I am delighted to share with you some of my experiences in developing my practice as a Life Coach, in the hope that they will help you and make your process of becoming a successful coach painless and easy.

When I started my practice, I did not have clear ideas of which sort of coaching I was 'supposed' to do, whether I needed to focus on a particular niche or a particular topic; I asked many opinions to other coaches, I did many attempts of marketing, but somehow I was struggling. I was putting a lot of pressure on myself, as I needed to be financially independent; I was also worrying about my lack of experience in marketing and running a business and I was feeling stuck.

I was trying to find an answer from the 'outside', and it doesn't work this way.

And then one day it daunted on me: I needed to simply connect my business with my heart. I needed to go inside myself, and start from who I am, my values, my unique way of being and develop my way of coaching from there.

And these are my advices to you:

" Go inside yourself, listen to the extraordinary and unique person you truly are and what you love most; in this way you will discover your unique way of coaching, your brand, what makes you different from all the other coaches out there.

" Then, you need to find out in which ways you want to market your unique way of coaching, whether it is public speaking, writing, seminars,you need to discover what is that you love doing most.

" And once you know this, you can decide to which niche you are going to market.

So, if you are connected with who you are and your passions and do what you enjoy, everything will become very easy and effortless.

And another thing that I would advise, is to ask for help when you need; some people think that because we are coaches we can first of all organize our time as if we have 55 hours in a day and then we are capable of doing everything; well, my advice would be to ask for help if you do not know about i.e. internet, or marketing, or accountancy, just ask for help: you would make your life much easier, and give you the time to focus on what you love most. And you deserve this.

Copyright Piercarla Garusi 2006. All rights reserved.