Deep Dive Dialogues with Dan Woerheide

3 Essential Shifts for a Thriving Coaching Business

• Dan Woerheide • Episode 12

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In my latest episode, I’m sharing three big ideas every coach needs to hear: (1) Embracing Authenticity so you can build trust, (2) Ditching Perfectionism to finally move forward, and (3) Why Connection is at the Core of your coaching business. Tune in to learn how to stop waiting for the right moment, show up authentically for your clients, and make real, meaningful connections—both in person and online.

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to Deep Dive Dialogues. I'm your host, dan Warheide, and today I want to talk about a couple things. I want to talk about authenticity, I want to talk about perfectionism and I want to talk about why connection is at the heart of every thriving coaching business. Over the past few weeks, again, I've had some amazing conversations that have sparked ideas on how to be more real in our interactions, why striving for perfection can hold us back and what it really means to be a coach. No fancy bells and whistles required here, so I'd like you to grab your favorite drink, get settled in and let's dive into today's topics Now.

Speaker 1:

Before we do that, I mentioned in my last episode that I have received a challenge from one of my great coaches, crystal Prophet, to invite you to review and or rate this show. So if you've listened to these episodes, if you've listened to the show and you have a thought good, bad or indifferent I'd love to invite you to simply leave a review. It depends on your favorite listening app or where you're listening from. There are several ways that you can do that. In Apple Podcasts, for instance, you have to dig just a little bit, but you can hit those stars on the show itself and you have an option under those to leave your own review. You can leave me a voicemail on my podcasting website, podcastdanwus, and you can sign up to receive updates about the podcast and other things that are going on in my world there as well. So I'd love for you to take a moment to leave us a review. It's just me. Leave me a review on this show, tell me what you think, tell me what you don't like. If you tell me what you don't like, of course, I invite you to leave me a voicemail and share those things there. But either way, please take a moment to leave that review. All right, let's jump into today's ideas.

Speaker 1:

I want to start with the power of authenticity, and you know, you've probably heard it before. Maybe it's even overstated in a lot of areas, but there's one big question that I seem to get recurring and it's how much should I share with my clients or with new people I meet? The truth is, being a coach means that we are creating a safe space where our clients feel like they can open up about their dreams, their challenges. Not just clients, by the way, everybody that we encounter If we have a new connection and we're having a conversation, you know what can we do to help them share their dreams and their challenges. If we're not willing to let our guard down and show some vulnerability in what we're sharing with that person, then we risk that person also holding back. That balance can feel tricky. You know that oversharing versus the undersharing, but authenticity helps to build genuine trust and connection with another person.

Speaker 1:

So we want to do our best to be relatable. Share enough of your journey or your story or your experience around a particular time. Maybe you're at a conference as an example and you're sharing your thoughts about the conference, letting other person know that you're human too and that not everything you've experienced has been extremely wonderful at this conference. That's just an example. But you know, sharing that you're facing struggles, the same as they might be. You don't know until you give them the space to share what they can relate to with you.

Speaker 1:

In fact, I have a belief that in some way, everyone we encounter has some relatable thing, some relatable experience, some relatable knowledge that allows each of us to be able to relate to one another in some form or fashion. We just have to be curious enough. We need to create a safe space to show that you're approachable. This invites your clients or other people to dig deeper and deeper and share what's really going on, their real concerns, their dreams, their passions or their ideas with you, and I believe we always need to have permission to coach someone. So before you dive into a particular topic with somebody, it's a good idea to always ask hey, would it be okay if I offer some coaching here? Would you like some help with that thing, that dream, that topic, that challenge? This is what I do for a living, or I'm building a business as a coach and this is what I'm working on at the moment, and I'd love to invite you to spend some time with me if that's something you'd be open to talking about.

Speaker 1:

Setting the stage for that professional, trusted relationship will absolutely help set you apart, but it requires a bit of authenticity, just being who you are, whatever the words are for you that resonate, that make sense, that allow you to share something and connect with an individual. There's no fancy tips or tricks that I would suggest following to just have a conversation with a new person or with a potential client or with your client, and I think we'll get into that a little bit today while I share some of these other ideas. So, which leads me to another big obstacle I think and it's a big obstacle I've seen recurring in the last few conversations that I've had with other clients it's perfectionism. I recently spoke with a client who expressed that they were almost paralyzed. They hadn't built their business, they hadn't started coaching yet, because they wanted to try and get everything just right. She was working on her website, she was working on her program structure, she wanted the perfect agenda or script.

Speaker 1:

And the irony, I think, in all of this is in all the things that we're striving for, is we we sometimes forget the number one thing that actually contributes to growing a coaching business, and that is connection with other people, conversations with other people. Simply having a conversation with someone with no formal agenda, no program or structure to follow, conversations, simple conversations, can turn into so much more for people. If you're curious enough to listen intently, to ask questions and be willing to challenge the beliefs in what they share or a particular viewpoint about the world from a place of genuine curiosity. If you're genuinely curious and think about how you can just be curious about this person and their worldview, it can uncover so much for that person. It can uncover so much for you. So take action over striving for perfection. It's important to just start coaching people, whether they're paid or not. Then you can spend the months and you can spend the money, the time, the energy on polishing your online presence or building your program out, or whatever it may be.

Speaker 1:

Learn as you go is another thing. Real growth happens in real life, in our day-to-day interactions, not in a vacuum of planning all of these finite details. Right, if you want to learn, go coach someone. No-transcript. Here's a question I want to pose for you to help you think through this what small action steps can you take today that are going to move you closer to coaching real people, instead of spending your time perfecting behind the scenes details? Which leads me to one of my other thoughts here.

Speaker 1:

I've also heard this idea recently, and it's not the first time I've heard it, but it's come to mind recently in a conversation. Is that this idea you're only a a real coach or a professional coach? If you have all of these things, if you have a fancy website, you have a structured program or an established brand or an agenda to facilitate your coaching conversation, some sort of guide to follow that's going to miraculously transform someone's life and the reality it's. Look, it's just not true. Okay, I looked up the definition of what a coach is, and the definition of a coach is someone who partners with clients in thought-provoking and a creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.

Speaker 1:

Look, there are 8 billion people in the world, and a majority of them, if not all of them, really want two things they want to achieve more and they want to feel better. Now, if you're listening to this, think about that for a minute. In what area of your life do you want to achieve more and in what area of your life do you want to achieve more? And in what area of your life would you like to feel better? Maybe it's work. Maybe you want to feel better and achieve more in your coaching practice, your coaching business. Maybe you want to improve your health, your wealth, your mental well-being, whatever it may be. There really are two big umbrellas. You either want to achieve more or you want to feel better, or both in some area of your life, and so does pretty much every person you meet. It's your job to uncover what it is and whether or not it's a good fit for you to potentially help them the true definition of a coach, or what coaching is at its core. You know, I've given you the definition.

Speaker 1:

I think there's really three things that allow you to distinguish yourself from not being a coach to being a professional coach, and the first one is the first thing about coaching is the desire to serve people. To serve people deeply, helping others to see new perspectives and create the transformation in their life that they would like to see. Now. This implies that they have the desire, of course, to have someone help them with this, and you know, maybe your invitation to help them with this topic may be all that they need to express that desire. But you have to have the desire first to be curious about them and the desire to serve people passionately to even find out if they, too, have the desire.

Speaker 1:

Now, the second thing about coaching is you have to have a way to connect, and whether you're in person with someone or you're using a phone call for your sessions or you facilitate them over Zoom, doesn't matter. You have to have a medium in which to coach someone. The third thing you need to be a coach is a means to receive a payment and a reminder here that you're providing a service, a professional service to someone. You should get paid for that. But whether that you're paid or not, these are the three core components I believe that you need. You need the desire to serve, you need a way to connect with someone or facilitate that coaching experience for someone, and you need to be able to take payment from someone and I don't know about you, but I will take cash. So if you meet those three things, then you can coach people and you are a professional coach.

Speaker 1:

The atmosphere that you create is what sets you apart from other coaches as a professional coach, but that doesn't require you have any fancy plan that's going to walk people through some seven-step process to achieve their deepest, darkest desires. So whether you're brand new to coaching, to the business of coaching, or whether you have years under your belt, you are a coach the moment you start guiding someone through a transformation, whatever that looks like. There's no perfect plan. There's no perfect outline. Those three core components are what it takes to take you from not having a business of coaching to being in the business of coaching. If you want to be a coach, then coach Everything else, like websites, formal programs. They all come second to actively I could speak, engaging in real conversations that help people move forward.

Speaker 1:

Now I want to pause here for just a second. Let's talk about perfectionism again in real life, because the reality is it's Tuesday morning, december 31st. It's currently 718 am, but I started this recording at around 530 am. I've had a couple pauses and interruptions because, well, there's no such thing as perfectionism. It is made up. It's this reality that we create for ourselves and ideally, I would have recorded this podcast yesterday and I found myself in some amazing coaching conversations with some new connections that I made, and it was a result of looking for an opportunity to connect with people I hadn't connected with. I posted in a group that I'm a part of, a community that I'm a part of that I found myself without any scheduled coaching conversations on my calendar this week.

Speaker 1:

It is the week of New Year's and I planned it that way, but I wanted to engage in some conversation yesterday and found myself here at home and wanted to put that opportunity out. So I spent my time engaging in those conversations and at the end of the day, I was like, oh my gosh, I forgot to record my podcast and I had no idea what I was going to talk about. So I got up early this morning, new Year's Eve day, and spent some time writing out some of my thoughts and creating an outline so that I had a podcast episode to record. And in the midst of that we have a dog that woke up hearing my voice in the other room and she was barking in the background. You may hear her in this recording. So I've had to stop a couple times. I had to deal with that. I had to pour some new cups of coffee, a new cup of coffee, all the things. It doesn't always go as planned and that is okay. So there's some real-world active moments for you in my life. And right, I mean, let's be real, I could have put intro music to this podcast. I could have done all the things.

Speaker 1:

Instead of publishing these podcast episodes. I chose to publish this podcast and these podcast episodes rather than striving for any sort of perfected nuances that could potentially be part of a podcast. I wanted to do this podcast really more for me and to be consistently in the creative podcast. The same way, I'm encouraging you to be consistently in the connection space, in the coaching space, in the consulting space, doing the work of whatever it is that you want, you desire to achieve. If you want to coach, then coach. If you want to record a podcast, then desire to achieve. If you want to coach, then coach. If you want to record a podcast, then record a podcast. If you want to consult somebody, then go, build those connections, consult with people, offer them that opportunity, bring them into your world, into your experience.

Speaker 1:

Now I publish this podcast in the hopes that, you know, maybe there's one other person, one of you out there can benefit from some of the things that I'm sharing. But that's the golden nugget on top of why I'm publishing this podcast. So there's the rest of my real world for you. If you haven't heard me say that on the show before, there you go, so connecting. But let's talk about that, because that's another thought that I had.

Speaker 1:

People are are so often and I think I said this in one of my recent episodes but people are looking for shortcuts everywhere. They're looking for some sort of marketing hack, some sort of sales script that's going to help them have these conversations, some social media strategy that's going to help you achieve more results in what you're trying to do in your business. And I think we're looking over the most important piece, and it's that pure human connection. You can meet people in your community. Don't underestimate the potential. Right in your own backyard, from your local coffee shops to your local meetups, there are endless ways to spark conversations. Look in my town, in my little city that I'm currently living in now we're moving in the middle of January to another smaller, actually a smaller community, which I am looking forward to, not because of the size of the community, because of the location. We're going to be right there on the beach. Finally, it's been one of my desires and it's coming to fruition ever since putting it out to the world Actually, I put it out to a community I'm in as one of my goals for 2025. And within two weeks we had found a place, then signed the paperwork to start that process, and we are moving in the middle of January, amongst many other things going on, but we'll make that work.

Speaker 1:

Anyway, there are endless ways to spark conversations. In my current city, there is a population of 50,000 people and I promise you I have not even touched, scratched the surface of connecting with or meeting all 50,000 people in this community. And add to that we are the home of Kennedy Space Center and there are thousands of people that visit here week after week to watch the shuttle launches or not. Shuttle, oh my gosh. The shuttle program ended quite a few years ago. But to watch the rocket launches space, that spacex launches one to three rockets each week and blue origin has just been approved to launch their new glenn rocket and so they've just done some testing on that and they should be launching soon. But my point is, people come here all the time to visit. They eat at the restaurants here, they visit the parks, they visit the beaches. There's endless opportunities to meet at least one new person and connect with at least one new person right here in my own backyard. So I want to encourage you don't underestimate the potential in your backyard. Go out and have a conversation with someone. Go sit in a coffee shop and be curious about what other people are doing.

Speaker 1:

Online platforms, social media, can certainly expand your ability to reach people. Yes, but don't forget the simple power of that face-to-face interaction, that face-to-face conversation with a person. The best way to connect with someone, I believe, is in-person first. If that's not feasible, not possible for some reason in your world, then, yeah, social media can be a tool that helps you expand that as an opportunity, but looking for shortcuts to generate leads leads to a whole different conversation. No pun intended with the leads, but, um, and if you didn't catch that I said, leads to potential new conversations, but not a shortcut to generate leads for your business. I I believe that there is no shortcut to creating authentic connections and relationships with people which actually lead to more prosperity in your business. But you can use these platforms, these tools, social media, to help expand your existing reach.

Speaker 1:

And asking so part of connecting as a coach right, someone may share. So asking for permission is where I'm going here. Someone may share an idea with you. They may share that dream or a challenge that they're experiencing in their world. That is your cue to invite them into a coaching conversation. I have some ideas around that. Would you be open to exploring those together? As you know, if they know that you're a coach, as you know, hey, I do this for a living and I'd love to invite you to a conversation where we can explore that. Is that something you'd be open to? Or if they don't know you're a coach, hey, I am. Or maybe you're a new coach.

Speaker 1:

Let me go with that example. Maybe you're new to the business of coaching and you're looking to start expanding your existing client base or adding your first new client or one of your first new clients. You could say something like hey, I'm in the process of building a business as a coach, or I'm in the process of shifting my focus from my current work into working full-time as a coach and I have some ideas around that. I wondered if you'd be open to sitting down and exploring those together. Great, let's set up a time. And if not, what's the worst that's going to happen? No, thank you. I think I'm good. I don't know that coaching would benefit me, and maybe that's an opportunity to have a different discussion, because do they know what coaching is, what the value of coaching is? So you could potentially talk about that too.

Speaker 1:

There's lots of opportunities there, but always seek permission. That's going to set you apart from the rest of the world of coaches and consultants, where people are often throwing out advice that's not sought. They're throwing out their ideas as part of a conversation, and there's nothing wrong with sharing ideas, especially if that's the forum in which you've created with someone and you're sitting down. You're having just a genuine conversation. They share some ideas, maybe they ask for your input, and that's also a clear opportunity to distinguish yourself as a professional coach is hey, you know I'd love to contribute some ideas to this topic, but, as you know or maybe they don't again, I am a coach. This is what I do for a living and I'd be open to exploring that with you. Here's what that would look like. Right, there's a couple different ways you can go with that.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I think I've shared the ideas. I think I've shared the ideas that I had outlined for today, and before I wrap up, I want to just a bit more of a rant on connection, if you don't mind. How about that? So, this came up again recently and it's something that I had talked about before, and I know I've talked about it in a previous podcast which I hosted, and it came up in conversation, and then I actually saw something in social media about it yesterday.

Speaker 1:

But let's talk for a minute about the big box stores. Right, you've experienced it. They have shifted so much of their efforts into this self checkout experience and, while there's so many different rants about that by itself and we could go a hundred different ways here but I just want to say I think they believe that this is an efficient way to improve their bottom line. I think well, I'll be honest in my opinion here that I do everything I can to actually visit a cashier in a line. I will wait longer than some people are willing to wait just for that experience because I think there's well I won't get into, well I will I'll share.

Speaker 1:

I think that those self-checkouts are taking jobs from real people. I get the cost-cutting measures that may be a part of that, but I think we're missing a real opportunity. I think those big box stores are missing a huge opportunity for that human interaction piece, the customer service piece. That actually is what I believe people are unconsciously seeking in those experiences, and those few seconds of a casual conversation at a cash register might be the only personal interaction that some people get that entire day. And after these past few years, you know, coming out of the pandemic that we all experienced, you know, I think we're seeing more and more how critical those real connection opportunities are, and so I think that's a huge missed experience which, as coaches, we get to offer in a deeper, more meaningful way. So I would encourage you to embrace it, lean into the personal connections and the opportunities that exist in that space that our retail giants are creating for us, and I think you'll see that your coaching practice will grow naturally. It'll grow organically. It'll be much more of a rewarding experience for you if you just look at those as opportunities.

Speaker 1:

So here's my wrap-up for you and my final cause to action for 2024. Yes, it's the New Year's Eve. It's New Year's Eve and the new year is upon us, so I'm going to encourage you Be authentic, open up, share and invite deeper trust with the people you encounter. Stop overthinking. You don't need everything to be perfect to start coaching people, so stop overthinking. Ask for permission in your coaching. Elevate a casual conversation into a coaching relationship by simply asking if they would like help with that. That's going to set you apart from many coaches and be the distinction between what you see in coaching and professional coaching.

Speaker 1:

Asking for permission here's another rant. Actually, let me pause there. It's not a rant. This is just a pause and a reflection around that topic, because what I believe is the greatest thing about the coaching world as it exists today is there are no real rules, there's no regulatory body for us. You have some organizations which have created some standardized processes and some ethics in which we can use as a guide, but there's no requirement for that. Certainly, it's impactful and it's helpful to follow a ethical approach to how you create clients, how you conduct your business, how you conduct your coaching and I would never encourage anyone to do anything that's unethical. And if you want to facilitate more of that into your work, your ideology, your concepts, you can explore what is offered out there as far as ethical guidelines for coaches, but there's no requirement to incorporate any or all of those things into your business. The one distinguishing factor that will make a difference is asking for permission beyond having a code of ethics for your business and approaching things from an ethical manner.

Speaker 1:

So stay connected. That's the next one. Whether it's in your own neighborhood, whether it's online, focus on making genuine connections. That is the heartbeat of your business. In fact, it's the difference between whether you're in business or not. You need to nurture those connections and start inviting people into your world, into your coaching coaching. So start 2025 off right. Think about what you're going to do, what steps you're going to take next. Get out there, talk to people and offer your coaching, because, at the end of the day, the only difference between an aspiring coach and an actual coach is the willingness to show up and serve, the desire to take intentional action. So thank you so much for spending your time with me today and throughout the last few episodes of 2024. If you've got value at out of this episode, then I encourage you to share it with someone who maybe needs a little nudge, and I will see you again next year.