Looking around LinkedIn at coaches profiles. In the description of themselves (the bit that goes under their name) you will find all kinds of fancy job titles!
After a 5 minute scroll I found these titles:
- Life and Soul Purpose Coach
- Mindset and Life Coach
- Harmonising Life Coach
- Transformational Coach
- Health Coach
- Head Coach
- Empowerment Coach
- Transformative Coach
- Somatic Coach
- Strategy Coach
- Certified Professional Coach
Here’s the thing. Not a single one of those titles will mean much to anyone other than the person who chose them and another coach.
I Hate Being A Killjoy
I’m not revelling in being unkind and it feels unkind to me to say what I’m about to say.
I know that coaches spend days, nay weeks, agonising over what to call themselves, or their business. The truth is that it matters not one jot.
Fancy business titles and business names are ‘hangovers’ from an employed era. When we work in an employed capacity, our title has meaning to others. A title allows others to know in a moment who you are and how important (or not!) you are. Its a pigeon-holing device.
When we become self-employed, it is different. The need for a fancy job title is removed, because (and this is the bit that feels unkind) no one cares! Let me caveat this by saying that I know that you care. I know that you care very much.
It’s Potential Clients Who Matter
It doesn’t matter whether other coaches know that you trained with X, Y or Z academy. It doesn’t matter at all what they think. What matters is what potential clients think.
Potential clients have no idea what a transformational coach is compared to a transformative one (me neither tbh). They don’t know what an empowerment coach does compared to a mindset coach, nor do they care. They don’t understand what we mean when we say ‘professional’ coach, in fact, they don’t give two hoots.
Let me be straight with you. The only thing a potential client cares about is what’s in it for them.
That incredibly useful piece of internet ‘real estate’ those few words under your name that follow you around LinkedIn (when you comment on the posts of others for example) is wasted for coaches when they use it to put in a job title. It’s far more useful if you use it to describe what you do and for whom.
Might I invite you to rethink your job title?
If this article has hit home, it is probably worth you joining Coaching Republic. It’s our free community for coaches who are building their coaching businesses and could do with a hand. We have free, fortnightly masterclasses and all kinds of help for those who need to reframe what they’re doing to find clients who can and will pay.
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