154 - Common Concerns Coaches Have About Building a Business

Are you a coach who’s feeling discouraged after a not-so-successful program launch or a slow start to your business? If so, you're not alone! Building a successful coaching business is undoubtedly more challenging than most people anticipate. Even I was taken aback by the difficulties I faced, and I believe many others are in the same boat.

In this episode, we'll have an honest conversation about the realities of building a thriving coaching business. We'll discuss the four most common concerns or conversations that I have with people, including the illusion of instant success, struggles with social media, building momentum and attracting clients, and the phenomenon of buyer's regret. Tune in and be inspired to give yourself the grace and time to build your business because once you get to the other side, your business will be amazing!

Anything is possible if you believe in yourself and your business. Your belief will drive everything.

👉Sign-up for the FREE Authentic Selling Workshop for Life Coaches. Start selling in a way that’s comfortable for you and feel good about selling your services! 

👉 Check out my FREE Canva Workshop and learn how to create stunning graphics for your coaching business! 

👉 Watch the episode on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts! 

👉 Book a free Coaching Business Assessment with me

Don’t forget to connect with me on social media:Instagram | Facebook| Pinterest

Transcript

Preview: It does take time. It's not gonna happen overnight, right? You're gonna learn how to market yourself. You're gonna learn how to be on social media, and how would you know if you've never done it for your coaching business before? You are going to learn how to attract clients, how to engage with clients, and then you will start connecting with clients through consults, right? Clients won't just come, but you'll learn how to connect with clients. And look, you're gonna spend money in your business that doesn't produce what you want at that time, but it's all part of putting your business together.

Intro: Hello, I'm Debbie Shadid, the host of the Life Coach Business Building podcast. If you are ready to have more clients in your life coach business, then you're in the right spot. Each week I'm gonna teach you super simple strategies to grow your business without feeling overwhelmed and without spending money on paid ads. If that sounds interesting. Stick around and let's get started.

Welcome to the podcast today. I just wanna say Before we get started, how much I appreciate you. I am over 150 podcasts in, and I'm just so grateful that you're here. So grateful that you're taking your time to listen to me. I love hearing the feedback, that you guys are getting value that you're learning from the podcast. And again, thank you for subscribing, for leaving the reviews that you do. It just means so much to me. 

All right. Today we're gonna talk about the four common concerns that I hear from coaches building their business. Now, sometimes I hear this on a consultation call, sometimes it comes up with the coaches that I'm working with, but I think these are four common concerns that you might have too. And I wanna have an honest conversation about what it takes to build a business.

Here's the deal. You know this already, but building a business is probably much harder than you thought it would be. It was harder than I thought it would be, and I believe it's probably harder than most people think it will be.

Now, of course there are miracles. Of course, anything is possible. But today I'm gonna talk about the four things that I hear that are the most common concerns or conversations that I have with people. And I just wanna tell you that nothing has gone wrong if any one of these four things is something that you've been thinking about or something that has come up for you as well, all right.

The number one common concern is time. They have this idea that it should be going faster. They have this idea that it should happen like in an instant, practically. We lose perspective on what can happen for us because we have never done this before.

Right? You're new to the business and even if you've been in an online business like I have been for many years, when you start something new, right? You don't have a good perspective of how much time it's gonna take. So we often measure our business growth and success based on where somebody else is in the success journey.

And that's a bad idea, guys. We don't actually know how long it's really taken them to get there. We look at where they are now, and somehow we think we're going to be there too. You know, when a coach asks me, How fast can I get the work done that I do inside of the business building boutique, which I kind of call our foundational work.

That is like getting your branding set up or expanding your brand. A lot of you guys have your brand done. We're writing that initial marketing message, creating a website, and some of you have that done as well. But then we spend all this time working on marketing, really crafting their message, building an audience, finding their people, putting out into the world what it is you are offering, you know, figuring out pricing, how to sell, all those things.

They say, how much time is that gonna take me? And I say, well, my program time length is built around the time that I believe that it would take for you to complete the work. But here's the deal. I'm not in your brain and I just want you to take this idea and apply it to everything else you've been thinking about building your business, right?

You are comparing where somebody else is at and setting now the standard of where you think you should be, and your background is different than theirs, right? We don't know what personal doubts they had compared to what personal doubts you had. You bring all of that with you. We don't know how well you've been able to manage how you feel.

Maybe you're a rockstar at pushing through or you're an a line action taker like I am. I can do things faster because I can take action no matter what, really. A lot of people can't do that. But you have skills and talents that I don't have. Some of you guys say I don't know how to sell. Some of the rest of you have been selling your entire life, so that is never gonna be a problem.

But maybe you're gonna be hung up on the technology. There are so many moving pieces to building a business. Maybe you have a parent that needs to be taken care of. Maybe you're taking care of a grandparent. Maybe your partner gets the flu and you are like out of commission for a month as the whole household gets sick.

Life happens while you're building a business and it slows you down. You know, maybe you wanna take a vacation, who knows what happens, but we lose perspective on time. In our mind it still should be like, I should have already had a lot of clients. So all of this plays a role into how fast we work, right?

What kind of knowledge and experience you bring to your business. I always say if you've already had another business, you will grow your coaching business faster because you have an unfair advantage because you've already been in business. So, my dear friend, just give yourself some time. Tell your family, look, this is gonna take time.

I am building a business that is like for the rest of my life, like I'm gonna be doing this forever and it's not gonna happen overnight. Maybe I thought, and maybe I told you that I was gonna make all kinds of money really fast, but guess what? I'm wrong. Now I know what I didn't know that it was gonna take, and so I need the time and space to be able to build my business without the pressure.

I hear often that partners are saying to coaching clients of mine or to people I've had conversations with on consults that like, this better be the last thing you spend money on, or you better get clients, you know, when is this ever gonna happen? And oh my goodness, you know? I understand That's very difficult pressure and you know, I guess it's unfair pressure. 

On the other hand, I know in my case, I actually kept telling my husband exactly how amazing it was going to be and how much money I was gonna make, and it was way beyond what was probably possible for me in the beginning, but I didn't know any better. But I never went and straightened him out on that.

I never went and said like, oh wow. Let me just tell you I was way off, like the perception I had about what those people were doing. So maybe that's a conversation that you need to have with your partner too. Maybe you need to tell your friends like, Hey guys, look, quit asking me about how many clients I have.

I'm building a business that's gonna be for a lifetime, that will eventually generate me hundreds of thousands of dollars, and this takes time. Building a business is just like building a home or building any kind of other thing that there is, right? Who knows what it is. It is brick by brick, right? We lay the foundation, we put up the boards, like all the things that go into it. You have to put a roof on the structure. You can imagine any way you want to, but it takes time.

All right. Number two. The second thing that I hear about is like social media. I'm just stuck on it or I've posted and nothing has happened. -And let me just tell you, you've never had to write about your coaching business before, ever.

So how could you be really good at it to begin with? Well, you're probably not. It's probably gonna take some time. And I understand that You don't realize that that was going to be the case. But my friend, you bought coaching from somebody who probably has spent all kinds of time crafting a message. They have spent all kinds of time really learning how to speak to you clearly and what looks effortless in the post that you got, or from the workshop that you saw of mine or from the email you read, has taken time for me to get to that point where you now say like, wow, I saw your thing in, in an instant. I was ready to work with you. Just keep that in mind, the coaching that you bought we've been working at this a very long time to get there.

So it wasn't just one post that they worked on and kind of threw out there. It was tons of things that they did with no response. Many things that I did with no response. It was weeks and weeks without consults. It was weeks without clients, right? There's a lot that goes into that. And then guess what? It finally starts to work.

But that only happens if you keep going. It takes time to figure out your message and to help somebody have the decision to buy from you. It takes time. Many of the women that I work with, we work on their copy. And what's so interesting about that is we'll start with one piece of marketing copy, and it's kind of the softer approach because they don't feel like they can sort of step into the fullness confidently of the kind of coach that they really are.

And their message grows. It becomes stronger and firmer as their confidence about their ability to coach grows. And that message that is more confident will actually create more connection with clients, so you get stronger in the way that you show up. And that kind of confidence also builds your personal confidence so you can talk to more people, right?

You sound more confident, you're more comfortable talking to more people because you know what you're talking about. So you can see how probably if you've been out there marketing, maybe if you're honest with yourself, you're actually kind of hiding because you might actually have this idea like, oh geez, if I do get a bunch of clients, then what do I do?

Like it sounds fun, but you're thinking, well, can I actually take care of all those people? So maybe your marketing isn't even really that strong, and I get that like, Sometimes you don't even see that you weren't coming on that strong until you've gotten to that place where you have this new strong certainty and confidence and clarity in your marketing, in your coaching, and then you're like, wow, I can see how, no wonder nobody responded to those posts or to those emails or to that workshop because really, I wasn't showing up with a very strong sort of message and strong delivery in what I was offering. And that's okay, you guys. Just own it. I mean, seriously, it just takes time. And that's okay. When you do this, you'll eventually become a better coach, a better salesperson, a better marketer, and then guess what? You will begin to be more magnetic in all the things that you do.

The third thing that I hear very often from clients is that they have the idea that clients are not coming. And first of all, let me just say, clients just don't come. They just don't appear. Clients will appear when you have done what you need to do to get them to engage with you, and that doesn't happen in the beginning.

There is so much competition out there. I heard somebody say the other day that there were 60 million social media posts a day, 60 million social media posts in the world. So look, you're one social media post, or you're two or three, and I'm not laughing. I'm laughing with you. We're all in the same place.

It just takes time. There is somebody who wants to buy your coaching today. I absolutely believe that. And I absolutely know that in one post, in one conversation, in your first conversation, you could sell coaching for sure, and it happens. But where most of you are trying to get to, like as fully booked, it just takes time.

So I want you to think about how long it would take to attract clients. Now you're gonna have to do your best mindset work to stay positive so that you can kind of write more inspired messages so that you can put the magic into your marketing so that one day you will begin to see the results of your efforts.

So I feel so sorry honestly for so many new coaches because they've only like been shown the end result and that's really what they see. And I think it's what our brain, I don't know, kind of brings to us. We sort of filter out all the rest and we just focus on the fact that this person did this one workshop and it converted into this one thing.

You know, you go and you watch some big training from some, somebody who's made millions of dollars, and all you're fixed on is that they have this one opt-in that created this many leaves that turned into this much revenue. That is their story over there. It's not your story today, and that's okay. Let's just start where we are. Just know that you'll build momentum and the compound effect takes place and it will begin to grow. 

All right. The fourth common thing that I hear, a concern that people have is they have buyers regret. I've been there too. Here's the deal. Everyone that I talked to has bought coaching, spent money on templates, on things, on courses that they thought were going to be the right thing, and then as it turned out, it didn't deliver what they had hoped that it would.

And I'll just tell you there are several reasons for that. And first, is that marketing is, you know, made to attract everyone. Made to attract a particular person, and you were attracted to that message. whoever sold you that coaching, crafted that message to make themselves look more amazing and I love that too, you guys.

Look, I mean, that's what I help you do too when you work with me. But I always wanna make sure that whatever you are crafting is anchored in truth. And the thing is, on the internet, in this wide world of the internet, sometimes the truth isn't exactly really true. We can't go and see exactly, does it look like that person really made a million dollars?

And I'll just tell you. Sometimes I watch videos or I go to workshops and I hear people saying how much they did on a launch and how much money they've made in their business. And I look at them and kind of how they're presenting themselves, maybe I'm judgmental, but I look at all that. I look at their background, and I think this is really interesting because it doesn't look like a person who's made millions.

So I don't know, you could make millions, but it could cost you a million dollars in Facebook advertising, you know, so what they made in the end, I don't know, but I'm just saying there are lots of stories that can be put out there that we don't actually know are true. So what I wanna say to you is craft a message that is true, but that actually shows you in the best light.

So I had a client tell me, look, I have only coached a hundred hours. And I said, hold on, you just used the word only. And I wanna say to you, why can't you say, you know what, I've coached a hundred hours? And she said, well, I haven't been paid for it. And I said, all right, did you coach a hundred hours? And she said, yes. And I said, okay. That is an honest statement that you can say with integrity. And you can say, in your marketing, I've coached a hundred hours already. Do you see how different that is? So I know there are some things that you can say about yourself that will present you in a way with integrity that will attract people.

Unfortunately, as I said, oftentimes the coaching that you have bought from other people, they have crafted a message to attract you, and it's not a hundred percent, uh, maybe accurate. So online you're gonna come across many stories that are hard to believe, and you know what your mama probably said, which is, if it sounds too good to be true, it's probably too good to be true. So, you know, if it's not adding up, then I would move on. 

All right. It is possible, of course, to do anything magical online. The second thing that I wanna mention about this regret that you have over buying things is, Sometimes you probably only heard what you wanted to be hearing that was true about the offer.

Maybe somebody laid out for you what it was really gonna take, and you bought the coaching and you decided that you would add a little bit to that in your mind of what was said. So my marketing copy doesn't actually say how much you're gonna make when you work with me. It says that I'm gonna help you build a business.

It says I'm gonna help you learn how to attract clients. I do want you selling coaching while we work together. I want you launching programs. I want you building your business. I didn't say we're gonna make a hundred thousand dollars, but oftentimes, Somebody will say, I didn't make the money that we talked about.

And I'm like, now wait a minute. We didn't talk about that. We talked about you doing X, Y, and Z. And it's like interesting. So just notice for yourself, be honest with yourself. The coaching that you bought, that you regret now you feel like was not for you, were you being honest about? What they said, what you actually read, and now what you have made that to mean.

Right. Did you add something to that story thinking that you should have gotten something that they didn't actually sell you? I always tell people when they say, I wanna make a hundred thousand dollars this year. I say, you know what? I want you to make a hundred thousand dollars too, but let's not count on it.

let's count on making a hundred thousand dollars next year, right. This year, give me a year. I don't work with you for a year, but give me a year to build your business. Give yourself a year to learn how to be in business. Give yourself a year to find your people, to market your business, to make mistakes, to learn how to sell, all of the things. Can you make a hundred thousand dollars in the second year? Absolutely. But give yourself the time and space to be able to brick by brick, build your business.

The third thing about buying the wrong programs is, is that sometimes you buy the wrong things just innocently because you didn't know any better. So maybe you have bought a sales program on how to sell your coaching, and you got in there and it was like, Well, that didn't work because I need to know how to find the people, or I don't even know what my niche is, or I don't even know what to say when I go to sell somebody.

Like they gave me the formula for selling, but I don't actually know anything about what I'm offering, or I haven't decided on my niche. So sometimes in this big world of buying programs and education to build your coaching business, sometimes you buy things that with best of intentions are actually going to be something you need to know, but sometimes it's not in the right order because again, you just don't know what you don't know.

Like you never thought about the fact that you would have to be able to explain your coaching in a really compelling way to somebody like to get them to have a consult with you. You never thought about the fact that in order for them to have a consult with you, you would have to grow a list or meet people at networking events or get them to opt into your product and then be able to deliver it via email.

Like there's lots of pieces that you're not thinking about. So it's like, well, that sales program didn't work. Well, that's probably not true. It probably will work, but you didn't know that you needed all the other things in place first. So I just wanna say, sometimes what you've bought is not wrong. You just weren't ready for it, and you didn't know that until you were there. So, give yourself grace. All of this is part of growing a business. It's all part of what it takes to be a business owner. You have to learn how to be in business.

I wanna wrap this up by saying anything is possible. You could create anything you want and your belief is going to drive everything. And this is why I just wanna say, if you believe that you'll have a business and if you give yourself the time and space to be able to learn what you need to learn and to be able to put it into a consistent action, it will come together. The coaches who eventually make it, it's because they stuck with it, you guys. It's because they held onto the belief that they knew they were gonna be able to do it.

They knew they were meant to do it, and they didn't beat themselves up for not having, you know, a $20,000 launch on their first program launch, or on their first month not being fully booked or on their first month, not having a consultation that they wanted to. They gave themselves grace because they said, you know what? This is all part of, I guess, what I have to learn. I didn't realize that I wouldn't have consults as soon as I got certified, but I do now, and so I just have to figure out how to do that. So take that perspective, you guys. Give yourself the grace. 

I hope that this helps you today because I'm always so sad when I hear the same things. Basically people are giving themselves a hard time over things that they didn't really know to be true. So, It does take time. It's not gonna happen overnight, right? You're gonna learn how to market yourself. You're gonna learn how to be on social media, and how would you know if you've never done it for your coaching business before?

You are going to learn how to attract clients, how to engage in clients, and then you will start connecting with clients through consults, right? Clients won't just come, but you'll learn how to connect with clients. And look, you're gonna spend money in your business that doesn't produce what you want at that time, but it's all part of putting your business together.

All right. I hope this was helpful to you. I wanna give you the best truthful information that I can. I wanna inspire you to give yourself the grace, to give yourself the time to build a business. And I wanna tell you when you get to the other side of that work and when you've got your business built, my friend, it's going to be amazing, right? And what you do, it just takes off. So give yourself the time and grace. All right, until next week, have an amazing one. Talk to you very soon. Bye-bye.

Outro: Okay, ladies, that is it for today. Before we go, I want to invite you to head over to debbieshadid.com. I have this incredible Canva training, specifically designed for life coaches where I'm gonna teach you how to use Canva to create beautiful graphics to market your life coaching. All right. Have an amazing week.

I'll talk to you very soon. Bye bye.