more ridiculous forms of coaching as legitimate. Allow me to provide some examples of these apparently new forms of niche coaching that have been appearing recently in the media, and that the general public is accepting as representative of true personal coaching.

Examples of absurd supposed “coaches” that the media promotes as legitimate.

“Credit report coach” (helps improve your credit report) “Parent coach” (supposedly works with troubled young kids, or is it the parents?) “Family manager coach” (the new family CEO?) “External accountability coach” (there is some logic here, but the focus is only on one of the many aspects of true personal coaching, what about coaching goals?) “Flirt coach” (speaks for itself) “Evangelism coach” (I have heard some sermons where the preacher might use this coach) “Celebrate Recovery Encourager Coach” (After several attempts I still cannot understand this one) “Life coaching and tarot” (Interpreting how the cards fall becomes a coaching thing?) “Fertility coach” (I am not touching this one) “Intrinsic coach” (Could it be intrinsically sound?), and as I reported previously in my humor section (where else) a person used a donkey as his life coach. (I guess donkeys listen better) I also have to include the “Swing coach” I also reported in my humor section that I believe is a spoof. (No, not what you think)

The list has been expanding very rapidly. I am not degrading any of these coaching niches or making fun of all of them, but I cannot help poking fun at some. My contention is that none of these newly created niche coaches and the many more that are sure to follow are providing true personal coaching. They are providing some combination of training, teaching, counseling, religious teaching, therapy, and or consulting, but NOT personal coaching. Yet, they all call themselves coaches. That is their right and it has proven to be very effective in some cases to attract the media attention, and the backdoor legitimization that comes with it, to create a very prosperous marketing program for whatever they are offering. I believe they are using the same formula of publicity, recognition, and legitimization that Paris Hilton used so effectively. These new “niche coaches” are attracting more media attention by being more bizarre than others.

Once again, more people are now being told by the media that these new forms of outlandish “niche coaches” provide true personal coaching. Unfortunately, if past history is the indicator, I am afraid that the public will also believe these unusual “niche coaches” to be true “Personal Coaches”

We want people to know the truth about personal coaching

All we want is that the truth be told so more people will become more knowledgeable in what is available to them to assist them to improve their lives in whatever ways they want. We are not begrudging or trying to hurt the media savvy “niche coaches” game. In fact, I have to wonder if true personal coaches might adopt this same Paris Hilton media control marketing program to draw attention to the true personal coaching process. Thomas Leonard was our best spokesman, because he did get the media’s attention. He thrived in the limelight. He drove around the country in an attention getting motor home and talked to anyone about the wonders of personal coaching. He created enough attention to educate thousands about personal coaching, and away we went. That was then, this is now.

In the meantime, personal coaches (now referred to as life coaches) must figure out a way to educate the general public about true personal coaching, so more people will make very informed decisions to enjoy the wonders of being coached by a personal (life) coach.

True personal coaches avoid the glare of publicity

Since true personal coaches are genuinely focused on supporting and assisting their clients (other people) to succeed as the king or queen to accomplish their coachable goals, they have difficulty playing the look at me center of attention media game. True personal coaches thrive by assisting their clients to reach marvelous new heights that can frequently mean attracting considerable attention for their clients. But personal coaches shy away from the limelight. They keep the light on their clients. That is why so many success stories included personal coaching, and the coaches remained in the background by design. So the general public is rarely aware of the true value of having a personal coach, because those who succeed with personal coaching become the stars of their new successes, and not their coaches. For example, a surgeon who performed a remarkable and successful operation will get and deserve the attention and rewards of his or her achievement. However, when you look at the actual operation, the surgeon had considerable supporting help to succeed. But like personal coaches these supporting people are rarely mentioned. But without their totally focused, professional, trustworthy, and supportive assistance the surgeon could not have successfully completed the operation without them. They concentrated on providing whatever the surgeon needed to actually succeed at the operation. Just like personal coaches concentrate on providing the honest and totally supportive assistance for their clients to succeed at their goals.

The media creates the problems it accuses the coaches of causing

The media is missing the incredible worldwide life-changing story of true personal coaching. And unfortunately, the media has been diverting the general public from this remarkable story, by focusing on and publishing the outlandish, the eccentric, and the inaccurate portrayals of coaching. The media makes stars out of people who claim to be coaches, but the real stars are the clients who achieve their remarkable goals through coaching and the personal coaching process, not the coaches. This is a shame. I guess if you want to play with the media, you must play by their rules. Outlandish and controversial is in, regardless of the truth. Deep human understanding and remarkable life achievements are out. I believe Mark Twain said it best. Do not argue with someone who buys his or her printers ink by the barrel.

The Internet allows the presentation of the truth by avoiding the self-serving media.

Yet, I have to hope that the advent of the Internet, where anyone can speak without having to play the media game, will offer more opportunities to present this wonderful story. That is the purpose of my blog site, my web site, my company, The Coach Connection (TCC) and this much longer than I had anticipated blog. I just want the truth about the wonders of the personal (life) coaching process to be received and understood by more and more people, so they can and will make the right much more informed decisions for themselves.

What we have here is a failure to communicate

Enough said.

Coming soon; How personal coaching works!