what is a life and business coach and do you need one?

234. if you've ever wondered what life and business coaching is and what it would be like to work with a coach, this episode is for you. 

first i discuss the important difference between coaching and therapy. 

then i talk about who i typically work with and the many benefits of working with a coach. 

i share some striking before and afters and some big wins my clients have created. 

if you are a high-achiever who's spent years pleasing others to the point of burnout, please listen to this episode. i've helped so many clients just like you. 

in my coaching sessions, I help clients celebrate wins (retraining their brains to not just focus on the negatives), identify limiting beliefs, and create doable plans toward meaningful goals. 

I ask powerful questions that help you reconnect with your authentic desires and build the self-trust needed to pursue them, regardless of what others think. and don't discount the accountability that comes with working with a coach.  

lastly, i share some incredible client wins and transformations. 

clients who come to me feeling stuck, indecisive, and self-critical discover newfound confidence, clarity, and purpose. 

my clients publish books, launch businesses, negotiate better contracts, improve athletic performance, and most importantly, stop sacrificing their happiness to please others. 

if you want to experience this shift yourself, book a consultation to see if are a  good fit—but act quickly, as my rates are increasing on April 1st.

if you loved what i talked about in this episode, you're going to love working with me.

i can help you feel better and get more done when you work with me 1:1. i'll help you figure out a meaningful goal, we'll create an action plan and i'll help you get unstuck all along the way. you don't have to go it alone, and you don't have to burn yourself out!

 
want to see if we are a good fit for 1:1 coaching? go to https://itstammiebennett.com/coaching and schedule a free discovery call to see if we are a good fit and find out what it looks like to work together.

 
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Transcript

Introduction to Coaching vs. Therapy

coach tammie bennett 0:02

You are listening to the Show Up Society podcast. If you want to feel better about the way you show up in the world, you're in the exact right place. I'm your host, certified life coach Tammie Bennett, and I'm here to help you stop giving a poop about what others think so you can make confident decisions. Your whole outlook on goals will change too. You'll see. They can be fun, doable and full of celebration, not something to be afraid of failing. And speaking of fears, I'll help you work through all of yours so you can take more action. You're already a badass in my book, and if you want to learn how to create the life you want, then get your buns in here and let's go. Hello friend, welcome to episode 235 of the Show Up Society podcast.

coach tammie bennett 0:45

Today's episode is going to be all about what is life and business coaching. So last week I talked about my sort of rambling path to becoming a coach, and now I'm going to talk a little bit about what is coaching. What is it that I do? What is it that I help people with? What's the difference between coaching and therapy? Who do I help? All those kind of questions Because, as I talked about a couple episodes ago, I had seen a bunch of people that I hadn't seen in many years, and a lot of them didn't know what I was doing and they didn't really understand what I meant when I said that I have been coaching for several years, and so I just figured this will be a great way if you would, or this will be a great way to explain what it is that I do, who I help, how I help them, and if you are interested in working with a coach, this is good information for you to have, whether or not that coach is me, it will just give you a little bit of insight into what you can get help with. So let's get started. Okay, I think it's really important to start this discussion off with talking about coaching and therapy and the difference between the two. I get questions about this quite often, and I think it's a really important distinction.

coach tammie bennett 1:54

So I'm going to give you the definitions and sort of a metaphor from one of my colleagues, somebody who I admire and respect very much, and I've known her for several years, worked with her for several years. Her name is Erica Hanlon and she is a licensed therapist in Colorado, and she's also a life and business coach, and she says it so much better than I ever could. So I'm just going to tell you what she says about therapy versus coaching. So therapy gives you tools and insights so you can get from not okay to okay. So therapy is designed to help you heal. Maybe you need to heal trauma or recover from depression or manage anxiety. So if you want to address a mental health condition, therapy is for you. That's the thing for you. Goals, make a plan and deal with setbacks to get you from okay to great. So it's designed to help you succeed. So maybe you're doing fine but you want to feel better than fine. So maybe you come to coaching because you feel frustrated or burned out or plagued with self doubt and you want to feel motivated, energized, accomplished and, just in general, feel better. So she also gives this great metaphor If you had an injury that was keeping you, let's say, from running I'm a running coach also so let's say you had an injury that was keeping you from running, you would go to a physical therapist, right, you would get therapy to take you from not really doing the thing that you want to be doing to being able to do it.

coach tammie bennett 3:21

So not running to be able to run. If you were running, fine, you were doing the things that you want, you were able to go out and run, but you wanted to run faster or with more joy, or you were training for a race, or you wanted to go from running to racing or running great, then you would hire a running coach. And so, similar to therapy and coaching, I will say this about my clientele Over half of my clients also work with a therapist either at some point during our coaching. A lot of times they'll have therapy session one day and meet with me another day of the week, or sometimes they have come to me after therapy so they've kind of healed their trauma and now they're ready to get going. And I've even had a couple clients go to therapist after working with me because they found a lot of success with me, but they realized they still had some issues, some kind of unresolved traumas that they needed to work on.

Who I Work With: High-Achieving Women

coach tammie bennett 4:15

So the point of me saying all this is that coaching and therapy are not mutually exclusive. It's actually pretty common for people to work with both. You don't need to, but for a lot of people it is very helpful for them. So I'm going to tell you what kind of people I typically work with as a coach. But I also want you to know that I am not super niched down into a specific type of person, so I work with all genders. I work with most ages, basically, from, you know, like 16 or 17 and up. I've worked with many, many high school runners. I've worked with all kinds of genders, all kinds of religions, all kinds of sexual orientations. I don't want you to listen to this when I'm talking about sort of like my, my typical client. I don't want you to listen to this when I'm talking about sort of like my, my typical client. I don't want you to count yourself out as somebody who could work with me.

coach tammie bennett 5:08

A lot of the work I do deals with high achieving women who have spent their lives just following the rules, doing what their parents wanted, doing the practical, responsible thing and pushing themselves basically to burnout to achieve their high standards. They have really high standards for themselves and they just go, go, go, go go to get it done. And along the way they've come to believe that if they aren't being productive or pushing themselves, that they're lazy. And these women have found success, but they also have found exhaustion and dissatisfaction and they've come to a point where now they know that for their health and their happiness, it's time to find some joy and working towards a goal that feels meaningful to them, sort of like their purpose, like what do they want to do in this wild and precious life? A question that I often ask my clients is when you're 85 or 90, what do you want to look back on your life and be proud of that you accomplished?

coach tammie bennett 6:04

So these clients that I work with, so many of my clients, are people pleasers and after all the years of people pleasing that they've been doing, they aren't even sure what they want to do next or what they want to do instead, because they've been spending so much energy in their lives making sure that everyone around them is happy and satisfied and content and that nobody's upset with them and everybody approves of what they're doing, and so a lot of times they'll come to me saying they don't even really know what they want to do. Now here's the tricky thing. They actually, in most cases, do know what they want to do in a dream world, but they're just kind of scared to give themselves permission to say it out loud, much less scared to give themselves permission to go out and do it. So, as a creative business coach, I use a powerful combination of strategy and practical tips and mindset to help these go getters get clear on a meaningful goal, something that means a lot to them, that they've wanted to do sort of a passion, purpose kind of goal. And then we establish together a doable plan to help them get there. So notice I said the word doable.

coach tammie bennett 7:05

I am all about helping people take actions in a way that doesn't overwhelm them, doesn't overwhelm their nervous system. It doesn't paralyze them with, like how overwhelming it is. We make doable plans that help their brain see like, oh, this is a no brainer, we can get something done today and just instead of being stuck. So I help people get rid of the people pleasing. I help them stop listening to their inner critic, because if you're listening to this podcast you probably have a mean inner critic that tells you all kinds of nasty stuff. And I help teach people how to stop listening to that inner critic and going on about your badass business in your life. So I help people feel guilt free. I help them find clarity and focus and joy as they make progress on that inner yearning that they've been keeping quiet for so long.

What Coaching Sessions Look Like

coach tammie bennett 7:54

So what does coaching with me look like? So I meet with my clients on Zoom At the current time. I don't have any local clients In the past I have, and we would meet in person sometimes if they wanted to. But the vast, vast majority of the coaching that I do happens on Zoom. At the beginning we start out meeting weekly to sort of just instill these new habits and then we can spread it out to every other week. And I have some long-term clients that have been with me for a year or two or three years, and for those clients a lot of times we just see each other once a month, and so what happens is we start each session with talking about a win, something that my client has created in the past week or so that they're proud of, and no win is too small to celebrate. And this feels really difficult for my clients when they first start working with me, because they're so not used to talking about good stuff that they've done or talking about accomplishments that they have achieved, and it also a lot of times they're like, oh, I haven't done anything great, they are not giving themselves credit where credit is due. So the reason we do that is we literally start training the brain, we start creating neural pathways in the brain to start cataloging and noticing and acknowledging and celebrating the wins that we are creating.

coach tammie bennett 9:15

So our brains are naturally sort of wired to go negative, to point out our flaws, to point out what's wrong with us, and so when you work with me, we actually help rewire your brain so that you don't get stuck going down the negative road all the time. Your brain is still going to give you negative info, but I'm going to help give you tools to not listen to that negative, that negative Nelly, and to be able to keep taking action even if your brain says something not so nice. So that's how we start the session and then we talk about whatever the client brings to me. So we might be working on a business goal, but maybe my client's mother said something to her that was just really upsetting and she's having a hard time. Or maybe my client has watched a lot of news lately and is upset. Or maybe my client just isn't motivated. So there will be times that we talk about things seemingly unrelated to the goal that we're working on together. But it's all related and all of the information is welcome. So a lot of times I will talk with my clients. We will be talking about relationships and boundaries and showing up online and authenticity, and we also talk about overcoming overwhelm and overcoming procrastination and perfectionism and people pleasing, and we find ways to find more joy in the stuff that we are doing. So I'm going to talk a little bit now about some of the benefits of working with a coach, and these are not just specific to me.

coach tammie bennett 10:41

Working with a coach can help you with any of these following things. It gives you a sounding board. Sometimes it's just so nice to have somebody listen to your ideas and kind of help you flesh out the details by asking questions that you probably haven't thought of, and so I love being a sounding board for my clients, and they come to me with their ideas and we flesh them out and we decide if that's an idea that feels good for them or not. It's also, like I said, really great for someone to ask you questions that you probably haven't thought of. So a lot of times when you're in it, when you're in your own life, you're not seeing it from the outside like I am, and so a lot of times I can spot kind of stuck points or limitations that you're probably putting on yourself without even realizing it, and I'm really good at helping you see those and questioning you about those, or maybe questioning the way that you are doing things from old beliefs. Like maybe you're telling yourself that you're not a finisher, so everything that you're doing is related to you thinking that you're not a finisher, and I actually will help you say like, actually you are a finisher, let's look at all these things that you have finished so we can sort of stop telling those old stories.

coach tammie bennett 11:47

But a lot of times you need somebody outside of you to help point out those limiting beliefs that you're operating from. So similar to that is I give people, I call them out if their brain is giving them a bunch of BS, right, and I do it lovingly and we laugh about it. It is not a problem, there's no shame, but we're just like oh man, your brain just lied to you. That's actually not true. It's also nice to give yourself a fully committed 45 minutes each week, or biweekly, if you choose to do it biweekly.

coach tammie bennett 12:13

How often do we get 45 minutes where somebody is listening to us uninterrupted, with their full attention, and so that's something that I really love doing for my clients is for these 45 minutes. It's all about you as my client and no one's going to, you know, interrupt us. Nobody's going to get in the way. You can say whatever you want. This is a super, super safe space to you know, to tell all of your like hidden, icky things that you, that you icky things, that maybe you feel scared to tell other people. It's a really nice safe space where you can just be your full, true self for 45 minutes and have the attention on you in a really good way. It's also a great place to have somebody believe in you.

coach tammie bennett 12:54

I believe so deeply in my clients. If I don't believe in you, then I won't take you on as a client. So I believe in you and I believe in your dreams and your goals and I will fight to help you get out of your own way to go achieve those goals, because I know that you can do it. I know that you're fully capable. So it's nice to have that time each week where you have somebody helping you fight for your goals and to help you focus on the goals and remind you what those goals are.

Benefits of Working with a Coach

coach tammie bennett 13:21

So many of my clients are multi-passionate and have so many different interests and we want to do so many different things, but I help you kind of stay focused on the thing at hand so you can complete it quickly and with more energy and then you can move on to the other thing that you didn't choose from the beginning. It's also a place where you can really get tuned in and you have a lot of clarity about your true desires what is it that you really want to be doing with your time and your space and your energy, and giving yourself permission to do that will lead to such a fulfilling life when you are no longer spending all your energy feeling guilty or people pleasing. It can just help you show up so much better if you are admitting to spending all your energy feeling guilty or people pleasing. It can just help you show up so much better if you are admitting to yourself what it is you want to be doing and then allowing yourself to go make that happen, and I hope you develop that self-trust that you will be able to figure things out, because I help remind you of how freaking smart you are and how capable you are, and it feels really good to have somebody remind you of that.

coach tammie bennett 14:16

Another thing that my particular coaching is I don't tell you what to do. I don't believe in that, because I believe that you are your expert of your life and your circumstances and your feelings and your heart and your soul and your mind, and so I will help shake up some beliefs and I will ask you questions like does that feel like that's the right thing to do, or how do you feel about doing that, or so I will kind of shake up the status quo sometimes. Sometimes I call myself a disruptor because I ask a lot of questions but I never tell you what to do, because I don't know you better than you. You know you. So all I do is help ask questions so that you can get really clear on what it is that you want and what you think the next steps are. Because, also, when you are taking ownership and responsibility for your choices, it just feels so damn good when you achieve the thing, because you know it all came from you, with support and love from me or your coach, but it came from you going out there and doing the work. So I just feel really passionate about you.

coach tammie bennett 15:16

Know you're not going to come to me and I'm going to say, okay, this week you're going to go do this, I might throw in some challenges for you. I might say what if I challenged you to do X, y, z, and you could tell me if that feels good or not? And if it feels good, then I'll challenge you to do it, and it's kind of a fun experiment to see, and we talk about it the next time and so so I might challenge you. But I'm never going to tell you what to do, because your life is your life and I'm just going to help you make decisions that feel good to you. I also am going to help you care less what other people think. You're going to get so into your self-trust and your self-love that, even if people don't agree with what you're doing or don't understand it or don't get it, you're going to feel so resolved that that's the right action for you, that you're not going to be having those kind of self doubts and those you're not going to have as much fear about what other people think about you. So another thing I do is I just kind of help you feel courage, because if you know that you are out there in the world doing this thing that feels maybe a little hard or uncomfortable or scary, you know that you have me in your corner, I am going to be your biggest cheerleader and I don't mean that in a raw, raw like fluffy way where I'm just like, oh my gosh, you're so amazing. I mean it from the depths of my heart, from full belief in you and your capabilities, and so it just feels good to have someone that truly cares about you and believes in you and supports you. It feels a lot easier to go out in the world and do kind of scary stuff if you know that you're going to be okay and you have somebody there to support you.

coach tammie bennett 16:45

One more really important piece to coaching with me is the accountability piece. So I don't think of myself or call myself an accountability coach, meaning I don't give you an assignment and then check with you next week to see if it's done. But the vast majority of my clients tell me that working with me helps hold them accountable because I will know what they're working on and I will ask them about it in future sessions. Hey, how did that thing go that you said you were going to do? And I've had so many clients tell me like I completed the thing because I knew that we were going to have our session today and I wanted to tell you about it and be proud of it. And so there is definitely that accountability piece, that kind of external accountability deadline kind of piece to working with me, and I just think it's kind of fun. I need that for myself too. That's one of the reasons I work with a coach is so I know that somebody is going to sort of be helping keep me on track and you, if there was a time where my clients are just having trouble doing a thing, they're just feeling stuck, I'm here every time to help them get unstuck and to get back on track and get back into action again.

coach tammie bennett 17:50

Okay, and if you've been around this podcast for a while, you know that a lot of what I do is emotion and feelings driven, and so I wanted to share with you some of the things that my clients have said about how they feel when they work with me. But first I want to start with some things that they say they felt before working with me, to give you sort of the before, and then we'll talk about how they feel after working with me. And I'm pulling these directly from some of the Google reviews that my clients left for me so I can put a link to that if you want, so you can see them for yourself. But, they say, when they first came to work with me, they focused on the negative. They were overly critical of themselves. They felt lost in a middle age spiral. They had fear and hesitation and procrastination. They were people pleasing. They felt indecisive. They always second guess themselves and their decisions. They felt stuck. They felt like they were longing for something new. And then some of the things that they felt after working with me were self-love, self-trust, taking consistent actions, transformed, empowered, accomplished, confident, grounded, affirmed clarity and focused, showing up as who they want to be excited, engaged, equipped to handle joy and disappointment, and authentic to who they are.

Client Transformations and Wins

coach tammie bennett 19:08

And from a coaching perspective, it is so cool to see the transformation of those how they feel before to how they feel during and after working with me. It is so cool that I get a front row seat to get to watch that transformation in people, and so I just feel I really do. I feel like I have the luckiest. I'm the luckiest woman in the world. I have the best job in the world. I think that's all I wanted you to know about what is coaching and what it can do for you and how you can feel and how it's different from therapy and some of the things that can help you with. Maybe I'll share some of the wins from my clients over the last few months. So I have clients that have submitted to writing contests more in the time they worked with me than in the years before it.

coach tammie bennett 19:52

I have clients writing and publishing books, starting new businesses, creating entirely new products and product launches, getting comfortable pitching themselves and marketing their new businesses. I have people making way more money, people with a lot more students enrolling in their workshops. They're getting art grants. They're showing up consistently on social media in a way that feels good. They're handling their nerves so they can race well. They're having tough conversations with other people that they've been putting off for months. They're making more money at trade shows and in their teaching businesses. They're negotiating better terms in their contracts at work. They're working with their dream clients. They're learning how to plan and organize their life so that they're doing more but it feels like less work. They're learning how to stop the grind and have some ease and joy and white space in their life. They're handling feedback from others without fear or shame. They're starting completely new, different careers that they absolutely love. They are having their best performances ever in sports competitions. They are no longer people pleasing at the cost of their own personal happiness. They are winning competitions in art and writing and racing. They're getting super in art, in writing. In racing, they're getting super clear on what it is they want to do and what they are going to do next.

Upcoming Changes and Invitation

coach tammie bennett 21:11

So that's just a few of the wins from some of my clients over the past six months or so, and all of these are possible for you, too. Any of those that you want is absolutely possible for you. You could probably do it on your own, but it might just take a little bit longer than if you work with a coach, whether that coach is me or somebody else. So I'm going to end that here today. Next week, you can look forward to an interesting podcast about some changes that are coming up to this podcast, the Show Up Society podcast, and also in my coaching business. So I want to give you a heads up on one of those changes, and that is that my prices are going up April 1st. I haven't changed my prices in over four years and it is time.

coach tammie bennett 21:53

So if you have been wanting to work with me as your coach. If you've been hovering over my Instagram or my website for a while and just a little bit, you know, scared to take the plunge, but wanting to work with me, this is your sign that this is the time right now. So go ahead and go to showupsocietycom, forward slash coaching and schedule that session with me. The consultation kind of get to know each other session to see if we are a good fit we can talk about. You can ask me all the questions that you wanna know about coaching and to see if I am the right coach for you and I'll see if you are the right client for me. I've only turned down two people ever on a consult and we just weren't a good fit and I told them so. So I will be happy to let you know if you are not a good fit for me in the nicest way possible and maybe I can give you resources for somebody that is the right fit. But go ahead and go there and schedule that consult now so you can lock in the current prices, because any consults that happen after April 1 will be with the new prices.

coach tammie bennett 22:56

But I have some very exciting things coming up that I, you know ways that I can help more people in the world coming up and I can't wait to share those with you. But that's going to be for next week on that podcast. So until then, thank you so much for showing up to this episode of the Show Up Society podcast. Now go out there and show up for yourself. Hey friend, if you liked this podcast episode and you want help applying it to your life so you can do more of what you want and feel good while doing it, you're going to love working with me one-on-one for six months. I'll help you with strategy and mindset so you can figure out what you want, make an action plan and I'll help you get unstuck all along the way.

coach tammie bennett 23:30

Go to showupsocietycom forward, slash coaching to set up a consultation to see if we are a good fit for each other. Oh, hey, loyal podcast listener, thank you for being here all the way through to the end. Okay, so your secret assignment for this podcast episode is to go to my Instagram at show up society and find the post that corresponds to this episode and leave me in the comments an emoji for how this episode made you feel. What were you thinking about? How did you feel when you were listening to it. That will be our secret code that you listened to this episode all the way through. I so appreciate you being here. Keep up the good work.