I haven't been involved in regular social media in quite a few years but when someone I know needed as many eyes as possible on and Instagram something or other, I complied and reactivated my account. While I was in there I went and had a look at what the people I had followed, who were mostly people i know IRL, had been up to for the past however long it has been and I was surprised to find out that several of the people I have known throughout my years were now attempting to try their hand at offering life advice and even offering their services as life coaches.
I had heard in the past that such a job exists even though I think it is rather stupid. There are some people out there that are probably really good at this like that Tony Robbins guy but these days I think just about anyone can claim to be a life coach. It is the Avon or Amway of the digital age I guess.
I particularly like how "students" is grammatically incorrect on the certificate above.
I should probably not let this bother me but while I was scrolling I ran into two people that I knew from high school that are now to some degree at least, a certified life coach and are desperately working on their branding to try to build an audience.
I am not going to use their real names because even though what I think they are doing is retarded, I don't want to damage them or hurt their feelings but I think you'll get the point anyway.
The first person we'll call Danielle. She has a bunch of videos that I watched a few of where she speaks confidently and offers some "free tips" to life and success but let me tell you about Danielle. Danielle was one of the "cool kids" in the parking lot of our high school. She didn't have much parental oversight and was one of those people that we all kind of envied at the time because she got to do whatever she wanted. As it turns out the parents like my own that were a bit controlling were the better ones at being parents. Danielle didn't do very well academically and her parents never seemed to really care and well, if the parents don't care, what motivation does an arrogant teenager have to actually do well in school?
That is not Danielle but I found this stock photo to be kind of funny because that was basically her. dreads, smoking on school property underage while not being at all concerned about if she got caught and a general "I rule" but am not at all conformist sort of attitude.
Anyway, Danielle and I kind of lost touch with one another because I went a whole 90 minutes away to a nearby college and she didn't even apply to any. She just got a job and a shitty apartment in the same city she went to high school in and then hooked up with a guy who got her involved (probably just MORE involved) in hard drugs while they had several kids together. He ended up going to jail for armed robbery at a bank where the people working there immediately recognized his voice and tattoos and he was caught in the same day. Idiot.
Danielle tried to put on a woe is me social media something or other but I think that the boyfriend ended up getting a lot of years in jail and then she moved on to someone else and had several more kids. When I stopped counting the had 5 kids which is fine if you are married to a hedge fund manager but no so much when you are working part time and collecting welfare. Danielle still smoked cigarettes the last time I saw her which is strange because these days almost everyone has quit due to a lot of reasons.
Danielle being a life coach is just so absurd. She has had zero life success and most of this was because of very bad decisions that she has made in her life that stem back a good 30+ years. I think what would be a better thing for her would be for her to try to coach punk ass kids out of following in her footsteps and screwing up their lives in the process. But then again, teenagers think they are invincible and definitely wouldn't think she is cool now so that wouldn't work either.
At least she has now gotten really into fitness and a majority of her talks are about how important that is in life. It is kind of amusing because I knew her when she (and all people) are at their physical best and she participated in exactly zero sport activities. I think she actually skipped class during gym in high school and the teachers just lost interest in pursuing her since her parents were not going to get her in trouble for this.
I do not know all the jobs she has had, but none of the ones I do know about have been particularly noteworthy or admirable. From what I know she just jumped from one failed entrepreneurial enterprise to the next and most of them were just laughably bad ideas like designing shoes.
I was kind of wondering what it is that people have to do in order to become a certified life coach and as I suspected, there isn't anything you have to do. The certification programs are scams in themselves and there is no regulatory body that determines if someone is qualified to do this.
I recall when I was just out of college and the internet wasn't everything the way that it is now and I stumbled upon some sort of employment opportunity where they were looking for "model scouts."
Who wouldn't want to do that? Well, it was a scam and it was quickly outed as one. I remember they had a page that would ask "of these people, who would you select as a model" and it was a bunch of normal looking people, some ugly people, and some really pretty people. I thought the answers were too easy so I intentionally made what I thought were the wrong choices on purpose. Then when I submitted my results I was selected to be a model scout! Wow! Amazing! I must have a good eye right?
Well of course I knew it was a scam so I used another computer later on that same day, answered the questions totally differently and got the same congratulations for making the correct decision. It was at that time that a friend of mine told me about VPN and IP spoofing and I did the test over and over again and no matter what you selected you had done it correctly.
I would imagine that this is what the qualifications for life coaching are also like
I suppose you could say that I feel a bit bad for Danielle and I wish her the best. She is probably feeling kind of bad since I know she is my age and she has accomplished almost nothing in her life. She lived the cool girl party until she was too old for that to be "cool" anymore, then probably languished at dead end jobs for years and now this is just her new silly idea just like designing shoes was.
The thing is this: nobody that actually knows Danielle would let her manage a shift at a food truck, let alone their entire life. I can't imagine the sort of person that would go to her for advice about anything other than maybe sponging off the government because you keep having more and more kids.
Since this whole notion of life coaching is just another sort of internet scam, it is actually kind of difficult to find any negative information about the profession online at all.
There are however, loads of links directing you towards how you can also become a life coach and of course, you have to pay for this. The people who would be really good at actually coaching you in anything, probably would harm themselves by giving away that information or the nepotism that is inherently involved in almost anything.
I have worked in construction management for many years and I am very aware of the fact that my success in winning contracts has a whole lot to do with the fact that I know people in the industry and more importantly, they know me. I also know how the system works and how to win government contracts pretty easily. I would never just freely give away this information because doing so would potentially mean the downfall of my own company.
This is why I think a lot of life coaching, even big names like Tony Robbins, are probably completely full of crap con artists.
Just like the saying goes: He who can does. He who cannot, teaches.