Choosing coaching clients wisely

I found this bit of wisdom online recently:

"Do your research and choose a coach with a proper education, experience, or certification. Find somebody who leads by example when it comes to living well in health, career, relationships, and general outlook on life."

All of this makes perfect sense. Some online coaches are simply longtime studious runners -- some fast, some not -- turned advisors; others come at the game from the information (e.g., advanced degrees in exercise physiology, kinesiology and so on) or certification (e.g., the courses USA Track and Field offers) side; and still others are current or former elites looking to stay involved in the sport and make some cash at the same time. Some, of course, bring some combination of these things to the table.

But it's a two-way street. If you're an online coach and get more requests than you can realistically handle, how do you vet these requests?

As I've mentioned before, I never intended to become an online coach and essentially had to be prodded into it. Having been an actual, in-person coach of high-school teams, the notion that anyone could effectively "coach" runners using a computer and some words seemed overly hopeful at best. But once I accepted that online coaching -- from which I had already benefited by the time I really into it myself, thanks to Pete Pfitzinger -- was a different mentoring endeavor but a worthy one in its own right, I softened.
Coaching adults on the Internet has never been close to a full-time gig for me. I don't think I have ever worked with more than eight or nine people at a time and that was really pushing it because beyond that I didn't feel I had the time to give any of them the attention they deserved. At the moment I work with about a half-dozen people and advise a number of others, all of whom are now longtime friends first and foremost (although most I met through coaching them first). I make a very small -- although much appreciated -- fraction of my monthly income from coaching fees. Partly as a result, I won't work with any and every person who comes along who's willing to pay the fee.
So here are some things to watch out for:
The blame game. Remember that just as your clients are putting their trust in you, you're doing the same to a great extent with them. If things don't work out from a purely results standpoint, they might blame you for it; in many cases you probably have it coming, but you could wind up with someone on your hands who later blames you for his not reaching his goals even though he didn't actually follow the schedule you gave him or provide honest input about his training or disclose to you that he had heavy-duty recreational drug habit. People being human, these things happen, and every now and again someone may make you a target in online forums (and in extremely rare cases this may happen even when the attacker has gotten nothing but great results but resents you for other reasons).
The bottom line. I don't always charge people nowadays despite the fee schedule posted on my site, and you may not either; I also vary the fees according to people's present financial situations (e.g., I give graduate students a break) because I know my coterie of clients contains no bullshitters. But if someone repeatedly promises to pay and fails to do this, especially when you know the person in question has no income and no legitimate means of generating one, it's probably time to move on. I don't mind charity cases as I've been broke-ass myself at times, but the ones who won't level with you are going to be nothing but chronic headaches anyway.
Boundaries, always boundaries. If you quickly discover that a new client wants something more than or even apart from what you agreed to offer, and begins dumping vast amounts of unsolicited personal baggage on you, bow out sooner rather than later. You may feel part of this person's pain, but you're not an online psychologist (and if you think you are, please see a real one). You're not there to solve people's marital or vocational woes, although the more you help runners with their running, the more readily they tend to respond favorably to life challenges. And that leads me to...
Non compos mentis. I won't say that you shouldn't accept people who are going through or have gone through personal problems. Hell, performance-oriented running basically is, arguably, a personal problem. But I have noticed over the years that some of the wackiest characters in the running are far more likely than the typical person to seek out a coach, in particular a "name" coach. Some of these people are frankly delusional, not just about their capabilities but their actual exploits -- I know one guy who regularly claims to do workouts a 31:00 10K runner would have trouble completing, and this guy either doesn't know about Athlinks or doesn't care because I don't think he's ever broken 18:30 for 5K in his life. If you agree to coach someone like this and accept the personal-record times they provide you at face value, a minor tragedy with comic elements is probably on your near horizon. However heroic you fancy yourself, you can do no more from afar for an unmedicated or improperly medicated person with borderline schizophrenia or a pernicious mood disorder than anyone else can.
The generous absentee. Finally, there's the runner who ought to be an online coach's dream. She pays you, sometimes for many months up front, and seems as gung-ho as anyone at first but then disappears for weeks or longer. Then she'll re-emerge, full of legitimate contrition and possibly a sob story to go with it. Meanwhile you notice that she's talking up your abilities on various Web sites despite no evidence of having read a word you've written to her or listened to a thing you've told her on the phone. Then the cycle repeats itself. In these instances you can plausibly tell yourself it's OK to just cash this person's checks and do the best job you can at your end, but on the few occasions this has happened to me I've only become frustrated, because believe it or not, I like the idea of helping people who ask for it when I think I have something to offer. And not just in running -- I've got parallel stories from my tutoring life for most of the ones I've offered here.
Anyway, if you're a longtime or even moderately experienced online coach, I'm telling you absolutely nothing you haven't already learned first-hand. If you're just getting going and want a smoothly running business or side business, keep these principles in mind.