how i developed confidence in my coaching practice

264. this episode gives a little behind the scenes of why i coached for 80 hours for free before hanging up my shingle as a mindset coach. 

if you have an area where you'd like to develop confidence, this may be a helpful episode for you. or you might just want to get an insider's view 😉

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!

 
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Transcript

Snoring Dog And Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey friend, I am doing another episode next to a sleeping doggy. Little Millie is right next to me, and she is my little snorer, so you might hear some snoring in the background, but it's kind of calming in a way. Today I wanted to talk about um I received a message from someone asking me if I have any podcast episodes on my journey when I started coaching people for free. Um so if you don't know the background to this, I had been a fitness coach and a running coach for, gosh, at this point uh 10 or 11 or 12 years. I'm always really bad about timelines and dates. Um, but so I had already been coaching runners for a really long time. And then I decided to really focus on mindset because I was struggling with some things with my mindset. I had noticed that so much of my coaching with runners was really about what was going on in between their ears, way more than what was going on with their legs and their lungs. And also I uh had been in different art uh owned different art businesses. So I had been in art licensing and product-based businesses, and I had some uh mindset issues with promoting myself and with confidence and with pitching and trying to get clients and trying to get new work. And so all of that kind of came together around 2019. I had already started my podcast. I had been doing daily habits for a while, I had been teaching uh classes like on vision boards and tiny daily habits and accountability and uh workshops about knowing what drives you and what inspires you and that kind of thing. So I had already done a ton of teaching, a ton of coaching. But around 2019-ish, I think, I decided that I was going to really focus on mindset coaching. And so I signed up for a certification program. And uh, as soon as I signed up, I started uh, we had tons of practice in my uh certification. We had tons of one-on-one practice. We were in front of uh our teachers and we got critiqued by our peers and by teachers, other coaches, but I also wanted to get a lot of practice on my own because I wanted to start coaching as soon as possible. I wanted to kind of hang my shingle as a mindset coach as soon as possible. So I coached for 80 hours in those first uh eight to 10 weeks of my certification program. So I just went out, I found a ton of people to coach for free. I coached them for between six or eight or ten sessions, I don't remember exactly for the people, but minimum of six sessions for each person and however many people that equals, you can do the math. Um, but I've talked about this a lot within a bunch of um kind of groups that I'm in as far like I'm in some coaching groups and some business groups and art business groups and the business of coaching groups. Uh, a lot of those take place on Facebook, unfortunately. Um, but I do log into Facebook now and then to to uh kind of contribute to those groups and see what's going on. And so it's sort of um I I've talked about those coaching 80 hours for free. I've talked about that a lot in those groups. And so um, I'm not sure. Uh yeah, so this person wrote me, Do you have any podcast episodes on your journey coaching people for free? And so I replied, uh, no, I don't think so, but that's a great idea. Maybe I can do that in the future. I'm kind of doing it right now. Um, and then I asked if they had questions about anything in particular. And so I just thought it might be interesting to share with you, uh, even even if you have, you know, you're not a coach, you have no desire to have a coaching business. I think that this is a good kind of uh thing to hear about uh building confidence in general and building confidence in a thing and practicing a skill. And so I thought it might be valuable for me to share this with you. Um, also, it just might be interesting for you to see kind of just the behind the scenes of my coaching journey. So, specifically, they wanted to know how I overcame the whole free clients aren't committed clients kind of way of teaching. So, in the coaching world, there are some coaches that believe that if a client doesn't pay in full, then they're not fully committed. I think that's disgusting, and I'll talk more about that in a second. Um, and then he uh also wanted to know the overall value I got from doing this free coaching and how I knew when to stop. So I'm just gonna kind of uh read you my reply and then I might expand on it because this was just over like some messaging. So I just said, um, I think the teaching that only the pay-in-full clients are committed is super gross and it denies the reality of so many people with financial struggles and just the reality of people's financial situations. I've actually I personally have actually extended my payment plans uh for people to make it more affordable. And I have seen no less commitment on their part just because they are paying in more um more payments. Uh and the same was true with my free clients. There was no less commitment to the work just because they weren't paying for it. And I just think it's so gross that mindset. I said, also, why do we need them to be committed? Committed to what? What clients are committed to is none of my damn business. I am here to meet them where they are and to know that they are beautiful, autonomous human beings deciding their own level of commitment. And I trust my clients endlessly to know themselves and to be able to decide what level of commitment they want to bring to coaching. My job is to meet them where they are and to support them where they are. So coaches wanting them to be committed is about the coach's ego, not about helping the client. So I have never worried about a client's commitment to me. If they come to me and say, I want help, and this was true when I all the years and years, you know, now by now I've been coaching for over 18 years. This has been true the whole entire, entire time that I have been a coach. I have never once doubted my client or my athlete's uh commitment. If they showed up in front of me and they asked for help, I was committed to helping them, and that's all I was concerned about. I am committed to you. As long as you're standing in front of me asking for help, I am here for you. So then I uh talked about the value I got from um coaching. This this episode is going to be longer than seven minutes, and that's okay. Uh I talked about the value I got from offering those hours of free coaching. I said, uh a big part of the value I got was my earned confidence. I had confidence in my ability to coach and to listen and to ask questions and to say the hard things sometimes and to trust the other human in front of me. It developed my confidence in being able to meet them where they are and to not put forth my own agenda. So in my coaching, I'm not telling people what to do. I'm helping them discover what they feel is best to do so that it's aligned with them and it's more sustainable. And so then when they're not working with me anymore, they have the tools to trust themselves and to continue to grow, even though they're that I'm no longer the coach that they're meeting with on a weekly basis. I also said it developed my confidence in my ability to attract clients because before I opened, you know, put my shingle up, like, hey, I'm a mindset coach, uh, I wanted to know that like I had the ability to sustain a business. I had the ability to draw in clients that wanted to work with me. It also developed my confidence in my ability to market myself as a coach and confidence in my ability to say what it is I do and who I help. So to be able to put myself out there on social media and emails and podcasts and guest speaking and all the places where I market myself, I wanted to know for sure what is it that I help people do? How do I help them and how do I market myself? How do I present that? It was also uh this all these hours of free coaching was also a really great practice in remembering that coaching is not about me, it's about helping others. And free coaching, it's all about helping other people. It's not what about what I'm getting out of it. I mean, I did get a lot of it. I got a really inspired by my clients, but my mission was I'm going to meet these people and I'm going to help them. And there's no financial benefit in it to me in the immediate sense, right? So um, yeah, I gained confidence and that was a uh a benefit. And I gained a lot of connection and communication with other people. Um, but a really big benefit was that I I knew that I was helping people in a really pure way. And it just was a really good um practice to know I am here as a coach, I'm here to help people. That is my mission, that is what I'm here for. And it was just a good 80 hours of practice of that, and I haven't stopped since. So um, see what you can take from this podcast episode and apply it to somewhere in your life where maybe you're lacking a little bit of confidence. And how can you show up and do the thing in a pure way, in a repetitive way, in a free way, in a giving way to develop your confidence in the skill or whatever that is, where you're a little bit lacking confidence? See what you can pull out of this podcast episode and see where it can apply to you. All right. Love you, friend.