#323: Do It Scared – The Confidence You’re Looking For Starts Here

Hello there, health coaches. Happy New Year everybody. I hope you rang in 2025 with Health and with Happiness, and I'm really glad that you're here every single week inside the Health Coach Power Community Facebook group. In addition to being live like I am right now, I ask a question once a week. I say, what do you need most? So if you're here with me or if you're watching this replay later, tell me now, put it in the chat. What do you need most right now? What is the one thing that is holding you up, holding you back in your health coaching business? Sometimes it's, I need this kind of information. I need a tool that does this. We have like 15,000, literally 15,000 health coaches in our group. So the answers vary from week to week. It's usually something along the lines of, I need more clients, or I got to get my business organized.

I got to get my head on straight. Something like that. But last week Ellen said something that I bet a lot of you are feeling. She said what she needed was the confidence to forge ahead. She said, I need the confidence to forge ahead. I have the tools now I need the confidence to execute. Have you ever felt that way? Yes. No. Tell me. In the chat today we're going to talk about finding the confidence you need to forge ahead and three strategies to ease into it. So stick with me. But first big thank you to our sponsor. Practice better practice, better handles every aspect of managing your coaching practice, from billing to scheduling to online programs, all that stuff. You can have everything in one convenient place for you and for your clients. They even have an app that makes it so easy, even on the go.

I use Practice Better for years and years in my own health coaching business. I recommend it all the time. And guess what? For all my listeners, you can save 30% off your first three months at healthcoachpower.com/pb and wait for it. And when you join by January 14th, that's 2025, you'll also get a free 21 day meal prep program from the good folks at Practice better. So again, go to healthcoachpower.com/pb. Alright, so we're back to Ellen, who is needing the confidence to move forward. I know Ellen isn't alone in this. Let's see. Heather says over here, she's struggling to put herself out there. I definitely have all the tools, but lacking the confidence. Oh, you guys are in the right place. Francine says, oh, Francine says she likes my hair today. Thanks, Francine. I blew it out straight. Always something different going on with the hair over here.

But listen, I know Ellen is not alone in this idea of I can't move forward. I'm afraid a little insecure about putting yourself out there as a health coach. She's also not alone. I can tell already by the comments, she's not alone in this misperception, that you have the confidence first. Like you somehow acquire confidence first and then you do all the things. Then you can go look for the clients. Once you have that confidence, then you can go hold your workshops, then you can start your podcast, find the confidence somehow in some way. Then my friends, this is backwards. Let's turn it all around. I want to explain, actually, I want to ask you a question. Why? Just think of one good reason. Why would you feel confident about doing something you haven't really done before? It doesn't even make sense. Nobody could expect that of you.

You can't expect it of yourself. So why are we looking for this confidence? We're looking for a lost set of keys. We're like, oh, it's around here somewhere. If I just keep looking and procrastinating and I'm doing everything else, I'll eventually find it. We're not going to just find confidence. We're not going to do mental gymnastics to get there. I've never run a marathon example, so I'm not very confident that I could run a marathon at all. That makes sense, right? That's an easy one that I've never even trained. I can't even run a mile. I could probably run a mile, but that's about it. Let's talk about something that you've actually trained for. We've all trained to become health coaches, so what's something else you've trained to do? When I was in college, I was an art major. I was doing graphic design for four years training, right?

Four years of training. I had, however, never presented this work, any of my graphic design work for a real paying client, and that sounded terrifying. I had zero confidence in myself. I did not want to get up in front of the room and present. And when the time came, because by the time I had a job and I was working in advertising, I had to stand up and be client facing, be in those meetings. And you know what? It was absolutely terrifying. I did not do an amazing job right out of the gate, but I did okay. And the point is, I did it right, and from there it got easier. Of course, I got better at it. Of course I did. I know you've had experiences like this. Your confidence grows in proportion to the action that you take. I'm going to say that again.

So if your mind was wandering, if you were doing something else, come back. Listen up. Your confidence grows in proportion to the action that you take. You earn confidence by doing. Now, first of all, how does that land? Do we like that? I feel like that's one to write on a sticky note, put it on the mirror who you see it every morning. But I also know that somewhere in the back of your head, you're like, yeah, but what if I'm not that good? What if I get out there and I'm just cringe? As the kids would say, I can't risk looking like an idiot, then I'm going to have zero confidence at all. That's the fear. But I think that's what our mind tells us. But the truth is, and I think this is science backed, the way that confidence grows, small wins are enough.

You just need tiny wins along the way to build more and more self-assurance. INE says, my actions were kind of messy today, although I went back and adjusted trying to be okay with making mistakes. There's going to be so many mistakes presenting to clients for the first time, I fumbled my words. I said the wrong things, but there's always something that you did. So if we could start thinking of it that way, what went well? I mean, even the fact like Francine actually took some actions today. I mean, score right there. Because we only need small wins. We don't have to get it right every time. We don't have to get it right the first time, and you won't. You just won't because that's life. But you only have to get one tiny thing, right? And that's enough. That's a little step to build upon, to build confidence upon little by little.

So I'm thinking about some of our fast track members from last year who are running their first webinar, like all the things that can go wrong in a webinar. Your mic isn't working, your lighting isn't working. What if I sound dumb? What if I mess up my presentation? What if nobody shows up? I mean, we make it easier in fast track because I give you the script and I give you the slides and all that stuff, but still, so Macaulay went through this first time experience, harrowing experience, right? To do a webinar for the first time and afterwards, this is what she said. She said, this was my first and definitely not my last webinar. It was an amazing experience. A year ago today, I was afraid to make a post about my business. My confidence was in the tank and I questioned my purpose.

This fast track program has opened my eyes to things I never thought I could do. Now, did Macaulay deliver her webinar 100% perfectly. Of course not. I don't think I ever do any webinar perfectly. There's always the mistakes. There's always the like, oh shoot, I forgot to hit the record button, but she did the best she could and in the end it's like, whoa, that was a huge jump in confidence. You just heard this infusion of good energy that she got by doing it, and she was scared, right? She was definitely scared and she did it imperfectly anyway, and that is the key to success. That is the key to moving forward, doing it scared, right, doing it imperfectly. Anyway, I want to pause here, and for those of you that are with me live, I'd love to hear from you in the chat. And if you're just listening via podcast later, we love you too.

Think in your own mind, when was the time in your life that you were terrified to do a thing like anything, but you did it anyway? It doesn't have to be about health coaching by the way. You can think about any aspect of your life when you were younger recently, whatever comes to mind. When I was preparing this episode, the first thing that jumped into my mind was getting divorced. Talk about terrified, leaving my marriage. It felt like I know many of you, some of you have been through this also, but you feel like you're free falling into the abyss with everything to lose. If you've ever taken a risk like that or even a smaller risk done something where you had no idea what the outcome was going to be and it just scared the pants off of you. Tell me about it in the chat.

I think we've all done this at some point. Oh, skiing. That's a great example too. I actually had a year ago, I took my boys skiing. I haven't been skiing in like 20 years. So terrifying. Have you done that recently? Francine skiing. I don't want to fall. I don't want to fall when I'm skiing, especially now at 45, I'm like, I'm not falling. So to get into a pair of skis, that is terrifying. I bet a lot of you went skiing maybe over the holiday break or something like that. Some of you were old pros, but for me, terrifying. Linda says, I was terrified about making a big presentation and when I was standing there, I did well. I surprised myself and got great feedback. I prepared myself well, but I was very scared being an introvert. Yeah, absolutely terrifying. Like pee your pants terrifying.

But so Linda did her presentation. Francine said skiing after she hadn't done it in years, right? It's all part of growth. We've all done something like this. Thank you for the examples ladies. By the way, usually these are the moments that catapult us forward. These are the things that create change. I mean, gosh, for all I know now, Francine goes skiing every weekend. Well, maybe not, but just being able to overcome that initial fear of getting on the skis, you're more likely to do it again, and that is how your confidence builds. So if you want to grow your health coaching business, you have to be willing to be uncomfortable over and over and over because if you're not uncomfortable at times, you're not growing. You're just doing the same old thing. You're getting the same old results. So if you want to grow in any capacity in your life, it requires discomfort.
When you do not feel comfortable, sometimes we hit the brakes. I'm not comfortable. Got to stop right here. I want you to think about it differently. Discomfort is not your sign from the universe to hit the brakes. It is your sign to grow. Grow into that next phase. Like McCauley, I want you to feel the fear because it's real and I know it. If you want to feel that fear, acknowledge it, be uncomfortable, and then you're going to do that webinar anyway. You're just going to do it scared you can. It is humanly possible to do a thing while you are scared to do the thing, whatever it is. That's exactly how I went down the hill skiing, let me tell you. Afraid the entire time. But by the end I was starting to have fun. Now listen, there are some things that can help some strategies like I promised you in the beginning. So for example, like I mentioned, our fast trackers get pre-written, pre-designed templates for everything, and that helps definitely when you have to do something new for the first time, you want to think where can I get support materials, resources? Where can I get things that I could use to lean on? What can I acquire so that I have some help with this? That would be the first thing to consider.

Another way to ease into doing it, scared, whatever it is, create a mini version of whatever it is and you're going to do the mini version first. Lemme tell you, when I went skiing, Francine, you were probably in the same boat. I went down a little bunny hill first. I did that a bunch of times. Then I went down the easiest possible slope and I did not care about anything else going on in that mountain. I was just going to get down that really easy slope. That to me was still absolutely terrifying. So I want you to create a mini version of whatever you're up against, make that your bunny hill. So for example, this month, some of my mailing list mastery members are running a three day challenge. Now, some of 'em have a lot of signups, others not so much. But I think that's great because when you only have a handful of participants for something, whatever it is you're doing, maybe it's a group program or whatever, you could think, this is terrible.

I don't have a lot of people signed up. But think of it this way, maybe a universe is giving you exactly what you need right now because now you get to do it scared for just a handful of participants. That is a load off. That's an example of a mini version, like a dress rehearsal for a few friends. If you want to hold workshops in corporate settings and that's terrifying, hold the workshop for your neighbors in your backyard. That would be your mini version. So think how can I take that next scary step and do a mini version of it first for Ian says yes to the bunny hill, bunny hill it up, baby. That is the only way to go. Here's an example for my own health coaching practice. By the way, I was going through some old videos this week and I came upon all these old videos I had forgotten about.

So you have to think of it this way. When I started out as a health coach in 2009, I never had to be on video. I never had to do my makeup. No one ever said, Michelle, I like your hair. We were not on video back then. It just wasn't a thing. So maybe around 2000, I don't know, 16 or so, this was becoming more and more popular and I saw people doing cooking classes and cooking demos on social media. That was terrifying to me. I am a home cook. You know what I mean by that? I don't hold the knife, right, but I get it done. My kitchen becomes a mess, right? I am not the food network, but I was like, that's cool. I like what people are doing. I want to try that. You know what I did first? I demoed a smoothie.

It was just me and the blender and that's it. I wasn't going to show off my whole kitchen. I wasn't going to break out a bunch of different tools. I wasn't going to chop things in front of people and maybe cut my fingers just going to be me and the magic bullet blender at my kitchen table. Real simple. And then eventually, because I had to figure out the audio, I had to figure out, I had to get a tripod for my phone to act as a camera from further away if I was going to do a full setup. Eventually I did that though. And then I was doing these full on live streaming, like 30 minute cooking classes, which were so fun, and they did so much for me and my business. But that came later. So Bunny Hill, make a smoothie. These are all real examples.

Let's recap here. We've got get support, get resources. Sima saying your templates help so much plus more. Yeah, any time you can just not reinvent the wheel, that's going to help you get over the hump. So that's one thing. Then you can execute a mini version of whatever you're scared to do. And here's a final idea for you. I know you can do this. Just start talking about it. Talk about it all the time when you're with your friends, tell them about how you are planning to do a cooking class online and what recipes you're planning to share or whatever it is. Tell them that you're going to start a newsletter. Tell them about what you're considering writing about in that newsletter. Just start speaking your vision out loud, having it heard by other ears with as many details as you can. And it's okay if you also say, actually, I have no idea how I'm going to pull this off, or I'm really scared about this, but I have this idea that I'm going to, that's how these conversations go because I don't know if you've ever had this happen to you, but I have had it happen again and again and again.
Tell me in the chat, if you've ever experienced this, you put your thoughts in two words. You speak your vision out loud and something magical happens, things start to fall in place, right? It's really weird and sometimes it doesn't happen right away. Maybe it happens later on, but the more you can verbalize what you're planning to do, it just helps your brain rewire itself. Oh, I'm doing this. I'm talking about it. Oh, people are hearing me. That's like a low level accountability, right? And if nothing else, it gives you an opportunity to step into the shoes of your future self. The one who's talking about the cooking classes that you're doing, or the email marketing that you're sending out. So even just momentarily, you get to step into those shoes. Kathy says, I've been journaling faithfully. Big help. I'm a fan of a journal too, but say it out loud to somebody as well.
I think that, like I said, that added layer of accountability is there. For instance, talking about it is my new practice. So out of my comfort zone, love that, Michelle. I'm not exactly sure how this is going to go. Totally, and I'm doing that actually right now. It's kind of funny that we're having this conversation because as we speak, I'm on the brink of some scary new stuff in my business that I don't know how it's going to go. I don't know how I'm going to pull it off. I don't know if I'm going to pull it off. It's in that phase. So what am I doing? I'm talking to people who've done it before. I'm getting support. I'm looking at small ways to ease into it. Iteration is your best friend, right? Small mini iterations will get you there eventually. And it's still totally confidential at this point, so I'm not going to blab about it right here on the podcast, but to a few of my trusted team members, you better believe we're talking about it all the time.

It's starting to form somehow when you speak it, it gets its own mass. It takes shape just by talking about it out loud. So I'm right there with you, lacking confidence and building that confidence through these actions. I'm just going to do it scared. So let's do it together. Now, this episode has been brought to you by That Clean Life, a platform that makes it easy for you to add value to your programs and packages with recipe books and helping clients meal plan for themselves. Think about all the different ways that you can use recipes with your private clients, with your online programs, cooking classes, even lead magnets. It's very easy with That Clean Life because they have a ton of recipes for every dietary style and all the coaches in my community. You can save 20% off your first four months when you join at healthcoachpower.com/tcl. And just a shout out for those of you that are like, I am looking for more clients, Michelle, that's the thing that I need most right now. That's the thing that I'm terrified about. Start with just this little bite of support. I have a free blueprint that you can look at, get a sense of what it's going to take to add more clients to your practice in the next 90 days. Go to healthcoachpower.com/blueprint. It's totally free, and I'll see you guys next week. Take care.