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Let's talk about the three points on your coaching timeline that really, really matter. The first point on your timeline is when you decide to start learning about how to coach. Maybe for you, you're just listening to every podcast, reading every book, and that is what you're doing to learn how to coach.
Maybe you sign up for a training or a certification program like my Greenhouse Course. Maybe you just realize you've been coaching people like, “Oh, that's what I've been doing, and that's what it looks like.” Whatever that point is, when you say, I'm going to be intentional about becoming a coach, that is point # 1.
Point # 2 is, “I'm going to be intentional about starting a business,” and that is the moment, the very moment, you become a business owner. “I am starting a business,” makes you a business owner. I don't believe that you're only a business owner when you have an LLC paper signed and a tax ID number with the federal government, or you have a website and it's fully optimized, or you have tens of thousands of dollars of revenue coming in.
You're a business owner the moment you decide to start a business. That decision changes your DNA into a business owner. Just like you made a decision to become a coach. However you go about becoming a coach, that was a key point on your timeline. You made a decision to become a business owner and work for yourself.
Key point # 3 is when you decide to start selling your coaching offers. So you become a coach. Now you know how to coach. Figured it out. You got the plan, you're doing all the things and you got a business. And so even if you're a sole proprietor, you have no paperwork, but you set up a bank account and you have an onboarding system so people can actually come in to work with you and those basics are set up. You know that you can coach somebody, you know you can help them, and there's a way for them to actually get helped by you. Those two things are set in place and now, because those things are set in place, you decide to start making offers.
These three things have to happen for you to be a coach.
Sometimes, clients, listeners, and people that I meet think that everything is so far in the future. It is all going to just someday come together. There's enough time. There's no pressure. They feel that they have more work to do. There are just more things to fall into place.
For example, they believe more people need to say yes to them, more people need to discover them or tell them that they're brilliant and create value around who they are. And it takes a very long time for them to realize, “I am a coach. I am a business owner. It is my responsibility to tell people I can help them and make offers so that those people actually come into my ecosystem and I coach them”.
That's what makes you a coach who coaches people: being a coach with clients. If you know how to coach, and you have your business paperwork in and you build a website, but you don't have clients, you're not doing the thing that you wanted to do, right? That is the whole point of actually showing up and doing all of the work that you're doing.
Simplify it. Bring it down. Boil it down. Make a compote. Okay?
You've got to simplify all of this to “I have become a coach. I have started a business. I am responsible for telling people I can help them and those people will pay me I will make an income so that I can do more of what I'm called to do as a coach.” So let's ask these questions right now; just stop and think.
When did I decide to become a coach?
When did I decide to become a business owner?
When did I decide to make offers so people know I can help them?
If you have not come to those moments, if those key points have not happened yet, I encourage you to be intentional about them and do them right now.
Right where you are at this very moment, you can become intentional and say, “Right now I'm becoming a coach. I'm becoming a business owner right now. I’m becoming somebody who shares the message of how I can help the world around me.” You being intentional right now starts the clock and now from this point on of an intentional decision, whether you made it before or you made it just right now, that is the moment that marks when you started to do something.
Now you have to actually begin to take action. To become the coach, do all of the things that you need to do to get trained, to learn, do all of the things that you need to do to get an onboarding system set up so people can actually work with you. You do not need 10 people on your team and you don't need a website and you don't need a bunch of money to start your business.
You just need to decide you’re starting a business. “I am now a business owner,” and I want you to use that language when you decide I'm going to become a coach. I am going to coach people.”
Right now, start calling yourself a coach. Don't wait till you've got a certification paper in your hand!
I want you to say, “I'm a coach."
Now, it's gonna take you a long enough time to start assimilating and wearing the cape. You've got to put on the uniform and say, “I'm a coach. I'm a business owner.” It has to come from the heart; an intentionality that you operate from. You have to decide to be intentional, and you have to commit to following through on the intentional decision.
What do you need to do today to really step into that role and take action? What can you do right now? And that third key point where you become intentional about, “I am going to tell people I can help them, ILC. IHP. I'm a life coach. I help people.” Post it everywhere. So you remind yourself that that's who you are, and it's what you're doing.
And it's what you're going after. You need to know what your goals, dreams, and true desires are, and you need to remind yourself of them. If you need a vision board, write it out every day and read it in the morning, whatever will work for you, tell other people and ask them to remind you, put timers on your phone. Set a timer that goes off at whatever time you wake up in the morning, and then every three hours throughout the rest of the day until you go to bed. Or every hour, if you are that kind of person, have a timer go off so that the alarm on your phone says. I'm a life coach, I help people. Let it remind you of what you should be doing today to take action because you're being intentional with this one life.
If you want to be a coach, you have to master this in your own life so that you can coach other people on it. Those clients who are coming your way are out there. They want you, they need you. You just haven't met them yet, and they don't know that you can help them. You're going to have to tell them that when they find that out, they're going to need you to help them take action.
So get started on doing these things right now because they aren't just good for you. You'll be practicing them so that you can actually be really great at coaching your clients in them. And then when you coach your clients in them, you'll activate more of it in your own life.
Live with intention and recognize when you actually make a decision to start something. And then, not just: “I’m starting,” but “I am doing. I'm leaning into it. I know what to do next. I'm figuring it out.”
Just walk up the ladder. Go from where you are to where you want to go. And recognize it's going to take several steps.
Use the failure framework: Try. Fail. Try. Fail. Try. Fail. Try. It works. Refine. Try.
Go for quantity before you go for quality. Honestly, stop waiting for everything to be perfect and excellent before you put anything out in the world. Start practicing how you will say it. And do what I do when I do a reel for Instagram or I do a video for courses or any of those things.
Start talking and spitting stuff out. Do a brain dump. Record yourself doing it. And get used to being in front of a camera, get in front of people. And pay attention to what it sounds like. Maybe you're a little bit nervous about what you'll say. Practice saying anything and you'll figure out what to say.
If you don't do anything and you never say anything and you never say, I'm a coach, I'm a business owner, and I can help people, you’ll never get practice saying it. You'll never know how you said it weirdly. You'll never know how awkward it was. You'll never know how easy it could have been.
You'll never know how it worked and what didn't until you start doing it. So start practicing it in the mirror, on your phone, with the people at their dinner table, or with a friend.
Get into the Christian Life Coach Collective Facebook group. Start saying it there with a bunch of other people who need to be saying it.
Get into one of the courses: Get trained as a life coach in The Greenhouse Course or if you've already If you're already coaching and you just need help setting up your business get in the Called to Coach Course.
If you're still trying to figure out, “Who do I want to work with? What's my core message?” Take the Niche Clarity Course.
I'm creating so many different ways to help you. Obviously, you can book a coaching session, but take some kind of action. Stop just listening to podcasts and reading books and absorbing and consuming information without ever producing anything.
You've got to open your mouth. You have to say something. I totally believe in your capacity to do this. I know that you can, I know that you should. Like I have such a new, fresh vision from the Lord. I really want to see lives transformed. And for me, the way I bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth is through coaching.
It's who I am. It's what I do. I love to teach and train. I love to lead. I love to show what's possible. I love to take something that was messy and overwhelming and confusing for me and for others, and streamline it and make it simple for you. So in that, my mission is to transform a million lives, not just by myself, but with you, with the people I can impact by being able to speak life to you, give you direction, help you figure out how to overcome the hindrances so that you yourself can go impact more lives.
And maybe it's in coaching, but maybe it's with your kids. Maybe it's in your marriage. Maybe it's at work, whatever it is, however I can impact you, because I am choosing intentionally to show up and produce what I can rather than spend my life consuming until everything feels comfortable and certain.
I'm so over that. I wasted so many years of my life, so much of my emotional energy, so much of my heart. I wasted it because I was waiting for certainty. And what happens is we mix up certainty and confidence. We thing we're waiting to feel confident but really we want certainty. And I believe confidence comes first in our willingness to show up, wake up, and try.
I believe that's where confidence comes in. Confidence says I'm willing to take some kind of action and fail and succeed and try again. And that's going to give me the clarity I need. And that clarity will cultivate itself to help me feel more certainty. So if you're waiting for certainty before you say, “I'm a coach, I'm a business owner, I can help people and this is how,” I want you to trade in what you feel is your right to feel certain before you do anything.
I want you to trade it in for true inner self-confidence, which simply means: confidence is not a certainty.
Confidence is your willingness to just show up and try something, anything, and take imperfect action. And from that place, you're going to create a cycle that will eventually lead you to success sooner than later with you being intentional and you saying, “This is me starting and I'm going to follow through.”
I believe in you friend. I know that you can do this. You have the capacity and you're fully worth it right now. You don't have to wait to be anybody different, to do anything different, to have anything different. You are worthy right now of showing up as who you are with what you have and the world needs it.
We need what you have inside of you. We need to hear your story. We need to know your experiences. We need to know the way that you have figured out to get from point A to point B. Please show up to the world with your story in hand. Please wake up and realize there are people who could benefit from you showing up and give up the right to be certain about anything.
And I think it's really easy to get that certainty mixed up with excellence. “I only want to produce excellence.” No - you’re giving in to fear. You're giving into procrastination. You're giving into perfectionism. Excellence is cultivated later because you have created something in its rough draft form so that it can be refined continually unto excellence.
Excellence is never produced the first time. If you believe that, you're holding yourself back. That's called self-sabotage. Stop acting like certainty and excellence should happen the first time around. It shouldn't. It should be a process. It should be a journey. And I hope that you can accept that for yourself because then you can give it away to your clients.
And that's the freedom, ultimately, that you want to give as a coach.
Bless you, friend.
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