Music and Intro Message
I’m Dr. Moira. I’m a college professor, instructor, coach, and passionate mentor to health coaches around the world. But I haven’t always been that confident and committed to my coaching career. I was hesitant to take the next step and wasn’t sure what the best approach was to success and fulfillment. I decided to step into my passion and purpose of guiding health coaches on their journey from hesitant health coach to committed health coach,
with a unique approach to coach growth, the Coaching Hive Blueprint combines creating a mindful vision with inspiring guidance and progress-driven learning. The coaching hive podcast is your glimpse into the concepts, ideas, and approaches that underscore the coaching hive while giving you the opportunity to implement tools and tips along the way. Are you ready to dive into today’s podcast, then let’s go and remember that this podcast is family-friendly.
So go ahead and play it through your speakers.
Introduction
This month has been a big one at the Coaching Hive as we focused on passion and purpose. In Episode 28, we sat down with best-selling author, Amy McLaren as she launched her new book, Passion to Purpose. The Coaching Hive has welcomed 29 book club members, gained NBHWC Approved Continuing Education Provider status, revamping the website and member’s area, and preparing to re-open the doors of the Coaching Hive all while still serving our current members with a Group Coaching MasterClass, Discussion Call, and Mentoring Call.
Which brings me to a little bit of a behind the scenes tour here at the Coaching Hive. Starting a business was NOT something I would have identified as a passion or purpose of mine. In fact, if you ask Nate, I was staunchly opposed to self-employment because I crave stability. Things have a funny way of changing and as your passions change, you can often find your purpose shifting or even changing. That is the beautiful thing about life. We can move and shift as our passions and purpose evolve through adulthood.
Whatever your passion might be, and if you aren’t sure, I highly recommend reading Amy McLaren’s Passion to Purpose book, questions often arise as part of the implementation of your passion to feed your purpose. One of the big perceived roadblocks can be money. After all, you have likely discovered at this point in your life that money doesn’t simply grow on trees. And you may be thinking about the cost of following your passion. Believe me, when Nate and I discussed starting the Coaching Hive at the end of 2020, finances were a big part of the conversation. We knew that we had several home projects that needed to be taken care of, things that couldn’t be ignored like high radon levels and a failing retaining wall that would have been disastrous. We also knew that these home projects couldn’t be spaced out. They had to happen in 2021 to prevent further problems. So yes, money was at the forefront of our minds. I’m an adjunct professor and contractor instructor. Neither of these positions affords us much wiggle room and something was going to have to go to have time for the Coaching Hive. Money was definitely at the forefront of our minds.
We questioned if it was the right time, how we would cover the financial aspects of starting a new business and while all of this gave me the heebie jeebies, we both knew it was right. Nate could tell that this was a way to make my passion come to life. He had made a job change about a year earlier to find more fulfillment and now it was my time to make a shift.
So are you ready to talk about the behind the scenes of Coaching Hive? I want you to see what is possible with little time and money and a whole lot of grit, determination, and scrappiness. Before we go any further, I will admit that I had a few cards in my back pocket during this start up that most people don’t have, but I still believe that it is possible to make those passions take a front seat and lean into your purpose more fully.
Behind the Scenes
We started listening to podcasts for the first time. And if you’ve been listening to the podcast for awhile, you know that I wasn’t a fan of podcasts at first. Nate started searching for ways to bring my idea to fruition and found some great podcasts and experienced professionals for us to learn from and listen to in every spare moment. The cool thing is that our 5th grader is along for the ride, and he is seeing firsthand what it means to take an idea and make it happen. He sees the learning, experimentation, frustrations, and successes. He did a happy dance each time someone joined the Coaching Hive. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.
Let’s back up. We started learning and listening and together we decided what might make sense for a membership that served health coaches on their journey. It was still a loose outline, but Nate built me a bare bones website and I started creating the Coaching Hive Podcast. Nate building me a bare bones website is one of those cards in my back pocket I talked about. In the early years of our marriage he helped supplement our family income by building websites on the side of his full time job that also included building website. He is a user experience engineer and deals with websites, software, and accessibility all day every day. He was putting in extra time after work researching the best and most affordable options for building a website that could scale and grow over time. I was talking with people, building my podcast, and all the while we were keeping a close eye on finances.
This is where it got tough. There are a LOT of fancy things out there. From software, to technology, to memberships, add-ons, and oh so much more. Each decision that we made was carefully weighed. Some things were no brainers like upgrading our server while other things went on the back burner – like lighting.
As you likely know, these days social media is almost a must for an online business so I had to spend more time creating posts, finding pictures, and being consistent. During this time, we realized that when I shared about the Coaching Hive it wasn’t very clear what the benefits of membership were or even how we would reach the right people as we built our community.
This meant that we needed to find an expert in messaging. Again, we were still carefully weighing all options and found a course and mentoring program that would help us in the area that neither Nate nor I had any experience – marketing and messaging.
Now this is where the shiny objects started to become a challenge. You see when you start entering the ecosystem of a more successful mentor, you start to notice the processes, technology, gadgets that they are using. You hear more about the courses they have completed and learn more about the possibilities. Up to this point, I think we were blissfully unaware of the options out there.
Consequently, this is when we doubled down and tracked each purchase and purpose on a spreadsheet. We identified what the item was, why it was important, what outcome it was expected to help us achieve, and the cost. When you slow down to have these conversations, it keeps your business simpler. It is easier to say no to the things that aren’t necessary right now and yes to the things that were essential.
Conclusions
And we continued this pattern over the months and here we are building a business that a few months ago I had no idea was on the horizon. I wasn’t sure what I wanted in life, but I knew that my passion was to see the world have more health and wellness coaches who are confident and committed. As a veteran educator, course developer, health and wellness coach, and mentor the stars finally aligned as I began to understand my purpose and that up to this point, my passion wasn’t driving my purpose.
Here we are. Thirty-one episodes into the Coaching Hive podcast, the Coaching Hive membership has been in existence for 6 months. We have delivered 5 MasterClasses, led 5 Mentoring Calls and 5 MasterClass Discussion Calls, and hosted 1 Implementation month focused on making progress with all that we have learned and discussed with our health coaches.
I started today’s episode with the intention of sharing a bit about the Coaching hive journey so that you can see that if your passion is leading you to a shift. If you are thinking about starting a business. If you are looking to make a change, it is possible. It is big, it is scary, it may make you think about money more than you wish, but it is also incredibly rewarding, uplifting, life changing, and 100% worth the challenge.
I shared a little of the financial components of our journey, because for me that was my big stumbling block. I’m lucky to have a partner who is always at my side rooting for me, encouraging me, and telling me now when the fun microphone wasn’t in the budget just yet. He has spent hours upon hours helping me think through processes, ideas, and roadmaps. We are both planners. We like to think ahead, we want to have a diverse business plan so that we can fulfill this passion of helping the world have more confident and committed health and wellness coaches.
Each month we sit down and talk about where we are, what needs to shift, and if we are still moving toward the passion and purpose that gave birth to the Coaching Hive. And each month, the answer is a resounding Yes!
So my question for you is what is your passion? How can you take that passion and let it guide your purpose? Whether it is a hobby, a business, a commitment to your family life, or something else entirely. I encourage you to sit down and think about what rocks are in the way and see if there is a way around or over that rock to get to the other side where your passion is leading. Over the past year, I have really doubled down in my belief that we cannot simply waste time hoping that things will get better. Instead, we need to take action. Any action to make change happen. That is how the world changes. That is how our lives change for the better.
As I wrap up today’s episode, I hope it was helpful to hear a little about the behind the scenes to the Coaching Hive start-up process. Just because it takes grit and determination doesn’t mean it is the wrong path. In fact, it may be just the path you have been searching for in your life. As we shift into the fall months and the ending of another year, I encourage you to think about where you are headed, how you are staying true to your passions and where your purpose may lead you.
I’ll see you back here next week for another episode of the Coaching Hive podcast.
~Dr. Moira
