Wendy (00:01.794)
Well, hello there. Welcome back to The Coaching Edge. I'm your host, Wendy McCallum. I have been coaching now for over 14 years, and I hope that as a listener of this podcast, you're learning something with every episode. Today, I want to talk about some of the things that I have learned over the years that were never discussed in any of my training or certification programs as a coach and that I think are probably generally not discussed in
training and certification programs. hear this from my coaches in my business building bootcamp program. They say these are the types of things that they wish someone had said to them sooner. And so I have gathered those up into a little list of 10 things and I'm gonna go through those in no particular order with you and hopefully help you feel less alone in all of this. Hopefully lift some of the feelings of like inadequacies that you might have as a new coach off of your shoulders and give you some helpful guidance.
So before I get to those things, I do wanna remind you that we run regularly in the BBB, again, my business building bootcamp, which is my one year membership program for coaches. It is a business coaching support program where you get live access to me every single week in what we call office hours. You also get access to an enormous content library that is organized by topic.
that is incredibly helpful as you start to put systems in place for each of the areas of your small business as a coach. We also have monthly master classes with experts. have a copy class where we talk about marketing copy and website copy. And then we have a tech and socials call every month where you can ask any question, no question is too stupid about technology and social media and so many other things. That program.
runs a regular open house and they're usually every couple of months and we have another open house coming up on November 21st at noon Eastern and I would love to see you there. If you've been curious about the program or you're listening to maybe these episodes, especially today's episode and you're thinking, yeah, that's me. I'm struggling with those things. I'm feeling alone. I wish I'd known some of those things and it would be really great to have not only the support of somebody like Wendy who's been there before, who's
Wendy (02:15.17)
got a really resonant, profitable, successful business in place and knows how to do all of these things and has done all the things wrong and learned from those things. But also a community of other coaches who were in those early years of building their coach, of their coaching practices, because I don't want to feel alone anymore. Please come out to the open house. This is the place to learn about the BBB. So the first half an hour of the open house is.
an opportunity for you to ask me anything you want about the program. I'll introduce it a little bit. It is not a sales call. It is not a sales pitch. That's not how I roll. Just want to present to you what the program's all about and how it works. The second part of the open house is a live actual office hours call. So you're joining an office hours call with my existing BBB group. It is an opportunity for you to meet some people.
to learn a little bit about what other coaches are doing in their practices, to see me coaching and supporting these coaches live, and also to ask any burning questions you have about places that you're stuck or feeling overwhelmed in your own business building process. So it's kind of a no-brainer. It's completely free. There is no pressure in any way to, you don't have to talk. You can stay quiet if you prefer. And you also will.
we'll find that you learn, I think learn a ton just from that, the interactive conversations in the live office hours. And again, no sales, no sales pressure. That's not how I roll. So that open house is happening November 21st at noon Eastern. I would love to see you there. You can access it by signing up at www.wendymcallum.com forward slash BBB. I'll put that note in the show notes. Love to see you there.
If you can't attend live register anyway, I will record and upload and send out the replay afterwards. Okay, let's talk about 10 of the things that I wish they'd told me in trainings and certifications that I've done. Now, to be clear, obviously, I've been doing this for a really long time and the last certification that I got, I had already been coaching for about eight or nine years by the time I got that certification. So by that point in time, I felt like I knew a lot of these things. But in my earlier trainings and certification, I...
Wendy (04:28.312)
did not know any of this and it was not being talked about. And I hear this all the time from my coaches in the BBB. They say, why didn't someone tell me this sooner? So I'm just here to tell you these things sooner. I don't want you to not know these things that, well, they're not all like really, know, cheerful and optimistic and positive. Some of the realities are that this business building thing is hard. I think not knowing that these things are true,
makes us feel like somehow we're failing. And I'm telling you right now, you're not failing. You are not failing. This is not your fault if you are struggling to build a profitable small business. The first thing I need you to know that nobody ever says out loud is that nobody knows what the hell they're doing when it comes to building a small business. So if you're in a training with a bunch of other people who trying to get trained or certified as coaches, chances are that 99 % of the people in that group have never, ever.
run a small business before. They've never been an entrepreneur. They don't know anything about business. Most coaches are coming from previous professions. So they've done something else for a while. Like I was a lawyer for 12 years before I became a natural nutrition consultant, went back to college to the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition, did a one-year program, learned everything about wellness and health and balance and food and all the rest of it. And was so excited to go out and start coaching and helping people change the way they and their families ate.
no idea how to build a small business, not a clue. And neither did anybody else in my program, but we weren't talking about it. And I wish we had been because it feels when you start out, it feels like somehow you're already behind if you don't know that. But the truth is it's a level playing field. People don't know what they're doing and there needs to be more business support in these trainings and certifications. I'm such a fan of that. And I'm constantly lobbying for that with anybody I get a chance to talk to like
Bring me in, let me help you with this. We need to be giving our coaches more boots on the ground support when it comes to actually building a business. Otherwise, they're not actually gonna get out there and be able to help people transform lives. So nobody knows what they're doing, guys. If you feel like you don't know what you're doing, you're not alone. I didn't know what I was doing. Most of the coaches in the BBB feel like they didn't know what they were doing. They feel better about it now. But when they joined the BBB, they were definitely feeling like they didn't know what they were doing. This is part of it.
Wendy (06:55.65)
The second thing that we don't talk about, we should talk about more, is that building a business is really freaking hard. And solopreneurship, that is building a business by yourself, which most of us are doing, is really lonely. And I know that sounds really negative, but again, knowing that building a business is really hard for everyone and that everyone feels alone, especially now post pandemic when coaches are almost coaching entirely virtually. Most of the coaches that I know coach
almost entirely online. I used to coach in person before the pandemic. I had a beautiful office, had a teapot. People would come up, there's a box of Kleenex on my coffee table and we would sit and have like a wonderful interpersonal session and I absolutely loved it. But since the pandemic, everything's been happening online. People have gotten comfortable with that and frankly for me, it provides me with a great deal of upside in terms of flexibility. So I love it for many reasons, but it also is really disconnected and it gets easy to feel lonely in this.
So the truth is, is that building a small business is hard and solopreneurship is lonely. So if you're feeling that way, everyone feels that way. It's not just you. There are things you can do about it. It's one of the main reasons why I created the BBB because we have this really amazing community of coaches and it definitely deals immediately with that feeling alone piece of being out there trying to build a business.
My coaches are so lovely. We have a great vibe in the group and we all support each other and get to know each other's businesses, which I absolutely love. And then of course, obviously the BBB is designed to help coaches with the practical side of building a business and to make it less hard. The other thing that I wish we had talked about more is that failure as you build a business is inevitable. It's part of the process and I didn't know that.
as somebody who is accustomed, know, sort of a type A driven person, again, I was a lawyer for 12 years and kind of, you know, succeeded, I'm putting that in air quotes, but succeeded kind of across the board in that career and succeeded in all the other things that I tried in life, I just sort of assumed that business building would be the same and that I would just sort of succeeded everything. But the truth is failure is part of it. It is inevitable, it is unavoidable. And in fact,
Wendy (09:14.954)
it is part of building a really successful business is actually recognizing that failure is part of that process and not resisting it. Obviously, I love it when things go really well first time around, but that rarely happens. The best, most profitable programs that I've created and ideas that I've had have started out shaky and have had many different iterations. BBB is a great example of that, that business building bootcamp that I...
launched a few years ago started as a beta. So I talk a lot about the importance of the beta mindset, which is really this mindset of like, the first time you do anything, it's not meant to be perfect is just a learning opportunity. And if you go into it, knowing this is an opportunity for you to learn and gather information and figure out what works really well and what doesn't work so well, and then tweak and improve the thing in the next iteration, and then just keep on doing that, the better that program is going to be.
I did that with the BBB, I had three different levels of beta in that program. I learned something really many things that were very important from each level of that. And it allowed me to arrive on the final version of the BBB, which frankly could still change, but that's what allowed me to know, look, coaches need more than a few months of support. This needs to be a 12 month support program. Also coaches need access to me all the time. And that's why we created...
two different options for times for office hours, calls a week. That's why we created the community. So there's a place for coaches to commune and ask questions and support each other between coaching calls. And that's how I realized, well, these master classes, bringing in experts, that's really helpful for coaches. So the program has changed over the years. And also after the first year of the BBB, I had coaches saying, I don't wanna leave, I'd like to stay. Is there an option for that? That led to...
the continuing membership option where you can stay on a monthly basis. all of that comes out of this experiment beta mindset of like, look, this thing's not gonna be perfect. I don't even want it to be perfect right out of the gate. I wanna learn and then continue to make improvements until I have the best, most valuable product possible to offer people. Failure is part of that. And the sooner you embrace failure as a business owner, the faster you're gonna grow your business.
Wendy (11:37.204)
and the better you're gonna feel about everything. So that's the third thing, failure is inevitable and experiment mode and that beta mindset is really the answer to that. The fourth thing that nobody talked about, which kind of goes along with these first three is that you're gonna need business support and it's gonna cost you some money. And nobody said that to me in any of my trainings. Instead, there was this sort of implied suggestion that these couple of...
you know, hours of training that were given to me were somehow going to be all I needed to build like a profitable business and that it was gonna happen in the first couple months of hanging out my shingle, none of which was true. So listen, you need business support if you want to build a business. Like unless you have previously built several really successful small businesses, you don't know what you're doing and that's okay, nobody does like I said at the beginning. But also you need to invest in
training and support, that is the only way to make a profit. Here's what I suggest you do if you're considering joining a program or hiring a coach or taking a course that is designed to help you build some aspect of your business. Ask yourself what you would need to make, what would need to happen on the other side of that training or coaching or course for it to feel.
like it was worthwhile and a success for you. What's the return on investment that you need from that course? This is something I ask always when I'm talking to people about either the BBB, joining the BBB or the CCC, which is my coaching course creator program, which is just an eight week program. What do you need to get on the other side of it? With the CCC, for example, where coaches take a big idea and turn it into a marketable course at the end, I'll say, how many courses do you need to sell in order to make this course that got you to the place where you have a finished marketable course worthwhile?
And it's usually, well, I only need to sell a couple of these in order to make back my investment in this. And then from then on, it's just all profit. And I'll say, great, well, that's totally doable. Does that feel doable to you? Right? So ask yourself, what do I need to get from this thing in order for this to feel like a worthwhile investment? Every single time I take a training and I still take trainings, I'm taking a very expensive training right now in an area where I feel like I need and I really can improve and use some more support.
Wendy (14:00.6)
So I'm continually getting business training. I'm always asking myself, what am I gonna need to accomplish or get on the other end of this to make this make sense for me, business-wise? How many more of these things do I need to sell as a result of this training and creating this model that I'm gonna create, for example, in the thing I'm in right now, for this to make sense for me? And I know that number. And every time I've done a training, I am able to point to what I got out of it and what I accomplished as a result of that training. And sometimes it's really specific.
I've created a program and sold this much of that program. And sometimes it's a little less measurable, you know, in specific, but it's like, I got this really amazing idea from this program, or this program gave me the confidence to go and start a podcast, for example. So think about that, but recognize like in order to be successful as a business person, you've got to get some business support.
It is just, it's part of the cost of doing business is learning how to do it so that you can actually make money. And the sooner you do that, the better. Now I'm not suggesting, we gotta be careful about this. You don't wanna be sinking like, know, $20,000 into a training program right now and it's your first year in business. But like, where can you get the support that you need and feel really confident that from that training, you're gonna be able to make that investment back and more. That's what you wanna be looking for.
This is a little bit different now, going away from the whole business is hard thing and you need support, which I know sounds a little dire, but it's actually really positive because there are lots of great programs out there that can provide you with that support. This is a little different. So this is another thing that nobody really talked about with me, which is that you need a warm audience before you can sell something. Selling cold is really, really hard. I had this idea for my first college certification.
that when I was finished, all I would need to do was create a website with like a way for people to contact me and, you know, launch a Facebook page and I would have immediately have people looking for my support online. That is just not how it works. I had to warm up an audience of people for a while before they were willing to pay me for my services. And that is because for most of us, what we do as coaches is personal. And you have to remember that in order for someone
Wendy (16:20.12)
to want to share something really personal with you, sort of download some of their deepest, darkest fears and secrets, they need to trust you. And it takes a while to build that trust. And I wish someone had said this to me in the beginning, because it would have shifted my expectations significantly if I had known this. You have to warm up an audience.
And there are different ways to do that. And we talk about all those ways in the BBB. You can do that through, you know, a social media platform. You can do it by blogging or through a podcast. You can do it by getting out there and doing in-person presentations, which I'm a huge fan of, or virtual presentations online, hosting, you know, workshops, low ticket offers or free offers for people. You can do it through a really valuable, well-thought out freebie that is a lead magnet that helps you get people on your newsletter list. There are lots of ways to warm up an audience.
but it does not happen overnight. You need to put in the FaceTime and it needs to be really thoughtful FaceTime, which means the paying clients will come, but they're probably not gonna come right away. And it is totally normal for coaches to have a long leg before they start getting a lot of one-on-one clients. And I am here to normalize that because we are not talking about that enough. That is what I see time and time again with the coaches that I support in the BBB. They're doing all the right things, but it takes...
and it takes consistency to warm up that audience till you get to a point where people are thinking, this is the person for me and I really feel comfortable enough with them that I'm ready to jump in and actually spend some one-on-one time with this person or join this program that they have to offer, right? So you need to warm up your audience. It doesn't happen overnight. It's really common and frankly normal to have a long leg between starting out in your business, hanging up your shingle.
putting up the website and the booking button for the discovery call and actually getting clients booking discovery calls. Okay, this is also something that I think we should talk about a little more. There's this assumption often, and I think this actually gets taught and kind of articulated in a lot of these coach trainings and certifications that coaches should be neutral. We should show up and we should ask open-ended questions and...
Wendy (18:36.554)
we should not be providing advice or giving any strategies. Instead, we're just there to help clients get insight through really great questions into what they know intuitively is the right next thing for them, help them get unstuck, help them to move forward, but not ever give advice. I wanna say you get to share your story and your experience with the clients first off, you get to share your story.
Some coaches do really well and it works better for them not to share their story. And that's fine, that works for you. But for me, sharing my story and my experience with my clients is one of the things that helps me build that like no trust fastest. And of course I'm careful with that. I don't monopolize the time. I tend to do that more in like marketing and free offers than I do in actual client paid sessions. But you bet your bottom dollar. If one of my clients is struggling with something and I have been there, I will tell them I have been there.
and you get to do that. How much you want to share is up to you and that leads into the next little piece, which is, you you get to really share your story as part of your marketing and you can share as much of that as you want to. And I always say share from your scars and not from your wounds. So make sure it's a healed over thing that you're sharing and you're comfortable sharing it. And for a lot of coaches, they start off, you know, sharing just the little things that feel
of safe to them, but still a little bit scary and then over time they get more comfortable with that vulnerability. But you get to share what serves you and what serves your clients and that can be part of really great coaching in my opinion. The other thing that nobody told me is that it is really important to make sure that you are meeting your clients where they actually are now as opposed to where you would love them to be.
So this comes up a lot in the BBB and also in the CCC, which is again the program where I help coaches create online courses and group programs. Coaches come in with this great idea for a program that they want to put together, but the program is clearly addressing a problem their clients don't even have yet. And their clients are actually incapable of even imagining like having slash solving because they're so stuck in the problem that they're in right now. So it's always really important to ask yourself, what does my client
Wendy (20:57.706)
actually struggle with right now. And this is just critically important when it comes to putting offers out there. Oftentimes, the program that comes down the road that you have a really great plan for an idea around is a really great thing to sell to people who have already worked through the first problem that they have with you. So it's like a secondary program that gets sold to experienced clients, alumni.
people who've already been in programming with you, but it is not a great primary offer or thing to be out there marketing to a colder slash little bit warm audience. So it's not to say that those programs are great. I've designed lots of those programs over the years. An example of that would be if you had a program like the BBB, which is for coaches in year one to five of their business, and then you created on the backend of it a mastermind program that is for coaches in years five to 10 of their business.
who are looking to up level and get really strategic with business growth, right? So I would be selling that second level of program to the coaches who'd already spent the time building their businesses in the BBB. But if I tried to go out and sell that mastermind right now to the audience, the same audience that I'm trying to market the BBB to, that would not make a lot of sense because those coaches are not ready for that yet, right? So where is your target?
client, your dream client, that avatar, where are they now? What's the problem they're struggling with right now? Right. So, for example, I have a lot of clients and a lot of business coaches in my business program who are alcohol coaches, so who help people during class. And they will often design, they want to design like a really great program that helps, helps somebody take like a 30 day break from alcohol. And but they're not getting people signing up for it. And I'll say, well, what's the
the problem that these dream clients have right now? Is it that they can't take a 30 day break from alcohol? Or is it that they can't take a three day break from alcohol? And you could see the light bulb go on. And you know, we might decide that that program that helps them to take a weekend off of alcohol or take their first two days away from alcohol, that that is a really great idea for a free program. So it might be a lead magnet for them. It doesn't necessarily mean it's a paid program, but
Wendy (23:18.06)
It is definitely a problem that a lot of their clients probably have now that's keeping them from coming into like a 30 days off of alcohol or a one year off of alcohol program that might be the dream program that they want to create. You've got to look at what's the problem they have right now. The thing that is often the problem that's keeping them from feeling like they're ready for coaching, for example, and make sure that you're addressing that somehow could be in a primary offer that's a paid offer or it could be in a really great, good quality, free
freebie. But have a think about that. Where are my clients right now? Am I actually meeting them there? Are my programs designed for where they are right now? Or are my programs designed for where they're going to be or where I would like them to be someday, right? Another thing that no one ever said to me is that you get to change your mind as a small business owner. I had this idea that I needed to figure it all out before I started. And I see this a lot in the BBB. Coaches are like, I need to know the name of my business. I need a logo. I need a tagline. I to figure out my brand colors. I need to know my niche.
I've got to know exactly what type of programs I'm offering. need to nail down the price. I'm like, hold on, hold on. Most of that is going to change and that is actually great. So don't spend very much time at all worrying about a logo or a brand or any of that stuff when you first start, because as you coach and as you create programs, as you help people, you're going to learn a lot about who you are as a coach, what problems you solve and help people solve really, really well.
what your special sauce is as a coach and what you actually wanna be doing. And you're going to change your mind as you go through this. My niche has changed time and time again as I've evolved as a coach. I've also changed the types of programs that I offered. I've offered and I've had times where I've offered a program and then decided I'm not gonna run that anymore because that's not lighting me up right now. And then a year later, I've really missed it and I've re-offered it again. You get to change your mind, especially in the early years.
Not especially, but it's especially common in the early years. And so what I don't want you to do is feel like you need to figure all of these pieces out right now. There are lots of ways to get out there and start earning money without knowing the answers to all of those questions. And that's actually totally okay. Okay, number nine, you get to coach the way that serves you and your clients best, which means you can coach, teach, and or consult.
Wendy (25:39.426)
You can give advice and you can give strategies, obviously, as long as you stay within your scope. This is really important. I hear this a lot in the BBB. I have coaches who are like, I feel like I'm leaning into the giving advice place. I feel like I'm going into the strategies place. My clients really want a toolkit. They really want me to give them some strategies and some.
you know, some cheat sheets and some support resources and all of that. But that doesn't feel like coaching to me because in my coach training or my coach certification, I was told that coaches don't give advice. I'm here to say you get to do what you want and what serves your clients best. And again, like I said earlier, you have to practice within scope. That is incredibly important. So, you know, you're not a certified health practitioner, then you don't want to be giving health advice. But what you can do is provide strategies based on what you know.
and what worked for you and what works for your other clients. And this is the beauty, I guess, of being in an unregulated profession as much as there are so many downsides of the coaching profession being unregulated. One of the upsides is there's lots of flexibility and you get to create the business that works for you and works for your clients best. As a burnout coach for professional women who are drinking too much to cope, for example, I provide lots of strategies. I provide lots of support around time management, stress management.
Burnout prevention, how to create better balance in your life, how to set boundaries. And it's not all pure coaching where I'm asking open-ended questions and the client is digging deep into themselves to gather the insight that they need. I do that too, but I am very clear on discovery calls that as a coach, I do a blend of things. I am a consultant and an educator and also a coach. And that combination...
serves my clients really, really well. But if they're looking for pure coaching only and no strategies or advice, then they're in the wrong place. So I'm here to say you get to do what you want, what serves you as a coach and what serves your clients best. And that may involve some teaching, some consulting, some providing of strategies and tools as long as you stay within your scope. And the last thing I just want to touch on is the fact that this is probably my latest revelation as a coach.
Wendy (27:54.338)
And it took me a while to get here because I'll be the first person to admit that sales is the one piece of building a business that has always provided me with the most stress. I just don't like sales. I've always hated salesy, pushy sales. And it took me a while to realize like, I don't need to sell that way. And that actually once I stop making the sales and the outcome, the money outcome matter so much, the sales and the money flow. And that, I know it sounds corny, but it's totally true.
When, you can detach yourself from the outcome of a conversation that involves an offer, so where you're making an offer to somebody, if you can just detach yourself from the outcome, it doesn't matter and I have no control over whether this person decides to accept my invitation or not. And you can instead just focus on the value of the program that you have to offer. And this is where it's so critically important that you believe in what you do. You believe in the value of the...
programs that you offer, the online courses, and in the transformations that you help people to affect in your one-on-one coaching practice. When you believe in that, and the way to believe in it, by the way, is to be gathering feedback all the time. And I talk about that in other episodes, but that is the very best way to build your confidence as a coach. When you believe in your offer and you detach yourself from the outcome and you show up and you legitimately say, look, I really think that the BBB is the thing for you. It is...
the best program out there. has is absolutely packed with value. It is worth at least two or three times what I I charge for it. And you get this incredible intimate community with that and some real boots on the ground. Really effective, very laser focused coaching for me every single week that will keep you moving in your business. When I show up and I say that with great deal of confidence and I'm detached from the outcome like look.
I hope you decide to join us because I think this is the solution to these problems. And I think you're gonna find that you make this investment back and more in a really quick way if you decide to join us. But at the end of the day, this is your choice. I think you're a great fit. think I'd love to have you in the program. Let me know if you have any questions. And I just make the offer based on my belief in the value of the offer. And I detach from whether the person decides to join or not. It's such a better conversation. It's so much.
Wendy (30:15.724)
less awkward, it's so much less stressful, it feels so much less salesy to me, which I'm sure means it feels a lot less salesy to them. That's the way I like to roll. And I really want to encourage you to start practicing, like detaching from the outcome. And I know that's hard when you're in the early months and years of your business, because it's really important to be making money. But I promise you, if you experiment with this, if you develop a beta mindset around sales and you practice and see what happens when
you really just focus in on the value of the offer and making the invitation and offer in a really clear way to the person, assuming they're a good fit for whatever it is you have to offer, that that actually is gonna lead to much higher conversion rate for you because you're gonna feel more comfortable in that process and the person is gonna feel like they can trust you. And I think the value of your offer will just shine through. It'll just be really, really apparent to them. So that's the last thing. Once you stop making sales and money matter so much, sales and money start to flow.
So those are the 10 things. There are probably another 10 things, but those are the 10 that I identified for this episode. Again, if you're feeling alone in your business, if you're feeling like you don't know what you're doing, that's normal. That is just part of this in the early years, but you don't need to do it alone. I would love to have you come and join us on November 21st at noon Eastern for the open house for the BBB. Again, to register for that, just go to wendymcallum.com forward slash BBB and fill out the form.
at the top of the page and I'll send you all the information you need to join us live on that day or if you can't attend live to have the replay sent out to you after the event. Have a wonderful week.
