511. There’s Only One Way to Succeed as a Coach

Most coaches think they need the perfect strategy to succeed: the best funnel, the best content, the best niche. But what if I told you that’s only a tiny part of the equation?

In today’s episode, I’m revealing the real secret to growing your coaching business, and it’s not what you think. If you’ve been feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or wondering why all the tactics aren’t working, this is the wake up call you need. Welcome to Better Than Happy, episode 511: There’s Only One Way to Succeed as a Coach.

Welcome to Better Than Happy, the podcast where we transform our lives by transforming ourselves. My name is Jody Moore. In the decade-plus I’ve been working with clients as a Master Certified Coach, I’ve helped tens of thousands of people to become empowered. And from empowered, the things that seemed hard become trivial, and the things that seemed impossible become available, and suddenly, a whole new world of desire and possibility open up to you. And what do you do with that?

Well, that’s the question… what will you do? Let’s find out.

Sometimes, listening to a podcast is enough. But sometimes, you’ll feel inspired to go deeper. If you hear things that speak to you in today’s episode, consider it your invitation to a complimentary coaching workshop.

On this live, interactive Zoom call with me, you’ll get a taste of the power of this work when applied in real life. You can participate, or be a silent observer. But you have to take a step if you want to truly see change in your life… two steps, actually. Head to JodyMoore.com/freecoaching and register. Then you just have to show up. Your best life is waiting for you. Will you show up for it? JodyMoore.com/freecoaching. I’ll see you there.

Okay, if you are a coach building a coaching business, or some other kind of entrepreneur building an online service-based business… actually, this applies to any entrepreneur, but that’s my specialty. I want you to listen up because this is not just a PS afterthought when it comes to how to be successful in your business. What I’m going to teach you today is not just the light, fluffy part that’s kind of fun to learn about and nice to add if we have time after we get to all the tactics and strategy. This is the core of what makes for a successful entrepreneur, especially a successful coach who owns her own business.

If you want to have lots of clients and you want to make a big impact, and you want to be able to scale and do eventually group coaching or a membership or retreats or live events, and you want to be on other people’s platforms and, I don’t know, whatever it is that you want to do, I hope you’re thinking big. I hope you want to make a big impact. 

Or even if you want to work more part time and you just want to have a few clients and you want to just be able to make an impact on a smaller scale, whatever you want, if you don’t get your head in the right place, it will constantly feel like paddling upstream.

If you feel like you’re paddling upstream, you feel stuck, you feel dread when it comes to working on your business, you have lots of guilt and shame, you think you should be doing things that you’re not doing. You question yourself. You worry that you’re not doing it right. You’re worried you’re going to waste time, you’re going to waste money. You’re spending time on the wrong things, or maybe you’re going to make the wrong choice. 

Or maybe you have lots of confusion, and you just can’t decide, and you just think you need someone to tell you the right way. Then first of all, you’re not wrong, you’re not broken. It’s not that you’re not going to be successful. You’re a human being with a human brain, but you have to manage that brain and you have to choose a different mindset when it comes to building your business.

And I’m going to tell you how to do that today. I know that sounds great in theory, but it also sounds very big and vague and challenging to do. So today we’re going to get into practical strategies. I’m going to teach you how to do it, but this is not just the light fluffy part. 

I say that because I see people go to these business conferences, right? And there’ll be a workshop or a speaker who’s talking about social media, and somebody talking about sales, and somebody talking about, I don’t know, YouTube or evergreen funnels or affiliate marketing or joint ventures or whatever, right? We have all these different kind of tactical strategy things, which are great.

I love learning about that stuff. I want you to learn about all of that stuff. Any of it you want to, I should say. But then there’s the motivational piece, there’s the mindset piece, there’s the getting your head in the right place, and people are kind of, “I’m gonna… I’m just gonna take a long lunch. I don’t really need that part.” I literally hear people say this all the time. “I don’t really need that part, I just need the strategies.” I’m like, no, you don’t. Because if you got your head in the right place, you actually don’t need very much strategy at all. It’s 80% where your head is at and 20% strategy.

You know how I know this? Because somebody was the first one to figure out how YouTube works, or how to use social media, or how to do joint ventures, or whatever else is the strategy you’re trying to learn. Somebody learned it first. How did they do that? If we needed someone to teach us how, how did anyone ever figure it out for the first time? Well, because they had their heads in the right place, and so they did what was necessary to figure it out. And there is nobody on planet Earth who can tell you the cookie cutter A to Z that’s going to create success for you. That doesn’t exist.

There are lots of people who have ideas and methods that you can try out, that you can take from, but your best pathway to success is going to be a combination of probably several teachers and strategies and tools that you’re going to pull together and combine it with you and your own method and your own style. And that’s your A to Z path. And you can only discover that A to Z path by getting your head in the right space and going out there and doing it.

I’m telling you, this is everything. If it feels like I’m yelling at you, I hope you can feel the love it’s coming from, because I care about you being successful. I want you to succeed. I know you have it in you to succeed. I have zero doubt that you have it in you to succeed, because if you didn’t, you wouldn’t have the desire to do it. Okay? 

So, here’s what I want to say. Let’s get tactical for just a minute. Let’s get practical. How do we do that, Jody Moore? I’m going to tell you today. You don’t have to do this on a grand scale, okay? Get your head in the right space is very vague and grandiose, and therefore, I don’t know how to even tell you to do it. But you only need to do it, and it will do it on the big scale if you do this, on a specific, day-to-day, small scale. Here’s what I mean.

I just got off a coaching call in The Lab: Coach Access. I coached a handful of beautiful, amazing coaches who have all different kinds of businesses. I use the term coach kind of loosely because we have like an interior designer in there, and we have a nurse in there, and we have all different kinds of people in there. But at any rate, we’re all building similar businesses, right? Service based businesses using online marketing. That’s what I’m talking about when I say coaches, all right?

And every one of them brings to me something that they think is just the facts about what’s going on in their business. They will present to me, “Here’s where my business is at,” or “Here’s what I’ve been doing,” or “Here’s what I’ve experienced,” as though they’re telling me the facts about the world or the facts about their business. And I interrupt them and say, “Whoa. How does that thought feel?” Because it’s always a thought.

Let me give you some examples here. I had a beautiful, amazing client who came on the call and she said, “Well, in the last few months, we’ve had a huge amount of client drop off.” Okay? I want you to just pause for a minute and notice, “In the last few months, we’ve had a huge amount of client drop off” is not a fact. It’s a thought.

So I immediately interrupted her and said, “How does that thought feel?” And she laughed because she’s awesome and she’s been with me a long time and she’s aware. She said, “It feels awful.” I’m like, “Yeah, why would you ever think that?” Now, a lot of people go, “Well, because it’s true. I have had a huge amount of client drop off.” I’m like, “Really? What does that even mean?” When we broke it down, the number of people that dropped off were like four or something. I was like, “What? Are you talking… That’s not a huge amount of client drop off.”

Okay. Now she’s like, “Well, compared to I usually only have two, and I’ve had four.” And I’m like, “Oh my goodness.” That is a poisonous, terrible, toxic thought. Because when she thinks it, she feels desperate and scarce. And you know what happens when she feels desperate, scarce energy? She suddenly has no idea what to do next. And she has to come to me and say, “What do you think I should do next?” Now, it’s fine to come to me and ask that. That’s what we do as coaches.

But imagine if she came to me and said, “I’m going to take my business next level. It’s time to double my business.” Notice a shift here. Instead of thinking about the past, we could just start thinking about the future. Who cares how many clients dropped off this month? Unless you think that’s a problem, which by the way, when we explored it, it was… had nothing to do with her business, her services, her program. 

If we have a huge amount, “huge” amount of client drop off, if that’s our thought, and we go look at it and we realize like, “Oh, people are dissatisfied with this part,” or “I haven’t been delivering in this way like I used to,” or “I’ve been overselling and underdelivering,” or something… If it’s something in our control, then we’re like, “Oh, good news. We’re just going to fix that thing. We’re going to change that. We’re going to improve our business or our offer in this way.”

But of course, that wasn’t the case. It had nothing to do with her offer. It had to do with what was going on in the clients’ lives, right? So, we’re not going to go out there and try to control the world. We know we can’t do that. So there’s zero upside to us going into scarcity and just thinking, “Oh no, I’m having this huge amount of client drop off,” because it sends the brain into crazy places. Have you noticed this?

Do not do this, my friends. You have to be more disciplined in your thinking. When your brain says, “We’ve had a huge amount of client drop off,” you just go, “Really, brain? Wow, it’s very dramatic, isn’t it?” This is what I do with my brain. Like, wow, very dramatic. And okay, even if we let that be true, so what? What are you saying? What are you afraid of? All of this is going to go away? Everything’s shrinking? We’re not going to have enough money to pay the bills? Is that what you’re telling me? Because that’s… Let’s just settle down here. Okay?

What do we want to do in the future? How about, let’s double down? Let’s put in more work. Let’s see what we’re capable of. Let’s make the next two months a month where we’re out of balance. Sometimes I like to be like, time to get out of balance, Jody. You’ve had enough balance for a while. Now we’re going to be out of balance. You’re going to spend a little bit more time, a little bit more energy. You’re going to work a little harder than you have been. I’m not saying we’re going to neglect all the people in our lives or anything. Don’t get me wrong.

Just like, “Hey, time to work a little harder. Let’s go. We’re going to hustle for the next two months.” Okay? We’re going to step it up. And that’s so much better than, “I’ve just had a huge amount of client drop off.” Right? My friend who’s listening, who I just coached, my client, you know who you are. You know I love you. We did some awesome coaching on this, but that is not a thought that is useful to walk around thinking.

Here’s another one that came up. Somebody said, “I just have so much drama around Instagram stories. I feel like I’m not doing it right.” I was like, “Wow, that’s heavy.” Right? Because she feels so stuck and she feels guilty that she’s not doing it and she feels… I was like, “What are you talking about? You don’t have drama around Instagram stories. You just have a brain that’s coming along, trying to be confused, taking what is probably good advice that someone told you about how to use Instagram stories, and then using it to torture yourself.”

That is not the point of the advice. You can take the advice or leave the advice. It’s just somebody’s opinion. They might even be wrong. You don’t have to do Instagram stories. You don’t have to do Instagram, period. You don’t have to, right? We got to get out of should. We’re going to go should-free. You know what? You could do Instagram stories if you wanted, but I should do Instagram stories and I should do it in this way keeps you stuck. It feels very heavy. It feels terrible. It makes it really hard to do Instagram stories.

But I could do Instagram stories means that I could or I could not. It doesn’t matter either way. It’s not going to create my success. I’m going to create success if I choose to create success, or I’m not going to create success. But I could do Instagram stories is totally different than I should. I could use Instagram stories to take better care of my clients. I could use Instagram stories to let people know how powerful my work is. I could. It’s entirely different than I should. Okay?

Do not tell yourself that you have drama over something, or that you’re stuck, or you just have this terrible thought. Even that is a thought. You see what I’m saying? Here’s another one somebody said to me. This is a newer coach, building a newer business, and she said that she’s done some practice coaching and she’s got some certifications and some licenses and all kinds of great things she’s doing. And then she said, “But I’m just having a really hard time getting my first paying clients.”

You guys, that is a thought: “I’m having a hard time getting my first paying clients.” Do you know that is not a fact? I asked her, “Wow, how do you feel when you think, ‘I’m having a really hard time getting my first paying clients’?” She said, “I feel desperate.” Guess what? Trying to build your business from desperation? Not fun. Super hard. It’s like trudging through the mud. We don’t know what to do. Not only mud, it’s dark. We’re in the dark mud at night. We can’t see where we’re going. We’re just getting sticky and dirty with every step we take. We just want to get out and take a shower and be done with this whole business thing.

That’s how I feel when I think, “I’m having a hard time getting some paying clients.” And then all the shoulds come back. “I should try something else. I should do this. Maybe I should do that.” No, remember we’re should-free from now on. Okay? So, you’re not having a hard time. Here’s what we discovered. She’s right on track. She’s on the journey. She’s doing it. She’s figured some things out. She just hasn’t figured it all out yet, but who cares? It takes time to figure it all out.

It takes time to grow and develop yourself. And it takes time to find your way in the market, and to find your message, and to find your voice, and to find your people, and then to get better at sales, and to get better at marketing, and to be more consistent, and to learn how to do videos, and to learn… It takes a minute, okay? Can we give you a minute instead of going, “I’m having a really hard time”?

It’s like a kid learning to walk. I want you to picture a toddler learning to walk. And every time they get up and they almost take a step and then they fall down, we’re not like, “He’s having a really hard time learning to walk.” We’re like, “He’s doing it! Did you see that? He took a step!” We take a video. We’re like, “You guys, he walked today!” And the child took like one or two steps and then fell down. We’re like, “He did it!”

I want you to be like that with yourself when you build your business. I want you to be like, “Look at me, I’m doing it!” Even though you only took one step and then you fell down again, don’t be like, “I’m having a hard time.” No, you’re not. If you tell yourself you’re having a hard time, guess what’s going to happen? You’re going to continue to have a hard time. Because your brain’s job is to be right about what you’re thinking and believing. Your brain’s job is to look for evidence that it’s true and even do its very best to make it true.

So, instead of thinking, “I’m having a hard time,” I want you to picture yourself succeeding. What does walking with ease look like for you? Back to my walking metaphor. Stay with me. Okay? What does walking with ease – when I asked this client, I’m like, “What does it look like when you’re successful? How…” She was like, “Well, it’s about time for me. I don’t want to work very many hours.” Okay, great. How many hours?

It took her a minute to figure out. Like, maybe 15 hours a week, maybe three hours a day. Then I want to be with my kids. Okay, so you’re working three hours a day. What does it look like? How many clients do you have? How much money are you making? She’s like, “Well, I don’t know about the money. I just want to be able to do this and that. I’m not necessarily trying to make a certain amount of money.” I’m like, “Okay, we have no idea what it looks like. We have no idea where we’re going.”

How do we get to where we’re going if we don’t know where we’re going? If we just say I’m going to Europe, it’s really hard to go buy a plane ticket and book a hotel and make travel plans. But if I say to you, “I’m going to go to Paris for a little while, then I’m going to go to London, and then I’m going to go to Rome, and I want to visit the LDS temples in each of those places, and I want to see the sights,” then I can get online and start doing some research and booking a trip. If I know I want to be there for two weeks and I want to go with friends, suddenly I know what to go do. I have some ideas, and I can figure the rest out as I go, right?

So, don’t focus on what’s not working. Focus on where you’re going and start picturing it. And start working on believing that you can get there and tell yourself, “I could get there. I could do that.” Right? Is totally different than, “I haven’t done it yet. I’m having a hard time doing it.” No, “I will do it. I’m going to do it. I’m doing it. I’m working on doing it.” So different, you guys.

What else did we have today? I’m just going through my notes from the coaching call and I’m like, let’s put this on the podcast because everybody needs to hear this. This is the power of coaching, by the way. This is why I recommend that you have regular access to coaching, that you’re getting coached or you’re listening to coaching. 

You’ve got to keep your head in the right space. And it will naturally want to go back to doubt and scarcity and confusion. It’s just like bad breath. Like I can brush my teeth, but I’m still going to wake up with bad breath every day, and then I got to brush them again. And I got to take care of my oral health.

And you also got to take care of your mental and emotional health because guess what? On default, it will go back to scarcity, negativity, fear, self doubt, judgment, all the things it wants to do. This is true in your life, but this is also true in your business. Okay. I’m just trying to think if there’s any other common ones. I mean, “it’s not working,” I think is the most common default thought entrepreneurs bring me. “It’s not working” is not a fact, you guys.

What does that even mean? I always ask that when they say it’s not working. I’m like, “What do you mean by that? What’s not working? What would working even look like?” “Well, I mean, I’m doing these things, but I only have 10 clients and I want to have 15.” Okay. So it is working, actually. Like it’s working. We’ve got 10 clients. Okay, so it’s working. “Well, yeah, but it’s not working the way I want it to work because I want to be getting more, or I’m spending more time getting those clients,” or whatever.

Okay, but “it’s not working,” how do you feel when you think that? Now listen, there’s probably a couple of you listening who are like, “No, when I think it’s not working, I get really excited and I get motivated and I get tons of ideas about how to get it working.” Okay, cool then. Keep that thought if it feels that way to you. I’m not even being sarcastic. I genuinely mean that. 

If the thought helps you feel how you want to feel, which is if you’re building a business: committed, determined, motivated, inspired, excited, I don’t mean you have to feel all those emotions all the time. I mean, those tend to be the most useful ones.

Like committed and determined don’t feel very good, but they’re very useful. Inspired and excited feel good, and I don’t have to feel them all the time. I’m not going to, unfortunately, feel them all the time. But I can some of the time. And committed and determined get me closer to inspired and excited. And so they’re very useful emotions, right? These are the ones I want to be operating from when I’m building my business. What I don’t want to be operating from: scarcity, fear, doubt, indecision, confusion.

And those are the most common ones that people tell me they’re trying to build their business from. And then they think, “Once I get more clients, then I won’t feel doubt, then I won’t feel confusion.” I’m like, wrong. I’ve been doing this a long time. And people don’t suddenly start feeling confident because they got clients. 

They just now feel insecure and scarce and afraid about the next level of their business. And they think, “Well, I should have done it faster, and I should be further along, and how am I ever going to get to the next level?” Or “This won’t last. This is only temporary.” Like your brain will just find a new reason to be in fear and doubt and scarcity.

You have to work on your mindset or there’s no end to this game. There’s no end. Okay? So, instead of that, instead of “it’s not working,” this is one of my favorite things Myron Golden says. He says, “It’s always working. It’s either working for you or it’s working on you.” Right? I mean, think about that. It’s either getting you the results you want of making an impact in the world and making the kind of money and getting clients and whatever. It’s either working in that way or it’s working on you.

You know what that means, right? It means, wait a second. I have to get my head out of the ditch that it’s in right now. And I have to get to a confident, abundant place. I have to choose to believe in me even though I have no proof or evidence that I’m worth believing in. I have to decide that I’m capable of doing this and commit to it and be determined to do it even though the people around me think I’m crazy and that I’m not going to do it. No one’s going to believe in you, friend, more than you’re going to believe in yourself in the beginning.

That will change later, which is a whole another problem, by the way. Because then people believe in you and then you kind of kick back and relax. And you can’t kick back and relax for too long. You got to keep pedaling at times anyway, or the bike’s going to stop, right? 

But anyway, no one’s going to believe in you for you. Your spouse isn’t going to believe in you. If you’re waiting around for that, you might be waiting a very long time. You have to believe in you. You don’t need them to believe in you if you believe in you. And you could do it in secret if you want.

I like to believe in me in secret. Well, sometimes I do it out loud. But there are many things that I’m just like, I’m not going to tell everyone how successful I’m going to be, what a huge impact I’m going to make. It’s my little secret. You know why I keep it a secret? Because it’s kind of a delicate, fragile belief that I have. I have it, but it’s delicate. It’s like a balloon. And if somebody popped it, then I’d have to re-blow up that balloon, and it’s a lot of work. So I just keep it to myself. I don’t pass it all around until it gets stronger, right?

So you can do that, but you have to choose to believe in you. You have to talk to yourself the way you would talk to a toddler learning to walk. You can’t be like, “You’re such an idiot. Who did you think you were? Look, you just fell down again. Do you know you’ve fallen down 10 times today?” We don’t say that to the toddler. We’re like, “Good job, keep going.” And just like every time the toddler falls down, its legs get stronger, which is how the toddler learns to walk. Isn’t that crazy to think about? My teacher Brooke Castillo used to talk about this all the time.

Every time the toddler falls down and gets back up, he’s doing little baby squats. And those baby squats strengthen his legs so that he can walk. And he’s also creating balance and core strength. All the things necessary to walk. And if we could just sit back and explain to the toddler how to walk without doing those things, we would, but that’s obviously not an option for all kinds of reasons. And the same is true of you, my friend, as you build your business. Listen, people will do it all day long. I’ll do it. I’ll sit and tell you exactly how to build a business.

In fact, I have trainings where I do that. Go to my website, JodyMoore.com, and I’ll teach you how to build a business. I’ll tell you all of it for free. But you won’t be able to do it unless you develop the leg muscles and the core strength and the balance and the coordination and the experience to do it. You won’t be able to do it long term. I think this is terrible news and great news. It’s terrible news because I always just… I really want to just gift to you the way to be successful. I do. I desperately want you to be successful.

I would just sell it to you. Be like, “Here’s the solution. Unwrap this box and you’ll have a successful business.” I would. So it’s terrible news that we can’t do that. And I want people to do that for me too, at all the things I want to achieve, right? But it’s also good news because this is the way that you’re going to develop and grow in the best ways. In the ways that you can’t even anticipate right now. You are going to become not only a successful entrepreneur and coach that impacts tons of lives. But your life is going to get better in ways you don’t even know right now.

It’s going to impact other areas and you’re going to meet people and you’re going to develop skills you didn’t even know you wanted and they’re going to come in handy in ways that you didn’t even know you need them. And one day you’re going to look back and go, “Oh my gosh, I think that thing that I learned is because I need it now.” Like, this is the way it works. 

For those of you that are members of the LDS church, there’s a verse of scripture in the Book of Mormon when we learn about the brother of Jared. And the Lord says to him, “Don’t worry, I’ve prepared you.” Right? Because he’s getting ready to take this scary journey across the sea in enclosed barges.

And the Lord says, “But I’ve prepared you.” He says, “Yes, the winds will blow, right? And it will be a stormy ride, but I’ve prepared you.” And sometimes I think about that. I’m like, yeah, we’re being prepared through trials, but also the things I desire to do, the goals I set, the challenges I choose to go after, give me opportunities to learn and grow and develop skills and knowledge and to meet people, to have contacts and resources. Sometimes are things I didn’t even think I wanted to learn. But I had to learn them in order to do what I want to do.

And then suddenly one day I’m like, “Oh, this is coming in handy right now.” So great that I have this skill because the Lord prepares us. Life continues to prepare us for life. And it prepares us in ways that we don’t even know. We don’t even know we’re going to need. It’s terrible news that I can’t –  none of us can just like have somebody tap us on the head and if we paid them enough money, they’d turn us into a successful entrepreneur. That’s just not a thing. But it’s also really, really good news. Because building a business, helping people, being a coach, is by far the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.

It is my life’s calling. I know it is. I know this is what I’m supposed to be doing. I don’t know, maybe I’ll do it till the day I die. Maybe not. Maybe I’ll get sick of it. I don’t know. But for now, this is 100% what I’m meant to do. So on the days it’s hard and I don’t want to figure out the next thing, I’m like, yeah, but what’s the alternative? You’re not going to live your purpose? That’s just a different kind of hard. That’s a different kind of pain. Then I’m going to sit around and feel unfulfilled. And it’s going to keep nagging at me to go out there and do what I’m meant to do.

So I would much rather have the discomfort of growth and progress than the discomfort of stagnation. And I know you’re the same, my friend, or you wouldn’t be listening to this episode. You would have hung up by now. You would have pushed stop and shut me off by now.

So, listen, we got to keep going and you got to keep your head in the right spot. You can do it, my friend. Thanks for joining me. I’ll see you next time on another episode. Take care.

Oh wow, look at that. You made it to the end. Your time and attention is valuable, and I don’t take it lightly that you made it this far. In fact, it tells me you might be like me; insatiably curious about people and life and potential and connection. Maybe you have big dreams but a small budget and no time. You’re tired, but bored. You’re content, but dissatisfied. Sound familiar? Come to a free coaching call and see for yourself what’s possible: JodyMoore.com/freecoaching to register. That’s JodyMoore.com/freecoaching.