459. 10 Years Coaching – Lessons Learned Part 1: Business

Welcome to episode 459, 10 Years Coaching – Lessons Learned Part 1: Business. May is Jody Moore’s Coaching’s 10 year birthday. And we’re celebrating by recognizing the lessons learned. All month long you’ll hear about my journey of finding coaching, then becoming a coach, how we grew to where we are today with a team, and most importantly, what we’ve learned after helping literally millions of people create a life that’s better than happy. Starting today with part one, business, if you are an entrepreneur like myself, especially if you’re a coach you’re going to love this one.

This is Better Than Happy. I’m your coach, Jody Moore. And on this podcast, my objective, just so we’re clear, is to change what you’ve been taught and have likely believed about yourself up until now. Here’s what I believe about you. I believe that what you think is real is mostly imagined And what you imagine is actually creating what’s real. I believe that in the ways you desire to achieve, you 100% have the capacity to succeed.

And finally, I believe that joy, love, and miracles are your God given natural state of being. And any time you feel far from them, the way back is much simpler than you think, but that’s about to change. Are you ready? Let’s do this.

Oh, my goodness, 10 years. So in, I guess, it was October or November or so of 2013, I was let go from my corporate job, which I had been at for over 15 years. And the company was going through massive changes and massive layoffs, so it wasn’t a complete shock. I knew it was probably coming. But still, it was a massive shift in just my day-to-day routine. Since having children at all I had always worked, even before I was married, I had worked at the same company and it had been great for the most part.

I had learned a lot and grown a lot and met a lot of amazing people and had a lot of great experiences there. And so it felt sort of a part of my identity that I was losing. And ultimately towards the end of my career there I met who is my good friend to this day Kris Plachy, who introduced me to coaching and the model and Brooke Castillo and her work and it literally transformed my life in so many ways. And then I signed up for coach training right after. I actually was introduced to Brooke a couple of years before that, Brooke’s work, I should say. I didn’t know Brooke, but her work and her tools.

So I had been studying this for a couple of years, and actually even using it in my corporate job when I was let go. And I thought, I’m going to go through this coach training program that The Life Coach School offers, although I had no intention of actually starting a coaching business, I really didn’t. I mean I guess probably in the back of my mind was maybe that’s a possibility, but it was a really, really out there possibility. I really didn’t think I was going to do that. I’d never viewed myself as an entrepreneur.

Well, May of 2014 was when I went through my certification, my coach training, I should say, which was a week long, six days actually, in person, full day experience of learning from Brooke in a small class of about 20 ish of us. And then I went home and had work I had to do afterwards to learn how to use the tools and to pass certification. But it was May 2014 when my life took the most drastic improvement of anything I can point to in my life, the biggest pivot, the biggest change that I am so grateful for.

And here we are, May 2024. That feels like yesterday but it was 10 years ago. So I wanted to spend the month of May reflecting back on my experience, only if I think it would be interesting and relevant to you. I don’t want to talk a lot about myself and my journey, but I think there are parts of it that some of you are really interested in that might be useful for you to hear. And for the most part, share with you some of the things that I’ve learned as I’ve been so honored and privileged to get to coach and work with so many of you.

We have had tens of thousands of people go through our coaching programs and our events and the courses and the things that we’ve offered here over the last 10 years. And there are millions of you who have benefited from listening to this podcast, many of whom I am fortunate enough to get to hear back from. So that’s what we’re going to do in the month of May.

Now, I also want to mention that as part of our 10 year anniversary celebration, we have just launched a new tier in my coaching program, The Lab. I’ve always had lots of other coaches come along who have wanted to learn from me. It’s been really common that someone comes along, benefits from coaching and then loves it so much that they want to become a coach and then go help other people. So I’ve got a lot of you who are in that situation and whether you learned it from me or another coach.

And then others who are just different types of coaches, maybe have a different type of training or a different kind of specialty with your coaching who have wanted to learn either what we do as coaches. But even more so, how we make our business succeed and how we find clients and how we get the message out there and succeed in business.

And if you’ve been around a while, you’ve noticed that I’ve had programs kind of come and go because I’ve always struggled with, I love helping people who are coaches to build their businesses and improve their coaching. But at the same time, it’s kind of a pretty big pivot from serving my clients on all of their just life challenges and any other types of goals. And so I’ve struggled to know how to combine the two. And I’m really excited about how we’re doing it now.

So we have our program, The Lab, where I’m still going to help everybody with anything going on, all of their relationship problems, money problems, time problems, confidence problems, parenting stuff and not just problems, but goals. How to achieve your health goals. How to achieve your money goals. How to accomplish whatever you want to in your life. And that is not going away. That is only going to continue to get better. That is The Lab.

But we have added another level of access in The Lab that I’m calling Coach Access. And in this version of The Lab, you will still get all the other things that everyone else gets, which you can apply to your own life and you can use to continue to learn if you’re a coach. But we’re also going to do some additional things in the name of me helping you with your business and me showing you behind the scenes of my business. And me continuing to teach you about all things marketing, sales, content creation, ads, even customer support, managing the business and some coaching stuff too.

How to improve your skills as a coach but anyway, I don’t want to spend a long time talking about that. I just want to tell you that if you’re going to join us in Coach Access, make sure you do it during the month of May, because that will be a program that will cost $225 a month to participate in. But if you join during the month of May, you get it for $125 a month for as long as you stay in the program. There’s also an annual option that you can look at that will save even more money.

But you can go to jodymoore.com/coachaccess to check that out, but make sure you get in before the end of May if you want to lock in the lower rate. We’re offering it as a celebration of our 10 year birthday here at Jody Moore Coaching.

Okay, so today’s lessons that I’m going to focus on come from really, or I should say, apply largely to anybody who’s trying to build a business as an entrepreneur. Now, they can of course be applied in a lot of areas of your life as well. So it will not be a stretch at all for you to be able to take what I’m giving you and apply it to other goals that you have. But I’m going to talk about it and frame it around the context of building a coaching business, because that is where a lot of these lessons landed for me and for the clients that I have coached.

And I just kind of brainstormed a list of the big major takeaways and I’m going to go through them in no particular order. So I apologize, I thought about, do I try to put these in some sort of an order, but I just, I couldn’t do it. So here we go. This is just kind of what’s going on in my brain.

So first of all, if you are trying to build a business, I want you to know that I believe it is a noble endeavor, if you want to. If you don’t want to, I don’t think that you have to. I don’t think that it makes you a better person, a more valuable person. I don’t think you need to prove anything to anyone. There’s no part of me that thinks that anyone should build a business, but if you want to, then I think it’s worth going for. So what I see is people get these two things confused.

They think that they should for some reason, maybe it’s because they put money into something and they’re struggling with the sunk cost of thinking, if I paid for this thing or I’ve invested time or money into it and then I don’t pursue it, that was a waste. I don’t believe that’s true at all. I think that if you put money into learning something and you met some people and you figure some stuff out along the way, that is never a waste, even if you don’t go do anything with it.

But I also see people who want to, especially coaches, this is so common with coaches, especially the ones in my world, because a lot of them are women who are in the thick of raising kids and things. And they get excited and they go through coach training and then they think, well, I shouldn’t be focused on growing that business I want to build. That’s selfish. It’s not the right season. My kids might suffer. I can’t be a good mom and a good entrepreneur at the same time. It’s too hard. There’s no way to do it all. You have to make choices. Thoughts like this.

I just think that if you want to, then you can and should pursue your goals. In fact, I’ve been listening to a lot of Myron Golden lately, and I’ve probably talked about him on the podcast, I know I’ve talked about him in The Lab. But I love the way he talks about the concept of multiply and replenish the Earth. The Bible says we’re to multiply and replenish the Earth. Well, I don’t know about you, but growing up in a conservative Christian religion, I was taught that that scripture means I should have babies. And maybe it does mean that. I think that’s probably a part of it.

But I think there’s a lot more on the Earth that could be multiplied and replenished. And I think that everything that God has created goes through seasons and therefore requires replenishing. And everything that God’s created or that man has created that’s good, is capable of being multiplied, not just addition, multiplication. Our world, our lives, ourselves, our relationships, all of it can become exponentially better. And entrepreneurship is one way that we contribute to the multiplication and replenishment of the Earth.

And if you’re a coach like me, then the best way you can do that is through coaching. That is an amazing way to multiply and replenish the Earth, it has been for me anyway. Wanting is an important skill. Let yourself want. So many people are not very good at wanting, they only know how to need. They’re really good at needing, but they’re not very good at wanting. Here’s what I mean. Something that you need is something that you have to justify.

If I go to Target and I see a cute lamp let’s say, and I tell myself I need that lamp. It means there’s a justification behind it. It’s, I have a spot in the corner of this room that is dark and I have been meaning to get something to put there to brighten it up. I need that lamp. Now, the truth is, most of us have very few needs. We justify it, but the truth is we actually don’t need very much at all but we want things. I want that lamp. A want is something that you don’t have to justify at all. You just want it because you want it and you don’t have to give an explanation and you don’t have to give a reason.

And you don’t have to make anybody else feel satisfied that it’s okay for you to want that. Are you good at doing that? Are you able to say, “I want to build a business that helps people?” I want to be a coach and help change people’s lives in this way. And when somebody says, “Why do you want to do that?” You say, “Because I want it.” This is what Dan Sullivan teaches. When you want something it’s just because you want it, that’s it.

And as soon as you have to justify it, as soon as you feel like you need to give this other person an answer or you need to justify it to yourself or anyone else. Now you’re trying to turn it into a need, which means you’re not getting better at wanting, you’re getting better at needing. I want you to get better at wanting, do you know why? People who want, do a lot more good than people who need because wanting comes from abundance and needing comes from scarcity. Wanting is very generous. Needing is more about, I’m going to take this thing that’s going to negatively impact someone else.

Okay, so for my fellow coaches and entrepreneurs who say, this is where I used to be, by the way, because I always loved working, but I started having kids and I thought maybe I’m not supposed to work. Maybe I’m supposed to be at home with my kids. But what I told myself was I need to work because I need to help contribute to the finances between what my husband’s making and what I make, then we can support our family. But if I’m not working, we’re not going to be able to support our family on that much. Is that true? I don’t know.

I certainly could make a case for it. But is it really true or could we have moved to a less expensive area? Could we have cut back on some of the luxuries that we were paying for? Could we have, I don’t know, I told myself, it was a need so that I could justify working because a part of me thought maybe I’m not supposed to work, when in reality I wanted to work. I wanted to work. And if I would have just owned, I want to work. I wonder what would have changed.

I wonder if I could have been more effective at both working and being available for my children in the way that I want to and being available to connect with my spouse in the way that I want to. Needing comes from scarcity, there’s some sort of guilt or shame or scarcity behind it. Wanting comes from abundance. I just want to because God created me and I’m here on Earth and I have a body and I’m alive and I have some experience and some knowledge and an opportunity and I want to see what I could do with it. That’s a beautiful thing.

So if you want to build a business, let’s go, my friend. Let’s go. I want to help you. I want you to help more people, and I want you to pursue what you want.

Okay, next thing I want to say is that your brain needs a problem to solve. Your brain wants a problem to solve, I should say, and so does mine. And if you don’t give it a useful problem to solve, a fun problem to solve, a problem that you want to solve that is yours to own and solve, by the way, then it will just look around you and find something else and turn it into a problem even if it’s not one. Again, 10 years I have been coaching all kinds of people but in the beginning of my time as a coach, I did private coaching. I did one-on-one.

My original program was six sessions long and I created it for the woman who was a stay at home mom, a member of some kind of conservative Christian church like the LDS church like myself. And wants to take care of her kids and loves her kids but is frustrated and overwhelmed. It helped regulate your emotions and be happier overall, it helped build confidence and it helped you become more excited about your future. Those were the three things that I promised and delivered to my individual one-on-one clients.

Here’s what I discovered over and over again. These women told themselves that they didn’t have time for their own interests. And not all of them want to be entrepreneurs, don’t get me wrong, or work or have traditional jobs like that. But everybody has interests. So whether it be a hobby, a project, a class, whatever it is, we all have interests outside of raising our families. And at the same time, we want to raise our kids and be good moms, good to our families.

But these women who didn’t have something else to focus on, had so much more drama around all the little challenges that come with being a mom and raising a family. So for example, I remember this one woman I was coaching her and she was so frustrated that she couldn’t keep the house clean. And she would try to get the kids to do chores. And we all know that’s a challenge and she would try to just keep up on it herself. And we all know that’s a challenge. And it was just this ongoing challenge and I was constantly trying to help her.

I tried all different angles as we do as coaches. First I tried to help her make peace with the house being not super clean because in the end she understands it doesn’t really matter. It’s not that big of a deal. She wasn’t living in something that was unsanitary, it just bothered her that things weren’t put away and she couldn’t keep it organized. So we tried that angle. That didn’t work. So then we tried another angle. Let’s get people to help. Let’s get a different system. Let’s get a different routine. Let’s get chores to be easier. Let’s get this house cleaned up.

And we tried that and in all of these areas, we had some success. Then I don’t even know how this happened because I didn’t encourage this, but for some reason she started selling this lipstick. What is it called? I want to say it was LipSense or something. Is that still a thing? Remember the lipstick that was the long wear and it came in all the different colors and it was a direct sales or multi-level marketing company. And she started selling it because she loved it and she found that she was really good at selling it.

And before you know it, she was building a team under her of other people selling it. And she was having a lot of fun figuring out how to be more successful selling this lipstick and how to help the other people working with her, find success as well. And suddenly, that’s what she wanted coaching on. Every time she came to the program was like, “Can we talk about what’s going on in my LipSense business?” I was like, “Sure.” So now I’m coaching her on that.

And I remember one day saying to her, “Wait a second. Whatever happened with the house because we talked about that a lot in how you couldn’t keep it clean and everything?” And she said, “Oh, yeah, that’s still true. I just don’t even care anymore.” I was like, “Amazing.” Because her brain needed and wanted something to strategize around, something to grow with, something to push back against, something to figure out, some kind of a challenge or problem.

And when she put that brain to work on something that was much more fun, which was building her business, she stopped making the messy house be such a big deal. So listen, our brains need problems to solve. If you notice, if you know logically that your brain is making drama and problems out of things that really in the end don’t matter, you might need to give yourself some kind of a project or a goal, or let’s build your business if you’re a coach and you want to build a business. That will help a lot.

Next, what you do and accomplish is not who you are, it’s just not. And this is true for all the areas of your life. You might have a bunch of kids, and maybe you’re in the thick of raising children right now and you spend all your time and effort and energy and brain power raising those kids. Bless your heart if that’s you. You are not a mom, I mean you are a mom, but you’re not a mom and that is not your whole identity.

The people in your life, your relationships, your family is not your identity. The things that you accomplish as a coach in your business or whatever else it is that you do, your church calling, your job, if you go work for someone else and you have a job. Those things are not your identity. This is very important for you to know if you’re going to be an entrepreneur building a coaching practice or any other kind of business. Because if it’s your identity, it becomes very heavy and dramatic.

And if it doesn’t work, then I’m a loser and a failure. And if it does work, then look at me, I’m so amazing. Except that’s a very fragile place to live from because at some point something’s not going to work. So what you do or accomplish is not who you are, it’s just not. It’s just what you’ve done and what you’ve accomplished or what you haven’t done and what you haven’t accomplished. You are you, period. You don’t have to do anything to become you or to prove who you are. You just already are you without doing a thing.

Now, to kind of add onto that, I want to say that your limitations are gifts. I know none of us want to hear this. We don’t want to hear when we’re going through something challenging. This is all for your own good. Just think how much you’re growing, but it’s true, our limitations are gifts because if everything was easy, we really definitely wouldn’t evolve and grow and it’s the evolution and growth that makes all of this worthwhile. That’s the reason we want to do it in the first place is so that we can evolve and grow.

That’s actually the whole reason we’re here on Earth is to become more like God. How are we going to become more like God? Through struggle, through overcoming struggle, through gaining skills or overcoming challenges. That is the idea. So your limitations are just gifts, that’s all they are. Here’s a gift for you. Here’s a limitation. Let’s see what you could do with that. I get it, in the thick of it, it doesn’t feel like a gift, and that’s okay. Everything that we bump up against is an opportunity to understand our worth and then decide what we’re going to do next.

It’s really easy to understand your worth when you’re winning, when you do something that you’re already good at and everybody claps for you and tells you what a great job you did and the results that you get are exactly what you wanted. Then it’s really easy to be like, “I’m okay, I guess I’m pretty good. I guess I’m doing alright.” But how about when it fails, how about when it doesn’t work?

Here’s another Myron Golden saying for you, he says, “It’s always working.” And he talks to entrepreneurs too. He’s like, “It’s always working. It’s either working for you or it’s working on you.” That’s a mic drop moment. ”It’s always working. It’s either working for you or it’s working on you.” That’s what happens when you try to build a business. You’re going to have some stuff that works for you and that will be fine, and you’re going to have other stuff that works on you. What are you going to do then? Keep going.

Okay, the next thing I want to say, and this is going to come up in some of the other episodes from this series because it’s such an important point, but shame is like tar slowing you down. This is true in every area of life. But listen up, my entrepreneur friends, if you don’t do the work I just talked about of, understanding your value and worth and understanding that what you accomplish is not who you are and your limitations are not who you are. Then this shame, this what’s the matter with me, who do I think I am, some people call it imposter syndrome, sometimes we call it fear.

You have to do the work every day. It’s like brushing your teeth. Every night I brush my teeth and my breath smells better. And then I wake up the next morning with bad breath again. You know what I have to do? Brush my teeth again, because I’m a human being. I will continue to wake up with bad breath every morning and that’s just the way of it.

And you will have to continue to do the work to understand that you’re a valuable, good, amazing person, not any better than anyone else, but not any worse either. And just as deserving of happiness and success as everybody else on planet Earth and just as capable of anything that you desire. Not capable of anything, capable of anything that you desire, anything you want. If you want it and you just want it and you don’t have a reason, then you’re capable of it. That’s my personal opinion. So we’ve got to work on the shame.

Wrong decisions are better than indecision. This is so true. Coaches, entrepreneurs, listen up, I can’t say this enough times. I have to tell it to myself over and over again too by the way. Wrong decisions are better than indecision or no decision. I did a podcast episode on this recently about the power that comes when we make decisions. But this is not more true anywhere than in my business. And it’s part of the reason I think I have achieved some of the success I have over the 10 years is because I make decisions.

I make decisions quickly. I don’t spend a lot of time in indecision and then I make the decision right as much of the time as I can. And if I can’t, then I make a different decision and I thank myself for taking a guess and we move on because all decisions are just guesses. Did you know this? They’re always guesses. None of us know the right decision from before the decision has been executed, we don’t know. We take a guess. Sometimes our guesses are right and we go, “That was good. That was the right decision, that led me to where I want to go. That worked out how I wanted.”

Sometimes we make what we call a wrong decision and we go, “Oh, wait a second, I thought this was going to take me down a different path. I don’t really like the path I’m on right now.” And then you can beat yourself up and feel terrible or you can just make a different decision and go a different way. It’s always better to make a wrong decision than to make no decision at all, especially if you’re trying to build a business. You will succeed at the speed of your decision making.

I have coached thousands of other coaches and I’m in all kinds of business communities and masterminds and I go to big events. I’ve heard the biggest speakers you can imagine and I’ve learned from some great, amazing, successful people. And everyone will agree with me that making decisions, even if they’re ‘wrong’ will get you to success faster than sitting back, waiting to figure out what is the right decision, because that’s just not a real thing.

Your willingness to suck at things is a superpower. Your willingness to be terrible at things is a superpower. Your willingness to make a fool of yourself if necessary is a superpower. Your willingness to have other people go, “I’m kind of offended by the way you said that and I think that was wrong and let me send you the correct information.” Are you willing to do all of that stuff? I’m not saying you do it on purpose. I’m not saying you try to offend people or you try to get it wrong or that you don’t put in some good faith, effort to do a good job.

But you could put in all of your best effort non-stop and you’re still going to make mistakes. And you’re still going to have somebody that just doesn’t like what you have to say, or the look of you or whatever else it is about you that they don’t like, there’s no avoiding that. Are you going to let that prevent you from helping people? Or are you going to decide you’re not for everyone and it’s okay and it’s okay that you’re not good at it all right away? Nobody’s good at it right away.

Ten years ago, after I went through that six day intensive coach training at The Life Coach School. Then my assignment was to go home and find, I don’t remember how many people, but a bunch of people that would let me coach them so I could record it and send it in. And I could get feedback about how to actually do this, what is much more complicated than it looks thing called coaching. And so I reached out to my pretty much family and close friends, which is common and I said, “Will you let me coach you?” And they were nice enough to allow me to coach them and record it.

And you know what? I wasn’t good at it, I wasn’t. I can tell you for sure, those coaching calls were terrible. Not only those but the first two years of coaching, I didn’t know how to listen very well. I knew how to kind of listen and start thinking about what have I heard Brooke Castillo or some other coach say in this situation that I might be able to pull from, what’s the right answer. And also I hope they don’t think that I look or sound stupid today. That’s mostly what was going on in my head.

It’s really hard to actually listen in a deep way like I can now as a coach when you have all that stuff going on in your head but you know what? I had to be willing to suck at it before I could get good at it. I’m still trying to get good at a lot of things. I’ve gotten really good at coaching, but there are other things I still suck at 10 years later, but you know what? I’m willing to. I’m willing to, every time technology changes, every time the way people like to consume content changes, I’m willing to be bad at it.

I’m good at podcasting now, but you know what? I want to do a YouTube channel now. I actually have tried a YouTube channel a couple of times and you know what I found? I suck at it. I’m not good at it. I’m not good at it for all kinds of reasons. And I’m just going to keep going and I’m going to be willing to be not good at it because that’s the only way to get good at it. And more importantly, I can be not good at it and still do so much good.

I have a sister, Lindsay. I have two sisters who both work in my business a little bit, but Lindsay helps me on the backend a lot. She also is a coach and does amazing coaching, but she’ll help me on the backend. She’s kind of my marketing support person. And so she was, the other day she’s like, “We need to go through all your funnels that you’re running right now and just kind of see what leads where. And is there anything we need to update and clean up?” I was like, “Definitely do that because I guarantee there’s a lot that needs cleaning up.”

So she started combing through things. What ads are we running? What opt-ins do we give? Where do we send people? What pages are they going to? What emails are they getting? And she came back to me after combing through everything and she’s like, “You know what I discovered? That you can do not very good work and still be really successful.”

She’s like, “Because a lot of your stuff is really a mess. It goes to pages that don’t exist and there’s so much we need to clean up and you’re still doing so well. You’re making such a big impact in people’s lives and you’re helping so many people. And you’re achieving so many of your business goals. This is the best news I have for you. You don’t even have to be good at it to succeed but be willing to be bad at it, especially in front of other people.”

What’s the next one? Consistent small steps beat out inconsistent big moves in the end. I’m going to say it a different way. Consistently doing boring things is more effective than occasionally doing exciting things. Doing small, boring little things that feel like they won’t matter over and over and over again is the way that you achieve success in any area of your life. We all know this.

This is true with your health goals. You have to do little boring things like drink water, it doesn’t feel like drinking water makes that big of a difference because I drank all my water today and I woke up the next day and I still don’t like the way my body looks in the mirror. But if you drink a lot of water every day for five years, you’re going to feel very different and it’s going to lead to a lot of other really different results. Consistent small steps beat out inconsistent, big, exciting, even perfect, moves.

Consistently doing things not very well is the way I achieved success. I didn’t inconsistently do things perfect. I consistently did things not very well. Are you in? Do you want to go on this journey with me? Let’s go.

Next one. If you’re not having fun on the way to where you’re going, you won’t have fun when you get there. This is so true. Now, I have been fortunate enough that I love what I do so much. I love coaching. I love talking about all the tools of life coaching. But I also have loved learning about entrepreneurship and marketing and online business and all of that. And so it’s been relatively easy for me to have fun along the way, not always. Sometimes I’ve had to check myself, do a little coaching or get coached.

But because I’ve had so much fun along the way, I’m having fun now. But I have coached hundreds of other people who are not having fun on the way and they still can achieve success sometimes, but it is not any more fun once they get there, it’s just not. The horizon always moves. They get there and they’re beating themselves up because it took too long or they’re beating themselves up because they should be further. And now they’re looking at the next milestone. You have to have fun along the way.

This has for me been my journey with food and nutrition and health. I tried for so long to struggle my way there and it just wasn’t any fun. Even though I could get there, I ended up always going back to old habits and old ways. So if you’re not having fun on the way, you won’t have fun when you get there, you just won’t. And if you want help having fun, I’ll help you have fun. We just have to reframe your focus and reframe your reasoning and reframe your routines and we just have to do some reframing.

Next one, you cannot grow or scale or develop your business without growing and scaling and developing yourself. We know this is true. This is just the reality. Your business will only grow and scale to the level that you have grown and scaled yourself. And this is not just reality for any of you, this is reality for me as well. My business is where it is because I am where I am.

And until I change the way I’m thinking, I learn more, I increase my skill sets, I change my perception of myself, I change my ideas around what’s possible, until I change that my business will stay the same. If I stay the same, my business will stay the same. That’s it. And that’s okay. We don’t have to be in a rush. I’m not saying growth and scaling and developing should always be the goal. I think sometimes there is a lot of peace that comes from coasting and remaining, although you will have to maintain. Nothing actually stays the same, it’s either growing or dying.

But I’m not saying you have to constantly be in growth and scaling mode. I’m just saying that wherever you are, if you do have the desire to either improve your processes or work fewer hours or help more people or make more money, you’re going to have to develop yourself in order to achieve those things. That’s just the way of it, I wish I could tell you otherwise.

Here’s the next thing I want to tell you. If you take care of your business in the beginning, when you’re just getting up and running, it will take care of you one day. I think about this the same way I think about my kids. So think about when you have babies and they’re just so little and fragile and they can’t even hold their heads up without your help.

And when you start your business, if you’re new or maybe you have been doing this for years, but you haven’t gotten a lot of traction or success yet. Then your business maybe is a baby and it needs so much from you. It might need money from you. It might need all of your time. It might need all of your creativity. It might need so much from you and it’s not giving you much back, meaning you’re not getting a lot of clients yet. You’re not getting a lot of traction. You’re not getting a lot of feedback. You’re not able to make much of an impact yet.

Yeah, that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. That doesn’t mean you’re not to be successful. That means you’re right on track. That means you just gave birth to a baby business. But my kids over the years have grown up and they still need stuff from me. I’ve got kids between the ages of eight and 17, and they still need things from me, some more than others. But you know what? They actually provide so much for me, too.

In fact, right now, as we’re speaking, my son went and picked up the two little ones from school because my husband was going to pick them up but he had another errand he needed to run, and I wanted to get this podcast done before they get home. Thank goodness, I put so much into teaching that kid how to drive and taking care of him, and now he’s helping me out. And it still goes both ways, but I’ve got kids who provide so much just in the way of help and daily routine, but also they bring so much entertainment, so much joy, so much expansion into my life.

And that’s something they’re not challenging at times. Sometimes they are and sometimes my business is too. But you know what? I look at this business now that we’ve created over the last 10 years and I’m just so grateful that we have this asset. We have this ability to add value in the world. We have this tool, this instrument, this vehicle by which we can make people’s lives better. And when you’re able to add value in the world and make people’s lives better, people will pay you for that.

You will get emotional compensation because there’s nothing more rewarding than seeing somebody get help and telling you that you had something to do with that. Sorry, I’ve got dogs barking out there at probably a person walking by, just ignore that.

Just a couple more things I want to say. A percentage of running a business is just doing things even though you don’t feel like doing it. That’s the stark reality. I don’t mean to paint this rosy picture like I love what I do and I always enjoy it and then it works and then isn’t this amazing. Yeah, that is true. That is how I think about it overall. But the reality is that there’s a whole bunch of things, like I said, the little boring daily things that I do consistently that I don’t really want to do.

Things like writing emails, things like, I don’t know, anything admin on my computer, I don’t really feel like doing but I do it. In fact, I was just thinking about this today because I’d got to do two calls back-to-back. I taught a class in The Lab called the instant one formula that everybody gets brand new when they come in, taught live by me. And I’ve been really excited about this class, so I put lots of preparation and time and everything into it. and it was so much fun to teach and I still get to teach five more parts because it’s a five part class. So that was awesome.

And then right after that, I did the elite coaching call. So anybody that’s been in The Lab for a year or longer they get an extra call with me every month where they can come and get help and coaching. And so those people have been here long enough that we can get a little bit deeper, a little bit more advanced. And so I did that for an hour. And it was so awesome. Days like that when I just get to show up and coach people, fill me up.

Now, that wasn’t my whole day, that was the bulk of my morning. And then I took my dog and went for a walk. And I came back. I’m doing a little admin and now I’m recording this podcast. But I was just thinking, thank you, Jody Moore for doing all the little things you’ve got to do in between the coaching calls so that we can show up and coach like that. I hear from so many of you coaches who tell me you want to work for me and that’s awesome and I don’t know, maybe one day I’ll have a need for coaches.

But the truth is the coaching is the fun part for me and for you, that’s why we all want to work for someone. But I’m so grateful to myself for building this opportunity to coach. I can coach as much as I want to because of all of the work that I’m willing, that I put in, in the past, first of all, and I’m still willing to put in. So a percentage of this is just doing things even though they’re not your favorite things to do. Welcome to life. But that’s also what makes it so rewarding is I can thank myself for the opportunity.

Okay, the last thing I want to tell you, the last kind of, I’m calling it a business lesson that I’ve learned over 10 years of running this business, being a coach and an entrepreneur. And this is my favorite thought. I offer it to people all the time. It’s not about you. And I’m talking to you about your business. So if it’s me in my business, the thought is, it’s not about me. It’s not about me. Now, people get confused about this.

The business is called Jody Moore Coaching and everybody on my team has an email address that has some version of their name and then @jodymoorecoaching. And my face is all over the website and the podcast cover. And it’s my voice you’re listening to right now and I’m on videos on my Instagram and Facebook pages and my name is at the bottom of every email. You’d think that this was about me. It’s not, it’s not about me, and that is the best news.

I tell myself that, not to humble myself because, well, maybe, maybe sometimes some humbling is required. But mostly when I need to hear that message is when I’m filled with insecurity and fear and doubt because if it’s about me then that’s really scary to put myself out there. When other people come along and judge me and criticize, if they don’t like what I’m saying, or if I try something and it fails and I make it about me, that’s going to feel terrible. But I remember, it’s not about me, it’s really not.

Even when people come along and they tell me how much I’ve helped them and they’re so grateful and so generous and telling me, people cry on my shoulder, you guys, at live events. I love all of you who come up to me, by the way, don’t avoid me. I was just on one of the coaching calls, a woman said, “I almost came up and introduced myself to you at a conference, but I was too shy.” I was like, “What? Don’t do that. Now you owe me a hug. I want you to come and hug me and cry on my shoulder and whatever you want to say, I want to meet you.”

But at any rate, when people come and they tell me how much I help them, that is not about me, it’s not about me. That’s about you. That’s about the person who took what I told them and ran with it. I had very little to do with it, if you’ve received help. Even when I coached people one-on-one and I would talk to them every week for six weeks, eventually that became nine weeks, sometimes even longer, that wasn’t about me. I got to spend an hour on the phone with them once a week. All the rest is them and God. That’s it, that’s what it’s about.

So listen, it’s not about you, even though you might choose personal branding as your business model like I’ve done, because it’s a really useful way to help people find what you do and to hear your message. We tend to hear it better when we connect it with a person. We like people better than we like textbooks. So that’s just a way to help get the message out there, my face and my name and all that nonsense. But none of this is about me. Isn’t that the best news, your business is not about you?

When I go to speak to audiences, and sometimes I get nervous ahead of time and I think what if I forget what I was going to say or what if I trip and fall or what if people don’t like me, what if it’s boring etc.? All I do is remind myself, you think this is about you, Jody Moore. This is not about you. This is about the audience. This is about, even if there’s one person out there who takes one thing you say and it points them in a more useful direction, than you did your job. That’s it.

This isn’t about you impressing anyone. This isn’t about you making friends and winning people over. This is not about you. This is about something so much bigger than you. That is how I feel about the work I get to do. This is God’s work, to me it literally is. I don’t mean that everyone should be doing it. I don’t mean this is the right approach for everyone. I just mean that for me, this is what God wants me to do. This is how he wants me to support my family and be fulfilled and grow and develop myself and contribute in the world, I know that for sure.

Alright, everybody, thanks for joining me today. Like I said, we’ve got four more episodes because there are five Fridays in May, thankfully. So May is our 10 year birthday here at Jody Moore Coaching. I’ve got more lessons coming up for you next week, so stay tuned and then till then have a beautiful week. Bye bye.

If you find the podcast to be helpful you’re going to love The Lab. In Better Than Happy: The Lab we experiment with applying all of it in your real life. Whether you’re in the middle of a challenge and ready for some relief or you’re ready to commit to pursuing your dream goals and making them a reality, come join me in the lab at jodymoore.com/thelab. That’s jodymoore.com/thelab.