Career Opportunities Beyond Wellness Coaching

By dougnau on May 19, 2010 in Career Coaching, Success, Wellness Coaching | 0 Comments

This website has become popular for the content that I provide about personal growth and development as well as Wellness Coaching.  Its the later from which I glean the majority of this site traffic.

For those of you that have outreached to me for the past several years as these blog topics have been in the top of the Google rankings, you know that I am a huge proponent of the industry and love guiding my readers about potential careers in the field.  For me, wellness coaching has been more than a job for the past 5 years, its been a fulfilling journey in which I’ve been able to support hundreds of people in turning their vision of health into a reality.  Its incredibly meaningful, powerful, and satisfying work. 

On a personal level, I’ve been at a cross roads.  As I’ve worked within a corporation for the bulk of my coaching work, I’ve found there are limitations as to how far you can go (both professionally and financially) when you decide that you’d like to become and work as a coach – at least in an organizational setting.  And while I love the work, I’ve been challenging myself to find a career beyond wellness coaching that offers the opportunity and advancement potential that any motivated career focused, and growth oriented professional would desire. 

Its my intention of this article to support you as you are considering what a career path in the wellness industry might look like and how one might develop ‘beyond’ wellness coaching.

As of late, I’ve been toying with the idea of working with private clients.  I started a live and wellness coaching business about 5 years ago now, and the experience was tremendously gratifying, but for me, after 1.5 years of searching for clients, was not working out financially.  Of course, my experience now after a number of years coaching full time in the industry provides me with an entirely new perspective and I am sure that venturing off into my own business now would look much different than it did 5 years ago – that’s simply a matter of understanding the marketplace better and I believe that type of education can only be learned with experience and time – something I’ve got now.  Regardless, while I’ve dabbled with working with private clients now (since its actually profitable at this time!), at this point in my life I don’t have the stomach to begin finding my own client base again.

So where does that leave the wellness coach looking for what’s next?  About 5 months ago I began reviewing job boards, about once a month, to see what might be offered throughout the state of California (and even beyond for curiosity’s sake.  Here’s What I generally found:

  • Wellness Coach – to my surprise, there were local jobs with openings as wellness coaches – of course this would be a lateral move, though some jobs want you to teach exercise classes and the like as well so they do have some variety for requirements
  • Health Educator – most hospital systems have jobs open as health educators.  I suspect with the new health care reform bill that we’ll start seeing more opportunities in this field as well.  From a career perspective, I am not sure that this would be an advancement though. 
  • Program Coordinator – This is a job that is appearing increasingly more often.  A wellness program coordinator typically manages the wellness program for a certain employer.  This could either be a job working for that employer, or for a wellness company that offers services to employers.  Typically this is a step up from a wellness coaching position from a career perspective.  This position can also be called a program manager – depending on the organization, manager might indicate a more senior position than a program coordinator.
  • Program Director – The program director is typically a step above the program coordinator.  Expect that you are less hands on in this position in terms of working with individuals directly in supporting them in becoming healthy.  Program directors are typically in charge of budgeting, working closely with sales, overall program success, and managing the staff that works within the program they are implementing.  Clearly if you are working for a small company, this level of hierarchy might not be in place. 
  • Sales Manager – works with selling the wellness program.  Sales managers may have a number of different names, typically its a ‘regional’ title of some sort, and the function is really to be a sales representative.  Don’t let the name ‘sales’ fool you.  Often times, large health care organizations are giving away health and wellness tools, so selling might mean getting people to adopt those tools (coaching typically costs $ though).  It truly is an interesting market.
  • Product Manager – works with the health and wellness products and manages these offerings.  Typically these offerings will be online, and the products tend to work with behavior change models, web based tools, health promotion campaigns, online and mobile applications.

I am sure that there are numerous other options that you could move into, but having worked for a couple corporations now that have large wellness programs implemented, this is a general outline of the career opportunities that might be present.  My only warning – its unlikely that you’ll find these all these job at companies right around the block.  You’ll likely need to widen your geographic horizon if you feel you are qualified for such a position and want to advance in the field of health promotion. 

Getting back to the story…

Back in late February/early March, I stumbled across a position for a ‘Product Manager – Healthy Lifestyles Programs’ with Kaiser Permanente.  If you are familiar with Northern California health care organizations, this is one of the competing organizations to Sutter Health – the company with which I was working as a wellness coach.  The job description for the position caught me because it had such a striking resemblance to my skill set – requiring both the technical qualifications that I’ve had from working in the software industry for nearly a decade, the project management experience I’ve had working there, and the knowledge of health promotion programs and working with external software vendors.  Honestly, I thought the position was written for someone that they intended to move up within the organization because of how specific it was and how unlikely I felt it was that they would find someone with such a specific skill set.

As I mentioned, if you want to get a job in this industry, its worth expanding your geographic region, this job was located in Oakland – a good 2 hour drive from where I live (without traffic), and although I knew that was a stretch, I figured it would be worth a half hearted attempt at submitting a resume through the online application system. 

Much to my surprise, I received a call from their HR department the very next day requesting more information.  After three interviews, a number of heart to heart’s with my wife, and as thorough an examination of the situation as possible, I accepted the position when it was offered to me.  So, as of 3 weeks ago, I am no longer coaching in an organizational setting (though I do have one client I still have private sessions with).  My work is very involved with coaching, and the software itself touts itself as a ‘digital coaching’ program, so my ties to the field are not cut by any means. 

The biggest challenge so far has been working out a commute situation.  My parents live in the SF bay area, and I am boarding with them several nights per week – that’s the only way I could pull this off in the short term.  It is difficult to be away from the wife and children several nights per week, but the opportunity warrants the change.  These are the big decisions in life that need to be made with a zeal for the future and a pulse for the day.

It’s important to always evaluate your career goals.  I know many people that feel wellness coaching is their calling and are very happy to complete their careers in the field.  I’ve always known that while I intend on being a coach my whole life, my career as a wellness coach would be a stepping stone to a position in which I’d be able to reach and support many many more people in creating a happy and healthy lifestyle. 

Be Well

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Written by Doug Nau, The Wellness Coach, i-grow.net

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