EP 362 - Why Successful Coaches Don't Show You This
Running a coaching business is rarely as polished as it looks on social media. The day-to-day of what it actually takes to build a coaching business in 2026 is much different than what you may think.
I always wondered why nobody would just show you what a successful coaching business actually looks like. The exhaustion, the highs, the fear, the deep satisfaction. So at the end of one long, rewarding day, with no notes and no plan, I decided to show you mine.
If you're new to my channel, my name is Debbie Shadid. I'm a Business Growth and Life Coach and the founder of the Business Building Boutique. For over two decades, I've helped women learn how to become coaches, get clients, grow their businesses, and create meaningful income doing work they love.
This one's a little different. It's honest, unscripted, and it's the real picture of what it takes to build something meaningful in the second half of your life.
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Watch the video with Candas Barnes here: https://youtu.be/XfDqBbsMZGQ
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Transcript
Welcome, this is me. It's the end of a really, really long, rewarding day. I have no notes, no preparation. I'm just here to tell you what it actually looks like to have a coaching business. The exhaustion that you feel, all the amazing highs, the challenges that you have. If you want to know what that's all about, then stick around. I remember thinking like, " What is it really like to have a successful coaching business and why won't people just show it?" So here I am. I'm showing it to you. Today and yesterday have been the most rewarding days and also the most tiring days and some challenges to it. Yesterday I had two group coaching calls. Today I've had two calls. But here's the incredible thing. The women that I work with, they are actually doing the work. They're actually showing up. We don't just learn. They're doing it and everybody right now is preparing for our Design Live Thrive Summit. So they're hosting workshops and they're right in the middle of it and I always say like you don't actually know what questions you have until you start building a business. So if you're over here, learning on YouTube about what to do and how to do it, until you apply it, put it into real practice, you really don't have questions. you really don't know how it's gonna be and let me say you also don't really know what you're gonna face. You don't have any idea about the emotions that are gonna come up. What you will find out is that there's some challenges. You're gonna find out that you kinda wanna hide. We do mindset coaching along with all of the how-to coaching, so I welcome all of the honesty that comes with it. Like, you know, I'm feel like I wanna put this off. I can see myself not wanting to do it. Can you relate to that? I mean, honestly, when you really tell the truth about how you're feeling, do you sometimes feel like, " Okay, I don't really wanna do this. While I'm saying I want to do it, I don't really wanna do it"? Yeah, that's the truth. So this is what happens when you build a business. You really have to face fear. I mean, real fear. It really takes courage to build a coaching business. Courage. Like bravery is the number one skill. You thought it was tech or being a good coach, it's actually bravery. Putting yourself out there and opening yourself up to criticism, that is actually the thing that takes courage. And on the other side of that, oh my goodness, the satisfaction that comes from doing it and the joy and the pride, really the pride that I see people having after they create something in their business and after they land their first clients, it's so incredible. We had a client today that was talking about working full-time and having two coaching clients, and she was like,"I feel like I can't do anything else. Like I, I never imagined I would feel this way. I have a business that's actually working, and now I don't really know what to do." She's like, I kind of feel like I reached my goal." And I know you might be on the other side saying, "Well, who's gonna reach their goal with two clients?" Well, let me tell you, you don't know that until you get there. And for this particular client, working full-time, managing her life, and having two clients, and then working on social media and all that, that is a real business. And she was saying like, you know,"I feel like I'm having trouble with the social media. Like how do I stay consistent?" That is the ins and outs that we all face, including me. It is late, I haven't gone on my walk, and I'm gonna film three TikTok videos because I am in the middle of learning TikTok. This is not something that I teach. I'm in this incredible program, and I'm gonna leave an affiliate link for it because I'm telling you what, it is the most unbelievable social media program I've ever done. It's called Growth House. I would invite you to join me on the journey right now. But that's what I do too. I coach, I teach, and I learn, and I do my own business, and I have all the same feelings that you do too. So while you're working on your business, you're also working on the mindset drama that comes up, and so am I. So every morning, I start my day by reading a devotional, by reading something about mindset. I am reading a really great book about money mindset right now and about what's possible for you. I do that to really inspire myself, and then I work on gratitude. I write down 10 things I'm grateful for, bare minimum. Then I review my day of what's ahead of me, and I decide intentionally what I wanna think about what I have ahead for the day. So today I did that, then I got dressed. I rushed up here to my office because I also had a workshop that I was hosting. And so before I got into my coaching calls today, I reviewed the whole workshop. I went slide by slide. So often people are surprised when I say that I do that. Like, if you are a professional at this, and you've been hosting all these workshops, and you're on YouTube and you're doing all this stuff, why would you have to practice the thing that you're doing, right? The workshop that you're doing, why do you have to practice this? Well, because that's the way I roll. Maybe you don't need to practice, but I'm gonna bet that you will. So it's reviewing it so it's fresh to me because I wanna show up as my best. So then I hosted our group mindset coaching call. I talked about all the ways that we buffer and avoid doing the hard work, and I, I called myself out on something that I've been doing. I've been avoiding doing these TikTok videos that I'm talking about. And so I have to join in and say," Look, this is how it shows up for me. This is what it looks like for me, and this is the way that I overcome it." So I was teaching about mindset. We followed that with our group coaching call, where we were working through the challenges that our coaches were facing and talking about the victories that they are having. It is so much fun to really be a coach with clients. You have no idea. Maybe you've had that already, but if you haven't, you have no idea how good it feels. We had a client who said, "I actually feel like a CEO now, like I have a real coaching company now because I'm facing challenges. Like, I'm trying to figure out how do I get this person closed, and I just closed this deal with somebody else, and I need to onboard her, and I have three kids. How do I manage all that?" That's what a CEO does. These are challenges that you've been hoping and praying for, and I'm telling you what, it is so fun to have to face them. So that's what we do in our coaching and so I had two coaching calls, group coaching calls, and then I followed that with a workshop where I had a group of women where I talked about building your coaching business, and I shared about our new 30-day program. It's 30 Days to Your First Client. I've been working on that too, right? The working on the things in your business never ends. And then I got off, and I had this private call with somebody. I do not do private coaching. I do group coaching, but if a client needs some support and I can see somebody struggling, then I reach out to them and I'm like, "Listen, let's have a call." That was the most rewarding call. That's actually what prompted me to get on here and tell you about my day. Because if you're struggling to get your business started and if you're tangled up in the tech and, you know, you don't wanna put yourself out there and it feels hard to say you're great, right? Which you have to do as a coach, and it feels hard to have the conversations with people about your coaching. I'm just gonna tell you, it is so worth it because this call that I had today with this person who was struggling, we spent two hours on a call. We worked through all of her challenges, and she said, " This call was life-changing," and I felt the same way. That's why I'm here. I wanna tell you about this. I wanna encourage you to do the work. This is so incredibly rewarding, and I know that you're meant for this. So after we wrapped up that call, I did a few more, you know, emails back and forth to people, and then I had my own coaching call where I was learning about TikTok. Please use the affiliate link in the comments. This is Growth House, is what it's called. I actually interviewed Candas, who is the person who brought me into the program. She reached over a million followers on TikTok and Instagram and several other places in a matter of 60 days, and I am working on doing this as well. This program is incredible. So listen to this episode with Candas if you haven't already. I will link that here, too. She's incredible. So I did my own coaching call. I followed that up with an inspired post that I did on Substack, and then I'm like, "Wait, I've got to show up and tell you what it's like to really have a day as a coach with a busy business and a busy life." Because you know what else I'm doing? I'm also taking care of grandkids. I'm also helping support my mother-in-law, and I'm so grateful for that. But that's what we're all doing. We're all trying to figure out how to do that, how to make a difference, how to do something for ourselves, and how to have a business that makes money. All of that. You work through it every single day. And it is messy, right? It is messy. And sometimes it's not exactly like you want it, and then sometimes the days are so amazing like today, where I could just cry. It's such a privilege to do this. And I just wanna say thank you for being here. If you're still here listening to me talk, thank you for being here and letting me serve you, because that really matters to me. Thank you for letting me teach you, and I hope inspire you about being a coach. Thank you for letting me be your guide. honestly. Thank you so much for everything. Subscribe. Let's stay connected. This is just me telling you about what it really looks like, and I hope I've inspired you to do it tired, to do it scared, to do it when you're overwhelmed, and to do it even when you don't have the results that you want, because someday you have a business like this. Someday you have this. And the reward, I don't even know how you can measure it. Yeah, it's a financial reward. It's a freedom reward. But there is a satisfaction that is so deep you can't explain it. So there you go, my friend. I love you so much. Seriously, I don't know you, but I love you because you're listening to me. That you've given me this opportunity to do the work that is so meaningful to me. And look, you get to do the same thing with somebody else. All right, my dear. Thank you so much again. Have a beautiful day and a beautiful week. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye.
