Only Have 2-3 Hours a Week? Here’s How to Grow Your Coaching Practice Anyway

Michelle Leotta:
Welcome to the Health Coach Power Community Podcast. I'm Michelle Leotta, ex corporate girl turned certified health coach with over 15 years of experience growing a successful online practice. I started out with no idea what I was getting into and learned a lot of lessons along the way that have given me the freedom to do the work I love and raised two boys as a single mom.

I created a health coach power community over a decade ago to make it easier for health coaches to build a career they love and make the world a better place.

Do you ever feel like your health coaching business would finally take off if you just had more time to work on it? What if two to three hours per week was actually enough. I built my coaching business in tiny pockets of time, and today I'm gonna show you how those time constraints can actually work in your favor.

And if you want the exact plan that I would follow today to add income to a health coaching business with just a couple of hours a week, I made one for you. It's a free three-hour-a-week health coach schedule. It's all mapped out, and you can download it for free right now at HealthCoachPower.com/3hours. That's the number three hours.

See my business started while I was working in big advertising many, many years ago. And between meetings, I would like go hide in my office and close the door and try to work on my coaching business for a few minutes here and a few minutes there. So you might be in a similar situation, right?

Where another job is the thing where it's taking up the majority of your time. Well, a few years later. I had left advertising, but now my first son was born, so I would work during his nap times. Brilliant plan, right? Except he was a 30 minute napper. You guys, he's 15 years old now, but this feels like yesterday.

So whether you are a mom or you're a caretaker for another family member, I get it. When I say that you can and should build your business in just a few hours a week, I am speaking from personal experience. I know when you have another job, you have kids, you have this whole list of responsibilities, and you want to do more with your coaching business.

It feels like you've got this bottleneck. It's like an impossible bottleneck to get through. Now, of course. And I'm sure your mind has gone here. If your coaching business were really rocking and rolling and you had a bunch of paying clients, maybe just maybe you could justify leaving that other job, right?

Sounds good. Or hiring a babysitter or another form of help to free up time. But when business is stagnant. You don't earn enough, and then when you don't earn enough, you can't justify making any moves like that, and you just kind of stay stuck in this loop where your coaching business never gets the space that it needs to grow, or that's how it feels anyway.

But I see it differently. Borrow my belief for a second that it is possible. Because when my son was taking those 30-minute naps, I taught myself how to make the most of that time, and I realized, oh my gosh, I could really accomplish a lot in 30 minutes, way more than I ever thought possible before if I was just focused for a full half hour, boom, boom, boom, things got done.

In fact. When he eventually went to school, and I had a whole day to myself, it was an adjustment. I wasn't much more productive, even though I had a lot more time. And that's very common for tasks to kind of expand, to fill the space that you have. Have you ever noticed that like if you have two weeks to clean before your in-laws arrive, you'll do a little bit over those two weeks, but you're probably going to do most of it.

The night before they get there, right? The more constraints that you have on your time, the more productive you suddenly become. The more clearly you think, the more able you are to make decisions, and that's why I'm convinced that the whole don't have time problem. It's not really a problem; it's a gift.

Go with me on this. I have been there, and this is the reframe for today. It's not a problem. It's a gift. And it's true. I know health coaches who easily have 20 hours a week, 40 hours a week to work on their business, and you know what they do? At most of that time, they overthink, they procrastinate, they get very little done.

Then on the other hand, I work with coaches who have super limited time, and they're like, boom, boom, boom. They're making decisions. They're making moves in the time that they have because they have to, so. Here's an example I'm gonna tell you about one of our coaches inside Empowered who has taken this idea to heart.

It makes me so proud. She's someone who's super driven, you know, she wants to do all the things, very motivated, and she has a demanding full-time job outside health coaching. And unsurprisingly, like years had gone by since she became a health coach. And every time she started making some kind of headway in her business, she would inevitably get overwhelmed.

Fall behind and end up scrapping the whole thing. I mean, it was deteriorating her confidence and even her desire to coach anymore. But with us working together, she's tightened up her vision of how to make progress. And you can do this too, so that it's actually possible instead of trying to copy, you know, what you see other coaches doing online.

That's what she was doing. But now. She's finally working smart within the time that she has. She's got a ton of interest in what she's offering right now, and she's excited about it again, instead of drowning in overwhelm, and that energy matters. So we had to simplify. We had to prioritize so her spark could come back for this work, and she's putting the three-hour plan to very good use, and I hope that you will too.

Let's say that you have. An hour block or maybe you have a 30-minute nap time like I did to get something done for your health coaching business. What you don't want, and this happens very easily, is you don't wanna sit down, stare at your computer screen, and go, um, kinda waste half that time just figuring out what you're gonna do.

How often has that been the case? From all the years that I've worked with health coaches, they say that knowing what to work on and having a plan mapped out makes all the difference, and I feel the very same way. You have to know what matters most and then spend your time there. Don't worry, I'm here to help because this isn't exercise in priorities, and you do have to know what to prioritize.

You wanna know a secret? Actually, I got this whole idea for today's episode because I was talking to Melissa. Hi Melissa. Now Melissa's a health coach in our larger community, and we work together years ago. I just love her. And in the past couple of years, her life changed. She's had two babies, and her business, her coaching business just went entirely on hold.

So we're talking the other day because I wanted to catch up with her, and I'm like, alright, Melissa, you've got two babies at that stage of life. I mean, clearly it's like a sleep deprivation situation still. You're trying to keep a toddler from falling down the stairs half the day. I mean, I remember, so realistically, how many hours do you have that you could commit to your coaching business?

And she said. You guessed it. She said two or three hours. So Melissa, this episode is for you, and it's for all the coaches in our community who wanna be helping people. You wanna be living your purpose and earning and building for the future. Don't wait. I am so glad. I was able to do what I would consider the minimum viable business activities, like the most important ones and nothing more.

When I was able to just get that much done when my babies were young because I never lost steam. I built, and maybe I was building with like one little Lego brick at a time, towards the business that I have today. Some of you may have even been in my world for all of these years, in which case you saw my messy earlier moments where I just kept going little by little by little, and you can do the same.

So that's why I put together this free three-hour plan for you. If you only have three hours a week, heck, even if you only have two hours a week, this is perfect for you, and it's for Melissa, of course, so you know where to put those hours for maximum results. Don't just sit there wondering, Hmm, what should I do next?

And wasting your precious work time. We wanna add income to your health coaching business, even if it's little by little. Right now, that free plan is available to download. It's at HealthCoachPower.com/3hours. That's the number three hours. It's for those of you who maybe only have two or three hours, or even if you have a bit more to work, but you're thinking.

How can I be most efficient with that time? I'm wasting a lot of time just staring at the computer screen. What if you could take your 10 hours of work and condense it down to three? That would be an awesome outcome, too. So, you know what I wanna do really quick right now, I wanna share a couple of things just in case.

These are on your radar, on your to-do list. Things that are definitely not part of the plan, like not a good use of your two or three hours per week. So if these are somewhere on a scrap of paper somewhere in your head, just cross 'em off. Let's file it under not right now. Because if the goal is to get some paying clients.

Actually, impact some lives. Enjoy being a coach, doing the work of a coach. You know, we wanna feel good about actually helping people. Here's what we're not gonna have time for. All right? Number one, we are not gonna have time to put on any kind of big launch event. So you see other people doing webinars or like sport.

Eight, five-day challenges and you see other people, you know, running online courses, any, any of that stuff, we're just gonna shelf it for now. Like, that's not happening. It's good if it works for other people, but you, I'm telling you right now, you need more hours to pull something off like that.

Okay, next. We are not gonna make the best use of two or three hours a week on Instagram. Ah, there I said it. I will say it again a million times. Any social media platform, you could spend that entire two or three-hour window of time creating a single reel that gets, I don't know, like a hundred views. No one comments on it, and it goes nowhere.

Waste of your time right now. Please hear me on this, and I'm gonna give you one more. This is your website, park it. Like this is something that will be a time suck. It is not going to lead you directly to clients. You think it will. I know, but it won't. And you have to borrow my 17 years of experience here.

When I say these things, I know you're like, is that true? I mean, but don't I need a website? And it may even come across as a little harsh. I'm trying to be super direct with you 'cause I know you don't have time to waste and I don't want there to be any confusion. And I know if you're like most health coaches, you're gonna say, all right, Michelle.

Well, if I'm not mimicking what I see other people do online, whether it's with their promotions or what they're doing on social media, if I'm not posting on Instagram every day, and if I'm not even working on my website, what do you want me to do? Sit here and twiddle my thumbs. Well. That's exactly why I have mapped out this plan for you so you know exactly what to do.

You can go grab it at HealthCoachPower.com slash the number three, three hours, and it's telling you exactly what I would do more or less minute by minute. If I only had two or three hours to work every week, and I wanted to get my health coaching business off the ground, earning more with that very limited time.

You don't need more time. Your limited time is a gift. If you know how to use it and you can make good use of it, I need you to go. Go now. There are people out there who need your help. Grab that three-hour plan, and I'll see you soon.

Thank you so much for listening to the Health Coach Power Community podcast. Please take a moment, leave a written review on Apple Podcasts. It helps us reach more coaches and allows me to bring you this free content every week to join us live. Ask your questions and have a direct line to me. Join our free Facebook group at HealthCoachPowerCommunity.com.