Coach-Trainer-FAQ: A Masterclass in becoming a coach with Lucy Higgins

Lucy Higgins

I think you need to get super clear on who it is you want to help. Think about who is your ideal client, and then create a client avatar. So by that I mean, where do they live? What do they do for a living? And then, importantly, what is the problem that they want solved? And I call that Hell Island. So imagine your client is on Hell Island. What does Hell Island look like? What's the problem? And then, what is the outcome that they want as a result of the coaching? And I call that Heaven Island. So what does that look like? Imagine you put them on a boat and they go from Hell Island to Heaven Island. And you think, right, what does that boat journey look like?

Tobi

When I started with the Making of a Coach, I wanted to build a resource that helps you with all these questions beyond the actual session. I wanted to tackle questions like, how do I find clients? Should I niche my coaching practice? How much can I actually charge? How long will this whole business building process take me until I can live from it? And when I met today's guest, Lucy, for our prep conversation, she said that she actually has an FAQ, a frequently asked questions list, with exactly these kinds of questions. She has this list because, next to her own career coaching practice, she also trains coaches at Animas, a large academy in the UK. So on this episode we dig into these frequently asked questions, tackling question by question, on the one hand on business aspects,

Tobi

In order to get us started, I found that a good question is, who's your typical client, and what challenge do you usually help them with?

Lucy Higgins

Okay. My typical client is somebody in their 35 to 55 age bracket who is a mother but also wants a fulfilling career. And what I help them with is this sort of struggle that most women have, which is, how do I do both? How do I be the mother I want to be and have a fulfilling career where I achieve my ambitions and my potential? And when I say, how do I do both, there are lots of issues underneath that have come up for women that we might explore and unpack and hopefully resolve.

Tobi

So that also sounds very mission driven. How did you arrive at this mission personally?

Lucy Higgins

It's interesting, isn't it? Because I never really thought of myself as someone like that when I was younger. Through the process of becoming a mother myself I saw the struggles that my friends went through and the struggles that I went through, and I saw a real opportunity to help women. I remember saying to myself, who is it that I want to help? The way to know that is by who is it that, when I imagine them, I feel emotional and like I'm going to cry. And it was always lonely mothers that made me want to cry. And it still really touches me now, thinking about a mother, a new mom maybe, or somebody with older children, but just a woman who feels really alone in the world and never used to, and has lost herself a bit and doesn't really know who she is anymore. And I saw all that wasted potential in women, and it really frustrated me, and I thought, right, that's who I want to help. I think that women are not helped enough, they don't get enough support these days. So yes, it is mission driven.

Tobi

And out of that also came your career change coaching program, which I think we will dig into a bit more later. Next to that, you also train coaches, right?

Lucy Higgins

Yes.

Tobi

Can you talk to us a bit about that?

Lucy Higgins

Yeah. So it was never in the vision. It's one of those things in life where you get offered the opportunity and you think, oh my God, I can't do that. And then you think, well, I've got to say yes to this, I've got to give it a go, and who am I as a coach if I don't take these opportunities? That's ridiculous. So I launched into it, and I've been doing it now for two years. I coach two cohorts a month, so 24 people a month, and it's a diploma in transformative coaching and it runs over six months, and it's online. And honestly, talking to my supervisor about it, because she went through the nightmare of me having imposter syndrome and all of that, and she was trying to encourage me, we regularly reflect on the journey I've been on there in terms of my initial hesitancy. And now it's actually one of the things I most enjoy about my business, and I'm actually really good at it. I get really good feedback, and you can hear in my voice that I'm quite surprised by that, because I never thought I could do it. But actually I am really good at it, and it feels good to say that, to acknowledge that that's a new skill that I have learned from scratch, that I love and find very fulfilling and I'm good at. So yeah, it's great.

Tobi

And what's the journey these people that you train are on? Are they new coaches that train to become transformative coaches, or how does that program look?

Lucy Higgins

Yeah, exactly, they are new coaches. They tend to be either people who are in big corporate organizations, maybe in learning and development or HR, and their companies are paying for them to become an accredited coach so that they can then be an internal coach in their businesses. And then there are also people who are just individuals, which is a bit like what I was when I trained, and they're thinking, I want a change of career and I want to become a coach. So they pay for it themselves and they're obviously heavily invested in that financially and energy and time wise. So the journey they go on: they are learning the skill of coaching, but I would say even more importantly, they are transforming themselves throughout the course. That's often a surprise to people. They think they're going on a course and they're going to learn how to coach, and they are, but what they also notice is a paradigm shift. They actually feel like a very different person at the end of the course. They've had a lot of coaching themselves, so they've been coached a lot, but also the content that we go through and unpack together offers them a different perspective on life, I would say, and a different way of being in life, which I find incredibly exciting to take people through.

Tobi

Super interesting. So they come to learn a craft, and then of course with that comes tremendous personal development, and going through this transformation yourself is always part of becoming someone who helps others have that transformation.

Lucy Higgins

Exactly. I think as coaches we need to have done the work ourselves to be credible, and part of that work is in the course, but part of that work is outside of the course as well. It's reflection, supervision, practising, reading, taking part in continuous professional development. All of that, it's an ongoing journey. As a coach you have to constantly be growing personally and professionally, I think, in order to be the best coach you can be.

Tobi

And when we previously chatted about that, you also said, well, there are a lot of frequently asked questions that come up in this coach training that you're doing. And I thought that would be really cool to unpack in a condensed way. So let's actually hop into that and go into these questions.

Lucy Higgins

Okay, so we are going to do it like a kind of quick fire round, and I'll just answer them as succinctly as I can.

Tobi

Yeah, if you want to elaborate a bit more on one or the other, that's also fine. But I will keep my questions short and not dig deeper. So I will try to tame my curiosity, to not ask follow-up questions, and we will go through the FAQ.

Lucy Higgins

Cool.

Tobi

Okay. How do I find clients?

Lucy Higgins

This is a huge question, and it's probably the most common question that I get. I think you need to get super clear on who it is you want to help. So a bit like I did with the test of the emotions, like, who is it that I feel needs the most help? Think about who is your ideal client, and then create a client avatar. So by that I mean, where do they live? What do they do for a living? How do they spend their free time? Are they married? Are they single? Do they have kids? How old are they? What's their gender, their race, their socioeconomic status? What do they earn? How much would they spend on coaching? And then, importantly, what is the problem that they want solved? And I call that Hell Island. So imagine your client is on Hell Island. What does Hell Island look like? What's the problem? And then, what is the outcome that they want as a result of the coaching? And I call that Heaven Island. So what does that look like? Imagine you put them on a boat and they go from Hell Island to Heaven Island. And you think, right, what does that boat journey look like? And that's the journey you take them on. Is it one-to-one? Is it group? Is it structured? Is it directive? Is it non-directive? And why should they work with you rather than someone else? What experience are they going to get with

Tobi

So what I heard was: who's my client? On what Hell Island are they, and how do I help them to get off? And then finding ways to communicate that, that you are comfortable with.

Lucy Higgins

Yeah.

Tobi

And what I also heard is that most likely the most powerful closing channel will be referrals from happy clients.

Lucy Higgins

In my experience, that's where I get my clients. But I took a long time to do that at the beginning, that building of my brand through Hell Island, Heaven Island, talking to my clients, building up my personal brand in the marketplace. But then now I don't really do that and I just rely on referrals.

Tobi

How long will that take me? What is my business trajectory? How quickly can I substitute my corporate salary with that sort of work?

Lucy Higgins

So I would say, because it's going to be different for everybody, for me, I don't think there's enough honesty out there about how long this takes. Personally for me, and certainly for a lot of my friends, it took four years. So four years of me working part-time around my children. And then, as soon as I hit that replacement, when I replaced that corporate salary, it's kind of continued to go up, because I've built that solid foundation of my business. My advice would be, don't listen to the kind of noise out there that says you can be earning a hundred grand in six months after you do this training course. It just doesn't happen, in my experience.

Tobi

Yeah, so four years of hustling, where you sort of slowly ramp up to the salary that you used to have, but then afterwards the upward path also goes on beyond what you possibly had before.

Lucy Higgins

Exactly. So I'm now earning, I think, 20 percent more than I was earning in corporate. And I've got a huge amount of flexibility and fulfilment and all those good things. So I would say just be patient, but also maybe factor that in financially. So you might want to have some savings to get you through those first few years, that you might need to dip into. The statistics at the moment are something like 87 percent of all coaching businesses fail in the first year. I think a lot of that is because people don't have a financial buffer.

Tobi

Should I niche? Marketing people tell me I should.

Lucy Higgins

Yeah, so marketing people will say you need to niche. My experience is that you don't have to. Actually, you are the niche. Something I didn't quite realize before I started this new career was that I am the business. It might sound obvious, but I didn't get it for a while, that I am the business, I am the niche. Nobody coaches like me, nobody is me, I'm unique. And that's enough, that can be enough. If you've got a very strong personal brand, you can go out there and say, I'm a coach and I can coach anybody. Or you may be like me and think, actually no, there is a particular sector of society that I do want to help, and therefore it might serve you better to niche and tailor your marketing to that particular client avatar. So it depends, really. I would say I don't think you have to, but it might be helpful.

Tobi

And if I can challenge you on that one a bit: now you are talking to me as Lucy the coach trainer, but if I look at Lucy the coach, you might not have perceived it that way, but isn't your strong focus on women who have ambitious career goals, and that also being your own history in a way, isn't that a niche?

Lucy Higgins

Yes. Yeah, I have niched, definitely. So I've taken my individualism, my journey as a human being, and I've turned that into my expertise and my niche. A lot of my clients, and I've only learned this through experience, a lot of my clients come to me because of my personal experience of motherhood.

Tobi

Yeah, so you didn't niche because marketing people told you so, but just because you have this strong sense of purpose in this one area of life and society in a way, and through that it came naturally, I would say.

Lucy Higgins

Yeah.

Tobi

How do I step into that business world and sell myself, even though I'm a helper? I'm not a salesperson.

Lucy Higgins

I know. Yeah. So lots of the new coaches that I train have gone into coaching because they want to help people. And a lot of them are people pleasers, and they want to serve others, help others, et cetera. And that often contradicts the need, when you are a coach, to sell yourself. They find it very, very uncomfortable. How do you do that? I think you quickly learn that you have to work in your business and on your business at all times. So I would say 80 percent of your time should be spent in your business, earning money, and 20 percent should be spent on the business. And then, how do you sell yourself if you're not a salesperson? You find your way with it. I don't see myself as a salesperson, I think it's really icky and horrible. I have found a way to do sales in a very hands off way, unpressurized: this is what I offer, take it or leave it, come back to me if you want to have a conversation. I found my way with it, but it took a while, it took two years to really get it nailed. So I would trust that you will find your own way, that you've just got to keep trying and experimenting with different ways of doing it. I think the

Tobi

Yeah, if you wouldn't have said it, I would have also used the word authenticity, that's what I really can see. And this authenticity, standing there with your own story, I think also gives you visibility, so you are already visible. And then it's mostly about talking about your offers. So it's not, you should buy this. It's more like, look, this is my story and this is what I do with it today. Do you want to talk?

Lucy Higgins

Exactly, yeah.

Tobi

How much should I charge?

Lucy Higgins

So, I'm afraid there's no right answer to this. I mean, I've got clients who are coaches and we will often spend two or three sessions on this subject. It's a big, big topic for coaches. If you look at the ICF figures, I think the rates are generally between 30 pounds an hour and, at the top end, about 450 pounds an hour. And those top end ones tend to be executive coaches, so they tend to be being paid for by corporates. I would say you've got to think about who your ideal client is. Okay, so how much can they afford? There's no good going for stay at home moms who haven't got a job and trying to charge them 300 pounds an hour because that's what you need to pay your bills. So you've got to think about, when you're doing your ideal client work, part of that is, how much money do I need to earn, and do these people earn that? So that comes into play. And something about your experience, I think,

Tobi

Yeah.

Lucy Higgins

who I'm coaching. I actually know somebody, I love her, Claire Pedrick, a sort of well-known coach in the coaching world. And what she says is, I will charge you what you can afford. So if you are earning a modest salary, I'll charge you 30 pounds an hour. If you are earning half a million pounds a year, I will charge you 250 pounds an hour, whatever. So she has a sliding scale, which I think is quite a nice way of doing it actually. It feels quite ethical. So, I hope that answers the question.

Tobi

Yeah, so it's a range, that's what I hear. Quite a range, actually. And of course, similar to the business trajectory in general, and probably also similar to the number of clients,

Lucy Higgins

Yeah.

Tobi

it continues to go up, possibly.

Lucy Higgins

Yes, exactly, potentially. Someone like Tony Robbins, he's not a qualified coach, he doesn't have accreditation, and he charges a million pounds an hour. Michael Serwa doesn't have any qualifications, he charges 20,000 pounds an hour. You can charge what you like.

Tobi

I think, if I think of Tony Robbins, then what I guess he earns the most money with is not even coaching anymore, it's group programs. And that's of course also another screw that you can turn. Either you have many people and then you have sort of a group program where you can charge lower ticket prices, or it's this very exclusive setting.

Lucy Higgins

Yeah. So there are lots of different options.

Tobi

Awesome, thank you. Can I coach people I already know?

Lucy Higgins

Yeah, this is an interesting one. I think the question that coaches need to ask themselves is, am I providing an environment for the coachee in which they can do their highest quality thinking? If we think, as a coach, actually, me knowing them and having information on them is going to pollute the space with a bias, with a judgment, then arguably we are not the best coach for them, because really, in a coaching space, it needs to be non-judgmental. I say that with kind of quotation marks, because we are judgment making machines as humans, right? So we can't have no judgment in the space. But if I'm coaching my brother-in-law, I just couldn't coach him, because I just know too much about him, it would just be very muddy. I find it a lot easier to coach people I've never met. So I think that's the question. You can coach people that you know, but you need to be careful about polluting the space with bias, because the client is the priority. They deserve a space to think and have their highest quality thinking. And if you are getting in the way of that with your relationship, then it may be that they're better suited to someone else. So it depends on the relationship. I've coached friends of

Tobi

Maybe you could call it a bit of supervision in there.

Lucy Higgins

Yeah, exactly.

Tobi

Makes sense. So you start with your second row circle in a way. Friends of friends, colleagues of colleagues.

Lucy Higgins

Yeah, so I always say to people that are looking for practice clients, that's the best, they're the best people. Friends of friends, colleagues of colleagues, because then they're likely to match you well, they're going to see something in both of you that would make a good relationship, but you've never met that person. So they are good people to start with.

Tobi

What do you know now that you wish you'd known when you started? That's a broad question, but I would say, to close off our last 20 minutes, let's refer that to the whole business building aspect.

Lucy Higgins

What I know now, it sounds boring, is the infrastructure. If somebody could have given me the infrastructure I would have needed, the systems and things to create a very smooth running business at the start, that would have been really helpful. But it took me quite a long time to work that all out, and to work out how to save time and which systems to invest in and all of that. I wish I'd known that.

Tobi

What do you have in mind when you say systems? Can you give an example?

Lucy Higgins

Yeah. Things like, have you heard of Calendly? Something like that. I didn't put that in because I thought, oh, I can't really afford that, and I didn't do that for about three years. I'd be doing it all on email, like, when can you make this next session? Really time consuming. And actually what I realized is, Calendly just makes you look a lot more professional, it all works, I don't ever have to deal with cancellations, the client can just manage it all. So things like that. And then also something like Xero, the accounting software. I wish I'd done that sooner, because that just gives you all your reporting, it does it all for me. So those two are probably the main ones.

Tobi

Accounting software and scheduling. What else are the building blocks of your system these days?

Lucy Higgins

My website works fairly hard, so I try to regularly put blogs on it, to create the SEO, to get traction. And then on my website you can book a free exploratory call, so that tends to work quite well. I have a system in there as well, where before somebody books a call with me they have to answer certain questions to check that they're the right fit. So I put in there that my minimum package is 1,200 pounds, for instance, so that if they can't afford that they can say, actually, I'm not going to meet with you. So it sort of stops any time wasting. And I ask them how committed they are to making a change, so that I get a real sense, and also so they've done a sense check before they see me. And I ask them, what is it they want to get out of coaching, and why haven't they made this change on their own? So I get them to do a bit of thinking beforehand, which helps me in that first session. Zoom is a game changer. I think that's it.

Tobi

Anything where you actually visualize sessions? Is that just a Zoom conversation, or are you using any whiteboard or online coaching tools?

Lucy Higgins

No, I don't actually. I'm very pure coaching, just conversations. In my training I use an iPad and I share iPad slides on the screen within Zoom, but not in actual coaching. No. I'd love to hear more, because I know that you've got some that you can probably share with me that I could use.

Tobi

Yeah, we are building a suite for online coaching that's easier to use than Miro or any of the infinite whiteboard spaces, and that also gives you picture cards and all of that basically one click away.

Lucy Higgins

That would be amazing.

Tobi

Now that I'm asking, you say that would be amazing, but you've also never Googled for something like that, it sounds like.

Lucy Higgins

No, but that's why I haven't, because it's not easy. I think these things have to be really easy. So if somebody gave me a free trial and said, right, have a go with this, see if you like it, I'd probably do it. But I wouldn't go actively and look for it, because none of my clients have said they need it yet. When I'm training people on values, for instance, core values, I'll often say, you can get values cards out there that you can use, and you can get strengths cards and needs cards and all these things. But if you are doing it virtually, you've got to think about how you're going to do it. How do you do that? That's really hard, right? So I suppose my brain hasn't gone to the point of, oh, I'll go and find a solution for that. But it'd be great if there was one.

Tobi

Interesting. Okay, I'll take note of that. With that, let's maybe close the business Q and A and let's have another round, focusing on the actual coaching process. So again, I'll hop into my shoes of an aspiring coach and I'll ask you a set of questions about the actual practice. What do I do when my client arrives with just some vague thoughts and emotions, and no clear issue, no clear goal in mind?

Lucy Higgins

It's interesting, this one, isn't it? Because if we are client led, why does it matter? They're coming and we're saying, okay, that's interesting that you've come up with this vague thing. And that is something you can do: you can say, oh, I'm really noticing there's a vagueness to what you're sharing here. What comes up for you when I share that with you? What are the consequences of us staying in this vague space? Is this something you want, or would you like to get clearer? So you could go into it in that way. But I also think there's something in here about your responsibility as a coach. You are not a therapist. In therapy, in my experience, you go into a therapy session and they might ask you, how are you? And you can kind of just talk, and it can be very vague. In coaching, one of the things that differentiates coaching from therapy is the structure of a session, and that structure involves a clear outcome. So what is it we are going to get out of this session? What do you want to get out of the session? What do we need to address in order to get that outcome? Tell me about this thing, this focus

Tobi

Yeah. What I hear is, you simply ask solution focused questions. How would an ideal outcome look? Or, maybe, where is it working already, how could you get even more of that? So you're saying, as a coach, the client leads, and at the same time we want to have sort of an outcome. We want more structure than we have, possibly, in therapy. And to co-create that structure, you simply ask the client what they want.

Lucy Higgins

Yeah. But when I'm talking about an outcome, I'm talking about the outcome for the session. So, what do you want to walk away with today? Not the overarching goal, which might be something like, I want a career vision. Okay, we know you want a career vision, that's your overarching goal, but what do you want to get out of this session?

Tobi

How would you know this session was useful?

Lucy Higgins

Exactly. You walk away today and you feel like that was an amazing session and it was really successful. What will be different at the end if that's the case? What shift?

Tobi

Can I interrupt my client?

Lucy Higgins

Yes, sometimes interruptions are necessary. I think as new coaches we worry about interrupting the client's flow of thinking. So you can have an unproductive interruption and a productive interruption, I would say. An unproductive interruption would be when it's coach led. So maybe you're getting a bit bored, or you've got an agenda and you want to interrupt and kind of guide the conversation. That you don't want to be doing. But a productive interruption would be, for instance, when you sense, so, in coaching one of our responsibilities, one of the goals of coaching, is to generate new thinking, to evoke awareness and generate new thinking. If you are sensing that the client is talking about old stories, old narratives, stuff that they maybe told you before in previous sessions, or that they're so emotionally disconnected from what they're saying that it's almost like they're

Tobi

I can offer an example actually that comes to my mind from my coaching and therapy experience. As a client, I often have the feeling I want to get the whole story across, so the coach really understands where I'm at and what I'm talking about. And I would say most times that's not needed. I have my story, and for my outcome as a client it's most of the time not super crucial that the coach knows all the details. So I think it might be fine to say, as a coach, can I stop you there for a minute and try to get, in a nutshell, what is really behind all this? What's really behind the story? What's the outcome, the goal that the client would want to achieve there?

Lucy Higgins

That is absolutely another example of where it would be good to interrupt. Are the client's words serving them, or the coach? Because if they're serving the coach, they shouldn't be saying it, because it's basically wasting thinking time, because they've already had these thoughts. So yeah, you're right. I will often interrupt people and say, hang on, can I just check, do you need to tell me this? Are you getting something out of this by telling me, or are you doing this for my benefit? Because if it's for my benefit, you don't need to tell me. We just need to understand what you want to get out of the session, and then go from there.

Tobi

Related to that, possibly: I heard there's directive and non-directive coaching. What's the difference, and when should I do which?

Lucy Higgins

Yeah. So I call non-directive coaching pure coaching. So that's ICF, International Coaching Federation, type coaching. That is where the client comes to a session and we believe that client is creative, resourceful and whole. Everything that that client needs is within them. There is nothing that I could say that will be better than their own thinking. So that's non-directive coaching, and that's super powerful, it really is. And then there's directive coaching, which is more guided. So that might be like a program that you've created as a coach that you take people through, and it might have different exercises and assessments. You are sort of directing them in a certain direction. And the extreme of that would be mentoring, and then further, teaching. So you can have directive coaching, which is a mix of coaching and a bit of mentoring and a bit of sharing of ideas and things like that. But then you've got mentoring, and then you've got teaching at the other end of the spectrum. And right at the other end of the spectrum is pure coaching. When should you use them? It's all dependent on the client, on what they need, what they want.

Tobi

What is supervision?

Lucy Higgins

What is supervision? So supervision is a very, in my opinion, necessary and ethical space to have as a coach, where you are with an experienced coach who is also, ideally, a trained supervisor. It could be one-to-one or in a group, but it's basically a space that you go to for your self care. So say you've got something going on personally that's maybe interrupting the way you are showing up as a coach, that you want to talk through. Or it could be a client issue that you are having. So say your sister is very ill at the moment and you find it really hard to deal with that, and then your client comes along and says, my sister's really ill, and it's the same condition. You might feel a little bit triggered by that, you might feel like you're polluting the space, you might just want a space to chat it through. So it's for that, to look after the coach's wellbeing, to make sure that the coach has somebody to bounce ideas off. It's like having a sounding board, and you can even get some advice from them as well, the supervisor can advise as well in that space. But it's more than coaching, it's more than having a coach. It's like somebody who's very experienced that you can go to for that sort of nurturing, I suppose.

Tobi

So it's sort of coaching for a coach, but it's more than coaching. It really has some aspect of mentorship or consulting also in there, because there's so much focus on the coaching profession, and also getting concrete feedback possibly.

Lucy Higgins

Exactly. Yeah. So you don't feel as alone with it all. And if you have it in group supervision, then obviously you can learn from other people's issues and things coming up, so that can be a really good space to learn and grow. My supervisor is a therapist and a coach, so I've chosen her specifically so that I have that space, depending on what I need.

Tobi

I also have a Making of a Coach podcast episode specifically about supervision, with a coach who has made that her core profession, because she believes so much in it, also as a remedy to loneliness in your journey, in your business, in your practice as a coach.

Lucy Higgins

Yeah, I agree with that. It can be very lonely.

Tobi

Should I get accredited by some coaching body like the ICF or EMCC?

Lucy Higgins

I think it depends on how you feel about those sorts of regulatory bodies, how much you need them, what you're going to get out of it, but also from a business perspective, how much is it going to add value to your offering in the world. I know that since there was a big coaching boom around lockdown, around Covid, more companies are asking for accreditation. So whereas before Covid it wasn't as important, I think the importance of it has gone up, the demand for it has gone up. So that's something to factor in as well, that you are actually standing out a bit in the market if you're accredited, and therefore you're more likely to get jobs.

Tobi

And who cares about the accreditation? So what are the characteristics of my target group where you would say, in this case it actually makes sense to get accreditation?

Lucy Higgins

Corporates. But then, having said that, sometimes they don't. There isn't actually a characteristic of the person who needs accreditation. I've noticed there's been a boom in coaching platforms, CoachHub and BetterUp and Thrive and all these, and they require accreditation, and many of them require a minimum of 500 hours of coaching as well. They're getting more strict about who they take on as freelance coaches. But yeah, there are some corporates that don't care about it, and there are others that do.

Tobi

Yeah, I also heard that before. We have an episode with Ebony, who has been a coach for 20 years, and then she got ICF accreditation because she was tired of marketing and wanted to really scale this work with coaching platforms like Nilo Health, BetterUp, CoachHub, et cetera. And for that she finally did get accredited.

Lucy Higgins

Yeah, exactly. And, for the record, I'm quite a big fan of accreditation. I think it's a really good thing, because I think anybody these days can call themselves a coach, and I think it sort of muddies the profession, because then nobody really knows what coaching is. Whereas if you have a regulatory body that says, well, this is what coaching is, this is the best practice of coaching, at least everybody knows what that part is, and then people can make informed decisions about whether to work with those people or not. So I think it's a really good thing.

Tobi

Which body do you recommend to go to?

Lucy Higgins

Any of them. I think they're all great. ICF, EMCC, Association for Coaching are the three that I know of in Europe, and they're all slightly different in what they prioritize, but they're all brilliant. If you want to work in the USA, in the States, you might want to go with the ICF, because they are primarily American, although they are worldwide. Essentially, if you go with them, you're covering all countries. Whereas if you go with EMCC, it's a European body, so there may be, I'm not saying there are, but there may be companies that would say, well, you need to be ICF accredited, not EMCC. So that's just something to bear in mind.

Tobi

Coming to the end of our coach trainer FAQ.

Lucy Higgins

Okay.

Tobi

What is a question that you believe aspiring coaches should ask more, even though they don't? Are there any blind spots that you commonly see, that people should better be asking about?

Lucy Higgins

Yeah. The only thing I would say is, just be cautious about leaving your job and going into coaching, and really don't believe the hype out there that you can just magically create a coaching business. It really does take time to build. So the blind spot, I think, would be to be sort of blindly optimistic. Do your research.

Tobi

And maybe also the power of getting started as a side hustle.

Lucy Higgins

Yes, great idea. I wish I'd done that.

Tobi

Okay.

Lucy Higgins

I just launched myself right in. But yeah, that is a good idea. Just do it slowly and then build it up, build it up, and then reduce the other thing. Great idea. Unless you win the lottery, and then of course you can just go and launch yourself.

Tobi

Okay, cool. Thank you.

Lucy Higgins

Thank you.

Tobi

Lucy, I think this was a fun session. This is where we stop the episode for today and finish the questions that Lucy usually gets asked in her role as a coach trainer. You heard it towards the end: Lucy did not start her own coaching practice as a side hustle. So how exactly did she do it? How do the pillars of her business look today? I can already tell you, there's a reason Lucy talked to us today about the distinction between non-directive, ICF aligned coaching on the one hand and directive coaching on the other. This sort of directive coaching makes up a big pillar of her own practice today, which she developed on the one hand coming from her own personal story, and on the other from her non-directive coaching practice. How exactly this looks is what we are going to unpack on our next episode. It's going to be a very illustrative example of how this business building,