Life Coaching
Let me tell you a story.
A long, long time ago (October 2009, to be exact), I was just a regular student, with a dream of being a life coach.
After two years of blogging about personal development, and flirting with different ideas of how I want to make my unique big contribution to the world, I decided to become a life coach.
Except months had passed, and I wasn’t doing anything about it.
Then, one day, my good friend Ammar grabs me after a lecture and says – “Hey, Vlad, you say you want to be a life coach. Well, why aren’t you doing anything about it? Why don’t you just put a post on your blog saying ‘I’m a life coach now. Hire me!’?”
I dismissed his question at the time, but when I got home, it came back and I started thinking about it. A lot. In fact, I’ve thought about it for several hours.
And I came to the conclusion that I didn’t offer life coaching yet because I wasn’t fully confident I could truly help my clients. Once I realized that, the ideas flowed easily – all I needed was to get in touch with a life coach friend of mine, talk to him, get recommendations for some good books on life coaching to read…
Long story short, a few weeks later I offered a pack of free life coaching sessions on my blog for several people, to get some experience and testimonials from real clients.
Yet none of that would have happened if Ammar hadn’t asked me that simple question. I probably would have kept on doing what I had been doing up until then, and it might have well taken me another couple of months, or half a year, to finally get off my ass and do something about becoming a life coach.
And the above is a surprisingly good example of life coaching. As a life coach, I will ask you the right questions to get you thinking, and help you realize that you are actually quite close to living the life you really want! And then we’ll together figure out the action steps you need to take to move closer to your ideal life, and get you moving!
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Now, sure, you could probably do that yourself. Eventually. But like I would have easily wasted another 6 months without doing anything specific to become a life coach… you might sit around, and blunder aimlessly, without getting much closer to your goals for a long time.
Life coaching is very much a turbo-boost pack. You don’t need to talk to a coach every week for 5 years to see some changes. In fact, all the desired changes with my clients happen within 6 sessions or fewer. (Which is why I offer such short session packs, as you’ll see later.)
Sure, it won’t take only a couple of phone calls with me to suddenly be living the life of your dreams. But it will be enough to help you find the direction, and action steps, and also give you the tools to continue your growth yourself.
I like to think of life coaching like being a friendly diamond prospector:
You have diamonds of wisdom buried inside your mind. You already have all the best answers for your life, for what makes you happy, what fills you with a deep sense of purpose.
But those diamonds are often buried deep inside your subconscious mind, and you don’t know where to look for them.
And you can either search around aimlessly, stumbling across those diamonds yourself. Or you can hire a friendly diamond prospector, who will help you quickly find exactly where those diamonds of your subconscious wisdom are, because he has all the right tools and experience.
He will help you extract the main veins of your diamond wisdom, and leave you with a map that will guide you in extracting the rest.
Does that make sense? Even if not, here’s a bit more to clarify exactly what life coaching is about…
Coaching vs. counseling vs…
Imagine you’re learning to drive a car.
You can hire a counselor, a coach, or a few other similar folks. How exactly do they compare to each other?
- a therapist explores your past experiences of driving a car
- a counselor listens to your anxieties about driving a car
- a mentor shares his own experience of driving a car
- a consultant tells you what to do
- a coach asks you open questions to let you discover how to drive by yourself
From this description, you might think coaching sounds pretty crap. That’s a good sign, because coaching would be a pretty crappy way to learn to drive.
Each of those disciplines is useful in different circumstances. Driving a car is a specific skill with set rules and best answers… so you’d probably be best off hiring a consultant or a mentor to teach you how to drive.
On the other hand, your life has no set answers. Also, you have far more knowledge about your own life than anybody else ever could, even if they studied you as a university degree, wrote two theses about you and then spent 30 years following you around with a camera and microphone.
That’s why you provide the answers during life coaching.
Apart from the answers being tailored exactly to your life, with all the fine details an outsider could never know, the answers you give yourself during life coaching have another benefit. You’re much more likely to act on your own suggestions than on somebody else’s! And taking action is the only way to change your life for the better. (Changing your habits of thinking also takes action.)
My experience as a life coach lies in asking the right questions to help you elicit all the right answers from your subconscious mind. Think of the answers from your subconscious mind like big shiny diamonds, and the life coach as a friendly prospector who lends you their expertise in locating and extracting those diamonds.
In a moment, I will give you more insight into what exactly happens during life coaching sessions. But before that, now that we covered what life coaching is and isn’t about, let’s see who it’s for (and who it’s not for)!
Who is life coaching for?
Here are some signs you would benefit from hiring a life coach:
- you’re not happy with your current life situation, but aren’t sure what to change (feeling stuck)
- you have trouble staying motivated
- you have goals, but find it hard to keep on track, succumbing to procrastination
- you have something important in your life that you keep thinking about, but never take any action
Who is life coaching NOT for?
Here are a few reasons life coaching might not be for you:
- if you have deep psychological problems or trauma (see a therapist for that)
- you expect to spend hours digging into your past (knowing where your trouble came from is nice, but it’s not really useful for dealing with them. Knowing where you are right now and where you want to be, and then bridging the gap, is what we life coaches do.)
- you feel it would be nice to change something in your life, but can’t really be bothered to take action (I can’t just wave my magic life coaching wand and give you the life of your dreams. (That’s part of the secret super-deluxe package.) It’s still up to you to take action to make those changes happen.)
If you’re not sure if life coaching is for you, e-mail me at me@vladdolezal.com. I offer a free 30-minute consultation to help you decide if life coaching is right for you. (And yes, I’ll pay for the call either to Skype or to a landline phone). E-mail me to arrange a time for the call.
What is life coaching like?
My first and foremost goal as a life coach is to help you achieve what you want to achieve.
Whether you want to stop procrastinating and get working on that business idea you’ve had for months, or to achieve better balance between your work and family life, or even just to figure out what it is you want from life, that’s what I will support you in.
To do that, I will seek to understand how you see the world. See what makes you tick. Listen to what you say, how you say it… even listen to the spaces between your words. During each session, you will have 60 minutes of my undivided attention. A full hour of time that’s focused on you, and only you.
I understand we all have different values. And no values are right or wrong – each person’s core values are exactly right for them. I won’t judge you. Instead, I will look at the world through your eyes, according to your values, and then help you best achieve what you want in accordance with your values.
I will also hold you accountable according to your own standards.
One of the first things I will do is help you discover your own core values. I have all sorts of nifty ways to help you bypass your overanalyzing conscious mind (“Should I have value this more than the other? But what will my partner think? Also, I’ve been told this other value is really important. Maybe I should value that more…”). We’ll cut through all that and let your subconscious mind tell us what you value most in the world.
Once you understand your core values, you will look at how they relate to your life, and where a subtle value conflict might have often been leaving you uncomfortable and dissatisfied without you even realizing where that feeling comes from.
After that, most sessions will run based on whatever most pressing issue you want to deal with. I will ask you questions to help you discover the best answers for your current situation, then let you figure out specific actions that you can take between two successive sessions and hold you accountable on those.
I will help you consistently take action during the coaching relationship, because action is by far the quickest way to improve your situation. You will usually agree to take some specific actions between one coaching session and the next, and I will hold you accountable on those.
Now, I don’t do completely pure coaching. All life coaches have different skill sets, and occasionally bring in different skills to help clients. For example, I use bits of NLP in my life coaching, because it has some ridiculously effective tools for changing your state and blasting through limiting beliefs. But mostly I use my life coaching skills, because that’s what helps my clients the most.
In short, I will look at the world through your eyes, ask you questions to help you discover your own answers, then hold your hand when it needs holding and kick your ass when it needs kicking.
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If you’re seriously considering the idea of life coaching, but aren’t quite sure if it’s right for you, I offer a free 30-minute informal chat over the phone to help you figure that out. (I like to call it a “consultation” because it sounds fancy 
). Just e-mail me at me@vladdolezal.com to arrange it.
I know hiring a life coach is a big investment and you want to be sure before committing. Also, for some people, life coaching will simply not be right at that particular phase in their life. Maybe they’d benefit more from hiring a therapist, or from waiting a bit longer to truly feel committed to changing. Then again, for some people the best action will be hiring a life coach right now!
So that’s why I offer the free consultation. To make sure we are right for each other before we commit and invest any more of each other’s time.
Speaking of investment, I’m sure there’s something you’ve been wondering ever since you read the title of this post…
The price (and my try-before-you-pay deal)
I offer four different plans, as follows:
Pay-per-session: $97
This is simply a one-hour phone call with me. This is a very rare option, in case you only have one small pressing issue, like wanting to find out your core values. Most people will want one of my session packs instead:
Silver plan – 4 one-hour sessions: $297 (save $91)
This is a pack of 4 one-hour phone calls with me. Ideal if you have a few smaller issues you want to handle. Finding your direction in life, finding out your core values, maybe a big project you’ve been procrastinating on.
My clients usually arrange these once a week, because that offers an optimum balance between keeping you accountable and giving you time to take action after each session.
Further, I will not ask you to pay me until after the first 1-hour phone call. (more details below). Also includes e-mail support for the duration of our coaching relationship.
Gold plan – 6 one-hour sessions: $397 (save $185)
A pack of 6 one-hour phone calls with me. Ideal to deal with any issues you want to handle. We will chew right through them, and get you taking action and moving solidly towards the life you really want.
My clients usually arrange these either once a week throughout the plan, or keep the first four phone calls once a week, then space out the last two to once every two weeks, to allow more time to take action during the less intense part of the coaching.
Further, I will not ask you to pay me until after the first 1-hour phone call. (more details below). Also includes e-mail support for the duration of our coaching relationship.
Platinum plan – 9 one-hour sessions: $547 (save $326)
This is the grand daddy of my life coaching plans, if you want a truly platinum experience.
The Gold plan of 6 sessions will definitely be enough to deal with your current issues, and give you a nice kick to move towards the life you really want. But some people will want more than that. With the Platinum plan, I offer 3 further sessions on top of that, to keep your momentum.
Like a car that’s stuck in a sand pit, it takes a powerful burst of energy to get you out, but once you’re back on level ground, it takes only a small shove now and then to keep you cruising at great speed.
Which is why I put together this pack. The 3 extra sessions, spaced out at one per month (or even more rarely, if you want), will help you maintain your momentum instead of slowly drifting back to inactivity, for months to come!
And, as always, I will not ask you to pay me until after the first 1-hour phone call. (more details below). Also includes e-mail support for the duration of our coaching relationship.
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(Note that I will pay for all calls, either to Skype, or to a land-line phone.)
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Okay, what’s with this try-before-you-pay deal?
I know that hiring a life coach is a pretty big step for you. There’s a very good chance you’ve never hired a life coach before. So you don’t really have a first-hand experience of how much life coaching will benefit you. At the back of your mind, you probably have a small nagging voice saying you might be getting ripped off, or not investing your money wisely.
I, on the other hand, have first-hand experience with life coaching. I know how much value it provides to clients.
So that’s why I’m essentially flipping the risk around. I’m fully confident most clients will get huge value from my coaching. Sure, I might get ripped off occasionally, but I think this small risk is well worth helping dozens of potential clients make the decision to get a life coach and reap the benefits.
If you hire me for one of my session packs, I will only ask you to pay me after our first full session (but before the second).
If you’re not happy with the coaching relationship for whatever reason (or if I feel we’re not right for each other), we can just stop right there. You won’t owe me anything, and you can keep the first session as a free gift, compliments of me, for giving life coaching a fair shot.
Once we’ve had our first phone call, and we’re still happy working together, I’ll send you the PayPal payment link. PayPal is a secure (and convenient) third-party payment provider, which basically means I’ll never get to see your payment details, only receive the specified amount of money.
What my past clients have to say
I’ve built my life coaching offer to stand on its own merits (with the try-before-you-pay deal, and all), but if you want some words from real clients who have worked with me, read below:
Hi Vlad,
Just a brief note to thank you for the excellent coaching! With your help, I was able to pull out of a serious slump I’d been in for quite a while.
I had originally read most of the articles on your blog and learned a lot from them. I had also gotten great value from your email course on procrastination. I printed out the entire course, as well as a number of your blog posts, and worked thru them. Good stuff, and fun, too.
But still, there was something I wasn’t quite getting; some aspect of my mental process that was somehow eluding my efforts to get unstuck and motivated. So when I first read about your coaching, I decided to go for it. And I’m glad that I did!
Thanks to your coaching, I’ve now got some powerful tools in my mental toolbox to help me self-motivate and stay on track when needed.
I really appreciate your guidance, friendliness, and your willingness to hold me accountable on some things. You went above and beyond the high expectations I had from reading your blog and taking your ecourse.
Thanks Again,
David Campbell, Denver, Colorado, USA
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Vlad gave me four hours of life coaching of an hour a week spread over a month. Looking back at where I was at the beginning of this period and where I am now there is a noticeable difference. My life is closer to my ideal life, and I have more clarity about where I am going. The primary reason I wanted to do the life coaching was to improve my studying and working through this with Vlad I have come with successful strategies to improve things.
Vlad used the life coaching sessions to elicit what I already knew. There were several ah ha moments where something in my subconscious came to light or I actually tried something out that I had heard before and found that it was useful. Vlad was very much a coach helping me do what I wanted to do.
I found the process valuable and useful and if I need a life coach in the future Vlad is the person I’ll turn to when he starts working properly.
Cheers Vlad!
David Lawson, Oxford, UK
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Dear Reader,
I sent an email to Vlad when he offered free life coaching in the hope that all my problems in life would vanish. This did not happen. This cannot happen. There is no instant recipe for making things better. I’ve learned that from Vlad. I’ve also learned a few techniques to better analyse the problems that I have. Not all problems have solutions, sometimes, you just need to wait out the storm. Have a plan for when the storm passes, and watch for when it does. But there are some things that are simply not yours to change.
Vlad helped me to identify my core values. An extension of my core values are anti-values. These are the things which on a subconscious level pull or push us toward or away from a situation or person. I now understand why things feel “right” or “good” to me and why things feel “wrong” or “bad”. It is simply because they appeal to my core values or conflict with my anti-values. These are both concepts that were entirely new to me. I’ve learned how to assess a situation to see how it aligns with these values and am better able to decide on whether to pursue or avoid something.
I’ve learned from Vlad to not focus on the destination of a journey or goal; but rather to focus on the single steps needed to move in the direction of the goal. I’ve learned that the road is not always straight, heading directly toward the endpoint. Sometimes it curves and takes you a few steps back before heading in the correct direction. The point is to keep moving.
I would certainly recommend working with Vlad to anyone. His knowledge about personal development is immense and the confidence with which he conveys that knowledge is enviable. I am certain that he will attain great success, both personally and with his clients, in future life coaching.
Regards,
Richard Chase, Johannesburg, South Africa
What to do now?
If you read all the way to here, you’re probably at least interested in life coaching. If you read most of this page without skimming, you’re definitely interested in life coaching.
So, if you’re interested, e-mail me at me@vladdolezal.com.
Either ask to arrange a free 30-minute consultation to figure out if life coaching is right for you. Or, if you’re already fully convinced that you want to hire a life coach and that I’m the right person for you, ask me to get started on the coaching as soon as possible, so we can start changing your life for the better.
Also, if you have any questions I haven’t answered… again, e-mail me. Looking forward to hearing from you!
