Welcome
Hello! I’m Dr. Moira. Welcome to a new episode and a new week with the Coaching Hive Podcast. If you are new, welcome, and if have been listening since the beginning thank you my friend. It is always a pleasure to have you here with me.
The month of June has been all about embracing change. As we have discussed, change can be challenging, but it can also be so rewarding. As we wrap up this month on change, I’m going to really ask you to go deep and examine where you are in your health coaching journey so that you can act today and build the business you envision. Nothing about today will be easy, but it is well worth the conversation. So, if you are ready to dive into today’s podcast, let’s get going and remember that this podcast is family friendly so go ahead and play it through your speakers.
Introduction
You already know that today will ask you to really be honest, you know that we are going to talk about change, but beyond that it is still a mystery. Here is my first question to get you thinking. Are you ready to make a change to become a committed health coach? I don’t know the answer to that question, but let’s start with what I do know.
I know you are a hesitant health coach if you are doing one or more of these things right now:
- You are pursuing multiple trainings as a way to find the solution to growing your business but not seeing the results you want.
- You are posting on social media every day but not finding your ideal client who is willing to book that consultation or sign up for your paid coaching program.
- Participating in multiple health coach social media groups but getting confused and frustrated by the mixed messages you are receiving.
You are probably experiencing frustration as a health coach because you aren’t creating that traction or growing your business as fast as you would like. You may even be getting more unfocused as you pursue other revenue streams until your health coaching business becomes more profitable or you wonder if you should even continue to pursue health coaching right now.
If you are shaking your head yes and this describes you, and you want to be a committed health coach who is satisfied with their business and coaching schedule, then this episode is for you.
I completely understand why you might describe yourself as hesitant when you think about your health coaching career. After all, there are so many people out there who don’t even know what a health coach is! Then there are others who don’t believe that a health coach can help, and there is even a lack of cohesion within the field about what is within our scope of practice and considered ethical. Talk about a lot to wade through in your decision to commit to health coaching.
I am part of a variety of health coaching social media groups and am inundated with mixed messages and confusing advice every day. As an experienced coach and mentor, I have learned to tune these conversations out and offer guidance when necessary, but it is alarming how frequently these conversations occur. I was talking with my husband not too long ago about this and mentioned that I find it strange that as a profession we offer so much to our client’s well-being, but aren’t always as openly committed to serving our colleagues in the same way.
I have had numerous aspiring coaches reach out confused and concerned about how to choose the right health coach training program or what next steps to take because there are so many conflicting answers out there.
So I get where the hesitancy comes from. In fact, I’ll tell you just a little bit about my experience when I first became a health coach. I was a new mom, still teaching as a college professor remotely (long before it became a thing) and working to build my health coaching career. It was more of a hobby and I was hesitant to take a chance on myself. It was different from anything I had ever done, I wasn’t sure I had an entrepreneurial bone in my body, and I was tired. Remember new mom with an infant who didn’t particularly care for sleep.
I was part of those social media groups and saw people wildly successful who were posting online and people were just flocking to them. So I started posting on social media and crickets. I thought, ok, I’ll offer some free workshops. I would get sign-ups here and there but mostly, crickets or workshop attendees who didn’t want my paid coaching services. I wasn’t just hesitant, I couldn’t even see a way forward. I wasn’t overly consistent at that point because I wasn’t sure where I was heading and I was still teaching and being a mom. As I struggled more, I started to notice the stories of more struggling coaches. Classic psychology. Kind of like when you get a new car and you suddenly notice all of the cars on the road that are the same make and model. There aren’t suddenly an influx of that make and model on the road, you just now notice them because it means something to you. Well, I started to notice that others were struggling and that increased my hesitancy.
But it doesn’t have to stay that way. If there weren’t any successful health coaches, we wouldn’t see health coaching gaining this much traction and regard. We wouldn’t see companies like Noom growing exponentially with the help of health coaches. Just because you see some people approaching with hesitancy, doesn’t mean that you can’t become a committed health coach. I bet if you look in the health coaching groups you are a part of and search for the success stories you will find them. You will start to see that while not everyone is successful as a health coach, there are many committed health coaches out there.
In fact, when I decided to commit to health coaching, I was able to fill my schedule with my desired number of clients, but that doesn’t happen overnight and it doesn’t happen without the right pieces in place. If you’ve heard me talk about the Coaching Hive Blueprint in the past, you probably know what I’m about to say.
The Pieces
You need a mindful vision, inspiring guidance, and progress-driven learning.
At the heart and soul of building yourself into a committed health coach is your vision and mindset. And I don’t just mean wearing rose-colored glasses and being unusually positive. I mean that you dig in and discover your true values and build from the ground up from who you want to serve, what transformation your clients will achieve, to scheduling ideals, and your deeper purpose. Many coaches I know just jump right in without this step. It is tempting because you want to start making money and serving clients, but if you skip this step, you won’t have anything on which to build nor will you have a clear and succinct way of describing to your clients how you can help. This mindful vision is critical.
With a mindful vision in place you are working with client and need inspiring guidance. You need to work with peers and mentors who are inspiring and help you to be inspiring. Often times you hear the word empowering, but that suggests that your peers and mentors have the power and will give it to you. That isn’t the case. Instead, they will inspire you to dig into who you are and what you have to offer as you work with clients. Having a community of peers and a mentor to guide you will save you time, money, and frustration. You won’t have to figure out all the answers by yourself and you will gain assurance that every health coach struggles and faces challenges on their entrepreneurial journey. When you combine inspiring guidance with a mindful vision you are going to start seeing sparks of brilliance, but that doesn’t complete the puzzle.
You also need progress-driven learning. This is unique component of the Coaching Hive Blueprint means that you won’t’ give in to trainings that won’t help you move forward. You will be rooted in your mindful vision and inspiring guidance so that your learning endeavors are carefully chosen to help you make progress. You have likely already discovered that learning just to learn may not help you move forward, help you book your next client, or grow your business. When your learning is progress-driven you will be pursuing the right training at the right time for the maximum effect.
With each pillar of the Coaching Hive Blueprint in place, you have flexibility to build the business you want with structure to keep that momentum moving.
Embracing Change
What would happen if you continue on your current path? You choose trainings that sound interesting, you hop into free social media groups on health coaching to ask the occasional question, and you decide to jump right into looking for clients. Well, the truth is that you might grow your business over time through the process of trial and correction but you wouldn’t have a clear path to follow or next step to take. This is what most coaches do, in fact.
But if you are ready to embrace change and choose a different, more focused path forward then what will be your first step? What would happen if you committed to the Coaching Hive Blueprint pillars and were able to take thoughtful and purposeful action each day and week? Would you begin to see more progress? Perhaps you would feel less overwhelm with a plan in place.
Maybe you aren’t convinced that there is a path forward and I understand that too. Remember, I was that struggling health coach who was stuck and overwhelmed. I was hesitant to continue. The problem isn’t that health coaches don’t know the steps to creating a successful business that gets them excited, they do. They don’t know that to create a mindful vision that will guide their learning to create progress, they need to find inspiring guidance instead of relying on free groups.
So, how do you craft your vision, find inspiring guidance with peer and mentor support, and engage in progress-driven learning? You can search for mentors in the free Facebook groups, but most Facebook groups don’t allow self-promotion. You may not even know a mentor is there. You can promise yourself that you will only take trainings that you need, but how are you going to know which ones are nice and which ones are necessary? You know you need to craft your vision, but every time you begin the process you get side tracked or overwhelmed. Think about it. You know the steps, but those with help get different results.
Conclusions
So how do you get help? If you are a hesitant health coach ready to become a committed health coach I would like to invite you to join me inside the free Coaching Hive Momentum Facebook group and explore the possibilities. Begin seeing the synergy that comes from the 3 pillars of the Coaching Hive Blueprint in action. And if you aren’t sure if the Coaching Hive Blueprint is your jam just yet, that’s ok. I’d still love to connect on Social Media to help you discover what your needs are in building your successful coaching business.
I always enjoy when you reach out on social media to connect and if you found this episode helpful, I’d love to see your review on Apple Podcasts so that we can reach more people. As always, thank you so much for listening and I’ll see you back here next week for another episode of the Coaching Hive podcast.
~Moira
