Prosperous Coach Podcast

Today I want to change your perception of marketing. Find the full transcript for this episode at prosperouscoach.com/115.

When you think of marketing, do you cringe? Have you been thinking things like this?

·      Marketing will feel sleazy no matter how I do it. I hate the idea of it!

·      I have to become good at selling myself.

·      Marketing, selling and advertising are all the same thing.

·      I don’t know how to market.

I thought those things too. And I think our response to high-pressure marketing tactics is what formed those beliefs. The sad thing is some of those tactics work and then you feel ashamed of having fallen for it.

I’ve surveyed coaches on their thoughts about marketing over decades and the urban myths about marketing remain much the same.

Most coaches think of it as a necessary evil.

Here’s what I think … if you believe you have to sell your soul to market you’ll never market effectively. But marketing is critical to attract clients. Without it, your business will be the best-kept secret.

There’s this assumption that once you finish coach training and throw up a coaching website the clients will come rolling in. The reality is that coaches, as with most other businesses, have to create their marketplace from scratch. That’s another of a multitude of reasons that targeting a unique audience and having a stand out niche is so helpful.

I had that same assumption when I started and was disabused of that pretty quickly. That’s why I say don’t sell coaching. It’s a steep upward climb to success if you have to convince prospects they want coaching before you can enroll them. For more on that, experience episode #7.

And by the way, I’m honored by all the new coaches who are finding my podcast. Consider going back to episode 1 and listening chronologically. It will be a helpful and eye opening experience for you. You can find episode 1 by scrolling to the beginning of my podcast in an app or go to prosperouscoach.com/1.

Before you despair, creating your own marketplace is a powerful, graceful and loving action if you let it be.

If you market consciously and authentically you will not have to advertise, sell yourself or your soul.

I know it’s true because I live it every day.

Marketing can be much like coaching. This is how that works …

• First raise curiosity about your target audience. What makes your audience tick? Who are they inside?
• Ask them powerful questions. What do they really want (not need)? What is a big problem that’s keeping them from getting what they want?
• Listen to their words as they describe what’s most important to them. 
• Engage your intuition.
• Discover the top values that drive them.
• Help them see their future the way they want it to look.

 Isn't that what you do when you coach a client?

Read more about how to create your own marketplace in an authentic way here.

This episode is pretty short but it will help to read the show notes to remind yourself of the “10 things” after you listen, which you can find at prosperouscoach.com/114.

One of my VIP clients was researching other coaches in her niche last week. She came away from that shocked and concerned.

So many of the sites felt like ghost towns. A lack of current content or pages out of date seemed to signify the sites were abandoned.

Besides this one, three distinct fears crop up fast from researching other coach’s websites:

Is the coaching field too saturated?

Should I be doing things this way instead?

Should I even try to make it in coaching?

First, I assure you the coaching field is not too saturated, especially if you do things to stand out in the crowd, which you’ll hear me reinforce a lot.

And should you even try? Only you can answer that. You know your mind and heart. If this truly important to you, you’ll go after it with singular focus and true grit.

It may be hard to accept this. A lot of coaches do not make it — mostly because they lack determination. 

Building and sustaining a business is no small feat. So many coaches will spend all the time and money to learn coaching skills then do all the tasks to launch but let the whole thing go before they even cross the threshold. Or, they give it 6 months then give up.

Looking back I’m amazed that I stayed the course considering my many mistakes and some slow years. I’m stubborn that way. Stick-to-it-iveness pays off.

So yeah, there’s tremendous attrition. And that’s true for all startups, not just coaching startups.

I encourage YOU to think of this attrition dispassionately. What really matters is YOUR courage of conviction. Don’t give up. Every problem has a solution. Find your way and enjoy the journey because few things in life will teach you so many meaningful life changing things as growing your business.

What most coaches ultimately want is to become a coach in high demand. That golden place where clients find YOU and they are ready to enroll. It’s something you absolutely can achieve if you give it a chance.

I ’ve narrowed it down to 10 things all coaches need to become a coach in high demand:

Specialize on an Audience with a Specific Big Problem and Goal

The viability of your audience and niche is the cornerstone of your stability as a coach. If you stand out in the crowd and become well known by a unique and viable audience, you set yourself up for success. The more broad your audience or light your niche, the less likely you’ll gain traction.

Implement a Strong Content Strategy

Standing out matters here too. If your blogs, episodes, videos and social posts seem to be just like every other coach’s, those efforts won’t pay off. Content is still King and Queen!

Grow Unstoppable Determination

This is about character. Will you apply discipline? Will you believe in yourself and this calling even when there’s no proof you’ll make it?

Go here to find the other 8 things to help you become a coach in high demand.

This episode is super short. Show notes can be found at prosperouscoach.com/113.

Recently, I heard a group of new coaches discussing the challenges of coaching someone who is un-coachable. 

As one coach continued to describe the situation it came out that this was a conversation between friends not a coaching session. They hadn’t talked in years. The friend was having a rough time and the coach, wanting to help, tried to coach her.

Hearing that, took me back to an unpleasant memory from early in my years as a coach when I tried to coach a friend and it ended our friendship. At the time, I thought my friend wasn’t coachable either.

As a new coach, I was so eager to use my newly trained coaching skills that I attempted to coach nearly every one if I thought they needed it. 

And that’s the big mistake – believing that people NEED coaching. No one NEEDS coaching.

Now, I’m very careful to never step into the coaching role unless I’m directly asked to. And I’ve realized the arrogance behind the idea of thinking that people need me to coach them.

Coaching is a co-creative relationship. For it to be ethical, both the coach and the coachee must intentionally step into the container as equals. If the coachee isn’t a willing partner, coaching won’t happen.

That’s why someone might seem un-coachable.

Coaching is a professional relationship where the client invests in themselves. The most effective scenario is they hire you to coach them.

So, you might wondering now, aren’t there any circumstances where you can coach individuals who don’t ask to be coached? For me, the answer is no because I know the damage it can do.

Think about it … If you had a therapist friend, would you like it if they were using their skills on you without your permission? Would you like it if your clergy friend tried to preach to or counsel you without permission?

Not only would it be annoying, it would likely damage your relationship.

Read more about this here.

This episode is a surprise package. It was to me and hopefully it will be to you too. Find the full transcript at prosperouscoach.com/112.

The longer I’m in business for myself — and it’s been a couple of decades now — the more I realize that once you have the strategy in place, success at your coaching business is largely an inner game.

And that’s mostly true about all aspects of life.

In a few minutes I’m going to share something radical that could help you to fall bacj in love with your coaching business and your life. But first let me take you back 14 years to an inspiring moment in time.

In 2006, when I first launched Prosperous Coach, it was a membership program with a year’s worth of curriculum for new coaches. One of my members made a huge impression on me. And I realized that while I was teaching other coaches how to launch, one of my Prosperous Coach members became my teacher.

This isn’t unusual in coaching by the way. Our clients have a lot to teach us.

This woman, I’ll call her Reena, was incredible! Smart, funny and wise. She was warm and encouraging to everyone. She accepted everyone as they were and filled the Prosperous Coach community with love.

She also had amazing successes early on that were so inspiring and possibly a bit intimidating to other coaches. Clients were flocking to Reena. She was getting $10,000 coaching contracts.

And before you start imagining a statuesque woman in an expensive suit … Reena was, I think, 5 feet tall, boyish, wore no makeup and could care less about clothes. She was not memorable by her looks but by her presence.

She’d always say that Prosperous Coach made her prosperous. She was a walking billboard for me. And it made me blush because ultimately I knew that I deserved little credit for her coaching business success.

I say this not to be self-deprecating but because over time we became long distance friends. Beyond her graduating from my program she’d touch in from time to time saying how much I and Prosperous Coach meant to her. 

And, I learned that she had many businesses before her coaching business, ranging from farms to corporate think tanks and other diverse things — each one of them wildly successful.

She’d start a business, bring in a team, nurture that team with love, respect and encouragement then turn over responsibility and move on to her next adventure. She was a consummate coach helping other people’s stars rise. And she was beloved among her colleagues.

She never talked about money but I knew she was wealthy in every respect of the word. And she was the most FREE person I’d ever met.

She shared stories about enrolling a new coaching client while sitting next to someone on an airplane. Those clients would champion her, promoting her far and wide. She never marketed ever. 

Companies scrambled to hire her for keynote speaking gigs and she wasn’t even trying for that.

Years into our friendship I asked Reena how she made so much happen so effortlessly and she told me a harrowing and deeply personal story, which is why I’m not sharing her real name. She was abducted at the side of a road, dragged into a forest, beat and abused and left for dead.

She survived by crawling 15 miles out of the forest. And she started a new life unafraid and accepting life the way it came to her. 

She didn’t tell me this story as a victim. She told it as the moment of her life transformation. And what I learned from her is this … 

I make my success by the way I think, by how well I accept myself, my circumstances and other people.

Read about the "radical" concept here.

This episode is inspired by a smart question from one of my VIP clients.

So I’m going to reveal where expenses go for my coaching business. And while I’m at it, I’ll share common expense pitfalls for coaches and finance savvy mindset tips.

I know this might seem boring but earning well is not boring. Losing profit after all you work feels like a tragedy. Don’t go there.

Reading the show notes for this episode will be especially helpful because I’ll list the sources of my expenses but I’m not going to bore you by listing them out verbally. Find those complete show notes at prosperouscoach.com/111.

Bright Shiny Apps & Services Steal Your Coaching Profits
First let’s talk about not-so-smart uses of your money for your coaching business.

There are multitudes of ads for bright shiny apps and services coming at you in your inbox and on social media. And in a moment of scarcity thinking you might be tempted to buy one, and another, and then another.

You know, you might think something like “maybe THIS will make the difference in my business”. That can be a dangerous thought. 

Those seemingly little $10/month and $20/month expenses quickly add up to thousands of dollars annually that your earnings might not cover. So think smart and choose wisely.

It’s so tempting as a new coach to get services for online client portals, social media time saving apps, virtual assistants, bookkeepers and all sorts of extras that in the long run probably won’t add enough value to help you earn more.

Keep Your Business Low Labor and Low Overhead
Design your business to run lean. That doesn’t mean being cheap with your business. The old penny wise pound foolish adage applies.

Smart expenses are those that save you significant time so you can serve clients more efficiently and earn more. But it takes some trial and error to learn how to invest money only where it really counts.

Be strategic with this rule: Only invest in what you need right now not what you think you might need someday.

Regularly dump apps and services that aren’t helping you earn more. If you have a low-income month or year, it could partially be that you’re spending too freely.

Think twice about the fancy, expensive coaches portal or top of line email campaign service. You don’t need those.

Here’s a tip … if you’re 100% sure you like an app or service and it’s truly helping your bottom line then opt for annual payments for as many expenses as you can instead of monthly because you’ll save a lot.

Startup Expenses Are Higher
Investing in your business is not only necessary, but it’s a privilege. Think of expenses for useful services as a blessing that helps you thrive. Pay for them with gratitude.

For example, significant investment goes into coach training (the vocational skills side of your business) and for hiring a business mentor like me to help you get everything set up right the first time (which is the strategic side of your business).

Also I think it’s wise to invest in a good web designer who is also a coder to create a WordPress website for you. Doing your own site on Wix or Squarespace may come back to bite you now or later.

It is not unusual to spend $25,000 out of pocket before you earn much as a coach. So don’t let anyone make you feel bad about start up expenses. It’s normal for ALL businesses and entrepreneurs. But do choose wisely.

Read about expenses that aren't worth your while for your coaching business.

There are 6 services I use for my coaching business that I could not live without. Find the show notes at prosperouscoach.com/110

I keep my business super streamlined for expenses, which means I keep most of what I earn. I want you to have high profit and the best support too.

1. Custom Website on a WordPress Theme

There are loads of debates about which is best web platform ... the venerable WordPress or newer on the block Wix and Squarespace.

I always advise WordPress over the others for 3 main reasons:

• WordPress is self-hosted. Which means you own your website.
• It has unlimited customization capabilities.
• It gives you access to more 3rd party plugins.

Bottom line ... if your intention is to succeed in your business and be in it for the long run, WordPress beats the other platforms hands down because it can grow as your business grows.

WordPress templates can easily morph into a home for your blog or podcast, a membership site, an online store. You can add sales page builders, survey or forms builders, advanced analytics, SEO builders, Live Chat, and that's just the tip of the iceberg for WordPress plugins.

And if you’re thinking about having a coach training school or some other coach service create a website for you, don’t. They won’t be what I call Client Winning Websites. I have a whole series of podcasts about what makes for a client winning website. Check that out at prosperouscoach.com/website

Don’t go cheap with your website. This is one of a few places that you want invest in your success. I highly recommend that you have Nichole Betterley create your WordPress website for you. Nichole is simply the best web designer for coach’s websites I’ve ever met.

She’s a trained coach herself, a designer and coder. It’s extremely rare to find all of those skills in one person. You will LOVE her. All of my clients do and she’s also been my designer since 2006 helping my website grow as my business grows and morphs. We did episode #45 together called Customer Coaching Website Vs. DIY Template.

Hold off on creating a website until you are crystal clear about who is your target audience and what specific problem your help them solve with your coaching niche. If you’re not crystal clear about this, let’s have a Strategy Session and nail that down for you.

2. Aweber(affiliate link).

Sometimes called an Email Blast Company or Email Campaign Company, this service is all about getting your messages out to people who have trusted you by opting in on your website for your free offer, also called a lead magnet.

You email leads list is you community for your coaching business.

This type of service helps you:

• manage email addresses of people who have opted in for your free offer
• get your emails delivered in a way that meets regulations
• automates everything so you save time
• build trusting relationships with followers
• review statistics that help you improve

No doubt you've heard of Mail Chimp and Constant Contact, there are dozens more that get more and more technical and costly up the scale. 

For a startup coach I suggest a relatively inexpensive and easy to use service that has services you can grow into. My hands down favorite is Aweber(affiliate link).

Here's why I LOVE them:

Read about the other 4 excellent tools for coaches here.<

In episode 106 I talked about practices I use to help me manifest more ideal coaching clients and income. In this episode, let’s talk about the other side of that – how coaches cast a spell of failure on themselves. Find the show notes for this episode at prosperouscoach.com/109

A couple of caveats first … 

·      I believe that I can change my mind. I can change my beliefs. I can change the way I respond to things. It may take time and it’s doable with awareness.

·      I believe that success requires more than positive thinking. Positive thinking lightens the way. It helps me put the focus on what’s working and gratitude. Strategic action joins with positive thinking to help me attract what I want.

So with that in mind … imagine that money and success are simply a flow of energy. Visualize them as a river. A river wants to flow, right? And it will find the way of least resistance to keep flowing.

What can you do to encourage the flow of money and success towards you?

Consider listening to episode 104 and whole series on Money Mastery at prosperouscoach.com/money

What are you thinking, saying or doing that discourages that flow?

I can tell you how I used to discourage the flow of positive results in my coaching business. It came down to spending more time in fear and worry than in believing in myself and taking strategic action.

·      I saw other people’s successes as a threat to my own. 

·      I didn’t own my value shown by how I didn’t highly value my time. (I’m talking about fees here)

·      I feared success and kept myself small in my actions.

·      I paid more attention to my failures than my successes.

Sound familiar?

Scarcity thinking is normal for most human beings. Our culture teaches us to long for what we don’t have rather than receive and enjoy what we do. That builds a muscle for wanting instead of building a muscle for receiving and enjoying.

You can build a stronger muscle for receiving and gratitude. And by doing that you attract more of what you want that what you don’t want. 

Back to the energy metaphor, fear and worry about what you DON’T WANT to happen is like putting an obstacle right in the middle of that positive energy flow so that it simply goes around you. Picture a beaver dam in a river.

Here’s another way to illustrate this. Have you ever spent time with someone who is continuously self-deprecating or negative? How does it make you feel? Even if you love the person it becomes less and less good for you to be around them. Eventually you will find excuses not to connect.

Continuously is the watchword here. Everyone deserves the opportunity for an occasional rant. Everyone deserves to share real feelings with people they care about. Ideally, feeling those feelings and sharing them creates forward movement. It’s catharsis rather than habit.

In the past I cast a spell on myself by thinking negative thoughts over and over. Thoughts like: 

·      “Nothing is working.”

·      “It takes a long time to be successful.”

·      “No one wants my services.”

·      “No one will pay my fees.”

To read more of the Show Notes for this episode click here.<

This episode is part of my Money Mastery series. The whole series has been getting great response from listeners and this specific episode is be reprised as Listener’s Choice because it had a record number of listens.

Today’s episode is about a better way to package a coaching program and earn more than by the session or group of sessions. You can read the full transcript at prosperouscoach.com/108.

First, let’s talk about schools of thought. If you’re still in coach training some trainers may insist that coaching should not be programmed. In other words, you shouldn’t create an offer other than coaching sessions because it means that you take away the coach’s agenda.

If you’ve been listening to me for a while you know I believe that you can both serve a client’s agenda AND offer a specific program for a specific audience that solves their biggest problem and gets them where they want to go.

After 22 years of experience in my own coaching business and helping hundreds of coaches reach financial success in their businesses in my private VIP program, I know that selling coaching by the session only may keep you at poverty income levels.

So what is a better way that helps you earn well as a coach? I’ve been leading to this in the previous episodes so I hope you’ll listen to those too.

Create a Customized VIP Program

This is what I help all my clients create. It helps the coach feel confident they have something of value to offer. They learn to articulate what they do in meaningful terms and without the agony of trying to convince people to buy coaching.

Of course, like all successful aspects of a coaching business, creating this program has critical steps that go before.  

It begins by targeting a viable audience – one that’s full of seekers – people who do invest in their professional and personal growth.

1.     Next you uncover their biggest known problems and the ultimate outcome they want to achieve. That becomes your coaching niche.

2.     Then, you put together a signature program tailor made to that audience. Your program has a clear set of milestones that you’ll help your clients achieve on the way to that ultimate desired outcome. 

3.     Then, you learn how to articulate that to prospects in a way that’s benefit rich, supplying them with assurance of both tangible or concrete and intangible or emotional things they’d like to achieve with your help. That there is a structure in your program helps them to trust you and feel inspired to invest.

4.     Lastly, you need a strategy to attract clients, build trust and rapport, then gently send them through a conversion process, sometimes called a funnel, so they are motivated to have a Discovery Session with you, where you’ll enroll them.

Getting all of this done isn’t easy by yourself. It helps to have a guide like me help you with all the steps no matter how big or small.

For examples of VIP programs read here.

Before we dive in, I’ve got a FREE gift for you because it’s been a hard year and you deserve this …

Have you been wondering why your coaching business hasn’t taken off the way you hoped? 

There could be one or several things that need adjustment. Most likely it comes down to the wrong strategy or a lack of strategy somewhere.

My free gift to you is a downloadable assessment called Coaching Business Checkup. It will reveal any holes in your strategy so you can do everything more effectively and earn more in your business.

Get your copy of the FREE download at prosperouscoach.com/107.

Now let’s dig into today’s Listener’s Choice episode …

There’s plenty of information out there in training programs about how to coach. And there’s lots of attention out there on how to market and enroll clients plus the various tactics to earn well as a coach. 

But there’s little communicated to coaches about exactly how to serve your coaching clients well so they love the experience, come back for more and refer others to you. 

Client service goes beyond coaching skills but does stem from the way you market and engage your target audience from the get go.

Your coaching client’s satisfaction in you and your program begins before they hire you and continues after they finish with you.

If you’re following the guidelines I’ve given to you in episodes 62 through 77 in this Coaching Business Checkup series, then you’ll be strategically setting everything up for your coaching business in a way that guarantees satisfaction for ideal clients.

And if you put in place specific things to ensure that people you attract are ideal for you, it will increase your clients’ satisfaction.

Client service is another strategy point for creating a successful coaching business. And that’s why this is part of, and the LAST episode of, my Coaching Business Checkup series.

Do you ever feel nervous with your clients and have performance anxiety during sessions? If you’re a new coach, that’s totally normal. And you want to apply awareness to be sure it’s a feeling that diminishes with each client.

In my early days, I was so anxious about delivering value that I lost my personal power by inflating my role. And I ended up feeling drained instead of energized by sessions.

Over the years I’ve given this challenge my daily awareness and made a lot of shifts.

Happily, there are things you can do that both create value while also setting strong boundaries, which protect you and your clients. I’m about to share 7 main ways you can up your game in providing value.

This will keep your clients happy and coming back for more coaching with you. 

#1 Cultivate Happy Coaching Clients Before During and After

Happy clients start by being happy prospects. Ideally before they hire you, they already have a strong sense of your integrity, personality and exactly how you can help them. That’s why a content strategy is so important.

Read more about getting repeat clients here,

I’m going to share something deeply personal in this episode, which is super short. This is part of my Money Master series.

When I launched Prosperous Coach in 2006, I was a new student of prosperity. At that time I called myself a spiritual coach and the basis of my work with other coaches was about the power of prosperity thinking combined with strategic actions.

I created a membership program with 22 weeks of study called The Coaches Power Path.

I stumbled upon a book that made a big impression on me called True Prosperity by Yehuda Berg. The concepts in the book are based on the Kabbalah – the word literally means receive.

His idea is that fear of success is inverted ego. And that fear is not a wall keeping you from what you want but rather fear arises to pinpoint what you need to focus on.

Fast forward many years … now I practice a few practices for my business that I believe help me focus on what I want and to detach from outcome. They reduce stress and worry while setting strong intentions.

Am I a master at these practices? No. I’m still a student of prosperity continually working on removing mental blocks about my own success. It’s good work that takes time.

I’m not a believer that it’s wise to sit on a cushion all day and think prosperity into existence. My idea is that I EARN fulfillment through both strategic actions and beliefs.

To assist the process I’ve devised a few rituals. Carl Jung said something like … rituals are how the conscious mind communicates with the unconscious mind.

So at the risk of you thinking I’m a kook, I’ll now share 4 things I do ritualistically:

1. When I receive a notification that someone has subscribed to my podcast, I greet the person in my mind and send wishes that they:

·      get great value from listening to my podcast

·      are inspired to share my podcast with other coaches

·      rate and review my podcast positively, and 

·      invest in my services IF we are an ideal fit.

I end by saying “For the highest good of all and the free will of all. 

Read the other 3 steps to this manifestation ritual here.