Coach to CEO | Selling Is Service When You Transform Lives

The transition from coach to CEO is the single most important mindset shift you will make for your income. If you feel capped in your growth, it is not your coaching skills or lack of certifications holding you back; it is your operational approach.

Many health and wellness professionals start their journey with a deep passion for helping others, only to find themselves completely overwhelmed by the day-to-day tasks of running a company. To truly understand how to grow your coaching business, you have to look beyond simply working in the trenches with clients. Growth requires stepping back and working on the business itself. When you make this fundamental shift, your entire perspective changes. Growth feels unfamiliar, and your subconscious often interprets that unfamiliarity as a challenge to avoid. Recognizing that this resistance is just a biological response—and pushing through it anyway;is what separates those who stay stuck from those who scale.

In this episode of Fuel The Flow, we break down why this transition requires a completely new approach to investments and pricing. Instead of endlessly trading your limited time for money, you must start pricing your services based on the actual transformation and immense value you provide. A true leader understands that buying back time by investing in tools, resources, and support is the fastest way to accelerate success.

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✨ WHAT YOU'LL DISCOVER:

• Why your income is capped by your decision-making, not your coaching skills.

• How to identify and overcome the subconscious fears holding your business back.

• The difference between pricing for your time versus pricing for transformation.

• Why investing like a true business owner is mandatory for sustainable growth.

⭐ MEMORABLE QUOTE:

"Selling is not slimy. It's not icky. It's providing a service for someone. A true CEO is pricing their products based on the value, the transformation, and also the sustainability of the business itself." — Valerie Feghali

⏳ DETAILED CHAPTERS:

00:00 - The Income-Capping Mindset Trap: Why your coaching skills are not what is currently limiting your revenue potential.

00:35 - The Shift From Coach to CEO: Transitioning your mindset from daily practitioner tasks to high-level business operations.

01:12 - Making Powerful Business Decisions: How quick, decisive action accelerates growth and builds your leadership muscle.

06:10 - What Actually Changes in a Leadership Role: The daily reality of stepping out of the weeds and into the CEO shoes.

06:25 - Wellness Vault is your ultimate solution.

06:58 - Stepping Into Your New Responsibilities: Embracing the uncomfortable unfamiliarity that comes with scaling a company.

08:28 - Investing Like a True Business Owner: Why buying back your time is the most profitable decision you can make.

11:36 - Pricing Your Services for Value and Transformation: Moving away from the traditional dollars-for-hours model to scale sustainably.

If this episode helped you rethink your business strategy, please leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify! Your support helps us reach more coaches ready to step into their CEO role.

🔗 RESOURCES MENTIONED:

The Wellness Vault: https://wellnessvault.com/

⭐ ABOUT VALERIE

Valerie Feghali is a physical therapist turned software CEO, helping health and wellness coaches scale their businesses without burnout. As the founder of The Wellness Vault, she provides white-label resources and strategic coaching to help you grow.

⭐ CONNECT WITH VALERIE

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

When you have a product and you're creating transformation, selling is not slimy. It's not icky. It's providing a service for someone. A true CEO is pricing their products based on the value, the transformation, and also the sustainability of the business itself. The question I want you to start thinking is 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. Hey there, and welcome back to another episode of Fuel the Flow. Today we're going to talk about something that's going to determine how much money you can make in your business. And that is the shift from becoming a coach to becoming the CEO of your business. Because the truth is that it's not about more certifications. It's not about how much knowledge you have around the topic you teach. And it's really not even about your ability to coach that caps your income. It's about your leadership, your decision making, and how quickly you can make decisions and your willingness to take on responsibility. So I want to start because I hear this all the time. And I myself have been in this situation where I'll be talking to a business owner, and this was me again a while back. I had these same issues, and I see that they're so close to the next level. And the moment that they have to make a decision of which way to go, even if the decision is so clear in what it is that's going to help increase their revenue, whether that be raising their prices, investing in more support, you know, getting more consistent with their content or having more sales conversations, niching down perhaps, right? Even when the lever is clear of what needs to be pulled in order to make more money, they they pull back. And I started to hear things from them like, I don't know if it's the right time. I'm really busy right now, and I don't know if I want to make this shift. You know, I don't know if my audience is going to like this. I just need to tweak a few more things and make this a little bit better and more perfect, essentially, before I launch it. And I hear this over and over again. And on the surface, these concerns seem logical. They seem to make sense. But what we're really looking at is it's fear, right? It's excuses that don't actually line up when you look at the math and you look at what's possible. And what's being confused, what it's being confused with is fear of taking that next step forward. So here's what's happening. As humans, we're wired for survival. So anytime we step into the unknown or a new level of visibility, maybe more responsibility, which could mean more money even or more pressure, our brain goes to this is scary, this is unfamiliar, maybe it's unsafe. Let's go ahead and get away from this, let's abort. And this is called, or I've heard to it as our internal thermostat. It wants to bring us back to what feels normal, what feels safe for us, what feels predictable to us, even if what is safe is also inconsistent or undesirable, playing small, staying stuck. That's the norm for a lot of us. And so our body, when we start to move away from that subconsciously, often pulls us back into that. And I hear this, I'm gonna go off on a little bit of a tangent right now, but I I've heard this thrown around so much, and I've seen it on Instagram so many times, is that, you know, entrepreneurs have to be comfortable with pain. The reason that we, you know, excel is because we're comfortable with enduring so much pain. And I don't personally re agree with that necessarily. I had a lot more pain in my life when I was stuck to somebody else's schedule, when I was doing work that maybe I didn't absolutely love or that didn't fuel my energy. And that's when I was experiencing way more pain. Now that I have control over my own schedule, now that I've built a business that I love, I mean, Mondays come around and I'm excited. I'm no longer dreading that Monday. You have that, you know, Sunday scaries where Monday's around the corner. And actually, today I woke up and it was Thursday and I thought it was Friday for a split second. And I was like, oh my gosh, it's already Friday. And it was like an oh shit moment where then I realized it was Thursday and I was like, oh yes, it's Thursday. I still have like a little bit more time to get a couple of these things done that I really want to do. Right. And so even if we are stuck in that place where maybe we're not super satisfied with our life, we're working, maybe we're still working our part-time job while we're trying to grow our business, or maybe we're not, we're undercharging for our services and we're playing small, our body oftentimes wants to keep us there because it's what feels familiar. And with growth comes uncertainty, it comes new problems. There comes a version of yourself that you haven't fully stepped into yet that you are going to have to step into and take responsibility for. And that at first can feel a little bit uncomfortable. So the real skill in moving past that is learning to separate when you're feeling scared versus when it's actually a bad decision to move forward with whatever that next thing is. Because those are not the same. So when you're operating from fear, it sounds more like, what if this doesn't work? What if people say no to it? What if I fail? But those are not actual data points showing us that it's the wrong decision. It's just fear. And those are what ifs. And if you're able to let go of those what ifs, then you're able to step into that next version of yourself and then more income essentially for your business as well, oftentimes too, if that's what you're desiring. So don't let what ifs drive your decision because that will keep you in a place that you don't want to be for way longer than you need to be. The question I want you to start thinking is Is there actually evidence that this is the wrong move? Or am I just uncomfortable because it's something new? That awareness alone will change everything for you. So now let's talk about what actually changes when you step into your CEO role. Because being a coach and being a CEO are really not at all the same thing. So when you're in coach mode, you're focusing so much on your craft, your skill, your delivery. But when you step into CEO mode, that's where you really have to zoom out. Hey, sorry to interrupt, but if you are a health or wellness professional and you haven't yet checked out the wellness vault, you're missing out. The wellness vault is a content hub for coaches who create their own plans and programs for their clients, run workshops, create digital guides, and so much more. You can now do all of this in a fraction of the time so you can focus on your clients and grow your business faster than ever with more U time. The link to the Wellness Vall is in the show notes. So go sign up for your free trial today. Now you're likely operating as both in your business right now. You're both the coach and the CEO. And that's okay. You can be in both of those seats. But when you move into your CEO position and you're you're doing the work of the CEO in that moment, you need to zoom out and look at the bird's eye view of your business. And you have to figure out whether or not you are taking responsibility for the things that are going to up level your business. So your business can't run on random motivation or scattered processes, or I'll kind of figure this out later. The CEO, when you're working as the CEO, you're thinking in numbers. You're thinking how many leads are actually coming in every month? How well am I nurturing those leads? What are your systems around it? How many emails are you sending out? How many follow-up phone calls are you making? You have to think about are you converting them into your paid process? So, what's your actual conversion rate with the number of leads versus how many people join your paid programs, right? You need to figure out that percentage so that you know the numbers. You know, how are you delivering and are you delivering consistently? Are people sticking around? Are they asking for refunds or are they canceling memberships? And if they are, why? What are those numbers? What's the reason that that's happening? And how can you adjust for that? So you're really looking at the data when you're stepping into that CEO position. And you're building out systems that create stability, predictability, and scalability of your business. So you need to start also investing like a true business owner when you're in that CEO position. And this is big because a lot of coaches, especially if it was once your side hustle, think how can I spend as little as possible and make some money off this, right? That's the mindset of someone who's just getting started or someone who's in a side hustle. But when you're actually trying to grow your business, what you should be thinking is, what do I need to invest in today to help grow the business? Do I need to hire more coaches? Do I need to get support? Do I need to hire a VA? What tools can I invest in that it's going to make my content better and save me a lot of times and make me more efficient in my business? Am I learning new skills that are going to increase revenue? That's a different type of skill. I'm not talking about more credentials in your business. The best courses that I ever took did not come with any sort of credential, but rather they taught me a skill that I could implement right away in order to see business growth. You're not just thinking about making money, you're building something sustainable and something scalable. Another thing, another shift that you have to think about is you have to stop avoiding sales. And this is something that a lot of coaches have a hard time with. They don't want to sound salesy. They say it feels icky or slimy when they're trying to sell their product. But what this often means is that they are afraid or uncomfortable with being rejected and they're nervous people are going to say no and what people will think about them. But the truth is, if you have a product that creates a real transformation, then your selling is actually a service to that person. They want it. In fact, we just got off of a business bootcamp. We just did a week-long business boot camp. Um, and it was all about how to create a challenge that is going to uh sell and convert. And at the end of it, our purpose around this challenge was to really nurture people in our wellness vault and give them more tools to use in their business. And at the end of it, people were asking, but wait, can I sign up and do more group coaching with you? Or what's the next step? Or how much could you do any one-on-one business consulting, right? They wanted me to sell to them because they wanted to keep making that progress forward. So when you have a product and you're creating transformation, selling is not slimy, it's not icky, it's providing a service for someone and you're selling to adults. They can say no if they don't want it, right? But sales are necessary and sales are what keep your business alive. So stop waiting for people to just magically show up at your door. You have to present the offer to them. So initiate those conversations, make clear offers. So, this is another mistake that I see coaches make all the time is that they'll offer three different things when they're having a conversation with a client. No, make one clear offer, what you think the best offer is for that particular person or what your signature program is, one clear thing to try to get them to move, take that next step forward with you. And that's helping them make a decision and making a transformation for the life with their life. So you are standing behind the value that you offer as a coach and the results that you drive. Now, the next shift of stepping into that CEO position is charging like a business owner. And this one is huge. So when I was working, when I first moved into my business, and it was a side hustle at this point, I started charging what I was making per hour at my W-2 job, my W-2 wage, right? That doesn't work when you're a business owner, right? Because a business owner has expenses, you have taxes, you have investments that you're making to scale the business, you have time that you're using to build the business outside of your client's sessions, right? And so you can't just charge what you are making at your W-2 job. You have to really charge for the value of the service and the transformation that you're providing. So if you are charging too low of a rate, you're going to cap your income very quickly. So a true CEO is pricing their products based on the value, the transformation, and also the sustainability of the business itself. So at the end of the day, your income ceiling is really not about how hard you're working, what certifications or expertise that you have, or even about how passionate you are about your work. Yes, those things are very important, but really what drives sales, what drives money in revenue is the level of responsibility you're willing to take on as the business owner, the decisions that you're willing to make and the speed in which you make them. So again, fear is going to hold you back a lot of times from making those decisions, but you have to be able to say yes or no to things clearly and have a clear path on where you're going. And then also how often you're willing to move forward despite that subconscious fear that's holding you back. So are you willing? Are you making quick quick decisions? And are you taking on the responsibility as a CEO? So if you're feeling a little bit of resistance right now, if there's something you know you should be doing that you've been putting off, I want you to really get honest with yourself. Is this just fear holding you back because it feels unfamiliar? Or is this where you should be going to hit your next level? So stepping past that fear is what is going to take you into the next level that's going to open up so many doors and change your life in so many wonderful ways. So if this episode resonated with you, share it with another coach or a friend who you think will benefit from stopping playing small and stepping into their CEO role. I can't wait to 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.