Business Mentor/NLP
First things, first and in case you didn't know...
The role of a business mentor/coach is to assist and offer direction to their mentees, helping them run and grow their business and encouraging them to develop the skills they need to be successful. The advice comes from the mentor's own knowledge and experience. A mentor can help them breakthrough and achieve more.
NLP therapists work with people to understand their thinking and behavioural patterns, emotional state, and aspirations. By examining a person's map, the therapist can help them find and strengthen the skills that serve them best and assist them in developing new strategies to replace unproductive ones.
Reiki practitioners, also known as Reiki masters, use gentle hand movements with the intention to guide the flow of healthy energy (what’s known in Reiki as life force energy) through the client's body to reduce stress and promote healing. Reiki is a form of complementary and alternative medicine; there’s evidence it can reduce daily stress and help with management of some chronic diseases.
Akashic records and Akashic readings are are said to contain every thought, emotion, and experience that has ever happened to every soul that has ever existed. Vivid images appear to the reader of past lives and of the future possibilities yet to be manifested. When you are able to unlock this encyclopedia of support, you have that for the rest of your life. It is like having a life-guide in your back pocket. You can also use the records for business. You can use it for a creative process and people have used them to write books and screenplays.
Key skills/talents
Mentors and coaches are naturally empathetic, genuine, and must truly have their clients' best interests at heart. Mentors need to be great listeners, because, in theory, they should be spending 80% of their time listening, 10% of their time asking questions to probe deeper into important topics, and 10% of their time offering advice.
The key skills for an NLP practitioner are similar to a mentor (ergo the symmetry), which means a high degree of empathy, plus the ability to actively listen to your client, and of course, innate knowledge of when to be silent and when to push.
The skills required for a Reiki practitioner and indeed an Akashic Reader, are again very similar to those of an NLP practitioner:
-
Good levels of concentration (daydreamers might want to try elsewhere)
-
Active listening skills
-
Excellent verbal communication skills
-
Knowledge of biology - and the human body in general
-
The ability to work well with your hands, and let's be honest, nice clean and tidy hands!
-
Ability to be thorough and pay close attention to detail
-
Patience and the ability to remain calm in stressful situations
-
Sensitivity and understanding
-
A VERY open mind and a VERY open heart!
Qualifications required
Most mentors are (and have become, through hard work) specialists in their field of mentoring, but the Institute of Counselling offers a course that is equivalent to an Ofqual level 5.
FYI, life coaching and becoming a 'life coach' is a different area entirely, and courses on this subject are far and wide. We have a life coach on our interview target list, so we'll cover this area off in another pod at another time.
There are many companies offering qualifications in NLP (see 'how to get started' below), which include being a Practitioner, a Master Practitioner and then an NLP Coach.
For Reiki, you will need to complete levels 1 and 2, as well as a professional practitioner course. To then become a Reiki Master, you must train with a master (Karate Kid style... not really), like Emma.
For Akashic work, there are no official qualifications or courses, per say; simply lots of ways to teach yourself how to do it, plus some workshops; useful links for this are below.
Training for all areas of Emma’s role are ‘on the job’, as you learn and become qualified. To support this, we would also suggest practising on friends and family, and indeed close work connections, who can support your inexperience (for want of a better word) early on.
Rules and regs
The Association of Business Mentors is the professional body for business mentoring in the UK and Ireland.
Although there are no regulatory bodies in the UK for NLP, The Association for NLP is a membership organisation which looks to uphold the highest standards and levels of professionalism for their Members and is practised by their Members.
For Reiki, the CNHC (Complementary & Natural Healthcare Council) is the UK voluntary regulator for complementary healthcare practitioners. It was set up with government support to protect the public by providing a UK voluntary register of complementary therapists.
CNHC’s register has been approved as an Accredited Register by the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care. This means CNHC has met the Professional Standards Authority’s demanding standards. All CNHC registered practitioners are entitled to use CNHC’s quality mark which demonstrates a commitment to professionalism and high standards. The public and those who commission the services of complementary healthcare practitioners can choose with confidence, by looking for the CNHC quality mark. General Medical Council (GMC) Guidance confirms that doctors are able to refer clients to practitioners on Accredited Registers.
You will also need Public Liability and Professional Indemnity Insurance cover, and certainly in the corporate world, this will be requested as validation of your suitability to work.
The following companies offer such insurance, as an FYI:
For all of Emma's areas of work, client records are confidential. Mentors and practitioners must ensure they keep clear, comprehensive and dated records of their client sessions. This is especially important for the defence of any negligence actions.
Likewise, you must ensure that any data you are storing fully complies with the Data Protection Act (2018), which replaces the EU GDPR and is now currently known as UK GDPR.
Remuneration framework
Business mentors can earn, on average, between £50k to well over £100k a year, depending on your level of skill, reputation and indeed where you are based, or indeed, traveling to (to mentor). Reputation and an established client-base will impact this, so some mentors can, in fact, earn well above this.
An NLP Practitioners salary is very dependant on where you are within the UK, with those based in London earning around £70-80k per year. Again, reputation and an established client-base will impact this.
Reiki Practitioners can make between £30k and £60k per year; and yet again, reputation and where you are based impact this hugely.
Akashic work is a grey area in terms of remuneration, with 'readers' charging anything from £85 for an hour, to well over £500 when combined with further 'soul' work; so do you research to make sure you are both competitive and lucrative with your pricing here.
Of course, the amount of hours in a week you want/are willing to work, will also impact all of these areas and the money you can make. With that in mind, extra income could be earned via extra sessions, or indeed (extra) Zoom sessions in evenings or at weekends, should you wish to work those. It's your time, so decided what works for you and what your financial goals are.
How to get started
Get Mentoring has some free courses and information relating to becoming a business mentor, and the Institute of Counselling offers a course that is equivalent to an Ofqual level 5.
The Association of Business Mentors also has training opportunities.
'NLP UK Training' offers accredited courses in NLP, as does Inspire 360.
The UK Reiki Federation lists accredited courses throughout the UK.
The 'Centre of Excellence' offer a diploma in Akashic Readings, if you would like to go down this route.
Or, to each yourself how to do an Akashic reading this is a great site to check out. The 'Akashic Records Readings UK' site has lots of great information on, and offers up workshops and readers that you can book, or indeed, learn by/with.
Associations or official bodies to register with
For Business Mentoring there is The Association of Business Mentors who look to uphold the UK and Ireland Professional Code of Conduct for Business Mentors and Business Mentoring and are a signatory of the Global Code of Ethics for Coaches, Mentors and Supervisors.
The Association for NLP exists as an independent membership organisation, in order to provide NLP Professionals with a standards framework through which they can self-regulate by honouring the Code of Ethics, Complaints Procedure and Membership Criteria.
The Reiki Council is the lead advisory body for Reiki practitioners in the UK. Through its member associations it represents the views of people giving Reiki to the public across the UK. The Reiki Council is a non-profit-making organisation that sets standards and guidelines, providing information and advice.
As stated above, head here for non-official, official support.
Progression pathway
As a mentor, coach and NLP Practitioner, the sky really is your limit in terms of progression. The more experience you get and the higher-profile clients you can work with, the more sought-after your services will become.
With that in mind, be sure to have super-professional customer 'touch-points', which means a website and nowadays, social accounts. If you want to talk-the-talk, you've got to walk-the-walk, so if your profile and your business doesn't look bad-ass to potential clients, how are you going to convince them that you can help theirs? Practice what you preach.
Furthermore, if you become really good, you can go on to write books, lecture and indeed run bigger group courses face-to-face or even online. There are folk out there earning millions doing this. Yep.
As a Reiki practitioner, and indeed a Reiki Master, with full qualifications and experience, you could go on to offer training in Reiki healing, and teach other potential Reiki healers, like Emma does. The links above can further assist with this.
Alongside Reiki, there is the opportunity to train in (and offer) other forms of complementary therapies. like massage, aromatherapy, or reflexology. Reiki really is about a holistic approach to the mind and body, so the more strings to your bow, the more you can potential charge for your skills.
Finally, Akashic Records and Readings work best (and are more lucrative) when combined with other soul/holistic work, so get on that-there Google and see what methods take your fancy here; and then try to offer your own style and your own approach to this type of work, just like Emma has done when she has combined it with Reiki, holistic massage and her unique style of business/marketing mentoring.
Additional links/FYIs
An obvious one, but for all forms of Mentoring and NLP, get yourself onto Linkedin. Make sure your profile is bob-on and network the proverbial s**t out of the business folk on there. Then, when a post goes out for a potential mentor/NLP guru, low and behold you're straight in to say hi.