Prosperous Coach Podcast

To see the questions and the episode transcript go to prosperouscoach.com/295.

Episode also mentioned #139 - The Art of Crafting Powerful Questions with Laurie Cameron

You know that open ended questions are the most potent tool for coaching sessions. 

A single powerful question can evoke a positive shift in clients. Learning how to frame those questions in the moment is an art every coach can learn.

But session time isn’t the only time that powerful questions help you and your client.

It makes sense to ask them in:

1. The copy on your website.

2. Social posts.

3. Other content like videos, blogs and podcast episodes.

4. Keynote talks and webinars.

5. Discovery calls.

… even in an intake document your client fills out and sends you before your first session.

I started sending 10 BIG QUESTIONS as part of my on-boarding process over a decade ago and I love how my new client’s answers clue me in about how to serve them best. 

I will share those with you now. And that might be a spark for you to create different or even more pithy questions for your new clients.

Find the full transcript with the 10 BIG QUESTIONS plus more resources for coaches at prosperouscoach.com/294.

Other episodes mentioned:
#293 Love the Coach You Are Becoming with guest, Cooper Neimand
#242 Enroll More Coaching Clients with Powerful Questions and Without Anxiety with a free downloadable guide to ace your Discovery Calls

Sometimes, I’m surprised that I ever enrolled a coaching client in my first few years as a coach!

I was out there in front of my audience both online and offline. I had a weekly newsletter with a growing list of subscribers. I did public speaking. I hustled.

But for years I never directly invited anyone to hire me. 

That seemed too pushy.

I stubbornly believed it’s enough to show up everyday and share my thought leadership. But too few hired me on that alone.

The thing is I knew I was wimping out. I knew I was sabotaging my business. But fear shut me down.

What about you? Are you afraid to ask prospects to hire you? Does it feel too salesy? I get that.

And it will hold you back from what you most want.

You see, people want to be invited. They wait to be invited! Let’s talk about a tasteful way to sell.

In this episode, I interview Cooper Neimand, past college basketball coach, now Wellbeing Specialist helping college coaches gain control, prioritize themselves, and build championship habits and culture.

Find the full transcript and more resources for coaches at prosperouscoach.com/293.

Life coaching originated from sports coaching. It's all about helping individuals and teams reach their full potential.

I think of a masterful coach like a positive mother or father, the loving, caring person who easily sees the potential of others and doesn't judge mistakes.

Ted Lasso from the TV series comes to mind. That character was far from perfect, right? And he had a gift for helping people grow into themselves.

Who do you need to become to be a winner in this field of coaching?

This year, a client enrolled into my VIP program who came from college coaching. Since our first conversation, I see him embodying "the right stuff." I admire how he always leaves a positive impression.

I asked him to be a guest on this episode, and he humbly and enthusiastically said Yes. Let's talk together about the right stuff and how you can develop more of it.

Find the full transcript and more free and expert resources for coaches at prosperouscoach.com/292.

Other episodes mentioned:
240
65
69

So far in your coaching business you might be simply trying to convince any client to hook on … to want coaching and be willing to invest in a certain number of sessions up front. 

Convincing clients they want coaching can be painful process. I tried that for years and wasted a lot of energy. 

The problem is that offering coaching session packages doesn’t create a strong context for why your prospect would want to enroll. 

It was only when I targeted a narrow audience and found out directly from them what’s been in the way of achieving their top goals and turned that into an exciting offer that I began seeing great results from clients and earning well. 

When you customize an offer for your audience into a Signature Program it creates a powerful context for why they want to hire you. 

Developing this high-ticket customized program requires you to think like your ideal client … not like a coach. 

Find the full transcript and more resources for coaches at prosperouscoach.com/291.

Other episodes mentioned in this episode:
141 - 5 Questions to Test Your Coaching Business Integrity
251 - Coaching a Coach Through Her Fears of Charging More
236 - Are You Attracting Coaching Clients Who are 100% Ready to Hire You?

Working with coaching clients is a huge privilege and responsibility. If managed well, it can be a relationship of mutual trust and respect — a healthy container for transformation.

But human beings are complex, each with their own trauma, triggers, wants and needs. Put two people together and it can get uncomfortable.

Managing the coach/client relationship is one of those trial by fire things. But you know me, I want to uncover this stuff that could trip you up!

The first thing to understand is that when you charge highly for coaching, clients are more committed and engaged in their own transformation and success. On the other hand, when clients pay little for your services, they are generally more difficult to serve and it can get edgy.

So do yourself a favor and charge more. 

Let’s look at 5 indications that something is off in the coaching relationship so you can repair it.

Dig into this full episode and other resources for coaches at prosperouscoach.com/290.

Also mentioned:
Episode 215 - 4 Ways to Stop Feeling Lonely in Your Coaching Business

Episode 180 - Have You Found the Niche Within Your Coaching Niche?

When you’re a new coach just launching, it can be lonely and overwhelming doing everything yourself.

You don’t have colleagues to bounce ideas off of or the built in accountability of a team leader as you do in a job. 

Everything is on you – the decisions and costs of building and maintaining all aspects of the business plus the workload of marketing — all while serving clients.

For those reasons, some coaches reach out to partner with another coach not realizing the additional challenges partnership brings. 

If a coach I’m mentoring brings up the idea of collaboration with another coach on any level, I encourage them to slow down and think it through because everything gets twice as complicated in partnership at first.

Let’s talk about 4 critical considerations for smart partnering and whether you have the right stuff to be a business partner.

Find this full episode transcript and more resources for coaches at prosperouscoach.com/289.

Recently, I had a Nail Your Niche session with a coach who started our conversation saying she’d been struggling for so long trying to decide whether she wanted to be a Health Coach or a Life Coach.

I said: “You can be both at the same time!” And that freed up her thinking.

Putting a word before ‘Coach’ doesn’t constitute a niche that will help you stand out in the crowd and gain traction fast, which is what a niche is meant to do.

Life coaching is coaching anyone about anything. Do you see how that can’t be a niche?

If you’re a business coach, leadership coach, health coach or what have you, you are doing life coaching and that’s because a person’s life is not perfectly segmented out. Everything spills over into all areas.

So, if you want to do life coaching and another track, you can!

Removing mental blocks will help you get out of the box and more specific than a coaching track!

Find this episode and more resources for coaches at ProsperousCoach.com/288.

Recently, I was invited to speak with graduates of a coach training organization. Most on the call were not yet earning a living at coaching and all were finding it difficult to repeatedly attract paying clients.

It turned out that each coach was selling life coaching, health coaching, confidence coaching — something like that. Their website, social posts and offers focused on the general benefits of coaching. People who had free sessions weren’t reliably progressing to paid packages.

This is a common problem for coaches and it’s my mission to change that.

I could see that 2 main things were keeping these coaches from financial success:

1. They were not addressing BIG ENOUGH PROBLEMS for their audience. 

2. They were not charging high enough fees to help them stay in business.

Those 2 things are about mindset. It was time for the coaches to shift from student mode to professional mode to attract clients who do invest.

Let’s tease this apart ...

Find the transcript and more resources for coaches at prosperouscoach.com/287.

I didn’t fit in to corporate.

I was pretending to fit in, which was exhausting. I pushed my introverted self and was literally getting sick from that. Anxiety was mounting and I was just going through the motions.

Before I launched my coaching business, I’d had a good job with perks and a great salary. Friends couldn’t believe I left it to be a coach. 

But I longed for work that allowed me to bring my full self to the table and leverage my strengths — to work in a sane way doing good. You too?

Having a coaching business may be the only income-producing role in your life where you get to bring your full personality, values and life experience together to serve others.

Are you making the most of that? 

Does your coaching business fit you? 

And, how can you bring your full self to the table and be known for it? 

Let’s talk about that.

There’s an art to attracting clients. I call it an art because it takes time to learn who is ideal for you and it takes conscious practice to draw them to you.

One powerful part of attraction is the words you use on your website, your Signature Program, your social posts, your freebie and your content — such as podcast episodes.

When your words resonate, you’ll have that reflected back to you. Here’s a reviewed I received about Prosperous Coach Podcast:

Rhonda’s value-filled words and energy help ground and ignite me at the same time. She takes me out of the fog and into clarity, out of stumbling into jogging steadily forward.

Wow! Thank you, Lena.

How did my words ignite Lena – someone I didn’t know before? Well, that’s the first step to enrolling a client. Let’s dig into that.

Find the full transcript for this Listener’s Choice episode at ProsperousCoach.com/286.