Spirit Coaching the Origin
If I were to start a business of some kind, what would that business be? I asked myself one day while on a walk with the Lord. It was the end of 2013, I was walking in the country in a rural area of Portland, Oregon and I was ready to do something new. I didn’t want to be a full-time employee anymore.
I realized that, if I could do anything, I wanted to do some form of life coaching. But I didn’t want to just do any life coaching, I wanted to focus on the spirit. I wanted to help people identify spiritual agreements, break up partnerships with the enemy and align with the Lord. I wanted to show people how to rely on God and allow truth to rule their lives.
When I got back to my house, I Googled “spirit coaching” to explore different aspects of what I was trying to build, but didn’t see anything on what I had in mind. Okay, this is both good and bad, I thought. Good in the sense that no one had ever done this before; it’s new. But bad because...nobody’s ever done this before! Fortunately, I had enough entrepreneurial drive up to that point to believe that I could make something happen with this idea. So, on January 2nd, 2014, I made a public figure Facebook page and announced that I was offering Spirit Coaching. My rates started at $20 an hour—I knew it would be worth more than that but I wanted to start low since this was so new and I was experimenting. In the first month and a half, I had four clients whom I was coaching consistently. About a year later, after lots of experimenting and refining my craft, I was working with about twenty people altogether. Fast forward another year, and this whole thing had skyrocketed!!!
In January 2016, I started advertising my coaching business even more. Before I knew it, my clientele had doubled THREE TIMES within the following seven months! I was blown away at all the business coming in and I actually started to get overwhelmed. I had so many clients! I jacked up my rates in hopes of weeding out the curious; I only wanted to take on those who were serious about changing their lives. But the increased price range only made people more interested! Something had to change.
One day I was telling a friend of mine about my situation and how much this business was growing. He said to me, “Mike, you need to train other people to do what you’re doing so that you can help more people. Don’t reduce the amount of people you can work with, expand your means so that you can help more people!” Sure enough, six months later, I did it. I put a campaign together and offered to train people to be mentored by me and learn to spirit coach. Seven people took my training course and five of them actually came on as spirit coaches with me! I got to contract clients over to them instead of trying to take them on myself!
As our clients began walking out the practices we suggested and put in place for them, they began realizing that their general experience in life was changing drastically. Hope became a reality for them! They got in touch with the fact that tomorrow is taken care of! They became secure and alive and confident in the fact that God was on the throne and sorting their affairs. This was changing the game for SO many people and it was incredibly rewarding for my coaches and I to observe and be a part of.
So, what is spirit coaching? What’s the heart behind it? Throughout the years, I’ve come across many people who are not getting the attention they need on practical matters. The prayer line at church is great for a quick fix or a radical shift, but when it comes to sustainability and walking out life-changing practices that would shift mindsets, habits, beliefs, and patterns, they need consistent support rather than just a random encounter on a Sunday morning. Often counseling and inner healing aren’t addressing the ownership that people need to bring to the table in order to walk out lasting change and produce fruit that remains. Spirit coaching is unique because each client gets to bring their own process to the table, rather than the coach just running them all through the same program. People can show up and bring whatever pattern, habit, or cycle they can’t seem to get out of and get some outsider perspective and spiritual insight.
In Spirit Coaching, we ask intentional questions and provide specific feedback for our clients. We layout a foundation for them to have awareness and understanding of the mechanics behind why they make the decisions they do, and why they feel and interpret the things in their lives. We are legitimately coming alongside people and helping them renew their minds and fix their focus on things above. When we can recognize spiritual dynamics and help our clients catch them for themselves, their lives literally change. Our goal is not to set anybody free—we help guide people to Mr. Truth and He sets them free. We can’t force or make anything happen in their life, but we can guide them toward the door where Truth is at and they get to choose to walk through it.
If you want to hear more about Spirit Coaching, my Coaching Team or the story behind how it came about, you can hear me talk about it on my podcast! Check out Episode 20 on Confessions of a Reformer! You can also find out more information about Numa Coaching and how to apply to work with one of our coaches here:Numa Coaching.