I have personally always had a problem with the label and qualification "Life Coach". These days it seems there are all sorts of people who can do a course for four weeks and be qualified to show someone how to sort out their lives.
I rankle at the fact that someone who is twenty-two and is 'qualified' to be a "Life Coach" would be able to guide someone who is in their late fifties, going through a divorce after thirty-three years of marriage, is estranged from their family, facing potential financial struggles and on the edge of depression how to deal with everything they are going through. What would these people understand at such a young age.
That is why I created the term Life Alignment Specialist. It is to indicate that my predominate aim is to assist people in getting into alignment with who they are, what allows them to be happy and engaged and how to be on track to achieve what they want in life. I just provide tools and they do the work with myself providing support and encouragement from a perspective of having been there.
When we are born, we grow with very clear ideas of our dreams, goals, hopes, desires, things, that we want to become, things we want to achieve, things we want to have in our life. Along the way there are various people, groups, and entities that subtly and sometimes not so subtly nudge us off course.
These people, groups, and entities may be well-meaning or they may have ulterior motives for nudging us off course.Once we become adults, we tend to be on a course that may not be authentically ours. After a number of years, we realise that we are working in a job or career that we really don't enjoy and gives us little satisfaction. We may be in a relationship that isn't serving us and we feel trapped and unsatisfied. We may be parents and we didn't really want to be, or we may have really wanted children and we can't. We find that we are living where we really don't want to live, doing things we really don't want to do, spending time with people we don't really want to spend time with. That's when we realise that we are not aligned with who we really are and we are living a life that although it may be a 'nice' life, it's not really what we want.
This is usually a "mid-life crisis" for most people as they realise that they have limited time left and they don't want to waste any more time. This is where I come in to assist them in looking deeper into themselves and finding their authentic self that was lost so many years ago.
I only help people in areas where I myself had struggles and where I created systems and pools of knowledge that helped myself first. This means that I don't help people to any great degree in areas where I have no real experience.
The area I have to help people first is understanding how misalignment works and why it's important to get yourself realigned before attempting to sort out any area of your life. This portion is the lynchpin that allows the rest to work more effectively in regards to results.
I then concentrate my efforts in regards to people's relationships (starting them, repairing them, getting over them), dating more effectively, improving their parenting so that it is more effective and enjoyable, dealing with conflict more effectively, developing confidence and skillsets, as well as emotions, mindset, and communication.
I only touch on things like finances, health, etc as I am not overly knowledgeable and can only talk from a personal perspective. If clients require more than I understand and can teach, I tend to refer them to people who are more knowledgeable than myself.
This is always the elephant in the room. It depends on what option you are choosing when you want to work with myself. I started off doing one-on-one coaching, which is the one that requires the greatest financial investment. I don't do a lot of that these days. Anyone who does one-on-one with me now is by application only as my time is more and more precious.
I then did a series of in-person workshops which I really enjoy and I created some online courses. These courses were for dating, relationships and parenting. I still do in-person workshops as they are more interactive and allow me to personalise content more.
I then created a more affordable option for people who wanted to work with myself, but didn't have the funds for one-on-one coaching. I created "The Family" which is a subscription model. People pay a subscription fee each week for access. I created this to try and help more people. This has all my content about dating, mindset, relationships, parenting, conflict resolution as well as touching on other stuff.
To answer the question, one-on-one coaching at the moment is US$2,997 and the cheapest, which is "The Family" is US$50 per week.
This is a question I could spend ages explaining, so I will keep it as simple as I can. In fact, I will do it in bullet points.
As a young boy I was shy, reserved, and didn't stand up for myself. I was an unimpressive student, with a smallish group of friends.
I learnt a trade as the suggestion of my father. This was despite myself wanting to be a graphic artist, long before it became computerised.
I hooked up with a woman that I was sharing a house with, married her, bought a house, had two children and was divorced four years later.
I struggled for years, battling the onset of depression, recurring suicidal thoughts, financial struggles, repressed anger, being a part-time father, and trying to make sense of everything. This is when I started my learning journey.
Started another relationship, got married again and after eleven years of a very, very, toxic relationship, finally ended it. More emotional struggle, financial pain, trying to make sense of it all.
At this stage my two divorces had cost me over AU$300,000 which is not the most painful part. It was the stress, frustration, anger, and lost time that was the biggest pain. You can't get more time and that is why it's best to get everything sorted as quick as you can.
I was now at the stage where I was creating my systems to sort things out after investing 10,000 hours in learning, investing AU$60,000 in the learning, all through hundreds of books, lots of CD's, DVD's and a chunk of courses, as well as workshops and retreats dotted around Australia.
I fine-tuned my parenting system, my dating system, my relationship system, my conflict resolution system and finally achieved my results. It only took twenty years to get to this point. This is when I started helping others.
To date I have invested well over $100,000 and many more thousands of hours in learning new things and fine tuning what I do. Of course, I am still the guinea pig of anything that I promote. If it doesn't work for me, I don't teach it to anyone else.
There are lots and lots of stories and examples in this summary where I stuffed it up. I did learn a hell of a lot though.
This is a tough one. However, there are certain traits that I ascertain at the start with someone. I do this so neither of us wastes our time, effort or money on trying to get results when they aren't in the right head space for it.
The two things I look for in a potential client is the following;
1: They have to be willing to face the truth of their situation. They have to be willing to admit that it is not how they want it and they want it to be better than it currently is. The truth is not an easy one to admit, however, it is critical to face it no matter how uncomfortable so that you can move forward. If they are still in denial, it is pointless working with them as they won't move forward very far at all.
2: They have to be willing to take responsibility for their actions. When they are looking at a situation in their past, they need to be able to point out and accept where they didn't operate as well as they could have. This isn't about taking the blame for another's choices, it is owning what is legitimately theirs so they can work on it. This means a better result next time.
If they have these two traits we should be able to work together and get great results.
For the information that I educate people on, absolutely.
Everything that I teach people has been tested and proven by myself and others. People who use it as instructed achieve the result and are very happy with where they end up.
The thing that I can't guarantee is how much effort people put into their own journey. If they fail to implement anything, then their results will reflect that which has no bearing on the information they were taught.
This is the old "How long is a piece of string?"
It depends on how much time you have to put into your journey. It depends on how 'bad' your situation is. It depends on how much you have to invest financially in your journey. It depends on how much time and effort you are going to put into your journey.
The best thing to do is to send us a message using the chat link to the right. We can ask you some questions to gauge where you are at, where you want to be, and what suits you best option-wise.
I have worked with people from a range of ages, cultures, belief structures, experiences, and other demographics.
At the end of the day, we all want to be reasonably happy, reasonably prosperous, and reasonably satisfied and content with our life. Who we are, what we do, what our roles are, are pretty inconsequential at the end of the day. It seems that the information applies to everyone.
The only determining factor for ultimate success lies with the person themselves and how much effort they want to put into their results.
Remember, your best life is within reach – let us help you align with it.