Whether you’re just starting as a spiritual entrepreneur or you’ve been working your spiritual business for a while, you’ve probably encountered a fair share of hurdles. Putting your message out into the world can make you feel very vulnerable and even if low self-esteem has never been a problem for you, you may suddenly feel unsure of yourself. Operating a spiritual business often requires you to explore different ways of approaching problems that may leave you feeling overwhelmed.

You may look at other spiritual entrepreneurs and feel like they’re miles ahead of you. The truth is the most successful people often work with life coaches to bring out their best self. There are many benefits to hiring a spiritual life coach to assist you in growing your spiritual business.

Things that a life coach doesn’t do

Before we explore the many benefits of hiring a life coach, it might be helpful to understand what a professional life coach doesn’t do. While working with a life coach can certainly contribute to greater mental health, life coaches do not treat mental illness or focus on mental health conditions. Life coaches are not trained as therapists. If mental health problems are a contributing factor in your struggles, a professional coach will refer you to a therapist. You can work with a coach and a therapist at the same time. Each will focus on different areas of your personal development.

Another thing life coaches don’t do is tell you specifically what you should do. A business coach isn’t going to tell you what social media platform to use in your business or how to edit a YouTube video. Coaching sessions are about partnering to help you find your own solutions to specific problems. A life coach isn’t a consultant. They aren’t focused on giving advice or telling you what to do.

While you might think that having someone tell you what to do would be helpful, it really isn’t. If their advice doesn’t work, you’ll likely feel resentful or shift the blame. A professional coach instead helps you uncover unconscious limiting patterns and insights to enable you to take the necessary action to become the best version of yourself and build a successful business.

Working with a life coach can help you with…

Now that you know the things that a life coach doesn’t do, let’s explore some of the things that a life coach does. There are many areas in which you can grow as a spiritual entrepreneur with the help of a coach. 

Setting good business goals

Setting good business goals is critical to enjoying success in your business. Yet, many people really don’t know how to set good goals. A life coach can guide you towards the right tools for setting realistic goals that are achievable. 

A lot of people go into their business thinking that it will be an overnight success and become frustrated when it’s not. The root cause of their frustration is that they had vague or unrealistic goals. A life coach will help you find new ways to clarify your goals and make sure that your goals are a right fit for where you want to go in your business and personal life. Good goal setting can often make or break how successful you’ll be in your spiritual business. It’s important to get it right.

Creating personal development

Being a spiritual entrepreneur often involves guiding others in their spiritual journey or providing spiritual services. For many of my clients, this brought up feelings of inadequacy or fear of being seen as a fraud. The truth is, you can only take your clients as deeply as you have gone yourself. Continued personal development is an important part of being a successful spiritual business owner.

Fortunately, personal growth is one area that a life coach can help. Through life coaching, you’ll gain a much greater understanding of some of your thoughts, beliefs and limiting patterns. By working with a good coach, you will be able to use this deepened awareness of yourself to create an action plan for growth in all areas of your life. And the truth is, being a spiritual entrepreneur absolutely impacts all areas of your life. 

Improving communication skills

As a spiritual entrepreneur you will often find yourself being challenged by communicating with other people. You’ll need to find your brand voice and get your message across to potential clients. Sometimes, you’ll have to navigate challenging conversations around finances or when a client is dissatisfied. Good communication skills are critical in business and can help you build strong relationships in both business and your personal life. 

A life coach can help you find new ways of communicating your feelings and your needs. Your coach can help you apply tools like non-violent communication to express yourself more clearly and without blame or judgment. Having the skills to communicate clearly can make a positive difference in how difficult conversations turn out.

Refining your decision-making process

Making decisions stresses some people out. I’ve personally known many people who worried about making the wrong decision and had a hard time deciding what to do. A good life coach can help you get connected to the present moment. This makes decision making easier because it eliminates an over emphasis on the past or too much worrying about the future. 

Getting centered in the present moment can also help you make decisions on subjects that are outside of your comfort zone. For example, some new entrepreneurs find that public speaking brings them great discomfort. This might lead them to make decisions that avoid public speaking. A life coach is going to help you get a better sense of how stepping out of your comfort zone may actually help you develop skills that will be important for achieving your specific goals. 

Overcoming your blind spots

We all have self-limiting patterns that we’re unable to notice. There are lots of reasons that you might develop blind spots around a mindset that is holding you back. Various life experiences can contribute to these blind spots. You may have a dream that feels threatened by facing your blind spot, false beliefs or thoughts. A good life coach can gently guide you towards new perspectives that allow you to not only see these blind spots but to positive changes that still allow you to move forward towards the dreams that you wish to fulfill. Often a life coach will ask a question that suddenly makes you notice some aspect of yourself that you hadn’t seen before. Uncovering your blind spots in one area of your life can often unlock new potential and help you create a better life.

Saying no to negative thoughts

Rumination is a term that describes when you focus on negative thoughts over and over. If you’ve ever experienced this, you’re not alone. Lots of people deal with the crazy mind chatter that can sap your confidence and your motivation. It can seem impossible to say no to these negative thoughts, but a skilled life coach will help you reframe many of these thoughts into more positive ones. Or they may help you find the right tools to focus on more positive things and release the negative thoughts. 

Asking the right questions

Abraham Maslow once said that if all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. Entrepreneurs can especially fall into this trap of trying to solve every business problem the same way. One reason this can happen is that you’re making assumptions about the problem and not asking yourself the right questions.

One of the key life coaching skills is asking powerful questions to increase awareness. A life coach will often help you notice that while you might have a good answer, it’s the answer to the wrong question. During your coaching sessions, your life coach will often ask deeper questions about a situation. It’s not unusual in working with my own clients, that they realize that they’ve been trying to solve the wrong problem! That kind of clarity can help you focus on the right problems sooner and that often is the difference between a successful entrepreneur and an unsuccessful one.

Creating more fulfillment in your personal life

You’re more than just an entrepreneur. Even when working with a business coach, you will often gain insights during your coaching sessions that apply to other aspects of your life. Working with a life coach for your spiritual business will also help you create more fulfillment in your personal life. This is a good thing because as a spiritual entrepreneur you are your business brand. The more you experience true happiness in every part of your life, the more you’ll show up in your business as the very best version of you. 

How life coaching works

The life coaching process is pretty straightforward. You will also be in control of the agenda for your coaching sessions. Usually, your first step working with your personal coach will be an extended session in which you’ll explore together what is and isn’t working in your life. You’ll also set personal goals and professional goals that you want to achieve during your time working with your coach.

After the initial goal setting session, each session will typically revolve around you selecting an issue or topic you’d like to work on. It might be one of your goals or it might be something that you’ve experienced or noticed. Your coach will partner with you to set a goal of what you’d like to accomplish during the session and then your coach will use questions and various coaching tools to help you gain a different perspective on the issue. If needed, your coach will also help you devise a plan of action for your next steps. Working through some of your goals will be hard work, but your coach will be with you throughout the process. 

Choosing the right coach

You’ve seen just some of the many benefits of life coaching for your spiritual business. But how do you choose a coach? There are many kinds of life coaches so you’ll want to find a coach that is a good fit for what you hope to achieve. For example, for most issues related to building your spiritual business, you may want to look for a spiritual business coach or a spiritual life coach. They will utilize spiritual tools to help you gain deeper awareness and insight. You’ll also benefit from your coach having a spiritual worldview.

Another thing to consider is your future coach’s training and certifications. Coaching is largely unregulated but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t industry standards. The International Coaching Federation (ICF) maintains ethical and skills-based standards for life coaching. Obtaining an ICF certification requires a life coach to complete an accredited training program and have a minimum number of hours of coaching experience. While there are quality coaches who are not ICF certified, you can rest assured that if a coach is ICF certified that they are a skilled life coach.

You’ll also want to consider other services of a life coach such as assessments or other modalities that a coach may use. These modalities have additional benefits so you’ll want to learn more about them. 

Finally, you’ll want to have an idea of the amount of time you want to spend working with a life coach. Most good coaches work with their clients for a minimum of 3 months. This is because it really takes at least 3 months for the client and coach to build a deep rapport and for the client to make meaningful progress. Depending on your goals, you may even want to work with a coach for 6-12 months. I discussed the topic of how to choose a life coach on a past livestream of the Soul Expansion Soundboard.

Ready to take the next step?

If you’re ready to enjoy the benefits of life coaching, I’m an ICF certified spiritual business coach who can help you and your business achieve full potential. Obviously, you’ll want to be sure that we’re a good fit for each other. I offer a free 45-minute clarity call to discuss your specific goal and how I can help you achieve it. At the end of your clarity call, if it seems I would be the right life coach for you, I’ll share how much time I think it will take to achieve your goals. And if it looks like I’m not the best life coach for you, I can offer some suggestions for other coaches that might be a better fit.