The Unusual Opportunities in Health Coaching in 2011
by Hilton Johnson, CEO, Hilton Johnson Productions Sometimes when things appear to be moving in the wrong direction, goldenopportunities are created. That’s what is happening right now. The U.S. health careindustry has gone awry. Ask any doctor, professor, or business leader and they willverify there is a health crisis in America and around the world. The good news is that whenever there is a crisis, there are millions and even billions tobe earned. A famous billionaire once mentioned that if you want to be successful,look within your industry or field of expertise and find a need that is not being met,figure how to meet that need, and you will become wealthy. Our health care crisis opensup marvelous opportunities for millions of people, including you. What’s really wrong,and why is this an unusual opportunity? The answer may surprise you. In the U.S., we have state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment and the best trained doctors,nurses, and technicians in the world. Yet heart attacks are killing millions before theirtime. Diabetes is making life miserable for millions and killing many thousands yearly.Obesity has reared its ugly head as one of the leading causes of illness among adultsand children. The U. S. Center for Disease Control reports that more than 66% of adultAmericans are overweight. Debilitating illness is robbing millions of hard-workingpeople of the most important asset they have – their health. But, you already knew all that, didn’t you? So, why is this happening? People are nottaking care of themselves. Every day, millions of people accept feeling tired, unhappy,and their lives have become drudgery, when they could be living full of energy andenthusiasm. In short, most of the people in America are not as healthy as they couldor should be because they neglect the fundamentals of staying healthy. Countlessdocumented studies prove that most serious illnesses are preventable with lifestylechanges. However, a surprising number of people ignore the professional advice theyare given. Between a third and half of patients routinely ignore medical advice, whetherit’s a simple prescription for medicine or more challenging lifestyle changes. Whenyou consider the complications, diseases, disabilities, time spent in hospitals, anddeaths that are attributed to ignoring common sense, healthy principles, and medicalspecialists, the dollar and psychological costs are staggering. So What Is The Solution? The solution is pure and simple. Help people live healthier lives! People mean well.Down deep, everyone really wants to be healthy. They buy exercise and fitnessequipment. They join health clubs. They earnestly make New Year’s resolutions. Theymean well, but they get off track easily and quickly – because they don’t have a goodsupport system in place. Health coaching helps people get on track to a better lifestyle and stay there. Healthcoaching makes a better lifestyle possible by making the individual accountable. Health coaching is really a form of life coaching. It is specifically focused on improvingthe overall physical well-being of each individual client. Aimed at improving the qualityof each client’s diet and fitness lifestyle, health coaching has been proven to be 91%successful in reaching goals. Yes, these are just a few of the fundamental secrets of whyhealth coaching works. Health coaching is an effective process whose time has come. Golden Opportunities Growing Every Day The health industry in the United States is a multi-trillion-dollar industry. Itencompasses one-sixth of the total economy. It is the most profitable and the fastest-growing industry that exists today. Health coaching, a niche market within the overallhealth industry, represents one of the most outstanding opportunities available tocreate a better life for yourself and your clients. The ongoing relationship between coachand client — and the trust and accountability it inspires — defines the fundamentaldifference between a health coach and other health care professionals. Health coaching addresses the “thinking and feeling” component of wellness. Trainedto listen and support, rather than simply dole out advice, professional health coachesare attracting more attention than ever — from individual patients and from the healthcare industry itself, desperate for solutions. Health coaching is recognized by healthcare providers across the U.S. as the cost-effective answer to choosing and maintainingpositive lifestyle changes. Health coaching has also been proven to support quicker andless-expensive healing when utilized in tandem with disease care. Health coaching is the21st century answer to proactive preventative health care and reducing health care costs,personally and nationally. Think about our current situation. Most doctors spend the majority of their timetreating symptoms, because most people consult with them only after undesirablesymptoms occur. Every good doctor also tries to advise his or her patients aboutgood health habits to avoid sickness. Unfortunately, too many people don’t take therecommendations of their doctors and skilled medical practitioners to heart. They refuseto change their eating habits or exercise more. They seek advice from poorly informedfriends and strangers. Some go out and buy “magic elixirs” that promise to keep themhealthy. Others assume an unseen force will take care of them and hope that somehowthey will magically stay healthy. Then there’s the almost universal syndrome most ofus suffer from – we refuse to believe we could get sick and die. We don’t want to thinkabout that at all. In short, a lot of people act like human beings! Many folks find itdifficult to initiate, let alone continue the actions necessary to be healthy, even if theyknow what those actions should be. They’ve realized over time that they don’t makechanges on their own. They crave encouragement and personal support. They need aProfessional Health Coach. Secret Number One about Professional Health Coaching: EmpoweredClients Come Up with the Answers Themselves Every client can feel empowered because you, as a Professional HealthCoachTraining®Coach, can educate them on how to make a change — for example, how to quit smoking,how to start exercising more, or how to control their weight. What’s more, you can guide them how to stick to their modified healthy lifestyle of health every day. In trying tochange a person’s lifestyle, psychological research confirms that goals must be specificand possible within a specified time frame. Including ongoing encouragement andrewards via health coaching leads to a much greater chance of success. As a Health Coach, the trick is to structure advice and instructions so that each clientfeels good about the healthy changes they are making. This means that coaching is atwo-way interactive process – your clients are not told what to do but actually decidewhat they want to do, based on their own instincts and common sense. The best coachestake time to understand all the unique subtleties about each client’s character. As asupportive Health Coach, you are constantly questioning, probing and challenging, tohelp each of your clients think through daily lifestyle decisions in a more intense andcomprehensive way than they’ve done before. As a skillful coach, you also find out whatwill make life more satisfying for each client. You understand that self-developmenttechniques combined with spiritual principles are highly effective in helping clientsadopt healthful habits. The successful Health Coach knows that one of the cornerstones of the coachingprofession is a simple truism. Most people know deep down changes they need to makeand, on some level, want to make these changes, but they don’t really believe that theycan do what it takes. They need inspired support to build confidence in themselves.Ideally, each client leaves their health coaching sessions saying, “I now have all thetools and support I need and I can do this. I can create a healthier life and be a healthierperson.” Secret Number Two about Professional Health Coaching: It Pays Off! Certified Health Coaches earn over $191 per hour, working by telephone and over theInternet.* Do the math and you will see that working only 20 hours per week withoutleaving home can bring in more than $12,000 per month – that’s over $144,000 peryear! Do you work more than 20 hours per week now? Do you earn that much? Withmore bookings, and increased experience and skills, you can earn even more – a lotmore. In fact, there is no ceiling to the amount of money you can make as a HealthCoach. (*Based on an independent survey conducted by Price Waterhouse Coopers showing that coaches earn an average of $50,550 per year coaching approximately 8.25 hours a week.) The market for potential clients is not just limited to the millions of individuals who arewaiting for a healthier life. A growing number of employers, health care institutions,and consumer groups are discovering that coaches can make a decided difference inways traditional practitioners can’t, especially in the areas of prevention and education.According to a study by trade journal Public Personnel Management: “When training iscombined with coaching, individuals increased their productivity by an average of 88%as compared to 22% with training alone.” As a result more and more groups are settingup health coaching programs within their organizations, and you can profit from thistrend. Various studies have concluded that every dollar spent by employers to promotehealthy lifestyles saves about three dollars in employee health care costs. This meansthat you can offer a company, a clinic, or an organized group your special skills andknow-how – just once – and suddenly you have dozens or even hundreds of new clients. It’s called the power of leverage. You can become all that I am talking about -- a Professional HealthCoach Training®Coach who realizes that the essence of good health is common sense, backed up andreinforced by personal responsibility and accountability. As a trained professional, youknow how to help clients in realizing and accessing the truth and wisdom that is alreadywithin. You and each client collaboratively use that knowledge to choose and implementmanageable steps towards creating and living a healthy intentional life. Secret Number Three about Professional Health Coaching: You Can CoachMore Clients, Work Less, and Earn More As a successful professional, you desire that everyone you talk to will be able to affordyour health coaching services. As a HealthCoachTraining® Coach, you can make theincome you desire without charging more than each person can afford to pay, andwithout over working too many hours per week. The answer lies in the concept ofsimultaneously selling a lot of people a service at an affordable price. This is not a newconcept. Many famous multimillionaires have built their fortunes that way – selling a lotof lower-priced items to many people instead of selling high-priced services or goods toonly a few. A challenge for personal coaches has been how to serve and manage a large stringof clients without overworking. That dilemma is happily solved by the use of ourHealthCoachTraining® online software program that enables you to deliver first class,personal attention to hundreds of clients without investing the time it takes to offereach person a phone or in-person session. Utilizing the power of our unique VirtualCoaching Office, your income will not be limited by the time you have available eachweek to coach clients individually. You can coach many more clients, each paying asmall monthly sum that they can afford. And of course, you can also coach a selectedgroup of clients one-on-one at a higher hourly fee. Through our Virtual Coaching Office, each client will receive your personal attention,customized support, and reminders to stay on track, just as though you were givingthem one-on-one coaching sessions in person or on the telephone. The secret lies inthat our online program supports you in efficiently managing your time – doing most ofthe work required to schedule and keep track of multiple clients. The Virtual CoachingOffice is your electronic helper – your invisible staff -- to give you more time to focus onactual coaching. With access to our Virtual Coaching Office, each of your clients can quickly look upspecific information that you recommend, at their leisure on their own computer –easily accessing thousands of pages of accurate current medical information writtenby nationally-recognized doctors and health experts. Your clients will report what theyare doing (or not doing) by entering their personal information in the secure VirtualCoaching Office. Each client will automatically be reminded to keep their promises toyou, and you can easily check on their progress or lack of progress in the privacy of yourown home office whenever you choose. You can even keep track of all your online clientsfrom a vacation spot or any location with Internet access. In short, you will be able to schedule your time as you want to spend it, and each one of your clients will receiveprofessional attention. A revolutionary step forward, our Virtual Coaching Office makes it possible for youto efficiently leverage your time and greatly increase your profitability. Trend-settingcompanies like Google, Motorola, United HealthCare, and other institutions arecurrently using the same software as our Virtual Coaching Office but we are the onlycompany that has brought this remarkable time-creating system to our Health Coaches.How does more time each day to realize all your dreams, while working less and earningmore, sound to you? HealthCoachTraining® offers is a 12-month program that combines the powerful skillsof professional coaching with health training, and teaches proven marketing and salessystems to attract clients and coach them individually as well as through our VirtualCoaching Office. The HealthCoachTraining® Program is one of the most innovative,comprehensive coaching programs available today. If you are curious or ready tocommit to a fulfilling health coaching business within this ever-expanding health carefield, explore our website. Our staff will be glad to personally answer all your questionsand let you know the next date for our complimentary webinar/conference calls that willgive you an inspiring live demonstration of health coaching and our Virtual CoachingOffice. But don't just believe me that HealthCoachTraining® and health coaching in generalis brimming with golden opportunities. Our successful Health Coach graduates andstudents speak for themselves (http://www.healthcoachtraining.net/testimonials.html). To attend a complimentary 90-minute conference call/webinar that will demonstratehealth coaching and the HealthCoachTraining® Virtual Coaching Platform, go to... The Unusual Opportunities in Health Coaching© Copyright 2010 HealthCoachTraining®, a division of Hilton Johnson Productions, Inc.All Rights Reserved. Click here to go to the top of Opportunities 2011
|
