088: 5 Ways You're Sabotaging Your Coaching Business

I've been an online coach since 2017 and I've made many mistakes along the way... and they are some of the same mistakes that I see my clients making. 

And most of the time these mistakes are happening because you want to be a good coach! You want happy clients and you want a successful business. But making these mistakes is actually holding you back from growing your coaching business, gaining momentum, and having the impact you know you're meant for. 

That's why in this episode I'm sharing the 5 most common mistakes I see coaches making - and what to do instead! 

Transcript

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Hey, welcome back to the podcast. In this episode, we're going to be talking about five mistakes that I see happening so often with my clients or, um, anyone I'm talking to on social media. And I want to be super clear. These mistakes are not coming from a place of like judgment or. I'm better than you because I have done all of these as well. I know there are mistakes because I have done them and I have learned firsthand that there are mistakes. And then of course, as I have helped my clients grow their businesses, I have seen time and time again how these five things, these five mistakes, if you will, are where you often and easily get stuck because the reason you're doing these things is actually coming from a really good place. It's either your intentions are really good or the action kind of seems to align with what you're working towards, or you might be seeing other people in the industry doing it and it's working for them. So you're going to really naturally think that you should do that too and model your actions after them. And so again, this whole episode, these mistakes, this is meant to be kind of a love and shove, a eye opening, hey, if you're doing this, that's cool. Let's talk about a better way to do things so that you don't get stuck here and you can honestly just grow your coaching business faster than I did. And you don't have to get hung up on these really common sticking points that I see time and time again, people falling into. Okay, so let's jump in mistake. Number one is spending your time on things that don't actually matter, especially if you are in the earlier stages of your coaching business. If you are trying to get new coaching clients, get booked out, establish that you are a good coach, establish your expertise, grow your community and your audience. if you haven't made 50k, 100k yet from your private coaching, if you're in that phase in particular, it's so easy to spend your time on the things that won't actually grow your business. Because let's be real, there's so many, so many things you can do and can spend your time on. And it's honestly overwhelming and so confusing because you're getting conflicting advice. From everyone and there's evidence that all of it works. And so it's really easy to be at the stage where you're like, okay, well, I'm looking around, I'm consuming content, I'm taking advice in and. I should be on Pinterest and YouTube and have a podcast and on TikTok and on Instagram and I need a website and I should have a low ticket offer funnel that leads into a group program. Then I have private coaching and I should also do a new masterclass every single month. And that person says I also need to be doing like live streams on Instagram all the time. So I should have like a live show. that I do and um, you know, I know I should grow my email list and well, you know, SEO is important. I'm on threads. Everyone's talking about Pinterest. Like it's so easy to get stuck here. It's so easy to get caught up spending your time on something that at this stage of business in particular, isn't your highest return on investment way to spend your time. Especially if you have a limited amount of time on business. I mean, let's get real. Um, even if you have no constraints, you know, there's still just like a physical restraint of how much time you have on business. But if you are someone who has chronic illness or you are a parent or you have a full time job or any of these other things that add additional constraints to how much time you have, it's critical that you're spending your time on the things that it's not only like the do matter or don't matter, but the things that are going to get you through the day. closer to your goal, the fastest, the easiest, um, the highest return on investment, the lowest lift, right? We don't want to make it harder. And so it's really easy. Um, excuse me. I see this all the time. Clients coming to me and they feel like their offer is perfect, but that they can't bring it to the market yet. They can't talk about it on Instagram yet because they don't have a website. Or they feel like they can't start a podcast yet because they don't understand. what their offer is going to be. Or they're not sure if they should be on Kajabi or Thrivecart or something else and so they're stuck trying to decide the tech. Or they're sitting there feeling like they need a professional photo shoot and a professional 10 page website and they need a really good logo and they need to have a mission statement and a vision statement and you can't do business if you don't have a clear You know, mission statement, and you don't have a project management system set up, you know, you really need to have all these automations and all this stuff, right? Like, it's so easy to get stuck here. So that's why this is number one on this list, because this is easily the biggest. biggest mistake and the easiest mistake, um, is spending your time on the things that don't actually matter. That's exactly why I created the five C framework, which is what I teach in my, uh, rich coach club curriculum. That's being released over the next couple of months. It's also what I am going to be talking about in my free live masterclass happening on April 30th. You can go to simplify with Megan. com forward slash masterclass to sign up because I'm going to be breaking down exactly What's in that 5C framework and what you should be focusing on. And if you haven't listened to episode 87 of this podcast, you should go listen to that because that episode, I also break down the only three things you really need to be focusing on. So lots of different options for you, whether you join the club or just want to take advantage of some of these free resources to get clear on where you should be spending your time, because As a coach who's growing your coaching business, there truly only are like three things, three skills to be mastering and focusing on. And if something's not helping you in that area, then it is not worth your time. But not only that, it's, there's a lot of different ways to do those things too, right? It's, it's also about narrowing down your focus and trying to do less, but getting, um, Um, but definitely mistake number one is spending your time on the things that don't really matter at this stage in business. Mistake number two is having too many offers. This is another mistake I see that's coming from a really good place. You want to meet people where they're at. You want to meet people at different budgets, at different stages of their journey and their transformation. And so you feel like the way to do that is to have an offer that meets them all across the board. You should have, you know, a 60 minute call option, a 20 minute call option, a two week asynchronous coaching option, a three month coaching option, you should have a membership, you should have a course, you should have templates, you know, it's, it's a lot. And it's coming from a good place. But the reality is that especially as a newer coach, when you have too many offers, it's going to lead to confusion from your ideal client. And it's going to make your ideal client have no idea which offer is the right fit for them. It's going to be extremely confusing for them. And it's going to change their thought process from like, Oh, I want to work with this person. And this is how I can work with them. So this is what I'm going to pursue to, Oh, do I want two weeks or do I want 20 minutes? And how much can I get out of 20 minutes? And well, that's cheaper. So maybe I should do that. And I don't know if I can do this, you know, like it's, it's adding a mental load to your client, to your prospective client, which isn't going to help them. Feel confident investing and it's going to add a lot of complications to you as you are trying to message and market your own offers. It's a lot harder to sit there and try to explain what the value is between a 20 minute call or a 90 minute call or two weeks of Voxer coaching or three months of coaching with six video calls, right? Like that is more complexity than you need at this stage in business. If you are trying to establish yourself as a coach, if you want to work with people one on one or work with more clients one on one or be, you know, working with higher ticket clients, whatever your circumstance is, we actually really want to have less offers at this stage. And this is in particular something you may be seeing other people do and it's working for them. So why wouldn't it work for you? Um, I've run into this quite a few times with my own clients because I have a couple of different ways people can work with me privately. And that is totally dependent on the season and my bandwidth. So during certain seasons of the past year, you've been able to do a 60 minute call with me. You've been able to work with me asynchronously. You've been able to do three months of private coaching. Um, and so my, My clients and community have seen me do that and they've probably seen other mentors in the space have a variety of packages. Um, and there are even people out there who are like off the cuff packages, like, Hey, I'm opening up 10 spots of a content session and yada, yada. And this isn't me saying that stuff won't work and you weren't, you won't get clients or sales from that approach. But the reason you can see that working well for. Coaches who are farther along in their journey is exactly that they're farther along in their journey. They are probably booked out with private coaching already. They're full, full package private coaching. And so these other ways to work with them are alternatives, but they're not the focus. That's how intensives are for me. I'm always booked out with my highest level one on one coaching. And I always have one on one coaching clients, but I don't always do intensives and the intensives I do when I do them, they are there to serve a purpose in my business during a season of business. My intensives may be there to be a funnel into a group program or into private coaching. Potentially they may be there for me to get paid market research done basically. And they may be there because I just want to. So there's, Usually a different purpose for those, but the intensives or the one off sessions, they're not the main thing. The main thing is my initial private coaching package, 12 weeks of one on one. That's the main thing. That's the service I focus on. That's the service that gets my highest level of attention. That's the service I always plan on having booked out when I have a spot open. It's a big deal. And, like, that's the meat and potatoes. The other one on one offers can be fun things I do for different purposes, but that are not like an everlasting part of my product suite. And I'll be transparent with you. When I have had multiple one on one offers, there is an added layer of explanation that has to happen. I have to be able to answer what we can do in 60 minutes and one week of Voxer versus what we can do working together longer. I'm far enough along in my journey. I know my client well enough where I can answer that, but it can be harder to answer that when you are just starting out. And I, like I just said, I think having too many offers can just add this layer of complexity you don't need at this stage of business. And this goes for offers beyond just one on one coaching. Um, I'm not sitting here saying the only thing you have to sell, you should sell as one on one coaching, and you're making a mistake by selling anything else. But if you have a limited amount of time. You are, you know, trying to do 15 hours a week or less on your business and you are just trying to get the ball rolling, build up the momentum, hit 50k, hit 100k. It's way simpler if you just have one offer and you don't sit there trying to do one on one coaching and a membership and a course and masterclasses. I've done it. It's overwhelming. I closed down all of my group programs at the beginning of the year. I really kind of at the end of 2023, because I realized it was too much for this season of life for how much bandwidth I have having private coaching, a mastermind, a group coaching program, a membership doing free. I'm not, not free one off programs and masterclasses. And I was, it was too much, too much for me. So this whole mistake, number two, having too many offers, it's two sided. It's too many offers for your clients in this season of business. But if you're here and you have a limited amount of time you're trying to do to build your business, having too many offers is also very challenging for you and I do not recommend it. Okay. Mistake number three is not having a clear niche or a clear result that you help your people with. Now, hear me out. If you're sitting there and you're like, I'm a personal brand, I'm multi passionate. I don't want a niche. Don't go away yet. Hear me out because I find that there is a sweet spot where you can be both a personal brand and still have a niche or a clear result. I feel like my business is a great example of doing this and so many successful coaches out there. are also modeling this for you. Because even if your business is your name or adjacent, you know, simplify with Megan is basically the same. Like no one calls me that, right? I'm not trying to be a faceless brand. It's me. I'm Megan. It's, I'm the coach. Um, but like having the actual clarity in who you help and how you help them is critical. To growing a business without making your life way harder. Like you can do it with a vague, you can target everyone and try to help them in everything and you'll get some clients, but it's going to be much slower and much more difficult. And much like having too many offers is harder on you as well. Having no clear niche and clear result you help your people with is so much harder on you when it comes to. marketing and messaging and selling and really building a brand where you're an established expert in something. It's just way faster to have clarity, especially when you're just starting out. Your decisions get so much easier when you have this narrower scope. And so I kind of view this as like almost a seesaw. On one side you have like who you help and on the other side you have like how you help them. You don't have to be hyper niche on both ends. You don't have to have like the narrowest scope of who you help and the narrowest scope of how you help them. But we need at least one of these to be narrow. You can have a more broad range of people you try to help if how you help them is extremely focused or vice versa. Maybe how you help people is more broad. Um, but you're trying to help a very specific type of person. One of my Rich Coach Coke clients, for example, does some more general coaching for people. She helps them growing their business and a lot of different ways revolving around marketing, but she touches on a lot of other components outside of marketing, but she helps clergy people, which is incredibly niche and really makes her stand out in the market. And so all clergy people are going to be like, Oh, you need a business coach for your side hustle. Like that's your person. And do we see how much faster and easier that is for her to have a path, um, of growth and acceleration within her business. So much easier. I've seen this within my own business from the very beginning when I was doing virtual assistant work as soon as I became a specialist in Squarespace and Asana and MailChimp and ConvertKit and like tech. It was so much faster for me to grow. I got booked out with my clients. I became known as like the person who's an expert in those things. And my business took off. Then a couple years later, I really focused on using my master's and my professional experience in human resources to help business owners hire full time team members. And I really narrowed my focus on, team growth and operations for online business owners. So again, both of those examples, the like niche who I'm helping is quite broad, but the result in specialty is very narrow. And so that balance totally works. When I came back to business after my sabbatical in 2023, I came back kind of the opposite, really hyper focused on mom entrepreneurs, but then helping them grow their business more generally. And then, um, as of this year, it has flipped the seesaw back where it's like, okay, I help, um, online coaches. So we're still kind of more niche than just like any business owner. Um, but the result is helping them grow their coaching business exclusively right now through private coaching is what I'm really focused on. Um, it will grow beyond that outside of private coaching, but right now in the season of business, I'm focused on Rich coach club, rich coach club is exclusively helping you with private coaching and that side of your business. And so I'm hyper focused on kind of this, like in between, I'm more niche than not. Um, cause I'm specifically targeting and speaking to and working with online coaches. And then the result is growing the private coaching side of their business and people who are kind of in that beginning stage. Now I do work with clients outside of that. Some of my clients do other things besides private coaching. Some of my clients don't do any private coaching, uh, because they've been with me for years and that's great, but my messaging and who I'm focused on supporting and helping is very, focused, but I'm kind of like in a more balanced seesaw, if you will. I wish you could see my hands. I'm like doing a hand motion to reflect the seesaw motion here, but I hope that this kind of helps you see that you don't necessarily have to have a super hyper focused niche and a super hyper focused result, but that there can be a balance, but that you want to have one of them. One of them needs to be focused. If you want to make your life easier and if you want to accelerate your growth and get booked out and have a business that's easier and simpler, niching and having a clear result will make you and your life so much easier. It'll make that so much better. So that's why mistake number three is not doing that. It's going to get you more money. stuck. It's going to slow you down. You're going to constantly be wondering, who am I speaking to? How am I helping them? How do I convey how I can help people when it's so broad? I don't know who I'm even helping. So how do I even figure out what kind of marketing to do? It's just harder. Mistake number four is having a passive approach to selling your one on one coaching. And this is again, coming from a place I find of like, you can only see so much of what people are doing, right? So if you're looking around and seeing what your mentor or other coaches are doing, you're probably seeing that they post an Instagram story or send one email and like, they're booked out, right? So like, all I should have to do is that, but That's usually not what's happening. Just picture an iceberg. What you're seeing is the Instagram story or the email and what you're not seeing is everything else beneath the surface. And depending on what stage of business you're in, you're going to notice this is a trend as you get more established, more, um, a known expert. Some of this stuff you can totally shift how you do, but when you're just at that beginning stage of building momentum and expertise and getting booked out and raising your prices and establishing yourself as a one on one coach. We got to do things a little bit more intentionally and absolutely more proactively. And so while, yes, you should post the Instagram story and you should send the email, we don't want this to be like an angels in the outfield thing. I think that's the movie I'm about to reference where it's like you build it and they come, right? So you sitting there and in your like Google doc outlining what your one on one coaching offer is, and then posting one Instagram story about it is not enough. Yeah. It's not enough, or making this beautiful PDF of what your offer is and then never ever sending it to anyone. That won't do it. Or creating a coaching product in Kajabi and you send one email out about it or you tell one community about it and then you get crickets and you don't do anything. not enough. And I want to encourage you to keep doing those things. I want you to keep sending emails and posting about on Instagram stories. And that's, that's part of this is a bit more of a resiliency and consistency to just have the bravery and the self trust to keep pitching, even when it's crickets, because people have to see things. I forget the stat, like seven times before they even really register. And that's just like a straight up pitch, right? People are going to want to know you better before they actually invest in you. So not only do we need to be really proactive in talking about our offers every day, you should be selling on Instagram stories every day. If you have a spot open, you should absolutely be Um, making it known that this is what you do and you should be experimenting with how you pitch. You should be experimenting with how you're positioning your offer. Maybe you post about your one on one coaching offer one way and you get crickets. And so instead of saying, well, I guess it's a dud, no. What if the next day you go from a different angle, change up some wording, change up talking less about the features and more about the result. Maybe the next day you talk about more about where your person is right now and their current problems and then suddenly someone DMs you, right? So we're learning, you're refining, you're mastering a skill of messaging and selling. And so often you are either, and by you, everyone, people who make this mistake, my clients, I've done it too. Um, you try to have it perfect at the get go. So you ever, you either like never really sell because it's not perfect yet or you try to get it perfect. You sell it or pitch it once that one way you think is perfect and you don't get a response and you either then stop or you never evolve it and you just keep trying the same thing over and over again. Um, and so. Um, part of having a more proactive sales approach is truly build like, this is a skill. Like if you're going to be a business owner, a coach, like sales skills are essential and selling isn't bad. So like any, any, you know, mindset baggage you got there, we'll have to address separately, but like get good at selling and you only get good at selling by practicing, by selling a lot. And by figuring out what's working and what's not working, what resonates and what doesn't resonate. And you might hit an angle that you didn't think would resonate and boom, wow, you got three clients all of a sudden. Okay, well, that really resonated with my people. Lean into it, right? But you never get there if you either keep doing the passive approach or you give up. So I really want you to be more proactive in experimenting and refining your messaging and your sales skills. But then also, are you doing the legwork so that people can trust you? There's another piece of selling here, which is content creation and connecting with your audience because the sale is much easier if someone already knows and likes and trusts you. And so if you're just sitting there and the only thing you're doing on Instagram is a couple of sales slides on Instagram stories, but you're not giving any value or any connection to you or behind the scenes of your life or personal stories or a viewpoint on like what makes you different or what's your approach or how you work with your clients. Or showing that you understand where your people are at and what they're struggling with and that you can help them. You could be the best salesperson in the world and you're missing a huge piece of the puzzle because you're being too passive about it. You're not really showing up and marketing and selling. When it comes to more direct sales, I'm a big believer in selling in the DMs. It's what I teach my clients how to do in Rich Coach Club. Um, Um, when it comes to selling in the DMs, nine times out of 10, I find that when I'm auditing a sales conversation, my clients are leaving it, um, and other people are leaving it way to open ended. You're not actually asking which they want, you're not actually asking for the sale. And so in all spectrums of your marketing and your sales process, be proactive, get in front of your people, experiment, refine, master. Get good at selling and that only comes through practice and through understanding you might be bad at first. It is okay to be bad at something. You have to let yourself show up wherever you're at with the skills you got and like put in the legwork to get better at it. Okay, fifth mistake that I see happening all the time, way too often, is over delivering in your one on one time. Package and the way you've set it up So many times people come to me already working with clients or wanting to work with clients and they think that they need to Have a weekly call and be available 24 7 and have extremely fast response times and they need to accommodate their clients availability for calls and so they end up working at Terrible hours for them so that their client is happy You And at the root of this, it's people pleasing, right? I say this as someone who struggles with it. So big hug if you identify as a people pleaser But that's like why we try to over deliver right is because we are worried about disappointing someone And so we feel like if we shove more features and more access Then we're helping and we're preventing that we're kind of protecting ourselves But what's really interesting is that most high ticket clients in particular Are fucking busy And like don't Want a weekly call, even if they think they want a weekly call, it's going to be hard for them to actually do that. And then what happens if they can't do it one week because they're on vacation and they skip a week. Do they get an extra week of support? And it's just like all these complexities. I've even run into this in my own coaching when I. experimented with doing two calls a month instead of one. And my clients like just didn't always need it. And we literally ran into this, like, okay, well, what do I do? Do I get to like add that call in on the last month and do I get more access? And you know, when your clients are busy people, it's usually not necessary to have that many calls. Now how you package your one on one coaching and how many calls, for example, or what type of asynchronous support is there or not there, um, That is very much like a process that should be customized to what you do and how you help people. But as a general baseline, I find that one call per month with asynchronous support three to four days a week at most, it's usually enough for, like everyone. Like it's a really good baseline and a good starting point. Maybe two calls a month. But so many times people come to me absolutely over delivering and this is where they run into the issue of burnout. Or like, I have three clients and I'm totally maxed out. How can I possibly hit six figures with this type of deliverability? Well, it's because we need to, you know, restructure your package and we also need to set some boundaries. Nine times out of 10, there's also some boundary issues happening here. Um, and so this is absolutely a mistake I see happening all the time that I really want to help you with and make sure that you are setting up your one on one packaging in a way that absolutely gets your clients results. That absolutely is appealing to your dream clients. And sometimes having too much stuff in there is actually unappealing and like not enticing and may turn clients off, right? And we also want to make sure that it supports. You're life, because if you do have limited amount of time, like me, 10, 12, 15 hours a week at most on a good week, you, we, we won't be able to hit six figures if you're available 24 seven around the clock. And you're going to be miserable if you're having to work, you know, stay up late to do a client call because you're trying to accommodate your client instead of having established boundaries for yourself and your work. So this is definitely something I love helping my clients work through, um, and is absolutely a common mistake. So if you are already working with clients or potentially you feel like you're getting a lot of, uh, people ghosting you who aren't saying yes to your offer, I would absolutely reevaluate. Are you over delivering? Have you feature stuffed your coaching service and, um, have you really compromised your own health and wellbeing? by how much access you've given to yourself. Do you have clear boundaries? Have they been communicated? Have you upheld them? Have you been letting clients walk all over you? Have you been letting your clients dictate your schedule? These are all some really good things that if any of that resonates with you, it's a moment to pause and say, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna make some changes. And I love helping my clients make these changes. Um, and so these are really the five big mistakes I see happening the most often with my new clients and mistakes I have made. So again, all of this is with a big hug and like, I see you, I feel you, it's all coming from a good place, right? Whether it's having too many offers because you're trying to meet people where they're at, or if you are. over delivering because you're trying to make people happy. Um, it's all coming from a place of wanting to do good by your clients. It's coming from a place of wanting to build a successful business. It's coming from a place of protecting yourself and I get it when you address these, these five little things, everything can get easier. Everything can move faster, more seamlessly, you have clarity, you know exactly what to work on and when to work on it. You know who you help, how you help them, and the one offer that helps them. And you're mastering your sales process. You're getting better at content, better at messaging, better at selling, better at delivering a one on one coaching package that actually gets your clients results, that has the testimonials pouring in, that brings in more clients because people can't stop talking about how great you are. And it's this beautiful like ripple effect that when you become aware of these things. a lot can get easier for you. So I'm hoping that by listening to this episode, you have awareness. Now you have some ideas on how you can resolve some of these potential sticking points and issues. And if you want more support in growing your private coaching business and addressing these issues, if you want my feedback in particular, I would love to have you in rich coach club. The doors to rich coach club are opening on April 30th when I'm doing my live masterclass all about the five C framework and what your 15 hour a week weekly schedule should look like and the math of having a six figure private coaching business. So go to simplify with Megan. com forward slash masterclass to go ahead and sign up for the free training. And then you'll get all the info about Rich Coach Club when the doors open. The doors are only open this next week. Uh, once the webinar happens, they're open for a week and then they close again until mid to late fall. I'd love to have you in Rich Coach Club. And even if you're not going to join Rich Coach Club, would love to have you on the masterclass. Because this is going to be a very valuable training and I would love to get to see you there live and hang out with you and answer any questions you have at the live Q& A at the end of the training. And I just am sending you love. All the well wishes. I'm always here. Just know I'm always here cheering you on whether you are a client of mine or a listener. I truly appreciate you and I want the best for you. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean so much to me if you would share it on Instagram stories or social media and tag me or leave a review. That always helps whether you're on Apple or Spotify or somewhere else, reviews really help the podcast grow, helps me know that you enjoy these episodes and share it with someone you think would also benefit from it. Thank you again so much. I hope I get to see you on the live masterclass and then I get to help you overcome these mistakes and these sticking points in your own coaching business inside of Rich Coach Club. Thanks so much. I'll see you on the next episode.