Stepping into the realm of coaching business comes with its own set of challenges and opportunities. In a recent episode of the Coach's Journey Podcast, hosts Faisal Ensaun and Sheri Fluellen provide valuable insights into the dynamics of creating a successful coaching practice. This episode is a guide for those looking to understand and navigate the intricate landscape of the coaching industry.

Catch the full episode now for an in-depth guide to revolutionizing your coaching practice—don't miss out!

Beyond Conventional Billing: Crafting Strategic Value-Based Packages

The episode underscores the imperative to transcend conventional hourly rates, particularly for those transitioning from related professions like therapy. Faisal Ensaun advocates for the creation of value-based packages, providing not only transparency for clients but also establishing a more sustainable and scalable business model.

Ensaun emphasizes the necessity of comprehending the intrinsic value coaches bring to their clients. Crafting packages that address specific client needs over a defined period not only enhances the overall value proposition but also fortifies the financial stability of the coaching business.

Sales Mastery: The Cornerstone of Coaching Business

Central to the episode is the pivotal role of sales in the coaching business. Contrary to the misconception that coaching is solely about client assistance, hosts Sheri Fluellen and Faisal Ensaun underscore that a significant portion of a coach's efforts in the early stages revolves around sales.

Sheri Fluellen introduces the concept of reverse engineering financial goals, illustrating the process of determining the number of clients needed to meet income targets. This analytical approach empowers coaches to establish a clear roadmap by working backward, deciphering the requisite number of strategy sessions or outreach efforts.

Subscribe to The Coaches Journey Podcast for more training!

The Learning Curve: Continuous Skill Refinement in Coaching

Beyond marketing and sales, the episode emphasizes the imperative of honing coaching skills. Faisal Ensaun shares personal experiences of the steep learning curve involved in conducting webinars and coaching sessions. The hosts stress the importance of actively seeking feedback, consistently refining coaching techniques, and perpetually elevating the quality of service.

Community Dynamics: The Influential Power of Supportive Networks

The podcast underscores the value of community participation. The hosts assert that the coaching journey becomes more manageable and enriching when aspiring coaches immerse themselves in environments where peers and mentors provide guidance, support, and constructive feedback. The Coaching Mastery community, as highlighted in the episode, emerges as a unique space for coaches to collectively evolve.

Final Thoughts: Navigating Success in the Coaching Landscape

Initiating a coaching venture demands a delicate balance of business acumen, sales finesse, and continuous skill development. The insights from the Coach's Journey Podcast serve as an invaluable compass for aspiring coaches, guiding them through the intricacies of the profession. By embracing value-based packages, mastering the art of sales, actively refining coaching skills, and participating in a supportive community, coaches can not only build a business but cultivate a fulfilling and sustainable practice.

The podcast offers a roadmap for success in the coaching business, combining the art and science of coaching to empower individuals on their unique journeys.

Transcription

I&O Get Ultra Clear on Money in Your Coaching Business

Narrator: [00:00:00] You're listening to the coach's journey podcast, exposing the struggles and celebrating the successes in the life of coaches who are action takers and creating authentic impact in today's world. Whether you're just starting out, expanding your reach or exploding your impact, you're in the right place right now.

Stay tuned and be sure to subscribe to this podcast. Now here are your hosts of the coach's journey podcast.

Sheri Fluellen: What's up coaches nation. This is Dr. Sherry with another episode of the coach's journey podcast. Today, we have one of the most anxiety provoking topics that we could ever talk about in life. We are going to unpack it today and how it relates to your coaching business. And it's not, it's not taxes. It's not public speaking.

It's not politics. It's not religion, but it actually is tied to all of those. And that is [00:01:00] money. Money is so hard to talk about. There is a gentleman. He is the CEO or president. Of real brokerage, which is an organization that I'm a part of on the real estate side of my life. His name is a Sharon. He has a really cool framework around relationships.

The, the relevant part to this is the most, this is how he thinks about relationships. The most deepest relationships that he gets into are ones that he can talk about money. If he can talk about money with somebody freely, openly, and not feel judged, not have any anxiety or concerns or any of that extra level of emotional baggage, he knows it's a really good relationship.

And Faisal, you and I have talked, talked money before. We've, you know, with our coaching business about other things. And so, find people you can talk about your coaching business. [00:02:00] That related to to your how much money you're making or not making quite frankly, because that's a lot of times where the conversation is.

So if you're not sure how your finances are and your coaching business or how you want to get it to where you want it to go or maybe you don't you haven't even thought about that you're like, I just want to serve people. And that's kind of that Pollyanna like attitude that's okay we love that but there's also the reality of.

There has to be money made in order to sustain your mission, unless you're independently wealthy and you don't have to worry about money, then you may be excluded from this. But other than that, we all have to have this conversation and this topic. So we are going to deep dive into this today. You might be a little uncomfortable, but that's okay.

That's a good

Faisal Ensaun: thing. Yeah, I love this topic for because I was so uncomfortable talking about this for a long time, and I actually do it purposely. Now, like, even around my family and friends, I'll kind of poke in these areas just to see how they feel [00:03:00] like, what's happening is like, we're. It's like you haven't been working for this long.

Where are you getting money from? It's like What's happening with your business? What are you doing? It's like people stay away from that stuff and I know exactly why because I stayed away From from that stuff because it's like you don't want to go there and there's a and I love that framework that you mentioned that for If you're, and I would say, like, if you are close with somebody, you will be able to talk about money, politics and religion.

Sheri Fluellen: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Faisal Ensaun: All three. But, but if you're, if it creates a lot of tension and everything, and you don't know how to approach it, it's likely there's not enough openness in that relationship. That's actually the reason for that is because our psychology is driven by these things, especially money, because, yeah. I'll share a little bit about me. Like I come from like a very humble background. Like we were like, this world is a very different world where I, then where I grew up and like, we, we had our basic needs met. Like [00:04:00] that was like, if we had our basic needs met, if we had food, water and shelter, we were happy.

But here's the thing that I saw. What I saw was my parents arguments were mostly around money. It's like literally status and money. It's like my dad my mom always wanted my dad to have a better status, better job, better thing. My dad didn't was not that motivated by that for some reason. And and there was always conflict and we always had issues with bills and challenges and stuff.

And incidentally, I re I repeated that pattern in myself. In my own life and within my own marriage, and that's not a coincidence. And it's like, those are the things that whatever is modeled to us, we do that. Now, of course, I'm not saying my dad only, my parents only modeled that for us. They model are a lot of amazing things like our faith, our connection, our trust in each other, all sorts of amazing things that they did.

But there are certain things, especially around money that I was very uncomfortable. We, my, my wife and I, we never talked about money. Now we talk about it all the [00:05:00] time. It was like, okay, what are, what are we doing? And I want to caveat this around this, cause, cause a lot of coaches are service driven and they want to serve people.

They want to work with people. We all do. But it, it comes down to the practicality of your model. So if you just want to serve people for the sake of serving people, which means that you want to, you want to, you could do this in three different ways. You could do it like as a completely volunteer thing, you could do it as a non, not for profit thing, or you could do it as a business.

Which is based on profit. As soon as you pick the vehicle of business, you're going to have to confront the question of money, which means, which, what does that mean in a business context? That's the, literally the lifeblood of your business. It's as important as when you talk about food for human beings, it's like, where's your food coming from?

Imagine nobody talked about food every day. It's like,

Sheri Fluellen: you can't. That's it. And honestly, even if it's a nonprofit that you still have to have the money conversations [00:06:00] because you're still probably going to draw a salary. You have the potential to take donations and all. So, so, so money still is a part of this, unless you, this is literally just a hobby and you're volunteering your time for maybe, you know, another nonprofit, which is totally fine.

You can do that, but if that's not you, then this conversation must be had. Quite frankly,

Faisal Ensaun: and more specifically, I want coaches to think about this from the perspective of their. So you, you will have a vision for the life that you're creating. And this is the part that you need to confront. Yes. You want to and here was my thought process when I left my engineering career.

Like, I could have worked there. Like, I, I was very good at what I did when I started off and I could picture. I could project that and say that, hey, in about 3 years. Three, four years, I'll make about 100 K or plus that, like that would have been enough for me in terms of the lifestyle that I was picturing, like, that would have been enough.

But what I saw was that I, it's [00:07:00] not interesting for me and in the way that I thought after I worked in it a couple of years, it wasn't interesting. So then I started thinking, like, okay, what, what, what do I love doing? What inspires me? What connects me to the things that It's like, it's actually my growth.

That's actually thinking about human behavior. It's actually thinking about like our place in this world. It's actually thinking about connecting with people differently. It's actually understanding how people operate. I was, it was very interesting for me. I'm like, okay, one option is I go back to university and take.

Degree like, like share it, go to her psychology. That was that was something I was considering. That's one way, except I didn't have a really good relationship with the academic world. I didn't like the system. So that was out. Corporate world was out. That was what was left. Well, How else do people work with people and I started looking into it and pretty soon I found out I was like, Oh, there's such a thing as coaching is like, Oh, okay, you can get training and get started a lot of it.

You will learn as you move along, but it will keep me engaged in that world that I'm interested in. Yeah. Okay. So I can [00:08:00] do something where I make money, but I love doing that anyway. I love studying that subject. I love learning that. Well, that sounds like a smart choice. To me at least because I'll be doing that anyway So might as well do something where I get paid in the process Now I didn't even know the potential of a business like this at the time I just like if I get paid enough to just survive and do this that I that I love I'll do this.

And but then i'm I made a choice there and the choice was that Oh, okay. I'm gonna do this for money, which means that I need to do activities that relate to money. So So going back to that vision, and that's what I want everybody to think about, like, if you have a vision for a lifestyle that you want to create, maybe you want to travel more, maybe you want to you want to be able to do certain things in your life.

So for example, for us, I want, I like traveling. I like being in different places. Sherry does too. And then I wanted to actually get a motor home at some point. I didn't know when at the time we did get that eventually. I wanted to live in different places for longer periods of [00:09:00] time to be embedded in that culture.

So those were important to me. And there were certain things that were important for my wife. And when we thought about it, like this took me three years to attach a dollar value to that, like three years to even consider that there's in my mind, I was like, I'm going to magically create that. Well, the world

Sheri Fluellen: and the three years it took you that long, I would guess because you didn't have people around you that were having these conversations and guiding you to think about things in a very intentional way, right?

Is that true? Because that's what we're trying to do. We're, we're shortcutting those three years advice. I'll took for you all that are listening. Like, you don't have to take the three years.

Faisal Ensaun: Yeah, and that's what, like, even the coaches or the people that were, they weren't business minded. They were thinking exactly the same way as, as me.

They were like, Oh, you know what? Yeah, it would be cool to have a have money coming in through there and they will talk about it, but it was more like on the passive end. But now the difference is that, okay. [00:10:00] What's the goal? How are you going to go there? So that lifestyle will have a dollar value attached to it.

For example, right now, my lifestyle for me to maintain this, I need at least 120, 000 a year. And that's a choice I've made for you. It might not be that. Maybe your lifestyle is 50, 000. Maybe your lifestyle is 200, 000. Whatever it is, there will need to be a how attached to that, which means that the activities that need to happen in your business.

Need to connect to that dollar value that you're creating in long term. So there will be a long term one, let's say three years, five years out because business takes a little bit while and then there's going to be the short term progression every year. How are you moving towards that? So that's what we want to wanted to talk about is like, are you thinking about it?

If you haven't talked about it and really sit down, figure out your vision, what is the dollar value that you would attach to that? And don't overestimate it. Okay. Like a lot of times when people do this, like I need millions of dollars, can you help me understand, like, tell me when I, when I walk people through, there's like, it's [00:11:00] like, yeah, I need a few million dollars to them.

Like, you probably need a few hundred thousand dollars and they actually feel better about that. When I tell them, like, cause now they don't feel that level of pressure and because it's different to create millions versus thousands in business is very different as well. Yeah.

Sheri Fluellen: So. And let me introduce. So when I think about this for myself, for my family, it's, it's about 140, 000.

We've got 4 kids, like a lot of, you know, we have our kids, you know, that means more money. Right? And then thinking about the travel we want to do. It might be a little bit more than that, but somewhere around there. Now, my husband and I also have other sources of revenue. So when I look at how much money do I want or need to make from coaching as a contribution to the overall, what does it look like now?

What does it look like in the future? Yeah. How much do we want to continue to invest? All of that stuff plays a factor. [00:12:00] So each person that's listening to this, your, your situation is going to be different. But regardless of if it's different or not, you still need to know your numbers. How much money are you getting from a spouse's job?

How much money are you getting from a different business? How much money do you have from investments that you've already made? All of that stuff matters into the big picture, which can help reduce the level of anxiety and pressure around needing to hit this huge number. But at the same time, that stress and anxiety is kind of good, you know, and in the psychology world, we know that there's like this bell curve to the level of stress that's optimal.

Too much stress is debilitating, too little stress is demotivating. So there is this, this sweet spot in the middle where we want to have some pressures and expectations on ourself because that's what helps us to do things and not just to be a bump on the log for the rest of our lives.

Faisal Ensaun: [00:13:00] Yeah, and then and that that is so important to think about that.

How are you structuring Europe? And also, this is one of those weird things with coaches that I've seen is that they they want to remove stress altogether. They want to remove. But think about anything that you do that's worth doing more than likely you will have excitement and anxiety around it. A mix of the two feelings.

It won't be just like if you're trying to get on, like, speak on stage, like, Yeah. If you don't feel anxious before you go there, it probably doesn't mean shit all to you. It's like you've done it too long. It's just whatever it's like, even with sessions, like to this day in coaching sessions, I'm, I'm much more confident and comfortable, but I want to do well.

I want to support my clients well. So I'm, I'm, I have a certain level of anxiety associated with it. It's not anxiety in the thing that that's debilitating. Dr. Sherry, but it's the kind that helps you motivates you to do things. That's very important to have and everything that you're doing, which means that your, your system is challenging itself to do better, but, but I [00:14:00] want, I want to make it more, more real and tangible because here's where the problem occurs.

a Lot of coaches jump in and there's a lot of unrealistic expectation in business. I had a two actually my mentor looked at me when when I first started, it's like, I'm like in one year, I'm going to do this. I remember him looking at me and he's like, give yourself three years. I'm like, no, I'm doing this in one year.

Give yourself three years to hit that. But, but like after three years of like, yeah, it made sense. And that was around the bigger goal. I was like, okay, so here, here's what, what coaches need to understand. So just like Dr. Sherry, if you have multiple sources of revenue, that's great. So in the beginning, when I started out coaching was not my primary source nowadays, but I, I've shared this before.

I started doing Uber because I didn't know how else to do this. Now, if I had real estate like Sherry, I would have been a little bit better had I made better choices before, but I didn't, so so the, I had to do that. So now when coaches jump in, they're like, Oh, you know what? [00:15:00] I'm going to give him myself three months.

This happen that's putting way too much. That's not what happens in business. You need to have at least a buffer of six months to one year to give yourself the space to start generating revenue because you, there's a, there are a lot of pieces to understand. So while you're doing that, you either have a buffer, like a cushion in terms of money you have.

Or you have a cash flow system somewhere else, whether that comes from job or real estate or whatever, wherever it comes from, you need to have something like that because you're also providing for your family unless you're well off, which is not that. That's that doesn't matter. But so what does that mean?

That means that If you don't want to, if you want to do better in coaching, you need to take care of that cashflow side where you're surviving. Like most coaches I talked to, they're struggling with survival and they're thinking about putting up their website. I'm like, makes no sense. It's like, why, why are you doing, how's that going to help you with business at all?

And I want to talk about the activities of it in a little bit, but really understanding that, Hey, if [00:16:00] I need money to survive, Business might not be the first place to go to if this is a startup, because startup, every startup takes a little bit of time to pick up, even if you have the right support program.

And the expectation is, and this is where the messaging that you hear in the marketing world is like, Hey, 90 days, you're going to make six figure. And one year you're going to make a seven figure business. They're assuming that, you know, everything you need to know about the business and they just give you the model and you'll put it to work.

That's very few people. Very few people. It's like, what's What, what's, what's your experience in there when it comes to these programs, Sherry?

Sheri Fluellen: Even, even coming into this, having been an entrepreneur in starting a brick and mortar business and running that for nine years, I was completely unprepared for the amount of traction I would need to get.

And so unless you've been in a very similar type of business where you've had [00:17:00] to. Figure out your offer. And you've had to think about how we present ourselves and and our identity because that's a piece in this whole, in this whole transition to is, is who, who are you? How do you even talk about yourself?

All of that stuff has to be in alignment and working for the money side to really start to become a little bit more predictable. And yeah. Yeah, let's let's, you know, I would love to just break it down a little bit more specifically and with some concrete numbers as some examples, because I think that would be the most helpful for our

Faisal Ensaun: listeners.

So what did you have in mind in terms of concrete numbers? Yeah,

Sheri Fluellen: so, so let's, maybe, maybe you can walk me through a little exercise. This is an exercise we do in our community. We've done this before with, with some of our members. Faisal, let's say that I'm new, a new coach into the community, and I'm having even got my first [00:18:00] client yet.

And I'm like, ah, so I'm working on like updating my social media profiles and I'm trying to figure out how to run ads and I'm finishing on my website and I haven't made any money yet. How would you, how would you approach me regarding the financial viability and kind of what my perceptions are about what I'm doing and what I'm going to make and the speed of all of that?

Faisal Ensaun: Yeah, so I would actually directly go into first of all, I want to understand, like, what does coaching mean for you in your grand life scheme? Like, what are you trying to do? Are you building a full time business, part time business? How does this connect to your vision? Tell me a little bit about your vision and how does coaching fit in there?

Because people have different ways they will approach it. And then I will want to know exactly, like once you explain the vision, I would want to know, like, what's the lifestyle that you're building? Are there any other sources of revenue? Are there any other things you're doing? Like, okay. So if you were to put a [00:19:00] dollar value to that ideal lifestyle, what would that be?

And which part of that comes from coaching? I would want to understand that. Usually coaches have no idea what that is. And so I have to walk them through. And when they get the number, they're like, oh, okay. I'm like, okay, so now you have that. Now tell me a little bit more about where you are in your skill sets and your offer.

I would want to understand you have a clear offer and I would want to understand what you do to get clients normally. So this is where like it dispels all the stuff because then a lot of the things that they're thinking about is actually meaningless when you put like one because what they're usually doing is what you said is like, well, I'm thinking about ads while you're starting out.

You have no idea what your messaging is. You have no idea what, what level of skill sets you have. So you're going to throw a bunch of money on ads and that's assuming you're doing it. So you're going to have to spend a shit load of time learning ads and spend a bunch of money. So that's another skill set that you need to learn.

That doesn't make sense. Okay, now you're thinking about your website branding. You're [00:20:00] trying spending a bunch of time on that. Does that matter? Not matter. It actually doesn't matter in the beginning that much. Or you're considering how, how are you going to send your email funnel and all that stuff?

How does that translate to money? So there are very clear, direct things outside of just manifesting money. Very clear thing, direct things you can do. Not that I have a problem with that because our energy needs to be aligned with certain things. Like we need to feel like we deserve certain things to get it.

Or, or at least we, we, we need to feel like we want this thing if nothing. So you can't have like blocks that are like, I hate money and I don't want to get this people who have money is like, like deal with that stuff. That's stuff you need to be but once you have that once you have that target number, then let's talk about like, how are you going?

How does this work in business? And this is the part that's hard for coaches to understand because most coaches are not business owners. I wasn't either. They don't understand how. You go from making no money to [00:21:00] make six figure like it there. It's complete and usually it goes back to what it when you ask them, they're like, well, you know what?

I'm attracting it. Like explain how that works. There's nothing tangible in there too. I

Sheri Fluellen: walk around with magnets and I'm hoping to, so let's say if I saw, I want to make, I want to, I want to make 10, 000 a month. And that, that would, that would push me over the six figure. So I would be a quote unquote, six figure coach which seriously, I feel like those numbers are relevant because who cares how much you're taking home or how much you're, you're making if you're not taking it home, but that's a whole nother discussion, but let's say, let's say that I'm set on 10, 000 a month.

So how would you walk me through? Kind of dissecting that and figuring out what do I actually need to do today? So we've talked about my vision. We've I've gotten alignment and clarity through previous conversations with you around my vision and how that fits in with the 10, 000 a month. But now I'm [00:22:00] like, I don't know what the heck I'm supposed to be doing each day.

And I'm just feel like I'm spinning my

Faisal Ensaun: wheels. So and this is a part to like a key thing to understand that almost everything you're going to do in the beginning of a coaching business will be sales. Everything connects back to sales. And everything connects back to also your skill sets. So you're spending a crap load of your time developing your skill sets, even if you've been trained, even if you have a lot of knowledge around personal development, you actually have to put it to test now.

So what does that mean? That means that I would want to clarify. what their offer is usually. So for example, when I ask coach, like, what's, what's your offer? They're unclear. It was like, I think I'm like, if they, they have some idea of it, like, I think I want to charge a hundred dollars per hour or 75. Just thinking that thinking is a problem in business.

Like you want to charge people hourly and usually therapists have that thinking process if they've been a therapist or [00:23:00] they've been in any kind of like their massage therapist or something else or, or, or from the cycle they they're trained to think in terms of hourly. We don't want to do that. We want to create an offer that gives value.

It's a value based offer. So I want to understand how much were they showing you? Usually I'm trying to get them to raise that a little bit because the way things work in business is that one month you might do very well. You might make 5, 000 if you weren't making anything, but another month you might make 1, 000.

So how are you going to account for that? That means you need to charge a little bit more based on your skill sets to be able to do that based on the value that you're giving. So let's say I helped them think about like, what would be a package, a package where they can track how many hours and all that stuff here is like, you're telling them, Hey, we're going to work.

This package is going to help you do this. You're solving a problem for your client for six weeks. We're going to work together 12 weeks. Ideally we work together. Three months is a good time. We work together and this way you get in this 12 week package might be 3, 000. Let's say if it's 3, 000. Now, how many of those [00:24:00] units sold translates to 10, 000 a month?

That's like

Sheri Fluellen: a little over a three. Yeah,

Faisal Ensaun: it's not that many. Yeah. And, and this is what, what makes coaching business, it's not selling toothpaste. So you don't need to make like a little bit over the, and I'll, and just to answer the other questions, like, actually in coaching business, one of the cool things is that the overhead is so low.

Like if you're starting out, you don't have that many expenses. You're like, it's like well over 90 percent of what you're going to do and making your coaching business. You're going to keep it just minus the taxes and some other things that you're going to pay off, like your corporation and other things and payment systems.

If you take out all that stuff, well over 90 percent you're going to keep. But once your business grows, that's going to like, that's going to change a little bit. But in the beginning, the first six figure, I don't think you need to spend that much here. And you're going to take home a lot of it versus a business like a restaurant might be 20 percent they keep.

Yeah,

Sheri Fluellen: [00:25:00] so using your example, if I solve, let's, let's say that I'm trying to sell a package that's 3, 000 and I'm wanting 10, 000 a month. That means let's just say I have to sell 4 people a month. You know, it's really 3 point something, but it's hard to sell half of a person to half of a person. Let's just, let's just call it 4.

So I have to sell. I have to make four sales a month on average. So then what we do is we reverse engineer. Okay. Well, if you want to meet, if you want to have four people a month that buy, well, what's, what are you doing prior to them buying that package? You're probably doing a sales call, a discovery call, something like that, maybe a webinar.

So okay, so, so then how many of those webinars do you need to do to get a client? You know, so if you're doing strategy sessions, maybe you're really struggling with getting all the pieces put together. Maybe you have to go through 10 people, 10 strategy calls to get [00:26:00] one buyer. So if we want four in a month, that means.

And we, we need to do 10 per buyer. That's 40 strategy sessions we need to do. And let's reverse engineer it even more. Like how are you doing your outreach and how many outreaches and people do you need to talk to in order for them to agree to, to have strategy session? So this is how we take the money conversation and make it tangible and real to what do you need to do on a day to day basis to actually make your money goals happen.

Faisal Ensaun: Yeah, and I love that you reversed that. So and you might hear terms like prospecting. You might hear terms like outreach. You might hear terms like strategy sessions, which are essentially sales calls. Like these are essential components of a business that's within a coaching model. If you don't understand that, here's what ends up happening.

Even if you're like most coaches are even scared to put themselves out there with blogs or video or [00:27:00] something. Usually most of the content you put out there, it actually just establishes credibility. It doesn't actually give you clients. It gives you credibility. It gives you, it makes, makes people trust you.

That you are out there and you're putting active content, you're doing this as a professional thing. But most of your clients are going to come from you actually reaching out to people within networks. Now that depends on your skill sets. This, I can't stress this enough because there's a lot of like cookie cutter advice around this is that, oh, go do webinars.

Well, when initially when I started, I was scared to death to talk to one person and you want me to do a webinar I had to, I had to build skill sets to talk to one person. Then now I'm on a webinar. I remember being on that first webinar. I forced myself to do it the second year. I was, I was like, Oh, what?

Especially webinars specifically. You can't see anybody. Like I don't do webinars. I do zoom calls now. Even my webinars are zoom calls, but I'm like, what's happening? I kept checking in with people. I'm like, are you still there? Are you listening?

Sheri Fluellen: Oh my gosh. I would pay money to see that. [00:28:00] Oh my gosh.

That's hilarious.

Faisal Ensaun: But it was torture. Torture because I did not have the skill sets. Now, keep your skill sets in mind. If you've done group facilitation in the past, if you've done group coaching, maybe that's the direction you go. You do webinars every week or not, not every week, once a month, do it because it's a lot of work to just promote one, one thing and get people to register for it.

But if you don't have that, you're reaching out to the people in your network and you're actually taking them through your coaching process. While you're doing that, you're actually building your skill sets as well. You're seeing what's the value of your product because when you do a bunch of sessions for like, let's say you do 10 sessions.

You will get a lot of painful data around that because what is going to happen is when you do your first few sessions, you're going to struggle. You're going to be like, I don't know how to start this. I don't know how to go, how to navigate this challenge. I don't know how to end this. I don't know how to go towards the offer.

I don't know how to ask them for referrals. I don't know how to ask them for like, there's so many [00:29:00] things that come up. That there's a huge, very steep learning curve in there. And this is what coaches underestimate. So most of their time goes in trying to build their website and stuff, but actually you need to accelerate your time.

And what you need to build is your ability to have conversations with people and support them. If you can just develop that and you do that long enough, and with as many frequency as possible, and this is why we say that as a number, if you do a hundred coaching calls, you will have clients. Now, the reason why people don't have clients is because you just don't do that.

Now, that's not easy because you will probably have to reach out to like 300 plus people to book 100 coaching calls, maybe 400 to book 100 coaching calls that would translate to you actually making an offer. And the key is that you need to make that offer. Which is 3000, 2000, whatever. But that number needs to make sense is that if you made a hundred offers and about 10 people signed up for that, then you're hitting the 10, 000.

[00:30:00] Now this gets easier as you move forward. Eventually you're not going to have to reach out to 400 people because the referrals start to come into the picture. People are going to start to reach out to you. You, you, you start to get into different networks. It becomes easier. The process becomes more fluid, but in the beginning, there's a lot of effort that needs to happen for you to build skill sets on, on the coaching side, or your ability to talk to people, your ability to sell your ability to make offers, your ability to refine your offer.

There are so many skill sets. If you're just passively stepping back and just doing content for the sake of content, but it's not leading somewhere. Towards that goal, then it's not building your coaching business,

Sheri Fluellen: and it's not going to fulfill that money goal that you have. And if you're listening to this, and you're thinking to yourself, oh, my gosh, I've been doing this wrong.

Like, I haven't been having these financial conversations with myself or with other people, and I really don't know exactly the [00:31:00] right things to do that are going to result quicker in getting paid paying clients. The Coaching Mastery community, we actually have a super amazing program specifically to help you get these basic fundamental pieces in place so you can start to make money so that you can then kind of start to, to add to some of these other things that you're already thinking about, but really that's not going to be the most valuable thing for you right now.

So if you're not sure about that, reach out to us, we would love to have a phone call with you to talk a little bit more about. The programs we have available the pay programs we have available so that they can give you exactly what you need right now. And you don't have to be spinning your wheels doing all these things that you're not really sure.

Is this going to work? Is it not? Am I doing the right thing? Because that's the hard part of starting any business is not really being sure if you're doing the things that matter the most. Right now in your business [00:32:00]

Faisal Ensaun: and really, I mean, we, I mean, we, we joke around about this stuff. We have fun, but we've, we've all gone through this process.

Like, it's not a judgmental thing for me to say all this stuff because I've literally experienced every step of the way. And I continue to experience and I've seen it. And so many coaches that it's actually much more painful to watch them go through this and just. Tell them directly what, whatever the hell you're doing is not working.

So stop doing that. Do this instead. But in the process, the most difficult part of this, as Sherry said, is that, that you need feedback. You don't, I had no frame of reference. I would put up webinars. I would throw content. I would do all sorts of stuff, but I don't know what's working. What's not working because I've never done this.

So you need to be around people who are a little bit ahead of you. Some who are actually doing the same thing and some maybe even behind you. So you can actually. do some work on that side to teach them. So that helps you to grow as well. And that's how we've set up our communities that we are an implementation community.

We want to help you grow. We want to give you [00:33:00] feedback on the sales side on, on your coaching skills side. And that's a unique part about our community. We don't just focus on business. We, Focus on the quality of your service, because if the quality of service is not there, it doesn't matter how good you get a marketing and sales.

It's not the business is not sustainable because the quality of your product is not good. If your service is not good. And that's there are very few communities that actually. Help you with something like actually it doesn't exist the way we're doing it, but there are other ways that that people are approaching this So join us and also if you're if you're just thinking like you were listening to us Like I don't know how to market around this.

I don't know how to approach the sales Just let us know we we've done a couple of master classes on sales and marketing That'll actually help you and even on delivery If you want access to any of those just share hashtag marketing sales or delivery. We will share that with you But if you haven't booked a conversation with us, please reach out to us.

We will help you sort this out and see if the community is the right fit for you because you don't want to do this on your own. There are too many things to [00:34:00] figure out on this path. It's going to take you three to four years on your own, but you will have all the foundations within the first year with us.

And if you do the work, you will actually start to make money. We don't promise any. What you are going to make, because that depends on your skill sets, but we push you to take action and actually make this a reality.

Sheri Fluellen: If just for myself, if I wasn't in a community that supported me, that gave me specific guidance that kept me going, encouraging me, think about it.

If I'm saying I need 144, 000, which is 12, 000 for, you know, each month, if I need that to, to like run my household the way that I want it to. And I want to do it on my own and it takes me three years. We're talking like, what, over four or 500, 000 that I need to have a mast and a savings account in order to buffer myself for those three to four years.

Like, that's insane. The idea that it's going to take me that long and I have to have that much money saved up in [00:35:00] order to sustain me while I'm trying to get traction and figure things out. That is insane. So the return on your investment in a community like this is unparalleled because. You are going to get to where you need to be so much quicker.

It's, it's just, it's ludicrous. When I, when I think about it, I'm so thankful that I'm not hanging on the wind, trying to do this all by myself. All right. So hashtag masterclass. If you want to send us an email at support at coaching mastery community. com, you can search us up on all the socials.

There's so many ways to get ahold of us, but we'd love to start that conversation with you and find ways that we can support you based on. What your vision is and what your financial goals are,

Faisal Ensaun: but we have an incredible day and we'll talk

Sheri Fluellen: soon. Sounds good. Bye.

Narrator: You're

listening to the coach's journey podcast.