#262: The Work It REALLY Takes To Succeed As a Health Coach

All right. Hello there, health coaches, you know what happened last week. This was really like the silliest thing, but I never know how to use all the features of my iPhone. I'm assuming most of us don't, right? But anyway, I felt silly because my boyfriend pointed out to me that there was a much, much easier way of navigating to the old photos in my photo library.

I was like, duh. And before you know it, I am spending hours pouring through old photos from like Halloweens when my boys were really little and super adorable from pictures from when I used to live in Boston when I used to live in Alexandria, Virginia. And also lots of photos from moments in my health coaching business that I had completely forgotten about.

And it was reminding me like, wow, you know, wow, how far I've really come. It was just smacking me in the face. Like it's, it's really been a long time. So I don't know if all of you are ready for this episode, but I think many of you are ready to hear the truth about what it takes to succeed.

And I know that many health coaches need to hear this because a successful coaching business cannot be handed to you. It just can't be just like we can't make our clients healthy. We can't hand them good health. We can't give them this plug and play solution, not for any amount of money. It just doesn't work like that. They have to do the work.

And the same is true in your business. It does not matter where you went to health coaching school. It does not matter. Please hear me on this. How many certifications you have. If you are a national board certified, which business coaches you've hired, no one can make the success happen for you. So buckle up. I was thinking I must be in my luteal phase.
Before we dive in, I'm just looking over here in Facebook. So if you are with me live on Facebook, say hello. Beth is here. She says, she says that she lives in Alexandria, Virginia. Well, what? What do you know? Maybe we would've been neighbors. I also wanna give a shout out to JR 3 93 who left a five star review on Apple Podcasts.

And this is what they said. So incredibly valuable. I stumbled upon this podcast searching for guidance as I start my health coaching business. One of the first episodes I listened to was about the top mistakes new health coaches make, and she hit every nail on the head. I have been devouring this podcast and it has been so incredibly relatable and beneficial. A must for coaches.
Well, JR393, whoever you are, thank you so much for listening and taking the time to write a review. It really helps, like it really helps us reach more coaches that need this kind of support. So please send your mailing address to us. Just reference this episode. We send it to support@healthcoachpower.com. So we can send you a little thank you gift.

And for everybody listening, again, super appreciative. If you could just take a minute, write a review of the show, and then maybe next week I can read yours on the air. That'd be fun. Thank you so much in advance for that. And I see that Ellen is here, and Laura, hey you guys. And Leanne who agrees that this is a Bingeable podcast.

I'm always shocked when people say that they binge this podcast, but hey, go for it. That's amazing, Leanne. Go leave a review. Now, if you are here live with on Facebook, or even if you're over here on Instagram land, tell me in the chat, getting back to today's topic, what do you think the most important thing is?

Like what do you think it really takes to succeed in this industry? Or what have you been told that you need in order to succeed? I think answers will be all across the map. Even if you're listening to this podcast later, maybe we even recorded it a year ago. Who knows. Just think to yourself, what really are the most important things to find success in this industry?
Coaches will often say, I need to get good at social media in order to find clients. Is that you? Anyone, anyone worried about their social media game first and foremost? Or coaches will say, I need a target market. Or, you know, we know it takes passion to succeed as a health coach. And it's like, yes, all of those things can help.

You've probably even heard me talk about some of those things before. I'm not going to deny them. Beth says, consistency. Beth, you are speaking my language. We are gonna get there. Every successful health coach I have ever known, and I have met many through the years, each one has built their business in a slightly different way. Like some are really big on social media,
some don't use it at all. Some are really targeted to a very specific market. Some especially those who've been around for a really long time are more general, right? They work with lots of different people or maybe they have a few specialty areas, right? So no two businesses are the same, just like, you know, no two people, no two bodies, no two health issues are the same. But I can tell you each and every successful coach, and heck, even beyond that, every entrepreneur I know has put into their business to get where they are. All right. So any guesses? Go ahead and put 'em in the chat if you are here live. So Beth said, consistency. Leanne says,

telling people you can help them. Yeah, letting people know about you. That's a good start, huh? I made a list. I have a few specific things I'm gonna share with you today, but tell me in the chat what you think as we go along, or you have others that you wanna maybe suggest, right? Because some really are more important than others.

So let's start here. If you wanna succeed, here's what it takes. Good energy. You need to have good positive energy. The kind that is infectious, the kind that other people just wanna soak in for real. Like in any industry, in any pursuit, we know your energy matters, law of attraction, all of that. But I'm gonna underline that and like bold it and make it bright green.

Good energy matters, especially as a health coach, because people are looking for that positive energy. You know, many times their relationship with you as their health coach, that's like the only place that they're getting that kind of support in their life. It's the only place that they are feeling that glowing energy. That's why they're gonna hire you as a health coach.

Clients are not, repeat, not gonna flock to you if you are exuding a negative vibe. Like it's just, that's not what they want. You know? And I definitely see this with some health coaches who are stuck in their own stuff, you know, stuck in their own low mood, their own anxiety, their own victimhood. I know I can spot it from a mile away because it sounds like I can't.

There's a lot of, I can't energy. There's a lot of like, that didn't work for me. Nothing works for me. There's a lot of complaining, there's a lot of blaming. You know, that feeling you get from someone when it's all blaming this and blaming that, that negative energy is palpable. And when I contrast that with a more balanced, self-regulated coach, 'cause you know, I speak and I work with so many coaches, right? So it's really easy to see differences in personalities when someone is more balanced and they're more in control and more regulated and they have a growth mindset. This is a person who says things like, I can figure it out, right? It's hard, but I can figure it out.

Or I don't know what to do, but I'm learning as I go, right? And I can do hard things, right? It is a totally, totally different vibe. Listen, there are totally times in my own business where I feel stuck and I'm like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do right now. You know? Or maybe there's times that I wanted to blame my clients for not doing enough.
Oh, they're not making progress 'cause they're not doing enough. They're not doing the things, they're not showing up. Maybe there's times that I've wanted to blame my kids for taking up so much of my energy. How dare they? Or I wanna blame a piece of software that I'm using because it's so difficult and it just won't work. Yes, those moments happen, but it's not helpful. So instead, I can learn to be a more effective coach when my clients aren't making progress. I can become a better mother by giving my children the energy that they deserve from me. And I can decide it's totally up to me which tools or software I'm going to use in my business. So then I can either get some help with that and learn.

Or I can say, screw it. I'm not using this anymore. I don't have to email the company to be nasty to someone who like me, is doing their best to run a business. Like, I don't need to do that. That's the bad kind of energy. So if you wanna succeed in this business, my suggestion is that you do the inner work first.

And and many of us landed in this profession because we were doing the inner work. Like that's how we got here. We had our own issues, but for many, like they're still there. I'm just telling you, I'm calling some health coaches out right now. You need to do the inner work and raise your vibes because we cannot make the world a healthier and happier place if we're in our own muck.

It shows no one wants to hire that. All right? Does this resonate? Tell me in the chat, does this hit home at all? Do you know anybody like this? Might this be you from time to time. It's okay, right? You know better. You do better. But the point is, energy matters. Okay? Next up.

Now, I've been in the health and wellness industry for nearly 20 years in varying roles. I started as a yoga teacher. And here's what I've noticed. Yoga teachers, again, I'm calling, I'm calling y'all out and I am one of you. You know, yoga teachers, health coaches, massage therapists, et cetera. We tend not to be natural born business people like we're healers, we're intuitive, we're feelers. However, if you are running a business, it is going to require your attention and your consistency. Thank you Beth, for saying the word consistency earlier. It's huge. Consistency's important because you have to build trust with your clients, with your prospective clients. In short, you cannot be a flake. You gotta show up.

You have to pay your taxes, you have to answer your emails. You guys, just this morning I emailed a massage therapist for the third time to set up an appointment for myself. This person had no online scheduler. Okay, fine. The link on the site is broken. Okay, fine. So they said I could email to book a session.

They did not give me any days or times that they were available, however. So this became a bit of a guessing game. And then they thought they wrote back when in fact, I assure you they had not. So this has flaky written all over it. And I know maybe this person is busy. Maybe there were extenuating circumstances this week. I understand that 'cause I also run my own solo operation. But all the more reason to have a working online scheduler. Anyway, I'm still gonna try this massage therapist out. I'm gonna give them a chance because I have heard good things about their work. However, you can imagine if communication problems continue, you know, just keep adding on. I can never make an appointment.

There's issues with payment, whatever, they're gonna lose my business. Not because I'm angry, not like I'm like storming out like, well you're gonna lose my business. Not like that. But because it's just going to be too difficult. If I can't set up a session, how am I ever gonna pay this person? Just pure logistical problems. So please, health coaches, let's get organized. Let's get simple systems in place. We all make mistakes, of course. We all forget things. Yes. But people need to feel like they can trust you or they're not gonna hire you. Got it? Okay, good. Laura says, great reminder, Beth says, trust. Yes. Okay. What else is it gonna take realistically for you to make a go of this whole career?

Ladies and gentlemen, it takes time. It takes time. I spoke with a health coach. This is a true story. A couple weeks ago, literally just graduated from health coach school. And I always ask, what are you looking to achieve? Not ultimately, but what are you looking to achieve in the next six to 12 months with your business?

And this coach looked me dead in the eye and said she wanted to earn six figures. Where does this come from? This we don't work in like, I don't know, where do people make a ton of money? Finance, stocks, bonds. I don't know. Things where you can get rich overnight. Bitcoin. This is not that. Yes, you can make a six figure salary as a coach. I'm living proof of that. However, you are not gonna do it in your first year, especially if you don't have any experience running your own business. You're new to coaching, et cetera, et cetera. It takes time to get there. Now, if you don't have time, and sometimes that is the case, right? Coaches will say, I need clients. Like now I just, I need clients now 'cause I have to pay my mortgage. I need clients now because I got these bills. I don't have time to wait. I'm gonna suggest you get another job because you can go into a job, work some part-time hours, whatever it is, and make money now.

But you are gonna need time to build it up. It's like a, a rolling, a snowball, you know, into a snowman, you know? And every time you work on your business, and especially if you're doing the things that are going to move the needle income generating activities, I know we've talked about that before on the show. You know that that pushes that snowball a little bit further and it does build over time.

But I cannot help you if you're like, I need 10 people in my group coaching program this week. Sorry. Like you have to put in the work ahead of time. You need to establish an audience. You need a mailing list, you need a clear message, you need to become known for something. Then what you see like established coaches doing, then you can offer a program and people will buy it. 'cause they're sitting there and they're already paying attention to you. But if they're not paying attention to you, because as already mentioned, you got bad energy or as already mentioned, you're inconsistent, you don't show up or you're boring or whatever, or you just haven't put in the work yet to build an audience.

It's very hard to get 10 people into your group coaching program this week. Make sense? Leanne says, love this reality check. There's lots of promises out there. I know. And I'm straddling this line because on one hand I know the opportunity that exists because I have lived it. And you guys, I started 14 years ago. 14 years ago.

So where I am today is not where I was five years ago, 10 years ago, certainly not 14 years ago. I think that I could have built faster and perhaps stressed myself out less if I had had more guidance, more skills, more tools available to me. A lot of things took me longer because I feel like I was in a, in a way, like at the forefront of figuring out a lot of things. Like running online courses before online course platforms existed, things like that. But now we have so much support available. It doesn't have to take 14 years, but it's not gonna take one, right? It's just not. So take care of yourself. This is not to discourage, but this is to, yes, like Leanne said, give a reality check. If you need money now, do something so that you are safe and secure. Because if you are coming from a place of desperation, I need to sign 10 clients. Oh my God, I've to sign 10 clients this week. No one's gonna wanna work with you because that's bad energy. That's that desperate Kind of bad energy.

And people are like this, they are wording it off. They don't want any of that energy near them. No way. So you have to make sure you are coming from a balanced, right? I already said there's a balanced state. You have to be coming from a safe place. Like your energy has to be right? And that includes your financial situation or you will really reek of the exact thing that people don't want.

Ellen is saying yes, knowing you this long, you were the visionary for the vision. Oh, Ellen, that's sweet. Yeah, Ellen's known me a very long time, right? And things were very different, very different. You just, you gotta play the long game when you're starting your own business. If you're gonna go get a job for someone else's business, that's, you know, it's, it's just a different path in life. The person who started that business, they, they've been playing the long game and now they can hire you, you know? And you're gonna get there in your own coaching practice to the point like where I am now, where I hire other people to do a lot of things for me, although I'm still a one woman show, I mean, I don't have any full-time employees, but a lot of, certainly a lot of helpers. Alright? So we need time. I think we understand that. And here's the other thing, and perhaps the biggest thing that I wanted to say to you today, if you're gonna succeed as a health coach,

it is going to take more work than you think. And again, I'm not saying this to discourage you, I am setting you up for success. Because if I had a nickel for every health coach that graduated yesterday and says, well, I posted on social media and nobody booked a consultation with me, I would have a lot of nickels. You know, I mean it's, I don't know where this idea comes from that we're just gonna post on social media and find clients. You're not like, that's not how this works. There are some cases, of course, that you can get lucky. You post the right thing at the right day, it resonates with the right person. Boom. You find yourself a client.

I'm not saying it never happens that way, I'm just saying that's not the path. That's not how you build, that's not the strategy that's gonna get you like to that six figure mark or even to the five figure mark. You know, it's not just a game of posting to Instagram, this is a whole business, right? You need a strategy, you need a marketing plan. So if you think like, okay, I'm gonna post to Instagram once, twice, three times. No, no, no, no, no. It's gonna take way more than that. Way more on Instagram probably if you're gonna use that platform and way more everywhere else you're gonna be at. You need to get out in public, you need to talk with people, you need to set up workshops, you need to get yourself published places. I mean, there's so many different ways to put yourself out there. It's not gonna be two or three social media posts. In fact, whatever you think it's gonna take, I can pretty much tell you like everything I do, like even since this week I've been working on editing some videos for my online courses course, which is starting, and a lot of the material is brand new. So anyway, we're doing editing, we're putting the final touches on some of the materials. And even that, it's gonna take like 20 times more work than you think it is. That's how you succeed, not by putting in the bare minimum, not by doing it one time.

I have run, since I just started talking about it, I'll continue my online courses for health coaches course. I have run this course in different iterations like five times, and I still consider it new, newer, like it's still not something that I think is like seasoned and perfect and you know, like I've been doing it that long and I've run it like five times.
But yet, and you know, and I've run many, many other courses, many, many, many, many times. So I have a lot of experience with online courses. But yet I'll see a health coach who's like, well, I've put together this program, you know, and then nobody signed up and now I don't know what to do.

You think the first time you do something, it's gonna come out right? Like no one, nothing. You know, the first time you made scrambled eggs, it probably didn't come out right? And like building your health coaching business is way harder than scrambled eggs. So at least give yourself enough leeway to go The first time I do anything, I'm not gonna get it right.
And the second time, I'm probably still not gonna get it right. You know, it takes a long time. When I started dating my boyfriend, he said something about how he didn't, you know, he didn't, we didn't like, I didn't call him my boyfriend for a very long time. And you know, he was very skittish about it.

But he said something that I thought was really wise. He said, it takes seasons to get to know someone. And it's true. Like this coming up holiday season will be the fifth Christmas that we've known each other. And yes, surely like our relationship is in such a different place than it was and the first Christmas that we knew each other. And you know, in your own life, you can think of examples like this, it takes seasons. Well, I'm gonna tell you the same thing. It's gonna take seasons of work in your health coaching business, You know, but it's not wasted time. You know, our first Christmas together when we just like barely exchanged little presents to our second, to our third, you know, that's not wasted time. So if you're doing things now and you feel like, ugh, it's not where I wanna be, you are exactly where you have to be because you gotta put in the time, you gotta go through the seasons and it's going to take so much more work than you think. I cannot stand, the coaches are coming out of school being sold.

This idea that they're just gonna walk out on the street and be like, I'm a health coach. And people are gonna like, what? Run up and like throw money at you. Nobody cares. Nobody wants to be told that you need to eat more vegetables. You have to learn how to connect with people, how to connect with the right people.
How to craft a message that they want to listen to because they've been hearing eat more vegetables since they were a kid, and they haven't listened yet. Why would they start listening now? It's all doable, but please set your expectations appropriately so that you don't get down on yourself so that that negative energy doesn't creep in and take over. I can't do it.
I can't figure out, I'm no good at this. I'm the worst. Nobody's ever gonna hire me to do anything. I might as well give up. Well, with that energy, you're not gonna get anywhere, right? You are learning, you are setting the foundations. You are going through the first season so that your next will be stronger and you will get there.

Give yourself at least the same grace of making scrambled eggs for the first time. That's it for today everybody. Thank you so much for joining me. I love seeing you guys in the comments. And for anyone watching the replay or listening later, you always can reach me inside our Health Coach Power Community Facebook group. I will see you there. Bye.