Tips on Hiring Your First Coach

How do you choose the right therapist or coach when there are so many options... and the stakes feel pretty high?

In this episode, we're talking about one of the most overlooked factors in personal growth: the relationship between you and your helper. Yes, training, credentials, and methods matter. But whether you're looking for a therapist, coach, or some other kind of support, research consistently shows that the connection itself is often what creates the biggest shifts. I'll share what I've learned from working with a lot of coaches, seeing several therapists, and investing many thousands of dollars in my own growth. We'll talk about why the most qualified person on paper isn't always the best fit, how to tell if someone's style works for you, and what to look for before investing.

We'll also cover how to do your homework when coaching is largely unregulated, why consuming someone's free content can tell you more than a page full of testimonials, and the questions you should ask before signing a contract. 

If you're wondering whether coaching, therapy, or a particular practitioner is right for you, this episode will help you make a more informed decision, and hopefully save you some time, money, and awkward Zoom calls.

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Email: sarah@missadventurepants.com

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Transcript

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Welcome to Climb Your Mountain, the only podcast that teaches you how to use coaching, neuroscience, and mindfulness to overcome life's challenges. I'm Sarah Mauer, a certified life and performance coach, frontwork facilitator, and trance geek. Each week, I show you how to change your brain fast for good and without struggle. Whether you're training to climb an actual mountain, building a business, dating, or climbing a fucking rebellion, these tools will help. Listen and learn so you can enjoy more of what you want. Happiness, fun, connection, creativity, courage, and the occasional mountaintop moment. Ready? Let's do this. Hey y'all, how you doing? I'm having a little bit of a rough day here in the studio. I'm with my 18-year-old cats, and one thing that's just becoming apparent in the last month or so is he's having such a hard time getting around. So, for example, in my house I have mostly laminate flooring, and if he sits down on the laminate, he can't stand up. Like his little legs just will not work and he'll kind of scramble and I have to go pick him up. So I may have to interrupt recording to do this. One thing the vet suggested that's been really helpful is I've just laid yoga mats basically everywhere. So now he likes to walk on those, and that's that's actually really helpful. So hopefully we'll keep him going for a bit longer. But it's the saddest thing ever to see. If you've ever had like a really old pet, definitely reach out and tell me how you survived it. Maybe on the Instagram, on the socials. It's it's so hard on the heart, for sure. And let's talk a little bit about choosing your first. I'm gonna say coach here. A lot of what I will say also applies to therapy. And today's episode is the third installment of what I'm calling the money series, all about investing in your personal growth, your mindsets, your mental health, your emotional health. And over the past two episodes, we talked about some of the differences between coaching and therapy as helping modalities. I talked in the last episode in depth about what kind of when you would really invest in therapy and when you might start with coaching. And also, there's times when working with both would be really helpful. And I thought today I would really dive into some of my tips about hiring your first coach, or a lot of what I'll say will also apply to hiring your first therapist. And then the final installment in this series is gonna be next week, and that's when we're gonna get juicy. We're gonna talk straight talk about money and coaching and personal development and mental health, and I'll answer some questions that I think a lot of people are wondering, but I don't hear a lot of people in my industry, which is coaching, talking about, which is why wouldn't you always go to a therapist, for example? They have more training. And why does coaching cost so much money? There is a perception out there that coaching is in some ways overpriced. And I'm gonna dive into all that. I have lots of thoughts on all of that, and I don't hear a lot of people talking about this. And I think it's really important to consider some of these things when you're thinking about investing in you. Because really, you are your biggest asset. You're the one that you're gonna be living with for your entire life. So anytime you have a chance to invest in your brain, anytime you have a chance to invest in your emotional health, I feel like it's so important and it's such a big decision, and it's worth, I think, answering all these questions that maybe in the past a bit in marketing, especially for coaching, have kind of been glossed over a bit. So that's what's coming up. But let's dive into the topic for today. Choosing your helper. I'll call it a helper. We could be talking, I'm gonna be talking mostly about coaches, but as I said, this could also be a therapist. And it does depend a little bit on your modality, whether you are looking at therapy or coaching, how much choice you have. Often, but not always, you will have less choice if you're hiring a therapist. And this is especially true if you're using your insurance to pay for the therapist. There's probably people that are in your network. Your network may be kind of small on a lot of insurance plans. And this can also be true if you're getting your therapy through an organization, say your employer. Many employers have employee assistance programs, they'll offer you a certain number of sessions with a therapist, but you won't necessarily get to choose who that therapist is. Or even if you're still in college, for example, and you are going to your school's mental health center center to get some therapy, you may just be assigned a therapist. And in some cases, I think you have the option to change, but you may have fewer options. It may be like one of the two therapists that is actually working at that center providing that service. So um there are some exceptions to this. I, a couple years ago, did some online therapy with BetterHelp, and that's a service that actually they will pair you with a therapist just based on um a questionnaire you fill out initially. But if you don't click with that therapist after a session, you're allowed to change. They'll reassign you. And I actually did one session with a therapist, and I was like, I think she's okay. I I don't I don't feel like a huge connection. And then I found that she was really difficult to schedule with. Like she canceled our appointments right before, and I, you know, if like things come up. I I know as a coach, sometimes there's a family emergency, and I do have to cancel an appointment, but her explanation just felt a little weak. It was just like, meh, this isn't working for me, this time slot. And I'm like, well, you could have told me like more than two hours before, if if I don't know, it just fell kind of flat. So I switched therapists, and I really love the second therapist. It was it was a good working relationship. So sometimes you do get a chance to switch. And if you are hiring your own therapist and going private pay, especially, meaning you just pay them directly, it's it's not covered by your insurance, then you often will have more choice. Maybe, for example, your friend goes to a therapist that's been really helpful for them, and you want to go to the same therapist. If that person's not in your insurance network, you could, you know, just pay their price and um have sessions with them. And yeah, often that will give you a lot more choice. And with coaching, coaching, it really tends to be the opposite. You tend to almost have too many choices out there. There's so many people you could hire. I am actually going through this right now. I'm actually looking at hiring a business coach, and I know so many coaches, so I'm like, there's so many people that would be great, and it's a bit overwhelming. So I am actually some of the things I'm gonna talk to you about today, experiencing in real life and going through in my own head right at this moment as I hire my next business coach. It's also true that you might be assigned a coach, for example, in my day job, I still work part-time at my boss, was in a program where they got some free coaching, and I think they were assigned coaches, they didn't necessarily get to choose, but assuming you're hiring your own coach, you will generally have just endless choices. So, how do you choose? So, I'm gonna start with my number one tip. This is kind of the prime directive, and I think this is true. Whether you're hiring a coach or a therapist, you might not have as much choice with a therapist, but to the extent that you do have choice, you really want to follow this. And this is that really liking and respecting and feeling respected by the person really matters a lot. And I think this is true in all helping professions. The helper-client alliance is so key. And I would say that your relationship with that person is probably more transformative than their education, their training, their specific modalities that they use, the testimonials on their website. And this may sound just kind of icky as I'm saying it. I'm like, it almost sounds like I'm like, go with the most, the nicest, most likable person. And I would say that that's not necessarily true. But when you think about hiring a coach, I want you to consider you're gonna be spending a lot of time with this person. If you're in therapy, sometimes people go to therapy for years. If you're in coaching, it's pretty common, especially if you are going with a very results-based coach. I definitely operate this way, that they're gonna want you to come for a few months and they will actually um not work with people who only want to come in for three sessions. So, for example, my packages that I sell are six months, and there's a very specific reason for that. It's that that's how long behavior change takes. We know just from research that for someone to change a habit, it takes a minimum of about three months of practice, and that's the ideal situation. In real life, what's often happening is that you go out to, for example, start to eat better or start to work out more, and you start strong and then life gets in the way. Your job is having you travel unexpectedly, or there's a family emergency that's causing a lot of stress and taking up a lot of your time. So your mind is not dedicated to that behavior change. So we actually, most coaches that I know, and definitely myself, like build in some extra time to really A, make sure the change has time to happen, even when life gets lifey. And then there's also so much value. Like, if you think about like when you learn to ride a bike for the first time, the first time you took your little feet off the ground and pedaled and the bike went straight, it was probably kind of wobbly. Like you might have gone for 10 feet and then had to put your foot down, or gone for like five feet and then fallen over. Our skills, when we're learning a new skill or a new behavior, they're very fragile in the beginning. And the more you have time to repeat them, to repeat them in different situations, to fail at doing them and then troubleshoot what went wrong. Why in this case did I um eat things that were off of my plan? Or why this week? Has it been really hard to work out? The more you have time to just like work through that in a supported environment, the stronger that habit's gonna get. It's gonna become like the person that can go out and ride a bike for 30 miles and never give one little wobble. And sometimes their hands aren't even on the handlebars, the hands are in the pockets. So that's another reason that I think having longer coaching engagements is so important. Um, and to get take this back to choosing your person, if you think about it, like for example, say you're coaching with me. We're gonna be meeting pretty much every week for about six months. There might be some times you go on vacation, I go on vacation, things come up. But that's a lot of time with one person. That is, I spend more time with my clients than I spend with a lot of my family members, I like the ones that don't live with me, a lot of my close friends I don't see every week, but I see these clients every week and they see me every week. So if that relationship isn't trusting, respectful, enjoyable, then coaching for a long time can become really tough in therapy, especially the longer-term therapy, can become really tough. So, with me, for example, if you don't like a bit of a lighter style, if you don't like to have fun in sessions and play a bit and explore, if you're very like business-oriented and structured and it must be A, B, and C, like straight to the results, um, you probably wouldn't enjoy coaching with me. There is probably a coach out there that like matches your style much better. So I think it's so important just to get to know how, and you can I'll talk in a in a minute how you can kind of suss this out, even if you've never had a session with someone. I think it's so important just to really think about if you're really going to like working for this person long term, like working with this person long term. So I'll share a little bit of my own experience. This is a therapy experience. Um, I've had seen several therapists, and I've seen several who practiced what's called cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT. And CBT is considered the evidence-based gold standard of therapy. It's what we know from the research really works and gets results for people. And I've kind of found working with some of these very experienced CBT therapists, that it didn't do a lot for me. Like I just had a hard time just really connecting to the person and connecting to the work. I didn't feel like emotionally seen, heard, um, respected in that relationship. And therefore, in a few cases, it meant that I didn't keep going to therapy. I just stopped. And in the cases where I did give for longer, it just meant that I didn't get amazing results. And the therapists that I actually got the most results with, the one who I would say like really changed my life, and there's still things that happen, and I'm I'm like, wow, I remember back to a session with Meredith where she talked about this, and at the time I didn't really get it, but now I get it. So her work has stayed with me for a long time. Like I would say it was probably about 20 years ago I worked with her. And she was actually using a therapy modality that I wouldn't say it's super unusual, but it's not one of the ones that people talk about a lot. It's kind of not in favor these days. If you're curious and want to look it up, it's called transactional analysis. And I really suspect why her therapy was so effective for me was probably 20% the modality. I do think there's some cool stuff in transactional analysis, but I really think it was 80% the relationship, and there's no way to know for sure or quantify that for sure, of course. But I really think that our working relationship was so good that I was really just able to hear her on a deeper level than some of these other people. And I another thing that thing that I think was interesting was that some of these CBT therapists that just didn't click for me, they were actual psychologists. So they had PhD level training. And Meredith, my counselor, that was very helpful to me, she was just she was a counselor. She had a master's degree in counseling, so less training, less education, but way more effective for me. So I think it's also goes to show that education and a degree doesn't necessarily translate into amazing clinical ability and amazing results for clients and amazing results for all clients. I suspect some of these psychologists that didn't work that great for me might have worked really good for other people. But yeah, in my case, it was a counselor using a lesser-known method, and it really was the thing that got results, and I really do think that that was because of the relationship. So I've also had a ton of coaches, and I would say I've really never had a coach that I didn't click with. And I think some of that comes down to I chose each of my own coaches, like I chose them specifically for me. Um, and I'll talk a little bit more about how in a second. But one thing I do want to say right up front is having coached, I think just off the top of my head with seven different coaches now, I can say from authority that having a fancy certification or a lot of Instagram followers or glowing testimonials or a beautiful website does not necessarily make an amazing coach. And there are a lot of amazing coaches out there who don't have any of those things. The coach that helped me the most, she didn't even have a website. I hired her, she was someone I knew through my network, and she was an amazing coach. I talked a couple, I it might have been in the last episode about doing some hypnocoaching on something that might be more of a therapy issue typically, but I was willing to work with her, just she was someone that I already knew, and she got me such amazing results. I felt like I got 10 years of therapy in a two-day and weekend intensive coaching with her, which was really amazing. And she was someone who didn't have a website, didn't have a huge Instagram at the time, didn't really, I don't know, like have some of the things that um make a coach look fancy and authoritative. There was not like a million testimonials on the internet for her, but she was a really good coach, and I'm so glad I found her, and I'm so glad that none of that stuff was important to me in that case. So if you are hiring someone and you really want to get a feel for if they are gonna be a good person that you're gonna enjoy working with over time, a couple of things I would really recommend you doing. First of all, if you're hiring a one-to-one coach, a lot of them are gonna offer either a consult, that's what I call it, the free consult. Some people call it a discovery call. It goes by different names, but typically there's an opportunity to go and talk to the coach, to really describe what kind of work you want to do in coaching, um, to really hear kind of their thoughts on what's gonna help you, what direction they would take things. And I think that that's a really good thing to do. Um, I know for me, when I'm a coach that's actually doing consults with potential clients, I think a lot of clients come in and they're like, oh, this is the part where she's gonna sell me or try to change my mind, or it's gonna be like going to a used car lot. And what I'm really looking for in the consult is a few really simple things. First of all, I want to make sure that this person is actually someone that coaching and coaching with me is gonna help. And also I'm looking a bit for fit. I'm like, is this a person that seems to like appreciate my style, enjoy talking to me? And really, like the sales thing is the furthest thing from my mind. I'm just kind of thinking about like, is this going to be a person that I can help, that I can get results for? And I'm usually really honest and upfront about that, if for some reason I think that that's that's not gonna be the case. And I really one of the big things that I will occasionally do on these consoles is suggest therapy first. That therapy might be the place to start, the way to go. And definitely, whenever you have resolved X, Y, or Z or feel like you are ready to A, B, and C, definitely. Think about coaching, but maybe therapy first. That's pretty common on the consult. So definitely if if the person you're thinking about working with, therapists will sometimes do this too, but definitely coaches, definitely take advantage of that free call. Definitely go in, ask all your questions, really get a feel for how this person and you would work together and what that would be like before you make your decision. I think that that's a really smart thing to do. Another question that comes up is, especially with coaches, since that industry is unregulated, how can one do due diligence before hiring or investing? So, what due diligence means, and if you're hiring a therapist, it's usually possible to look up that therapist in your state's database, make sure they've not been disciplined, make sure they're licensed, and that their credentials are all in order. And that doesn't necessarily mean that clinically they're going to be an awesome match, but definitely it's it's it gives you some reassurance, right? That you're hiring someone that's qualified to do the job. And with coaches, you could also do that if they voluntarily engage in a credentialing program. If they're ICF certified, for example, you could look them up in ICF's database, but a lot of coaches won't be. That's that's I would say the minority of coaches actually get those voluntary credentials. And some very good coaches just don't bother with those because they don't need to. So, how do you do your due diligence and find out if a coach is a good investment? And I think a couple of things. Um you could ask for references, however, most coaches don't actually give those, and most therapists don't actually give those. I know that I personally don't, not because I'm trying to hide something, but because the giving of the references actually breaks confidentiality. And I could ask my clients to like voluntarily do that, but I feel like that's just not something I want to ask them to do. I I don't feel like that's the most the best thing for them in that situation, even though it would be good for me. So I I generally do not give references. I would say that that's gonna be true of a lot of coaches. So how do you really get a feel for a coach or a therapist if you're hiring one that is independent before you invest? And I would say the best way, the way that I tend to do this, the way I'm doing it right now, consume a lot of that person's free marketing materials and content. So things like podcasts, blogs, some people will do actual webinars where they're teaching on a topic. Often that will be for free. Um, looking at their social media, joining their email list. Email tends to be pretty intimate where they share some of their more personal stuff, um, some of their best tips. So definitely you could join their email list. Most most practitioners will have one. And just use these free sources to really get a feel for their style, what kind of clients they work with, what kind of problems they are really good at solving, and see if you get value. If the person's going to be a good person for you, you should actually get small shifts in your thinking, in your behavior, just from their content. They should be able to give you some value ahead of time. And if you are actually feeling like they're helping you, even without you hiring them and hearing your problem personally from you, I think that's a really good sign that it's going to be a good match. I have personally hired most of my coaches, either from my network, they were people I knew, or from their podcasts. I hired one of my, I was she, she might have even been before the hypnocoach. I think this is true. Before the hypnocoach, that was really helpful to me that I just talked about a minute ago. I was in a group coaching program, and it was specifically Brooke Castillo's self-coaching scholars program. And unfortunately, this program is not around anymore. It was basically a membership model, and you could go and study with Brooke on a different topic every month. She would go in depth, and you also had group coaching calls, sometimes with Brooke or with other coaches that she had hired, and you also got one-to-one coaching. They were 20-minute sessions, I think, and it was usually not with Brooke, but with um someone that she hired and had trained personally, and they were all like really good coaches. So I know I found that one through Brooke's podcast, and I feel like that was just an amazing experience for me. I feel like the person that I was before self-coaching scholars, and I was in it for a year, and the person I was afterwards were just completely different people. Like it was such an inflection point in my life. I was just at the end of it thinking about life and problems and myself and my capabilities and my capacity so differently. And that was just from a group, not even one-to-one, um a group general life coaching program. Like it wasn't even specifically niched on any particular topic. It was just like, let's make your life better. So I found that through Brooke's podcast. Like, Brooke is someone I 100% like found. I think she's another podcaster that I like mentioned, really liking her podcast. And then I kind of from her podcast, like it was changing my mindset so much and the way that I thought about things. I was like, I really have to get the paid stuff. I have to work with her and just see what this can do for me. And it was truly life-changing. So that was really cool. Um, yeah, so podcasts, great, um, great place to look. Um, but so many other place to places too. There's still coaches that have blogs. There's still almost all coaches do some social media. So just kind of see what your person is doing a lot of that you're interested in and really try to get a feel. Um, I would a final thing that I'll offer to you, and this might be more at the consult stage when you're actually on the phone talking to them about working together, is if you want to one one other way that you can do due diligence is just by checking the terms and conditions of working with them. I think it is so important and so like smart to invest smartly. And that means just understanding exactly what you're investing in. So, questions, for example, that you can ask is what happens if I'm not satisfied one month into this six-month coaching package? And what are your refund policies? What if I feel that I have gotten my result early? What happens? And generally, coaches will be pretty happy to tell you, most coaches that have been practicing for any amount of time will have answers to these questions. They'll have policies. And the policy might be that, you know, once you pay, you pay. There's no refunds. I find that this is, you know, the thing that helps people get over the finish line. When they know there's no going back, it helps them be invested. Um then, um, so that's that's the reason that a lot of coaches will have a no refund policy once you've once you've purchased your package. You're in. Um, I personally am a bit more flexible. My my my refund policy is I generally do not want to be holding someone hostage in the coaching. So if one month in they're just feeling like it's not a good match, if they are making a good faith effort to um implement what were the coaching and they're coming to sessions, they're listening, they're prepared, they're bringing questions. And if it's just still not working for them, I always am pretty happy to cut them loose, to refund unused sessions. I do, I don't generally allow people to ghost. Like you don't get to, I feel like this does not serve people to allow you as a client to just like disappear and then like four months later, like ask for your money back and not really have a conversation about like because even if it's not working for you, there's probably something useful to learn there. So it really serves you to be able to come to your coach and be like, hey, this is what I'm seeing, this is what I'm experiencing. Um, and then we can have a talk about if there's a way to make it work for you. And even if not, even if you're gonna leave, like what might be helpful in the future, like when you're investing in your next coach, what what might you want to bear in mind? So I always require a conversation and open communication. Like, I don't give money back to people that ghosted, but um, generally I'm very happy to give money back to people for whom it's just genuinely not a good fit. And to be honest, that has been in the years I've been doing this, just I can probably count the people on one hand, and that is I I'm super happy to do it. I feel like I feel like in relationships, like I said, where the connection between the people is so crucial that I want you to be with someone that you really connect with and and can spend sufficient time to actually change what you want to change. So I'm always like happy and open to that discussion. So, friends, I hope that's super helpful. If you do have any questions about hiring a coach, about consults, about um the differences, anything we've discussed, differences between coaching and therapy. Um, if your particular issue, is it a therapy issue, is it a coaching issue, reach out anytime. Um, you can contact me on social media, you can contact me by my email, which I'll put in the show notes. And you could also, if you're feeling like you're really ready for a deeper discussion, schedule a consult with me. We can really talk about what um you are wanting to change, what you are wanting to work on, and specifically is this a coaching issue, is this a therapy issue? If coaching, if I was gonna work with you as a coach, like how specifically would I do that? What would that look like? So definitely reach out anytime if you have questions, and I will see you here next week.