Hey, welcome back to the life coach launchpad. My name’s BJ, and I’m here every week talking to you about all the online business things that, as it turns out, need to happen in order to have a successful life coaching business. I’m a business coach. I love to help life coaches make more money, get more clients, have more fun, and to do what they love to do, what they’re meant to do. And that’s coaching. So let’s dive right in. Today’s episode is inspired by an email that I got from someone on my email list, and this person was just letting me know some thoughts that they were thinking about in terms of starting a coaching business. Embedded in this short email were what I consider four myths that prevents tons of coaches from starting or going all in.

So I’m going to jump right into it. Myth number one is that no one would pay me for my type of coaching. This comes in different forms, like, I don’t have a niche or I’m too niched, I’m too specific. And that’s just our brain’s way of finding an excuse. This is our brain trying to keep us safe. This is what our brain does. Over the millennia that our brains were forming, going through evolution, our brains were just trying to keep us in the cave. In the cave is safe.

If you go outside, I don’t know what will happen. You’ll probably get eaten by a saber toothed tiger or something. But here’s a great way just to stick your head out of the cave, and that’s just to google what you want to do. Chances are other people are doing it. That’s a great power of the Internet. In this example, this person has decades of experience as a pastor, tons of bible knowledge. They have experience coaching. I googled christian life coach.

Guess what? There’s tons of christian life coaches. I mean, I knew that before I googled it. But when you google it, it just really shows you what’s out there. Now, just because someone has a website doesn’t mean they’re making a killing. It doesn’t even guarantee that they’re making a living by what they’re doing. But when you see a lot of people doing it, it’s a pretty good indication that you can make a living doing that. When you’re looking through Google, through the Google results, this can be risky because us humans, we love to compare and despair. So if you’re out there just naturally when you see what someone else has, you want it or you get jealous.

Those are just very natural human reactions. But the habit that you need to get yourself into is just to stop and remind yourself that this is a race against yourself. I’m talking about in business. Business is a race against yourself. In life, it’s a race against yourself. The only person you should be comparing yourself against is your past self. Go learn what others are doing. Get inspiration.

And of course, try not to get dragged in with the compare and despair, but use that as inspiration to move forward. And when you start thinking, oh, I’m not niched enough, I’m too niched, this is what people care about. People only care about is can you help me? Can you help them? And if you can, that’s what you need to be doing. Here’s myth number two is marketing is too hard. Also, people will say that marketing is too expensive. Again, can you help people? Often we get stuck thinking that we can’t convince people they need our help. But I’m asking you, can you help? Can you help people? If you can, or even think that you can, the help you provide becomes invaluable for that person. I mean, you know, you went through probably a very similar transformation as the way that you help people go through today.

And by the way, if you’re convincing people to buy from you, that’s quite a red flag. What we’re trying to do is trying to educate people on the powers of coaching. The way to get through to people, the way to find them, the way to educate them, that can all be taught. You can learn organic marketing. Paid ads are easy and they don’t have to be expensive. You can get started with a dollar a day. You can get a lot of feedback that way. If you can help, just talk about that.

That’s what marketing is. That’s all anyone cares about anyway. Myth number three, I can always start later. Yes, the online tools, the marketing principles, your coaching skills, they’ll all be there later. But if you’re always saying later, with no plan of when, no plan when you’re going to get started or no plan of when you’re really going to take it to the next level, that is not a decision. That is indecision. If you remain an indecision or think that maybe you can’t help without actually seeking to learn more, then you won’t take those steps and it won’t happen. Here’s how you can investigate.

Why do you think people won’t pay you? Because you created one social post and you heard crickets. Well, sometimes you might have created hundreds of posts and you don’t hear very much feedback, but think about it, kind of flip it around. Is there any positive results that you’ve created in your life? Have you exhibited grit, persistence? Have you really gone for something else in the past? Use that as momentum. Use that as evidence that you can in fact, create a coaching business. When you’re considering this option of always starting later, ask yourself, well, what will life be like if you don’t try? Because if you keep putting it off, that’s exactly where you’ll end up. You won’t have tried. You will become someone who hasn’t tried, who hasn’t put themselves out there as a coach, you haven’t told anyone. Are you willing to accept that? This is the situation I was in when I was a manufacturing engineer for eleven years at a multinational company.

I was making six figures going up the corporate ladder and if I just would have stayed there, I would have been very comfortable with the benefits that I was receiving and would have just done that till retirement. But the thought of not trying to become a business coach just made this not an option for me. I know that I am meant to help people do what they love to do and make a business out of it. I know it’s possible. So I just feel like jumping up and down and telling people that and showing people that and helping them to do it. Here’s another way to get through this, is that you don’t have to decide to go 100% all in in order to get started. If you can find a stepping thought or just kind of a first step, then you can get the confidence and motivation to create something. Tell someone what you do, tell someone that you’re a coach and then tell more people that you’re a coach.

Create some social posts or more social posts. Create a lead magnet. Develop your program. Create a website. The more that you create, the more real it becomes and the more confidence you’ll get when you just do the next step. You don’t have to know exactly what the following step will be, but just doing one step will lead you to the next. And by the way, this is where I can help. I have a client who’s in the early stages of their business.

They don’t have all the answers about they want their business to look like, but after talking with them, they know the first step. What I’m doing is I’m building their lead magnet for them. They don’t have a website or anything. They have nothing. So I built a website. I built the landing page. I embedded a convertkit form into it so they’re collecting email addresses. After someone leaves their name and email address, they get directed to a second web page that says, thank you for downloading my lead magnet.

And after that, I’m going to create the social media ad that goes along with it. When we do this step by step, it gives us confidence to move on to the next step. Another way that I help is that if you’re interested in building these skills in yourself, I can coach you through it. When you work with a coach, you know this. It is so much easier having going through the process with someone who has done it before. It is faster, it is easier, it is less anxiety driven, and you end up with a better result. Okay, myth number four is I can’t make as much money as my day job or I can’t afford to invest more in my business. I know what I see.

I don’t know what all of my clients make, but I do have some long term, year by year profit and revenue data on one of my long term clients. I know that in year two of having her podcast, I don’t know ExacTly what she made in year one, but in year two, she was making $100,000 in profit and she was doing this very part time, probably less than 20 hours a week. That was also the year that we started working together. The next year she tripled her revenue and her profit. So she was making about $350,000 in revenue, probably about 300,000 in profit, working less than 20 hours a week. I think that’s pretty good. She was doing what she loves to do, what she is meant to do, what she is called to do. So when someone says that they can’t afford to invest in their business, I call bs.

You can’t afford not to invest in your business or you can’t afford not to get started in your coaching business. If this is what you are meant to do, then you have to keep pushing. So those are my four myths that prevent coaches from getting started or growing their business. It also addresses the question, will anyone pay for my coaching? These types of things pop up in all different forms. If you’re looking for any help in anything that I mentioned today, or really any challenges that you’re seeing in your coaching business, let me know. I can help.