There’s nothing I want more than to see you succeed as a coach.
But when I reflect on the thousands of coaches I’ve helped…
There are a few common blocks I see keeping many great coaches stuck.
Holding them back launching their business, getting clients, making real money and ultimately going full-time.
So if you’re serious about launching or growing your coaching business…
Click here to watch this video 👇
There’s nothing I want more than to see you succeed as a coach. But when I look back over the thousands of coaches I’ve helped, there are a few common blocks that I see keeping so many great coaches stuck holding them back from launching their business, getting clients, making real money, and ultimately going full-time. So if you’re serious about launching or growing your coaching business, keep watching because you’re about to learn the 26 biggest mistakes you need to avoid. Hey, my name’s Jason Moss. I’m a multi-six figure business coach and I’ve helped thousands of coaches around the world launch and grow their businesses. And look, the mistakes I’m about to share with you in this video are super important to avoid if you want to create success as a coach. But when it comes to getting clients, there’s also a lot of other pieces you’ve gotta have in place in your business in order to attract clients consistently month after month after month.
So if you wanna know how to do that, how to make that happen in your business, I put together a free client attraction guide that walks through all the details. You can get it completely free. Just click the link above or below and go download that right now. First way to fail as a coach is to wait until you feel qualified. I hear from coaches almost every day who reach out to me and say, Jason, I really wanna be coaching full-time. I want to transform lives. I have this calling. I wanna step into this work. And, and I know that I’m here to be a coach. I know that that’s what I really want to do. And at the same time, I don’t feel qualified. Who’s gonna wanna hire me? Maybe I haven’t done this before. I’m a new coach, right? I don’t have a ton of experience.
I feel like I, I’m an imposter. I feel like no one’s gonna wanna hire me. And because of it, I’m just kind of putting this dream that I have on the back burner and waiting for the moment when I feel qualified enough to start. Let me be real with you. As someone who’s helped so many coaches and is also launched and grown multiple coaching businesses myself, I have never felt qualified before. I started doing the thing that I really wanted to do to start. The only way that you will feel qualified is when you start to do the thing that you really want to do. And at first, it’s gonna feel really clunky. When I first started, it felt like I was wearing a suit that didn’t really fit right. I knew that this was what I wanted to do, but I was feeling things out.
I was a little uncomfortable. My first few sales calls were really clunky. And over time I started to feel more confident. And as I started attracting more clients and helping people get results, I started to feel more of that sense of, yeah, I am qualified. Like I can really help people. It certainly didn’t feel that way at first. This is a big trap that I see holding so many coaches back from doing the thing they want to do. And it all rests on this false premise that suddenly you’re just gonna wake up one day and feel qualified. It doesn’t work like that. You’re not gonna feel qualified until you start. So don’t wait to feel qualified. Take action today, get started, and trust that as you move through that process, you’re gonna start to feel more and more qualified as a coach every single day.
Second way to fail as a coach is to tell yourself the market is too saturated and it’s impossible to stand out. And a lot of coaches have this limiting belief around the fact that, well, you know, if there are a lot of other people doing what I do, I’m not gonna be able to get clients. I’m not gonna be able to stand out. This simply isn’t true. And the reason it isn’t true is because people don’t just hire you because of what you do. They also hire you because of who you are. And so, even if you’re a health coach who does basically the same thing on the surface, your uniqueness, the personality that you have, the the weird quirks that you have, the way that you show up on social media, the pictures that you share of your kids and your family and going out on hikes in Colorado, these are all things that are going to attract certain people to you and also push other people away.
The truth is, people want to do business not just with people who can help them, but people who they like, people they feel connected with. So when you show up fully in your business as yourself, you become someone who stands out simply because there’s no one else out there quite like you. And when you can do this well, when you can dial up your personal brand in your business, it means that even if you’re doing the same thing on the surface as other people out there, there are gonna be certain people who see what you do and see who you are and wanna hire you and feel like you’re the only person for them. Because not only are you a great health coach, but you also live in Colorado like they do, and they, you know, you have kids as well and they have kids and they feel connected to you because of those things.
I mean, I am living proof of this
Third way to fail as a coach is to say you don’t know how. And use that as an excuse to avoid taking action. I hear from a lot of coaches who say, Jason, I don’t know the first thing about marketing. I just don’t know where to start when it comes to launching my business. And because of it, they use that as a reason to keep their dream on the back burner and avoid getting their business off the ground. The truth is, you’re not gonna know how to do any of this when you first start. When I first started coaching back in 2016, I had no idea how to market a coaching business online. I had never done that before. I had some experience and background, you know, in other areas that was helpful in terms of me being able to get started. And I was also figuring out a lot along the way.
So I read articles, I invested in courses and hired mentors to help me. And over time I started to understand how to do the things that initially I had no idea how to do. But the thing was, I didn’t wait around for the how to just fall out of the sky first. I made a decision, a commitment to myself that 100% I’m all in on launching this coaching business. I’m going to make this happen. I don’t know how I’m gonna do it, but I trust that if I can make that decision and that commitment, then the how is gonna unfold along the way. This is exactly how I’ve been able to scale my own business past multiple six figures. It’s not by knowing how to do the thing initially, it’s by setting the vision and saying, this is what I want. And committing fully to that and trusting through that process that the how as I take those first few steps is gonna unfold along the way.
So you don’t need to know exactly how to do this before you get started. The thing that’s most important is to commit to your vision, to be all in, to say, this is what I’m doing. I am launching this business, I am growing this business. This is what I want. I’m going full time. And then once you make that commitment, you’ll be amazed what starts to unfold and happen as a result. The fourth way to fail as a coach is to look for magic bullets and quick fix marketing tactics instead of the boring unsexy tried. And true truth is, when it comes to marketing, there is no magic pill out there. There’s no magic little lever that you can just pull in your business and suddenly clients are gonna be falling from the sky. And if you see someone who’s talking about something like that out there, chances are they’re probably trying to sell you something.
The truth is the things that actually work when it comes to marketing and getting clients, the things that we teach inside coaching launchpad, these are not like sexy flashy tactics. These are principles. These are things that honestly have been around for a long time. They’re, they’re not like, like super flashy things, but if you do them and you show up consistently over time, you will get results. The coaches who struggle are the coaches who are looking for that quick fix. They’re looking for the magic bullet. They’re looking for some quick answer to their marketing problems. You know, something that they can do once. And then suddenly, you know, clients are gonna be flooding in the door. Rather than saying, how can I find a few things that I can show up and do consistently over and over and over again over an extended period of time that are gonna just plant these little seeds day after day and are gonna build my business?
This is how you create success as a coach. If you look at my calendar, my schedule and what I do on a daily basis, there is nothing super exciting about it. There’s not one thing that you would see and go, oh my God, this changes everything for me. It’s probably a lot of the same things if you’re a coach who’s been doing this for a little while that you also do in your business. It’s the compound effect of the consistency of showing up over years and doing these things and committing to the process day after day after day that’s gonna get results. The fifth way to fail as a coach is to rely a hundred percent on word of mouth to bring new clients to you. Relying 100% on referrals is not a great way to build a business because it puts you in this reactive place where you’re dependent on other people to create lead flow into your business and bring people to you rather than you taking ownership of your marketing and recognizing that it’s your job to be able to create new leads.
It’s your job to be able to bring new clients in the door. If you’ve got some referrals, great, but we don’t wanna depend on that as a marketing strategy. I see a lot of coaches who are just in this like passive place in their business. It’s like, well, I’m just gonna kind of like trust that clients are just gonna fall from the sky, or people are just gonna refer people to me rather than saying, what do I need to do in order to actually market myself online in order to show up and connect with new people who don’t know who I am and don’t know what I do and could really get value from my coaching? This is the approach and the mindset that’s gonna get you results. Not laying back and expecting clients to fall from the sky. It doesn’t work like that. So if you’re relying a hundred percent on referrals, word of mouth, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table and it’s super important for you to build out a marketing strategy in your business, which you can actually start getting clients, not just being completely dependent on other people to bring new clients to you.
Number six, this is a big one. Spending all your time becoming a better coach and expecting new clients to just fall from the sky based on the quality of your coaching skills.
Who they hired was the person with the best credits, the person who mixed the number one record like three months ago, or the person who they had a relationship with, or the person who was recommended to them by a friend. And initially this used to drive me crazy ’cause I was like, well, why would they not wanna hire the best mixer? But I realized over time that the quality of my mixing skills wasn’t nearly as important as my ability to actually put myself out there and market myself as a, as a engineer and show up and build relationships and do the right things to be able to get my foot in the door. And this is a lesson that I’ve carried with me through the journey of building my coaching business. The truth is your success as a coach, and when I say success, I mean your ability to get clients, your ability to make money, your ability to go full-time as a coach, replace your income that is more dependent on your marketing skills than it is on your skills as a coach.
There’s plenty of great coaches out there, coaches that I talk to on a regular basis who are amazing at what they do, who can create incredible transformations in people’s lives, but are struggling to make a couple thousand dollars a month. And on the flip side, there are coaches that have half the coaching skills as them who are running six, multiple, six figure seven figure businesses. So it’s not the quality of your coaching skills ultimately that’s gonna separate you from all the rest. It’s your ability to show up, to communicate what you do in a, in a way that makes sense to other people, to market yourself, to put yourself out there in a way that other people can connect with. This is what’s gonna get you clients. So don’t just spend all day trying to develop your coaching skills and expect that that’s gonna solve your client problem.
Instead, value and appreciate the fact that your success is dependent on both your coaching skills as well as your marketing, your sales skills, your business skills, and invest into developing that side of what you do as well. This is what the most successful coaches I work with, do they value and appreciate both of those sides. Number seven, complain about how much you hate social media regardless of how you might feel about social media. Maybe you think Facebook has taken over the world, big brother, whatever it is, social media is the best way to connect with people in today’s world.
If you go outside, you stand in line at Starbucks, you look at what everybody’s doing while they’re waiting for their Frappuccino, while they’re standing in line waiting for someone to take their order, what are they doing? They’re on their phones and if you look over their shoulder and you look at what they’re doing, chances are they’re probably scrolling through Instagram or TikTok or Facebook or whatever other platform there is out there by the time you’re actually watching this, whether you like it or not, social media is where the attention is today. Attention is the currency in today’s world. It’s the most important currency that we have. And so the best way to do this as a coach is just to go where people already are, rather than building a website or rather than trying to kind of bring people back into your world, simply ask yourself like, where are my ideal clients already hanging out and how can I go meet them where they’re at and use that as a bridge to bring people back into my world?
So I hear from coaches all the time who say, you know, I don’t wanna be on social media. I hate social media. Social media sucks, whatever. They’re sitting around all day complaining about social media and I’m like, look, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table. Regardless of what your feelings are about social media, this is where your people are. So show up and create content on social media. You’re gonna get clients sit around all day complaining about how much you hate social media and you’re gonna be the coach who’s broke. That’s the bottom line. So don’t be the coach who’s sitting around all day complaining about social media. Instead, recognize whether you like it or not, this is where people are. Leverage those tools and those platforms as a way to share your message and connect with the people that you want to connect with.
And you’ll have no problem getting new clients and you’ll be much more likely to experience success as a coach. Number eight, be the coach who’s too cheap to hire one yourself and then expect other people to hire you.
And so the first three years of my coaching business, I was cheap as hell. I’ll be honest, like I really didn’t invest much in my own business. I pinched pennies. And it’s funny thinking about that today as someone who’s done a lot of money mindset work and really shifted a lot of my beliefs around investing and over the last two plus years I’ve invested 50, $60,000 or more into hiring mentors and business coaches. And one of the things that’s really changed for me as I’ve started to do that, not only has my business grown dramatically as a result of that, but it’s also changed the way that I show up to sales conversations with potential clients. Because when I get on those calls, I’m not asking for somebody to do something that I wouldn’t do myself. I’m walking the walk. I’m saying, look, I am someone who invests in business coaching personally.
I have coaches I work with, I have healers I work with, I have mentors I work with and I hire them because I believe in this firsthand. So there’s a congruence and there’s a level of certainty that I bring to those conversations that I didn’t bring before when I wasn’t walking the walk. And I see a lot of new coaches struggling to sign clients because let’s be honest, they’re too cheap to invest in coaching themselves. They don’t actually believe in the value of coaching or they believe in it intellectually, but they’re not actually voting with their wallet. And if this is the case, if, if you are the coach who’s doing this very hard to convince other people to invest into working with you, why would they wanna work with you if you’re not actually walking the walk? Don’t be the coach who’s too cheap to hire one yourself and expect other people to hire you.
Instead become your ideal client. Be the person that you want your ideal clients to be. This is one of the biggest sales lessons that I’ve learned along the way in my journey. Whenever you’re experiencing objections or resistance or a common thing that comes up on sales calls, like maybe people are saying, I don’t have the time or I don’t have the money, or whatever people are telling you again and again and again in many cases it’s a mirror. It’s actually a reflection of your own belief of a pattern that you might be following in your own life. So people are always like, well how do I overcome the objection? What do I say? I’m like, well the first thing you do is you look at every single area of your life and ask yourself, where am I showing up as less than who I want my ideal clients to be and how can I shift that first?
And there’s no bigger area that this applies than when it comes to actually investing in your business and yourself. So walk the walk, be the coach who invest in coaches and mentors themself and watch how that changes your conversations that you have with your potential clients as a result. Number nine, start marketing. Do it for two weeks and then give up when you don’t get a client right away. I’ve done this before, okay, so I’m not throwing anybody else under the bus. The truth is marketing takes time and all of these tactics and strategies and anything you might learn from someone like me, it’s not like a magic switch, you just flip it and suddenly clients are coming in. Marketing is about building relationships fundamentally, this is about you building a relationship with someone else, someone who doesn’t know you at first and taking that person all the way from, I have no idea who you are to, I love you and I wanna hire you.
And that transition, that series of steps that someone takes from A to B, that doesn’t happen overnight. This takes time because relationships take time. And so if you’re expecting to just show up on social media and create a couple posts and suddenly have this flood of clients coming in and you get discouraged and frustrated when that doesn’t happen right away and then give up and stop doing the things that you need to do in order to market yourself, you’re not gonna be successful. This takes consistency. This takes you showing up day after day and it’s hard at the beginning because it feels like no one’s paying attention to you. Every coaching business I’ve started the first few months were really difficult ’cause it felt like I was just showing up and like sharing my message with no one and like no one was paying attention.
The truth was every single time I showed up, every time I shared a message or or showed up in authority or leadership or showed up as the coach that I really wanted to be, I was planting seeds with people. And at first maybe I was only communicating with three, four or five people, but over time those numbers grew. And this is how I’ve been able to build a following of tens of thousands of people around the world who are engaged with my content and who are listening to the things that I’m sharing and teaching and who are reaching out and saying, Hey, I wanna work with you at the beginning. It’s slow. So don’t get discouraged if you start marketing and you don’t get results right away. Continue to stay the course, continue to put in the work and recognize that this is gonna take some time.
And if you can keep staying the course and keep showing up and keep doing the right things over time, you will succeed. Number 10, only post on social media when you’re feeling inspired. I love inspiration. It’s great when it strikes. The truth is it’s pretty inconsistent for me
I’m gonna rely on inspiration as well as discipline, as well as structure and routine and consistency. Which means that there are some days that maybe I don’t feel like doing this and I show up and I do it anyways. Or I create structure around myself so I can support my inspiration with the consistency required to actually grow my business. So maybe when I’m inspired I create like five pieces of content and then I schedule them out so they’re being released on a consistent basis and I commit to a certain number of pieces of content that I’m releasing on a weekly basis. Whatever it is, whatever your way of creating that in your business is is up to you. But I can tell you as someone who’s running a coaching business on a very high level, inspiration is not the fuel that I would depend on in order to move my business forward.
Number 11, do anything to avoid having a conversation with your potential clients. Expect your website to do all the work for you. The number one biggest thing that’s gonna move the needle for you in your coaching business, especially if you’re in the early stages of your coaching journey, there’s nothing that compares to you actually being able to engage with someone through a conversation, whether that’s through a DMM or whether that’s through a phone call. And to be able to take the time to make someone else feel seen and heard and understood and to really understand what they actually want and to pitch them a relevant next step and to tailor your pitch to be relevant to their specific situation. All this happens through conversations. It doesn’t happen through a website, it doesn’t happen through a sales page. And so many coaches in the early days are afraid of conversations.
They’re afraid of reaching out to people and having those conversations. They don’t want to come off as pushy or salesy and so they just expect their website or their content to do all the work for them and they end up leaving so much money on the table. Do not be this coach, especially if you’re in the early days. Lean on conversations really heavily. My first six, nine months of my coaching business conversations are really what got me to that like five to 10 k a month mark. I was reaching out every single day to coaches who were in my niche and having conversations over messenger. It was a little bit of a grind, I’ll be honest, like was having lots of conversations with people. But that was a great way for me to get started. And over time I started to to scale using things like funnels and ads and uh, websites and content and things like that.
But initially that wasn’t the case. The thing that really moved my business forward in the early days was having conversations. So don’t be afraid of conversations. Don’t expect your website to do all the heavy lifting for you. Instead, actively be reaching out to people who are in your niche, whether that’s people who are following you or people who aren’t. And having those conversations and building those relationships. One of the best ways to move your business forward. Number 12, avoid telling anyone what you do for fear that you might come off as salesy.
I’d seen a lot of people you know, sell in other contexts and it just didn’t feel right to me and I didn’t wanna do that in my business. I didn’t wanna come off in that way where I would make somebody else feel uncomfortable or be pushy. And honestly this belief and this mindset and this block help me back a lot in the early stages of my business. Here’s the truth. You’re not doing your ideal clients any favors by them not knowing about what you do and how you can help them. The analogy I often give people is imagine you’ve got a backpack full of water bottles and you’re walking through the desert and you see somebody who’s sprawled out on the sand in the middle of the desert, a hundred feet in front of you because they haven’t had water in three days. It would be of service for you to go up to that person and say, Hey, I have a water bottle.
Do you want it? It looks like you’re really thirsty. This is what selling is. Selling is nothing more than making an invitation, a relevant invitation to somebody who really wants and needs something. Someone who needs help and saying, Hey, I’ve got this thing that can help you. Like, do you want to hear more about this? Do you want hop on a call and we can talk about how we can get you to where you wanna be? This is what sales is, it’s not about you. It’s actually far more about them than it is about you making a sale or getting a client. And when I started shifting my mindset away from this very self-focused place when it was like, oh, I don’t want to come off as salesy, I don’t want people to think I’m pushy and really grounded more into this mindset of like there are people out there that really need my help.
There are coaches out there that are struggling to get clients and I have skills and knowledge and expertise that I can share with them to help them solve that problem. When I’m grounded in that place, it’s so much easier to show up and tell people about what I do. I don’t feel that resistance ’cause I realize that I’m doing it from that heart of service, from that place of service. So this is the mindset shift that starts to happen when you overcome this belief. Remember, you’re not telling your ideal clients about what you do and how you can help them. It’s not helping anyone. This is a big part of what we help people overcome inside coaching launchpad our program, some of these mindset shifts and beliefs. Super, super important to your success. Number 13, wait until you feel sure that you’ve got the right niche.
Something that holds so many coaches back. Help me back. When I first started my coaching business, what’s my niche? Oh my god, I have no idea what it is. I filled out five niche worksheets and I’m still not sure. Let me spend another three months overthinking this before I actually create my first piece of content or put myself out there. This is a trap. I’ve helped a lot of coaches in the early stages of their journey and I can tell you probably number one biggest thing that people get tripped up on, what is my niche? Who am I serving? Here’s the truth. If you’re in the earlier stages of your business or even if you’ve been coaching for a while, you’re not gonna feel clear about your niche at first. The way that you get to clarity about your niche is not by overthinking it, filling out another niche worksheet, hiring another coach to help you with this.
It’s by you actually putting yourself out there saying, you know what? I feel like I want to go in this direction. I’m not totally sure whether or not I have the right niche, but I’m just gonna start putting myself out there. I’m gonna spend, you know, 30, 60 days creating content for these people. I’m gonna get on some calls with these people and see is what I’m doing actually resonating and connecting? Do I have something that people actually wanna buy? This is how you get to clarity on your niche. It’s not by thinking it through. There’s a certain level of thinking it through that I think is important. But beyond that, it’s you actually putting yourself out there, being comfortable in the discomfort of not being totally sure. So don’t worry if you don’t have clarity on your niche right now. It’s not an excuse to not take action.
Put yourself out there, start creating some content and I promise you, 30, 60, 90 days down the line, you’re gonna have so much more clarity on this piece than you do today. Number 14, keep coaching for free because you think you need more experience. Stop coaching for free
It’s like, oh, if I just like meet with someone for free and I give them all this time of mind and I show them how awesome I am as a coach, they’re gonna want to pay me all this money. The truth is, it almost never works this way. What often happens is you start working with people for free and then they see you as a coach who’s just giving away all your time for free. And those are never gonna be the clients who say, oh wow, I’m gonna wake up in the morning and suddenly decide you’re worth paying thousands of dollars to. Doesn’t work like that. The way that you get paid is by setting the bar high and saying, I am a professional coach, which means I value my time and I value this transformation that I’m offering so much that I know that I’m not available for free.
If you really wanna make this happen, there’s a certain level of commitment that that requires of your energy or time, your attention and your money. And if you’re not willing to make that happen, then that’s okay. We’re just not a good fit to work together. Another thing that really changes, and this is what I’ve experienced in my own business, once you transition out of doing a bunch of free work or low priced work, is your clients will actually get better results. Because when someone pays you to work with them, they are making a commitment to themselves that this is something worth taking seriously. And that means they’re gonna show up to the experience differently and they’re gonna engage in the process more fully and they’re gonna get better results. And they’re also gonna be way better clients to work with. The clients that are always the biggest pain in the butt are the ones that either you coach for free or they don’t pay you a lot of money.
Those are always gonna be your most difficult clients. I can guarantee you, I’ve seen this so many times in my own business and whenever I make this mistake, I’m like, oh yeah, I’ve gone through this like four or five times and four or five different versions and different businesses don’t do a bunch of coaching for free. Chances are you’re more than qualified enough to start charging for your work today and set that bar high and choose to step into the identity of a professional coach, which means people pay you for what you do. Number 15, spend all of your time focused on your day job and other less important priorities and then tell yourself you don’t have enough time to focus on your business. Let me be real with you. I talk to coaches almost every day who have a lot going on in their lives.
They’ve got day jobs, they’ve got family, they’ve got challenges at, you know, home. They’re, they’ve got kids, they’ve got a million different social activities going on. And there are coaches who use all those things as an excuse to punt their dreams down the line and say, oh, I don’t have the time to be able to focus on my business. Or as a way of justifying why they’re not making progress in their business. In other words, if I only had more time, I’d be further along as a coach. Not true. On the flip side, there are other coaches I work with who say, you know what, I’ve got so much stuff going on and I recognize that this is something that’s really important to me. Launching, growing my coaching business, making this transition of full-time is something that matters. It’s not gonna go away. This is a dream that I’ve had in my heart for years.
I’m not gonna continue to punt that down the line and blame circumstances for the reason that I can’t take action. I’m gonna create the time for what matters. I know that there’s more than enough time for the things that are important to me. ’cause let’s be honest, how much time do you spend every single week watching Netflix and scrolling through Instagram? If you just looked at this, I was actually sitting on the couch the other day with Kimberly, my partner, and we were looking at screen time and she’s like, oh my God, I’ve spent like 10, 10 hours this week on like Facebook and Instagram. I’m like, well, you could start a business with 10 hours a week and if I looked at your screen time right now, chances are I’d probably see the same thing. Let’s be real. You’ve got more than enough time to be able to make this happen.
If this is what you really want, stop putting your dreams down the line, blaming time for the reason that you don’t have the things that you want and the life that you really wanna create. Instead, take control, take ownership, take power. Recognize that time is not a valid reason for you, punting your dreams down the line. And the good news is you have more than enough time today to be able to take action and claim the life that you really know you want. Number 16, spend hours editing every social media post trying to make it perfect.
And when you can create lots of content and have lots of touchpoints, every little touch point is gonna bring someone one step closer to wanting to work with you. So I see a lot of coaches who get stuck on this because they’re spending like three hours on every social media post and they’re spending so much time overthinking and over tweaking and trying to make every word perfect, rather than just getting in a cycle of like, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. How can you create a piece of content in 15 minutes or 10 minutes, or just turn on your camera and just record something and then done send it out. Cool. This is the mindset of success when it comes to content creation. It’s really like, how do we get in flow? How do we create things quickly? How do we not overthink it? Don’t worry, every word does not have to be perfect.
If you can get in that flow and start creating and releasing more quickly, ultimately you’re gonna be able to increase your volume when it comes to content creation. And that’s probably one of the biggest keys to success when it comes to actually getting clients online through social media. Number 17, outsource all your decisions to a mentor who you think knows better. Drives me nuts when I see this
You’re hiring mentors as a way of gaining perspective, as a way of having insight into areas that you might be not as experienced in those mentors and those guides. And those coaches are gonna give you feedback and ideas and perspectives that are useful and valuable. And it’s your job to take all of that advice and that feedback and run it through your own personal filter and your own lens and say what feels right for me? There have been many times that I’ve been told by a mentor or a guide, Hey, here’s what I think you should do in your business. And I knew in my gut or my heart that it just didn’t feel right for me, but I felt like I should do it because, well, you know, so and so said I should do it. And then I did it and it flopped because I wasn’t really invested in it or because I knew personally for me, it just wasn’t what I wanted to do.
And so the biggest lesson I’ve learned is to listen to that, like when I have that resistance or that hesitation to be curious about that, to not just absolve my leadership to someone else. Super important that you remain in the driver’s seat in your own business. Number 18, launch 10 different offers and try to sell them all at once. So we have basically one offer in our business, one core offer that does 90% of the revenue in my business. Again, this is a business that will do close to seven figures this year. That’s a million dollars a year with one offer. I see coaches all the time who are struggling to hit, you know, five K months, who’ve got like 7, 8, 9 different offers. It’s overwhelming. The truth is, every offer you add to your business creates more complexity, spread your focus thinner, and it’s a really easy way to get overwhelmed.
So my recommendation is, if you’re doing under six figures as a coach, start with one offer. Start with really honing that in getting that right, getting that to a place where it’s selling consistently. You could scale that up to six figures. You don’t need more than that. If you just wanna make six figures as a coach, great, that’s fine. You probably don’t need more than one offer. So avoid the tendency that I see with so many coaches where it’s like when one thing isn’t working, you just add more and add more and add more. And suddenly you’ve got this overwhelming, chaotic business where you feel like things are outta control. ’cause you’re, you’ve got way too many plates in the air and nothing’s really working. Instead, really simplify pair things down and say, how can I create one offer that’s really landing and connecting with my ideal clients?
Number 20, avoid showing up on social media because you’re afraid of what your friends or family or coworkers will think. Oh man, I see so many coaches who are so amazing at what they do and can change lives and could make such a great impact, but don’t wanna show up and are afraid to show up because they’re afraid of what other people think. Who caress
People spend the majority of their time thinking about themselves. And when you can remember that because you’re wired just the same way that I am and everybody else is, and take off the pressure and recognize that people aren’t thinking about you as much as you think they really don’t care. I mentor so many coaches who are so worried about this, and then they show up and they start sharing about their coaching business and no one cares. The most common thing is just support. Like, you know, your Aunt Bertha would be like, oh, great, you know, comment on your Facebook photo. Good, good job. You’re doing coaching now. Cool. That’s what you’ll get.
Just get out there, start creating stuff. Don’t worry so much about what other people are thinking. You’ve got a mission, you’ve got work to do that’s far more important than your fear of what other people are gonna think. Number 21, listen to all the voices in your head that tell you you’re no good, that no one’s gonna hire you, that launching a business is not gonna work. Oh, man, if there’s one thing that really trips coaches up in the early days, it’s all the inner stuff. Imposter syndrome. It’s the fear, it’s the self-doubt, it’s the inner resistance. It’s all the voices that are gonna hold you back if you let them from doing the thing that you’re really here to do. Truth is, every single coach that I’ve worked with has a version of this in their business, and I certainly, I have too. And when I look at the most successful coaches that I’ve worked with, it’s not that those voices aren’t there, it’s that when they hear those voices, they don’t use those as a reason to not take action.
In other words, you can show up, you can do alive and be feeling like a crappy coach the entire time. It’s not that those thoughts have any power. The only power that they have is the power that you give them. So remember that just because you feel like you’re a crappy coach, just because you have thoughts that say, no one’s gonna hire you, doesn’t mean they’re true. Your brain’s gonna throw you all sorts of crazy stuff to try to keep you in the box and keep you safe. This is how our brain works. It’s not designed to help us take leaps and to step into larger, more expansive versions of who we are. It’s designed to keep us from getting eaten by the saber tooth tiger. You’re gonna get all sorts of crazy stuff coming up for you in the early stages, especially of your coaching business.
The biggest question is, what are you making those thoughts mean? Are you believing them? And are you using that as a reason to hold yourself back? Number two, listen to people who’ve spent their entire lives working for someone else and tell you that launching a business is too risky. Usually this is gonna be your mom or your dad or someone who really caress about you, but has never launched a business before and just has this idea and belief that launching business is risky and working for somebody else is not. And so you should spend your entire life working for someone else. When in your heart, you know that that’s not what you really wanna do. Here’s the truth. There are pros and cons to both. There’s a certain level of consistency, certainly that comes from having a paycheck and showing up every day and being told what to do and existing within a larger system.
But here’s the other thing, you know, when I was director of sales, when I was working for one of my best friends, and one day he called me up five minutes before a team meeting and said, Jason, this is not working. We need to let you go. And it was the first time that I’d ever gotten fired. And I realized in that moment that I had tried so hard to do all the right things and to show up and to be the best and director of sales that I could be, and I still got let go. And the truth is, when you’re working for somebody else, your job is in somebody else’s hands. You have influence over that, but you can do all the right things and still get fired versus when you’re working for yourself, there’s no one else that can take that from you.
There’s no one else who can show up one day and say, Hey, uh, your job does not exist tomorrow. So let’s be honest, what’s really riskier? Personally, I sleep much better at night knowing that my job is not in the hands of somebody else. That I have control and autonomy and freedom, and knowing that if I don’t make money, it’s no one else’s fault but me. That gives me a feeling of confidence that makes me feel empowered personally. I’d much rather be in that place than working for somebody else. The choice is totally yours. But let’s not accept blindly the belief that working for somebody else is always the safer choice. Because let’s be honest, in many cases it’s not. Number 23, judge other coaches who are more successful than you, instead of celebrating them and asking them how they did it. If you’re scrolling through Instagram or social media and looking at all the other coaches who are talking about how successful they are and how many clients they are, and feeling like, screw Martha, she’s, you know, Ugh, I really hate the way she talks about this and that, and screw Bertha.
And I don’t know why all these people have names that
That’s amazing. How does she do it? I’d love to take a closer look at her marketing and see if I can learn some stuff from her and her messaging. This is how you create success as a coach, not by judging people, but by celebrating them. So cool that all these people are creating all this success rather than writing them off as people who lack integrity or people who are scammers or whatever it is. Asking yourself, wow, like this is, this is someone who’s really successful. Can I learn from them? This is how you create success as a coach. Number 24, don’t choose a niche. Just try to coach everyone. Very hard to stand out as a coach online if you’re trying to be the coach for everyone. I see a lot of coaches doing this. I go to their website and they’re like, I can help you with your career and your finances and your relationships and your health, like the catchall coach, trying to be everything for everyone.
If you’re doing this, very difficult to stand out because in order to stand out, especially on social media, especially online, you need a message that is relevant to a very small and specific group of people. You need a message that can cut through the noise, that can speak very directly to someone’s challenges and desires and the very specific things that they want and need. And you do that by getting narrow and specific about who your people are. In other words, choosing a niche. So if you’re trying to speak to everyone, if you haven’t chosen a niche yet, if you’re trying to be the catchall coach, you’re gonna struggle. It’s gonna be very difficult to get clients. So rather than doing that, get really clear, get specific, choose who are the specific group of people that I’m here to help and serve. Who’s my niche? And it’s gonna be so much easier to get clients.
Number 25, trying to be the cheapest option out there. Really bad marketing strategy, trying to compete on price, trying to be the type of coach who’s saying, oh, you know, I’m gonna discount my stuff all the time. And, you know, talk about how cheap my prices are and make that a core part of my positioning and my marketing strategy. The truth is, the best clients are never price shoppers. They’re not the kind of clients who are saying, well, Martha’s a hundred dollars cheaper than Bertha, and so I should go with Martha. This is not what great clients think. What great clients think is, I wanna work with Martha because she’s the best coach for me, and I don’t even care how much she she charges because I want the best. They’re primarily focused on value and return on investment, what they’re gonna get and the experience they’re gonna have.
So when you compete on price and you try to talk about your prices all the time and how cheap they are and and make that a core part of your marketing, you’re actually gonna turn off the people who don’t care about that stuff, the best clients. And instead, you’re gonna attract the kind of clients who are price shoppers and who for that kind of client, your prices are never gonna be low enough. And so you get in this spiral where it’s like, well, I’m attracting all these clients who are telling me I’m too expensive and I feel like I need to lower my rates further. And it’s this downward spiral because all the people that you’re bringing in are the kind of clients who are looking for cheaper prices. We don’t want those clients. We don’t want the clients that are primarily focused on that.
So don’t try to be the cheapest coach out there. Instead, try to be the one that’s the best. Try to be the high caliber coach, the one that’s delivering the best possible experience for people. It’s gonna be so much easier to get clients and make really good money as a result. And number 26, drum roll please. The last way to fail as a coach is to blame the algorithm. Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, whatever it is, you feel like your content’s not getting visibility, no one’s paying attention to you, not the algorithm’s fault, it’s yours. It’s your fault for not making better content that people actually wanna read, that the algorithm actually wants to show to people. So rather than blaming the algorithm, take ownership, take leadership. Recognize that if your content’s not getting the visibility that you want, it’s no one’s fault but you, and you have full control to actually change that.
That’s the good news. You can study content creation. You can look at people who are getting visibility and asking yourself, what are they doing differently that I’m not doing? And over time you can start to make changes. Remember, the algorithm wants great content to show to people, content that’s gonna keep people scrolling and keep people on the platform. So you can create that content. The algorithm’s gonna be on your side. So the number one biggest key is create content that people actually wanna read and consume and watch. And if you can do that well, you’ll have no problem getting people who are actually gonna be seeing it. Okay? This was quite a video
Now, as I mentioned earlier on in the video, avoiding these things is a big part of success as a coach. And there are also some other really important keys that are involved when it comes to getting clients. If you wanna, a roadmap you can follow to attract 2, 3, 4 high paying clients month after month into your coaching business, I put together a free client attraction guide that walks through all my best client attraction advice. You can get that by clicking the link above or below. It’s completely free. I’d love for you to check it out. I think you’re gonna find it super valuable. I can’t wait to share that with you. Now, before we go, comment down below and let me know, of the 26 mistakes that we covered in this video, which of those really resonated for you? Was there one that you were like, Ugh, I feel like Jason’s calling me out here.
Let us know. It’s okay. You’re not alone. I’ve struggled with almost every single one of these things, and I think hearing your perspective and hearing your insights will also be super normalizing for other coaches. We’re probably experiencing some of the same challenges too. So comment down below. Let me know if those 26 things, which one really stood out to you. We’ve got so many awesome videos to come on this channel, so if you want more free content like this to help you launch and grow your coaching business, subscribe down below and I’ll see you in the next video.
