Why Most Health Coaches Are Constantly Busy (& Never Grow)

Feeling constantly busy in your coaching business but not seeing the growth you want? You might be trapped in a cycle of "busy work" and procrastination without even realizing it. In this episode of Fuel The Flow, Valerie Feghali breaks down the most common time-wasters that keep health and wellness coaches feeling overwhelmed, overworked, and stuck.

If you're tired of reinventing the wheel, battling tech overload, and struggling with setting boundaries, this episode is your guide to working smarter, not harder. Learn the exact strategies and mindset shifts you need to reclaim your time, focus on what truly matters, and finally scale your business without sacrificing your life to do it.

In This Episode, You'll Learn:

• The #1 reason coaches get stuck in "perfectionism paralysis" and how to break free.
• How to simplify your tech and focus only on the tools that serve you and your clients.
• Strategies for delegation and using AI to handle the tasks you shouldn't be doing.
• The importance of setting firm boundaries to prevent burnout and increase your focus.
• Actionable mindset shifts to move from an overworked coach to a thriving CEO.

Your Assignment from This Episode: Conduct a 72-hour time audit. For the next three days, track your time to identify your single biggest time-waster. What tasks can you delegate, automate, or eliminate to reclaim your focus?

Resources Mentioned:

The Wellness Vault | Your All-in-One Content Hub Juggling meal plans, guides, and social content? Wellness Vault is your ultimate solution. Get customizable meal plans, client-ready guides, and social media graphics you can brand as your own.

• Start your 7-day free trial and reclaim your time → https://wellnessvault.com/

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 - The #1 Thing Holding Your Business Back 
01:54 - The Perfectionism Trap: Stop Wasting Time 
04:27 - Escaping Tech Overload to Work Smarter 
06:20 - Are You Over-Customizing for Every Client? 
07:30 - Stop Reinventing the Wheel (A Better Way) 
09:49 - Why You MUST Delegate (Even if You're New) 
12:21 - How to Set Boundaries & Prevent Coach Burnout 
14:19 - The Mindset Shift That Unlocks Growth 
15:56 - Overcoming FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) 
16:51 - Mindset Block: "If I Didn't Build It, It's Not Valuable" 
18:31 - Your Assignment: The 72-Hour Time Audit

Connect with Valerie:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/v.feghali/
• The Wellness Vault: https://wellnessvault.com/

Disclaimer: The Fuel The Flow Podcast is for educational purposes only and is based on the lived experiences of Valerie and her guests. Please consult with a professional for your specific needs.

Transcript

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What makes your business unique is you. I think a lot of times we waste time on things that we think are bringing our business progress and success. In reality, we are just procrastinating. It makes your business more professional that you are investing in other experts. Anything that makes your business more efficient is money well spent. I think the mistake a lot of coaches make is that they're trying to Welcome to the Fuel Your Flow podcast. I am your host, Valerie Figali, physical therapist, turned software CEO and business coach for health and wellness coaches. We are going to be talking about all things health and business. They might be more closely related than you think. So let's go ahead and get into it. Welcome back to another episode of Fuel the Flow. Today I want to talk about a topic that most coaches and wellness business owners just don't seem to have enough of, and that is time. Time just seems to pass, and before you know it, it is gone. So one of the things that I want to bring attention to during this episode is how to prioritize our time in a way to work smarter and not harder. I think a lot of times we waste time on things that we think are bringing our business progress and success. And in reality, we are just procrastinating. And coaches, a lot of times and wellness business owners, will use the excuse that they don't have enough time. But then when we dig into what it is that they are doing with that time, it just turns out that they are wasting a whole lot of it. And this can have an effect on your energy, it can have an effect on your perception of how your business is going. And so I want to just go over a few things where I feel time could be saved and these items maybe could be eliminated or trimmed so that you are able to really maximize on what it is you are trying to achieve. Now, one of the biggest things that I think coaches make the mistake on is that they focus so much on making their products perfect before they ever put them out into the world. They want to have websites that are perfectly curated. They want to have programs and guides to hand to their clients that are absolutely seamless. And they want programs to bring people into that really show that they are real true business owners, that they are badass business owners. And all that is great, but all that also comes with experience and it comes with the growth of your company. So as you grow larger and larger, and you can start hiring out, you can start to see what it is that your clients like, what they don't like, that's when you can start to perfect things a little bit, make things a little bit better. Now it nothing is ever going to be done. And I think that's really important to remember because a lot of times coaches think once I just finished the finish this online course, it's going to be done. And then I can move on and just start marketing it and get getting people in and coaching. And unfortunately, that is just not true. Even if you're building out a digital course or some type of program, it's going to change and shift over time. Your clientele is going to change, the resources that are available to us are going to change. And so it's constantly going to be modified. So my biggest advice is to start with your minimum viable product. Rather than creating something that's perfectly curated, that has all the bells and whistles, start with the bare minimum. And then once you get clients in and you start to collect their feedback and see what it truly is that they need, then you can start to really build out from there. Because the last thing you want to do is be spending a ton of time on the front end creating something that your clients might not actually even want or might not be able to use for whatever reason that you did not foresee. So I think the mistake a lot of coaches make is that they are trying to plan their business like five years in the future. And yes, though I think it's good to have a vision, a five-year vision, you don't need to know step A through Z. You only need to know step A and step B, maybe step C, in order to get started. So don't hesitate getting started just because you don't know the answer to all of the problems you will need to solve as a business owner. That will come with time, that will come from with experience, and that will change over time. So there's no way to pre-plan for every single thing that could happen. Another area in which I think coaches often get lost is inside of the tech. Now, yes, you need some technology in order to run an online business. Because if you don't have that technology, you will be wasting a lot of time sending invoices manually and sending your content through email, and that's going to be draining. So you do want to build out those automations that make it a lot easier from you as a business owner. However, you don't need to have all of the fancy technology and all of the technology figured out in order to just start bringing clients on and to grow. Again, that will change. And as your business grows and evolves and your clientele changes and evolves with you, you will start to realize which tools are going to be best for you to invest in and spend time learning the systems. And so that will change over time. It's not wrong to start in a Facebook group or to just use PayPal for your payments. It's okay to start very, very basic and then add on from there. You also want to make sure that you are taking advantage of any sort of onboarding process that a new technology or a new tool offers. I know I made this mistake because I just wanted to go, go, go. I just wanted to get in and start building and have it ready for when clients were in. And I think I wasted a lot, I know I wasted a lot of time because I was not focused on the actual systems that that tool provided and more trying to piece it together. So one thing that I would recommend is make sure that if the system you're buying into, if you're buying a new tool or a new technology, that you're actually going through any sort of onboarding process that they have already set up, even if it takes a little bit of time to watch those videos, to take those calls, it'll save you so much time on the back end. So make sure that you are doing that. The next area in which I think coaches waste a lot of time is over-customizing for every single client and trying to make everything look beautiful and perfect. Instead, what you should do is create a template that you can then reuse with multiple different clients and just make small adjustments. You don't need to completely reinvent the wheel. Just start with what you already have and then customize that slightly for your next client. Don't rewrite the whole thing. Don't start from scratch. Use that template both from a design perspective and then also from a content perspective. You can use a lot of the same words, a lot of the same content with multiple different clients. You just might need to adjust one or two things here and there. So be careful about over-customizing things for clients. The thing is, clients want simplicity. So if you have a plan that's simple for them to follow and that they can actually take action on rather than something that's over-delivering on the education piece side of it or over-delivering on the complexity of it, those things are going to fall flat. They want simple and direct, something that they can act on today. On that topic, but with a slightly different context, a lot of coaches think that they need to reinvent the wheel from a program perspective or from a content perspective and make it completely different than what they see other coaches doing online. And this is just not true. What makes your business unique is you. It's the way in which you coach, it's the way in which you guide people, it's the hand holding that you provide, it's the personality that you provide, the comfort level that you give to your clients in order to make them open up to you and express their needs and their desires. So that is a lot of what makes your business unique. Yes, I suggest that you have a signature method of coaching. So this is a way that you coach that gets people results. So it could be your five-step framework for clean eating or whatever that may be, but a unique method. That does not mean that all of your content and all of your education in that program needs to be different from everybody else. The reality is we're coaching a lot of the same things that other coaches are coaching on too. And it's okay to use some of the same things that they are using or do some of the same things that they are doing. Learn from people who have done it well and who are have a success successful business and are getting results for their clients. Watch what they're doing. Don't copycat it, do it in your own way, but it doesn't mean that you need to completely reinvent the wheel. That is why we made our wellness fall program, which is a content hub for coaches. Coaches can go in, they can grab the material that they need in order to get their clients' results. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. There are other things out there as well. If you're not in the wellness fall and maybe you've checked it out, maybe it's not for you, although it there's a ton of value in there. But if it's not for you, there's other tools out there too that can help to save you tons of time. There's tools that can help you write your email content. There are tools that can help you build out your programs. All of these can be hugely valuable. So you do not need to reinvent the wheel. Get the help you need from other tools and subscriptions that are going to help with the efficiency of running your business. Anything that makes your business more efficient is money well spent. The next thing people waste their time on is trying to do every part of their business by themselves. Now I understand I at one point didn't feel like I had the funds to hire people. But the truth is, once I did start investing in other people, I realized how much time that opened up for me to actually bring on new clients and make money in my business that I didn't have before because I was spending so much time trying to do the finances, trying to build the websites, trying to create all of the content. There was so much that I was doing that wasn't directly related to bringing in new clients and making money that I was not growing my business as quickly as I could. So there are systems such as Upwork that you could use to hire a VA for a very low cost. And if you can hire these people, you know, sometimes you do need to hire out of the country while you're just getting started in order to start growing your business. And that's okay. And then eventually, if you want to hire in the country, that's great too. But start bringing people on that can take off some of the busy work that you do from a day-to-day basis, some of those simple repetitive tasks that you're doing. See if you can get help for that. Now we also have AI, which is a great tool in order to take out some of the busy work for us. So we can create GPTs, for example, using Chat GPT that are designed to work on a specific task. It's very easy to create a GPT on your own, and we'll talk more about that on the podcast in a different episode. But if you create those GPTs in order to complete a certain task for you, you will be saving so much time on the back end. Things like synthesizing research and material. You can use ChatGPT for that. You can upload all of the research articles that you found and have it synthesize the results for you. That saves you a ton of time. You can have it help edit your email newsletters. You can have it help look through a sales page that you created and find some holes and areas in which need to be improved. So there's a lot that using AI can do to increase the efficiency again of your business to save you a ton of time on the back end and also to get you better results. So don't shy away from it. It's not going anywhere. Use it as a tool in your business. It's a very low cost in order to essentially get something that an employee would be doing for you on the back end. The last thing is setting boundaries. And I think this is a mistake that I made early on and I continue to make from time to time, but I notice when I'm doing it and I start to pull it back again. So with boundaries, you end up creating work periods of time which are much more focused than when you are working all the time. So what I used to do is I used to work on the nights and I used to work on the weekends and I used to work on all my off hours. If I saw an email came through that I felt was urgent, where really it probably wasn't, but in my mind, I'm like, this person didn't get their product. I need to email them right away and make sure that they're looking in their spam folder and they get it right away. In reality, some of those things are not as urgent as you think they are when you're first starting your business. But what you need to do is set up those strict work times where you are focused on work, where you know, hey, I only have one more hour. I gotta, I gotta get this done in one hour because I have committed to putting down my computer, to putting down my phone after five or six o'clock. So make sure that you are setting those boundaries. Now, in the beginning, you might need to have more hours. You might need to have some time built into the evenings or into the weekend. Maybe one or two evenings a week you do work from eight to nine at night, or maybe on Saturdays you do work for a few hours and that's okay. But you need to have those hours set and those boundaries set that this is when you can reach out to me. This is when I will respond and answer. And this is when I am not available because I'm either doing my family time or my personal time. And so that you are much, much more focused while you are working. If you are constantly in your DMs or you're constantly on your email, it's going to be a lot less efficient. You're going to waste a lot more time than if you're just in front of your computer and can get it all done seamlessly. So don't be afraid to set those boundaries within your business to say, this is when I'm working and this is when I'm not. Now, some of this work done on saving time and making your work smarter rather than harder, it comes with some mindset shifts because a lot of times people will say, okay, that all sounds great, but then they go to put it into action. And really, it's more of a mindset issue than it is a time management issue. There is the fear of not being good enough. So when I said earlier on in the episode that one of the time ways people waste time is by trying to perfect every little thing that they put out there, it's that feeling of not being good enough when they are presenting their client with a certain product. And that's one thing that we can get over by actually getting feedback from our customers. So when we present that product, when we start running them through that product, when we are fully available to them from an emotional standpoint. So when we say, hey, I am open to any feedback that you have. We are constantly trying to improve our business, we are constantly trying to improve our products to make sure that they work for you. And you show that you are open to their feedback, that takes a lot of the pressure off of both you and it relieves a lot of their anxiety around maybe not wanting to ask questions or bring certain things up. And so if you can do that, that human-to-human connection is way more valuable than the product that you're actually providing for them. So having that interaction with your customers can take a lot of the pressure off and can help change your mindset from saying, I need to have something perfect in order to provide to, hey, I am the person who's providing value, the value is in this relationship. Another one of the fears is fear of missing out. A lot of times coaches see the shiny object, they want to go after that thing, and they get distracted. And that distraction leads to lost energy and lost value, producing the thing that they actually ultimately want to have in the end. So being okay with not going after a certain thing that's there, that might be available in the moment, but isn't ultimately going to lead to progress in your business. So you have to have the strength to say no to some opportunities that come up that may not be the opportunities that lead to the type of growth that you are looking for for your business. So before you start pouring your energy into anything else, ask yourself, is this something that in the long run is going to get me closer to my goals? And if the answer is no, the answer to that opportunity should also be no. And the last mindset shift that people need to get over is the fear that if it's not custom and they didn't do it themselves, that it doesn't provide value or that they're cheating in some way. And that's simply just a lie. Any business that's successful is using material that's created by somebody else. It's not like the owner of Walmart produced all of the products that are sold in Walmart, right? Where they're selling other brands. They're using things from other companies. And that's how every successful company is run. That we need to be okay with not doing everything ourselves, and that either somebody else that you hired might have created something for your business, or that you're using some pieces of products or templates that you've purchased. That is all okay. It makes your business more professional that you are investing in other experts, that you are investing in your business. It is okay not to have everything built from scratch. You shouldn't have everything built from scratch. That would be a waste of time. So that's another mindset shift that coaches oftentimes have to get over. So just think about the biggest best companies or the companies that you love that are providing a ton of value for their clients. Think about what they're offering and whether every single piece of that, what they're offering, is actually built by with their own hands and by themselves. And the answer to that likely will be no. So it is okay to use templates, to use tools, to use anything that's going to make you more efficient and get your client a better result. If it gets your clients a better result, it is a win. And again, it's worth investing in and it provides even more value for your business. My assignment for you from listening to this podcast is to now go take a time audit for the next 48 to 72 hours of what it is you are doing throughout your day and in your business. Write down every half an hour what you spent your time on. And if you're finding areas in which you're spending a lot of time either doing something to perfect your programs or something to maybe you're scrolling social media, times that you feel is wasted time, write that next to it. And then go through those last 48 to 72 hours, take a look at your journal and find areas in which you can delegate tasks. How can you take some of those things that you did and either hand it off to someone else, either use AI to create to fix that and to handle that for you, or that you might even be able to just take off the docket altogether. So look through those tasks that you are doing and figure out is there a tool, is there a system, or is there a person that can help me get this done faster? I hope you enjoyed. I'll see you on the next one. I hope you enjoyed our conversation from today. Any links we discussed will be in the show notes below. Also, we would be incredibly grateful if you would leave us a five star review. This helps us keep the podcast going so that we can continue to provide value for all of you. I hope we see you on the next one.