Yes, it's true. There are people out there who don't want to be successful coaches. Whether it's because you're carrying around memories of when someone told you 'you'll never amount to anything' or you somehow feel like you don't deserve success or even that if you become wealthy it will make you a bad person, you may have thoughts that are holding you back.
As a coach, you'll be familiar with the concept of limiting beliefs. And it can take a fair bit of work to shift them, but it can be done. I've worked with a number of clients who have absolutely demolished the negative thoughts that they used to carry around with them, and now they don't let them hold them back.
One of them was a coach who didn't think that anybody would ever pay to be coached by her. She gave away free coaching sessions all the time because she was embarrassed to ask for money. In actual fact, she was a very good coach, but she'd started to believe that she wasn't anything special.
When new clients came to her, without realising it, she was giving off the 'I'm a new coach and I'm not very confident' vibes. It made people nervous and they questioned the price. So she immediately offered them a few free sessions. The trouble is, once people have got used to getting something for free, they don't
ever expect to pay for it. The same goes for giving people huge introductory discounts. When you try to put the price back up, they don't like it.
She and I worked together every week for an hour for 6 weeks. Within a couple of weeks she had decided to run workshops and the word started to spread. She became more confident and it showed. People wanted to be coached by her and didn't care about how much she charged because they were confident they'd get the results they were looking for.
And this is the point - your attitude will make or break your business.
People aren't stupid - if you aren't enthusiastic about coaching and the results your clients have experienced or you seem nervous about asking them to book a session, they'll start thinking you're not worth it or worse, you're trying to rip them off.
Studies show that only 7% of our communication is through the words that we use. The rest is our body language and our tone of voice. Even if people are saying all the right things, you can tell if they don't mean it and your 'gut' tells you that something isn't right.
And it's not just when we have clients standing in front of us.
You can pick up on this when you're on the phone - have you ever been on the receiving end of a scripted cold call? It's not natural is it? You can tell when people don't believe what they're saying.
Something that fascinates me is the sub conscious messages that people pick up from Marketing. The layout you use in an advert, the tone of voice in a press release, the 'feel' of your website all have a sub conscious impact on the person receiving the message. Portraying yourself as a competent coach with confidence
in their abilities is vitally important for you to win clients.
I once met a coach at a seminar who showed me exactly how body language has a big impact. During the talk, I'd asked the speaker a question and explained that I was a coach. In the break a lady in her early thirties shuffled up to me and said it was good to meet another coach. As we started to talk, it was obvious to me that she was quite new to coaching, so I asked her if she had a 'niche' that she
worked in. Mumbling and looking at her feet, she quietly told me she was a Confidence Coach.
"A CONFIDENCE COACH??"
I thought to myself and without realising it, I'd given off signals that I was surprised. So she giggled and quickly added "well they say that you teach what you need to learn yourself".
Remember that when people come to you for coaching, they are looking to you for support and guidance. They want to be coached by someone who they aspire to being like.
Please don't use coaching other people as a way to learn lessons yourself.
Play to your strengths and be authentic. If you're coaching people on work/life balance, you need to have your own work/life balance sorted out. But if you're constantly tired, running late or stressed and you're talking to a prospective client about work/life balance or stress relief, they WILL pick up on it. They might not know why, but something will tell them that you're not the right coach to be working with on this issue.
Contact:
Agbolade Omowole
nigeriaslifecoach@gmail.com
+2347064649978
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