The Career-Integrated Entrepreneur™ Podcast

Ep27. How to Build Unshakable Confidence as a New Coach

• Cindy Excell

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If you have been telling yourself, “I am not ready to coach yet,” this episode is for you.


Today, we are talking about the real reason confidence does not come from another certification or course, and how you can start building unshakable confidence right now, even if you feel messy, scared, or unsure.


I am sharing the lessons I learned the hard way, why your lived experience matters more than you think, and how to finally stop waiting for permission to start your coaching business.


Inside this episode, we will cover:

  • Why getting one more certification will not make you feel ready
  • How real coaching confidence is actually built
  • What truly qualifies you to help clients (hint: it is not another credential)
  • How to overcome the fear of not being enough and start taking action now

If you have been stuck waiting for the perfect moment, this episode will help you move forward with confidence and clarity.


Resources:

Free eBook: $5K/Month Side Coaching Business Blueprint

Connect with me on LinkedIn here

Check out my Instagram here

 If you've ever thought, I am not ready to coach yet, then this episode is for you. I'm sharing the real reason confidence doesn't come from getting another certification, and how you can actually start building unshakable confidence of being a coach right now, even if you feel messy. You feel scared and unsure because the truth is you are already more ready than you think.

Welcome to the House with Heels podcast, the show for high achieving corporate women who want more than just a paycheck. I'm your host, Cindy Excell financial advisor, attend business coach and I help high achieving corporate women. Turn your expertise. Into an online coaching business that brings freedom, income, and impact.

Without quitting your nine to five job or burning out on this podcast, I'll share everything you need to redefine your career success, create your financial runway, and build your side coaching business on your terms. Now, let's get started. Hey friend. Welcome back to a new episode of Hustle with Heels Podcast.

If you are thinking about launching a side coaching business, or maybe you've already started, but you keep second guessing yourself, then today's episode is for you because on this episode, we are going to talk about how to step up to have confidence of being a coach. This is not the. Fake it until you make the kind of fake confidence.

I'm talking about the real grounded and unshakeable confidence. The content that says, I may not have it all figured out yet, but I am showing up anyway. Now, let's dive in. I want to take you back to the beginning stage of my corporate career where I came to Australia as an international student. Uh, after I finished my undergraduate, got my bachelor's degree in China, and then I came to Australia to do my master's degree.

As soon as I graduated, I stepped into the financial services industry, which is to be exact, the financial planning industry to become a financial advisor. That's when I started to get into this credential trap as if the more qualification I got, the more qualified I would become As a financial advisor, I pretty much did everything, every certification, every advanced diploma, every professional designation that, a license that the industry offered.

Anything you can think of. If it existed in financial planning industry, I've got it. And if you looked at my LinkedIn profile, you probably think, yep, she's got it all. It looks impressive on paper, but here is what you want to see on paper. None of that actually made me move faster in my career as a financial advisor.

It didn't get me promoted any quicker than those colleagues with half of the qualifications. It also didn't suddenly make me feel more confident and more ready. To say clients to talk about their financial planning needs. If anything, it actually gave me more reasons to keep waiting because no matter how many letters are added after my name, there was still this little voice whispering.

Who do you think you are? Your English is not that good. You never had any experience in the financial services industry before you come to Australia. Client wouldn't want you to be their financial advisor because you know, because of your Chinese accent, et cetera. Looking back now, I realize that what I was doing, I wasn't just collecting knowledge, I was actually collecting permission.

I thought if I ticked enough boxes, if I got more qualifications, more credentials, more designations, if I proved that I was qualified enough on paper, then maybe I would finally feel ready. I. But I never did because the truth was I didn't need more credentials. What I was actually doing then was to hide behind those qualifications, those paper, because seeing clients and the talking about their investments, talking about their um, portfolios, their wealth, their superannuation, their pension, et cetera, and to have those revenue target as a financial advisor, it felt scary.

It's not as comfortable as doing all the back office support work behind the scene. So what I really needed back then was the courage I needed just to go out there and to do the work and to get experience. And that's exactly what I did after I left a very secured corporate job to join the largest investments bank in Australia and to become a wealth manager.

Now, let me be clear. Credentials do matter in some industries and in some professions. If you are stepping into a brand new field where you've got no experience or no knowledge at all, or even the industry might require the certain certification or certain credentials for its safety, regulation, legal, or even ethical reasons, then yes, you do need to do the training.

Learn your craft and be responsible. But if that's not the case, if you've already walked the path, if you've already got the knowledge, the experience, if you've solved the problem for yourself or even for others, if you've lived those transformations and know how to guide someone through it, then that experience is worth more than any textbook theory because what you have lived through wasn't a theory.

They were the living experience, and they will leave the truth and the people can feel that. So you don't have to wait until you are certified to be valuable. Your story, your journey, your results, your transformation. If someone else can benefit from what you already have, they count probably more than you are giving them credit for.

So after all those years in corporate chasing credentials, like they were the key to confidence, something in me shifted. I started seeing how experience played even more critical role in the professional career. You can always further your study, your qualification, your knowledge base, if it's going to advance you with more skills at what you do, but you can do it while you already have those experience in the doing part.

And that's when I started playing with the idea of starting a startup business. At the time. I've already gone through a massive personal transformation after I had the two kids, um, which is in my fitness journey, physically, mentally, and emotionally. I've changed the way I moved, the way I ate and the way I saw myself, it was a big deal for me.

So naturally people started asking me, how did you do it? Can you help me too? Can you show me how you did it? That's when I thought maybe I could teach people to get fit. Maybe this fitness thing that changed my life could also help others as well. But then the familiar voice crept back in, as you probably can imagine.

Well, you're not qualified. You can't call yourself a fitness trainer or a coach unless you have all the credentials. What if people don't take you seriously because you are such a newbie in the fitness industry. It was like a deja vu. Now, to be fair, in the fitness space, there are real legal requirements, so I did what I needed to do.

I got certified as a personal trainer and a nutrition coach. I followed the rules, but here is what completely caught me off guard. There is no one client even asked to see my certificate. No one client thought A personal trainer certificate is less than a bachelor degree of exercise science or master of body movement, et cetera.

If there is such thing, not even once there is no one said, oh, you are not qualified enough because you only just had a personal trainer certificate. They didn't care. What they actually cared about was this. Did I understand? What they were going through. Could I actually help them get from stuck to strong?

Did they actually resonate with my approach? Was I someone they could trust? Not because of my title, but because of my story, my approach to fitness, training to nutrition, even a lifestyle. So they didn't want a shiny brochure coach. What they wanted was someone who actually got it, someone who had walked the same message, emotional.

Exhausting path as a working mom who want to get fit and come out of the other side, and that made me realize something really powerful. People don't need a perfect expert. They actually need a real guide. They need someone who worked the walk, someone who knows the struggles, the setbacks. Someone who's willing to say, I've been there, let me work with you.

Because your experience, your real lived experience, whether it is through your corporate career or your personal transformation, is also a type of qualification, that type, that cannot be taught in a classroom, and it cannot be taught on paper. Now, I know that some of you are listening and thinking, but who am I to coach somewhere else?

What gives me the right to guide anyone? And I want to show you this new perspective about coaching. Coaching isn't about being the expert of everything in your field. It is about being the guide. That's really what a coach is. You are not standing at the top of the mountain, um, and shouting instructions to your clients.

Instead, you are a few steps or maybe quite a few steps ahead of them, and you are walking beside them on that path. You are basically saying of being where you are, I know what you are going through feels like right now, and I've got the tools, the map, the experience to help you move forward. You are not dragging them.

You are not fixing them. You are just guiding them, but you're guiding them with care, with clarity, with the tools, with commitment, and here is the part that often gets overlooked to truly coach someone well, you need to actually care, like deeply care. You need to genuinely want to see your clients to succeed.

You need to come from a place of service, not ego, not performance, not proving that you are right. A good coach comes from place of, I've walked through this and now I want to help you do the same in a way that feels doable, supportive, real, and feels good for you. That's what makes you qualified. Not your certificate, not a fancy title, not years of academic theory.

You are qualified. If you've walked through the transformation yourself, if you have figured something out that is somewhere else is still stuck on, and if you can offer tools inside or structure or the system or the roadmap, that can help them move forward faster and with more confidence. The other thing I want to say here is that you definitely do not need to be miles ahead.

In fact, being a few steps ahead actually can be quite powerful because it means you remember what it's like to be in the struggle. It is still fresh for you. The confusion, the self-doubt, the messy middle, those relatability, those empathy, it is what creates trust and those experience of yours can help people feel safe enough to take the next step.

So you don't have to wait until you feel like an expert. The actually, the more you are into this coaching world and into, into the actual field you are coaching on, you're probably going to feel like less of an expert. You know, you know the saying that people usually say, the more you know, the more you feel like you don't know, right?

So you definitely don't need to have everything figured out. You just need to be willing to show up as a guide for your client with honesty, with care, and with a heart for service. And you also need to know how to ask great questions to guide your clients. And that, my friend, that's what will make you a great coach.

Now, let's say you are nodding along right now. You're thinking, okay, I hear you. Um, I've got some experience. I've helped people. I care deeply, but I just still don't feel ready. If that's what's going through your mind right now, that thought, that hesitation, that feels so logical and responsible even it is the most common thing I hear from people who are smart and capable, and I want to call it what it really is.

It is not logic. It is actually fair. Fear in the power suit, that is your fear being sugarcoated as being practical. It sounds something like, I just want to do one more course first. I just need to feel more confident before I put myself out there, or maybe I should wait until I've got more time, more clarity, and more energy.

I get it. Whatever that little waste in your head telling you that you are not ready yet. I've been there many, many times. But here is what I've also learned from my own experience and from coaching other corporate professionals in this space. You will never feel fully ready because readiness is actually a failing, and the feelings are fleeting.

They come and go. If you sit around waiting for that moment where you feel 100% confident, qualified, and clear and ready, you might be waiting forever. Because confidence doesn't show up before you take action. It is actually built through the doing and through taking actions. It's like you're going to the gym.

You don't wait until you are strong to pick up a weight. You pick up the weight, you do the repetitions, and over time you become strong. Same with this, same with coaching, same with building a business. It is a skill that anyone can learn, but you can only learn it by doing the thing. How it actually works with confidence is this.

You take a step, even a tiny shaky one, that action gives you the evidence. Maybe it's a conversation that went well with a prospect client or maybe it's a piece of content that you post on social media that landed well, or maybe it's just you map out your side of business ideas. That evidence builds belief.

You think maybe I can do this, and that belief makes you braver to take the next step. Over time, the steps get bigger, the belief gets stronger, and that is how unshakeable confidence is built. Not in the theory, not on paper, but by showing up every single time. When you doubt yourself, when you feel the fear, but you choose to do it anyway.

Not once, not perfectly, but you do that consistently because confidence is not something you can download from somewhere. It is not something you can learn from getting another qualification. It is something you actually build. Break by, break through, taking actions, messy actions consistently. Every time when you show up before you feel ready, you quiet that voice, that little whisper that just a little bit more, and then that is how you build real unshakeable confidence.

Now to wrap up this episode, you don't need more paper. You don't need more approval. You don't need more credentials to start with. The minute you stop waiting for permission is the moment you start owning your power. You are more ready than you think because you have everything you need in you. You have that in your story, in your journey, in your lived experience, in your corporate expertise, in your skillset.

What do you really need right now is to back yourself. Now to help you take that first real step, I've created a free PDF Guide. It's called the 5K per Month Started Coaching Business Blueprint. It is a free PDF document where I'll walk you through the real reason why 5K per month is the smartest starting goal, not just a small goal, especially when you work in the nine to five.

And I also talk about the most common mistakes new coaches make and how you can avoid them. I'll show you the three phase plan to create and validate your coaching offer, market it simply, and start getting paid. And how to use the one focused hour a day to build a momentum without burning out. And I even had this fill in the blank worksheet.

To help you map out your first high ticket coaching author in less than 30 minutes. It is designed specifically for corporate women, corporate professionals like you, who are brilliant at what they do, but just need a little bit of help figuring out how to train your skills into a profitable coaching offer.

So if you're been thinking, I know I want to start something, but I just don't know how, this is your next step. The link is in the show notes below because you don't need to be more ready. You just need the no fluff, the right guidance to get you started. I usually would charge for this blueprint because it is truly value packed.

If you take time to walk through it, you will have a pretty good start of your start coaching business, but I've decided to give you this for free. So make sure you download it and do the work. Okay? That is all for today. Have a great rest of the week and I'll see you in the next episode. Thank you so much for listening to the Hustle with Heels podcast.

I hope this episode has inspired you to take action towards your sad hustle dream. If you are en enjoyed this episode. Please take a second to rate and review it. Each review helps me help more corporate women and early stage entrepreneurs just like you. Don't forget to take a screenshot, share it in your Instagram stories, all on LinkedIn, and attack me at Cindy Excell.

I will see you next week.