180 - Tips to Overcome Common Business Mindset Traps for Life Coaches

Can I be honest with you? As you grow your coaching business, you're going to encounter A LOT of mindset drama. You're going to experience some setbacks that may keep you stuck. 

But here's the truth— every coach encounters these hurdles! The best part? Overcoming them is absolutely possible.

In this episode, we’ll discover how to conquer the common mindset traps in your business-building journey. Learn how to better manage Imposter Syndrome, overcome overwhelm, conquer fears, money drama, and limiting beliefs, and how to make things easier as you grow your business.

Join the conversation to discover the right actions, the easy steps, and the simplest strategies to take in your business, and clear the path for you to create success!

👉 Create a profitable business that looks good and sets you up to be respected through the Fast Track Business Building Boutique Program 

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

If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and forward this to a coach who is building and growing their coaching business. CLICK HERE TO LEAVE A REVIEW

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

Transcript

Preview: There is a risk and a chance when you launch your business that you might fail. But what I can tell you for sure is that you have a lot of control over that. You have the ability to be able to go out and do differently over and over and over again. You have the ability to not quit until you have success in your business.

So to me, failure is not an option. And when you hear that, you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not for you, Debbie. But do you see what I'm saying? Fear of failing is fixed by you not stopping.

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 going to teach you super simple strategies to grow your business without feeling overwhelmed and without spending money on paid ads.

Now, if that sounds interesting, stick around and let's get started.

In today's podcast, I'm going to talk about mindset, your business building mindset. Now you guys know that I'm the action coach and inside the business building boutique, we not only have an action coach, that is me telling you the strategies. But we also have a business mindset coach. What I know for sure is that you need to take consistent action to build your business, that you're going to encounter some mindset drama.

You're going to experience some mindset setbacks that are going to keep you stuck in your business. So, I want to talk to you about a few of the common mindset roadblocks that really slow people down. These are some of the common things that we coach people through as they are building their business.

Let's talk first about imposter syndrome. Have you had it? Have you experienced it yourself? I want to tell you there are three ways to overcome or to better manage imposter syndrome. The first thing is to pick a topic that you know so well. There's 2 coaches that I experience who talk about imposter syndrome.

The first coach is a coach who has decided that coaching is a good career and that they've heard that life coaches make lots of money and they decide to choose coaching as their next career and they pick a niche that they think is going to be the profitable niche. Those coaches have not experienced transformation typically in the topic that they want to coach on.

They were just interested in a topic and decided, hey, I'll be a coach in that topic. What happens to those ladies is. They find out that they don't actually know it firsthand, that they can't speak with that empathy as if I know what you're experiencing, because I've been there too. That is when imposter syndrome shows up for them.

They feel like, do I really know how my client feels? So, if that is you, and you've picked coaching as your career, and you have picked a niche that you don't feel like you. Thoroughly understand. And I want to ask you to pick a different niche, think about something that you've had a transformation in your own life on and then pick that niche so that you know it well enough to be able to help people and to be able to show up with empathy.

The 2nd coach who experiences imposter syndrome is the coach who is working in a niche and is talking about a topic that she knows. So, well, right? That's the ideal situation is that you, number 1, pick a niche. That you know, that you have had a transformation on the reason why I want you to do this is that I want you to teach around this topic and I want you to know it so well that you can pair it with the certification information that you've gained or the knowledge that you have about coaching.

And then you can teach it without stressing. You can write an email about a story that you have without worrying about it. Thank you. You can be in the middle of a workshop and you don't have to read a script because you know this niche because you are in this niche. Now, the way that imposter syndrome shows up for that person is just a natural response from your permanent brain who is just saying to you like, Hey, you're putting yourself out there for the first time.

This is dangerous. And you might hear a whisper of, are you really qualified to do that? But I promise you, if you have experience in this niche yourself. If you've had transformation and if you know about coaching, then you are qualified to teach on this topic and to coach on this top. The second part of being able to better manage imposter syndrome is you want to make sure that you are acting as your authentic self.

So I want you to be your future self. I talk about that a lot.

I think as coaches, we really understand that when I help the ladies in the business building boutique, build their personal brand identity. I talk about you stepping into your future self. And building your business from that place, but your future self does not look like it. Me, your future self looks like you, right? It looks like the best version of you. Your future self does not look like that person that you think you want to be like on Instagram. Your future self looks like you. So if you are feeling imposter syndrome, one thing that you might check into is that if you are trying to be someone you're not. Then that probably has you feeling like you're being an imposter. 

All right. Third way. I want you to manage imposter syndrome by thinking about it as something completely normal. You should expect it to come up. This is just a normal response. I mentioned that already that your primitive brain is going to tell you, Hey, you're not good at this.

Hey, people are not going to believe you. Hey, you don't know what you're talking about. Think about all the different things. That you hear that backtalk that you hear, just expect it to be there and when you expect it to be there, you will not have the same type of resistance against it. So you're not doing anything wrong.

If it comes up, the way that you manage it is you acknowledge it and you say, this is interesting. I hear you, but guess what? I know what I'm talking about and I'm not an imposter. So that is the way that you manage your imposter syndrome. All right, let me recap it again. Number one, pick a niche and a topic that you know so well.

Number two, be your authentic self. Do not try to emulate anyone else. And number three, just expect it to be normal. All right. 

Let's talk about overwhelm. Let me tell you what, of course, overwhelm is a common business mindset trap. If I was to ask you, how are you on any given day? Many coaches say, oh my gosh, I'm so overwhelmed.

I'm so stressed. I'm going to ask you, do you say that? Chances are you do, because I think that's a normal human response to how are you, especially as women, we are doing so many things. We're managing family. Some of us are caring for our parents, our grandchildren, and our children. Right some of you guys work full time and you're building a business and you're taking care of all the household responsibilities.

And you're building a business, so, of course, you're going to experience overwhelm again. Let me just say, it's totally normal. If you feel that and just set yourself down and say, all right, let's get the facts straight here. What am I overwhelmed about? What's the reality of my situation? I kind of like to say, what is the fire that I need to put out next and are all of the other things that I'm thinking about really that big of a fire?

Probably not. All right. 

So what I want you to do when you feel overwhelmed is just to sit down and think of the next best thing in your business that you need to do. Consider the obligations and responsibilities that you have. And look and see how much time you have and just do the next 1 thing inside the business building boutique. We have a 12 step process to get you to where you have a solid business foundation built. You know how to market, you're talking to potential clients, your coaching clients. Each one of those steps builds on the other. So when clients say to me, oh my gosh, I'm so overwhelmed. I say, look, we're doing one step at a time, so that's what I want you to do for yourself too. I want you to think about how you can show up and end overwhelm when it comes up today, tomorrow, and the next day.

Another mindset trap is limiting beliefs. How often do you believe that this isn't gonna work? That secret little whisper that says, this ain't going to work for you, it might work for them, but it's not working for you.

Do you guys hear that? That's a limiting belief. Maybe you say to yourself, like, I can't coach those people on everything. Guess what? Let me just tell you, you don't have to coach people on everything. That's not necessary. You only coach people on the things that you feel qualified to coach them on. And guess what?

If you get on a coaching call and somebody brings you a topic, you're not comfortable with, you know what you do, you say, now, listen, I am going to make a note of this, but this is not something that I feel comfortable talking with you about this week. Let me do some research. Let me think this through. We can talk about it next week, or let me refer you to somebody else.

Yes, you guys, you hold the power to tell people I can't coach you on that. So, when that limiting belief comes up, I can't coach on everything. Of course, you can't. None of us can and again, if you are working within a niche that you really know, well, I suspect you can. The other thing that I want to mention is that you might consider what coaching really is.

I think that some clients will have results from being able to talk if you sit on the other side and you listen and you give them space to unload. Sometimes I think that that creates a result in itself. A person feels hurt. So think about if you find yourself in a place where you're thinking, like, oh, I don't know how to coach on that.

Think about some other things that you might be able to consider number 1, again, that you might be giving the person exactly what they need, which is the space to be heard. Number 2, you can tell them to wait. Number 3, you could do some research and refer them to somebody else. What about that limiting belief that you're not ready?

What is ready? How do you ever get ready? I don't know. I can tell you that so many of you guys spend so much time doing pure coaching and that's really fantastic. But the way that you really get ready is just by putting yourself out there and doing coaching. Yeah, you really get ready when it's really people that you don't know. So I would recommend that you give free coaching to people that you don't know. That's a way to build your business.

The last limiting belief that I want to talk about is money. If you have this thought that you do not want to ask people for money, my dear, you better get that thought corrected. Because money makes the world go round.

And you are exchanging a service for money, right? They don't go to the doctor for free. They don't go to buy something in store for free. You are a service provider. And you don't give things away for free either. So I really want you to think through that. What I know for sure is that over the years when I have given clients something for free because I thought, oh my gosh, I feel so sorry for them.

I know I can help them. I want to help them. You know what happens? They don't actually do the work. It's so interesting. I'll get the whole story from him about how desperate they are to make a change. And I feel so good about offering them something free. And then they don't show up and do the work, or I'll say, you can have access to all of my content, all of it step by step.

This will get you to build your business. They won't even go in and watch 1 single training. So, free doesn't work in coaching you guys. Yes, I mentioned having free individual coaching sessions as a way for people to experience coaching kind of like a complimentary coaching session. But when you just give them free coaching, a set of coaching sessions, or walk them through your program for free, you really don't get the results that you want.

The next limiting belief that I want to talk about is fear. And again, let's just try to normalize this. Let's talk about the fears that you have. And let's just say, of course you feel fear. Can you see the common theme here? Everything that you're experiencing as a mindset trap, I think is actually perfectly normal.

You might think it's a big deal and you might spend some time getting coached on it, getting yourself worked through it. You might be journaling about it, but look. What if it was just normal you said, that's interesting. All right. So, of course, you're going to feel embarrassed. You have the fear of feeling embarrassed on social media.

You have this fear of messing up. If the fear of not knowing what to say, if the fear of the way that you look, you have the fear of being judged. Right? I was thinking today when I got on the podcast, I've had this cold and I completely lost my voice. And so I know my voice is kind of rough today and I was like, Oh, I don't know if I should do it.

But you know what I would rather do, I would rather show up with a raspy voice and talk to you guys about the mindset traps that I know you need to solve. I would rather do that than worry about my voice. So what if you consider that not everyone is paying that close attention to you? Like many of you guys listening to this podcast, maybe you didn't notice my voice.

Until I brought it to your attention, it's so interesting because oftentimes the things that we look at and critique about ourselves, nobody else notices. And also, I just want to tell you, while you are new to business. That 1st post that you do when you finally get your website up, guess what I need to break the bad news, but nobody's coming to it.

Nobody's looking at it. So it's okay. Because as you do more of those, and you finally start to build up some momentum and people start to look, you get better at that point. All right. 1 of the ways that you can manage fear is to just let yourself be embarrassed. Like take some time and kind of meditate on the feeling of embarrassment.

What does that actually feel like? What does it feel like in your body? Imagine it, live through it. And I promise you that you're going to find out it's uncomfortable, but it's not that bad. That's one of the ways that you can sort of desensitize the fear that you're having. What other fears come up that fear of failing?

It's legitimate. You guys, there is a risk and a chance when you launch your business that you might fail. But what I can tell you for sure is that you have a lot of control over that and you have the ability to be able to go out and do differently over and over and over again. You have the ability to not quit until you have success in your business.

So to me, failure is not an option. And when you hear that, you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not for you, Debbie. But do you see what I'm saying? Fear of failing is fixed by you not stopping, by you keeping on the track of building your business until it's built. How about fear of being found out as if you're hiding something?

Are you hiding anything? If you are, I would just put it out there. If you are hiding something that's nobody's business, I wouldn't worry about it. All right, so if you're worried about being found out, then just tell people what it is. If it's nobody else's business, then don't worry about it. All right. If you are coaching within your niche, a lot of that fear of being found out is not going to come up.

How about fear of being criticized? Again, I talked about that slightly. Who cares what somebody thinks? About your hair, your glasses, your lipstick, who cares? I always think it's interesting when somebody has criticism for me, and it happens. Wouldn't say regularly, but it does happen. I always think, oh, my gosh, I kind of feel sorry for that person that they have so much time on their hands that they actually have time to write me an email back.

To tell me what's wrong, or I think, gosh, I feel sorry for that person because they have so much anger that they had to take it out in an email to me. So that's what I think about criticism, right? It's constructive. That's great. All right, how about fear of social media messages that you don't want to receive?

People will say to me, I don't want to do social media because I get all of the people who are selling me. And I say, yeah, that's part of being on social media. And those people, and I really mean this, you guys, those people are just trying to make a living too. They're just copying and pasting messages into people's DMS.

And yes, maybe they're coming back 3 or 4 times. But who cares? Right? That's not the way I build a business. That's not the way I teach you to build a business. I don't love the DMS either. But, you know, have compassion for those people. They are trying to make a living just like we are, right? You're trying to get their business out there.

It's not a big deal. You don't have to answer to them. Just delete them. Okay. If somebody is annoying, you block them. Another thing that I hear is fear of stalkers. People will tell me, oh, I have a stalker. You don't know. I have a stalker. Look, I've talked about this before on the podcast. Maybe you do have a stalker, but it is so, so unlikely.

Most of those people are just weird people who make messages about the way you look about wanting to meet up with you about your picture about something. I don't know why they do that. But that fear, you need to just address those 2 fears about being on social media and the DMs and the stalkers. Look, social media is free.

You should be there whether you think it works or not. You should be there. All right, let's talk about fear of getting a no. No. No is a word that has two letters. That is it. No is just a word. What are you making “no” mean? The next time somebody says no, or they say I'll get back to you, it's just like, interesting.

They didn't say a word yes with three letters. They said no, okay? Just normalize this as just not being a big deal. Who cares if somebody says no? I love to play the game with myself, imagining. That if one more person says no, I'm one more closer to a yes. So how can you think about it? All right. The last mindset trap I want to talk about that really stalls you out and keeps you stuck and overwhelmed in your business.

Is this one thought that this is too hard, that thought alone, that this too hard blocks your intuition. It keeps you from tapping into the inner knowing that you have. It keeps you from asking that really important question of, but what if I did know, or what if it wasn't that hard? You see, when you are certain of that, it's like you're locked down.

You don't even have the knowing to go ask for support. You don't even ask yourself. Wait, if I think it's hard, how could it be easier? What can I do to learn to solve this? How could I approach this differently? A lot of times what I think is hard is sometimes not as far as I think it's just maybe I'm tired or maybe I'm distracted because I have so many other things going on.

Or maybe I have put it off so long, I've built up a big story about it in my mind. And it's really not that hard.

So whatever it is you think is hard, I would make it the very 1st task of the day when you are the freshest when you have your fresh cup of coffee, and you are ready to go. And I would just figure out how to make that task easier or how to make it easier to build your business, how to make it easier to meet your goal. Everything can be adjusted to make things easier until you're able to do what you need to do. So those are the common mindset traps that I see coaches have that really slow down and sometimes even completely stall out their businesses.

If you want to know the actions, the right actions, the easy actions, the simplest actions to take in your business. And I want to talk to you about joining the business building boutique and you guys, the gift that comes with that is the mindset coaching our mindset coach. She's magical. She will find limiting beliefs that you didn't even know you had.

She will find the mindset traps that are slowing you down. And she will clear the path for you to be able to create success for you to be able to do the things that I teach you inside the business building boutique. So, I want to challenge you to not let your dream sit on hold where you are stuck any longer, get on a consultation call with me.

Let's talk about how we can help your business. Both of us, my mindset coach and myself and my team, we want to make this the best year that you can have. 2024 is right around the corner, so let's get you set up for success right now. All right. Debbieshadid.com/schedule. Super simple. Get on my schedule and I will talk to you guys very soon.

Have an amazing week. 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 going to teach you how to use Canva to create beautiful graphics to market your life coaching business. All right.

Have an amazing week. I'll talk to you very soon. Bye bye.