A coach is someone who helps clients discover his dreams and goals, his values, his priorities and his boundaries. A coach rarely offers advice on what to do; her role is to lead the client to identify the problem, the options and to choose a solution. A coach asks questions ' especially the tough ones. What are you afraid of? Who is waiting for you? What is it that you don't want to tell me?

A coach is on the journey with the client sharing victories, experiencing challenges, resourcing solutions together.

As the teacher, or the coach, you also have to be a student. You are on a continuous learning path. In fact, it is in the process of coaching that you learn the most.

People who want to be schoolteachers need to learn how to teach. If you're going to be a success coach, doing your best won't be enough. You need to learn how to coach. You need some skills.

If you start to coach without creating a foundation, you're still likely to have success in the beginning. That success comes from your excitement, your energy, and your ability to transfer that excitement to others. Their lives will improve simply because they're paying attention. Yet what happens when six months or a year passes by and all of a sudden the results drop off, and you don't know why. It will be because you don't have a system.

You won't be an expert or an authority in every area you discuss. As a success coach, what you will do is help others find their own answers, silently companioning them. It's not my job to tell my client what to do with his life, but it is my job to help him find out for himself what to do to take his life to the next level.

Do you want to be a good student? Then be a good coach.

Whether you think you want to be a coach or not, you should be. Enter into the business of coaching ' it will benefit your life; it will be the catalyst for you to step into greatness. When you learn to coach others, you become the best student of all. As you coach from within yourself, outside of yourself, you often come up with solutions for your own issues while helping others discover theirs.

As you go become a coach, you'll learn to be flexible, and you'll coach in areas that you may know nothing about. And that's perfect because you don't need to know content, you just need to know people. You're an expert on people, because you are one! You are on the outside looking in. You have a perspective that your client doesn't have.

A coach is the bridge between information and action. There is a difference between knowing and doing. Some people have the solutions to their problems, but lack the impetus to get going. Some have the solutions and aren't aware. And some need guidance in discovering the answers they seek. But answers alone are not enough. Solutions without action result in the same outcome as not having the solution at all.

You, as the coach, believe more in your client than she believes in herself. You see her as perfect. You see the obstacles behind which lie her successes and you lead her around, over and through those obstacles.

You guide your client through the discovery process. You create a system of accountability to help the client take action on his discoveries.

Coaching is about being real. Dealing with what is, rather than what isn't. Developing a bond of trust. It is about opening up to each other.

Coaching is also about knowing yourself. So much of coaching is based on instinct, and questions, and internal examination. If you're not on a journey of self-examination, you're not in tune with yourself, and you're not congruent with what you're asking of your clients.

You need to get real with yourself - know your strengths, and your challenges. Know your personality - how are you likely to act, to react, to choose to do work. Know your striving instincts to get work done. Know your skill base. Know your limitations, and where to get resources.

When clients are looking for a coach in their lives, a life coach, a success coach, they're putting their dreams in your hands. They trust you with their lives, their hopes. It's not something they choose lightly ' there is a lot at stake in giving you that trust. It's not what they stand to lose that scares them. It's what they stand to gain by choosing the right person to guide them.

You will create miracles. Miracles happen all the time, although we don't always identify them in that way. You've heard stories about life-changing experiences. The help you give can change your client's life. A miracle is a shift in perception. All you have to do is shift someone's perception of the way she sees her life or the way she approaches certain things, and a miracle happens. One minute she's literally going off the road; the next, you have picked her up, set her going in a new direction and her life is changed forever. And you will do it again and again.