Most Coaches Will NEVER Be Successful (here’s why)

99% of coaches will never make enough to leave their nine to five. Instead, they’ll be stuck at a day job forever, spending the best hours of their waking life slaving away for someone else while a select few, the 1% are quietly raking in the dough, signing high, paying clients consistently waking up every day to freedom. What separates those coaches who succeed from all the rest? And more importantly, how can you become part of the elite few, the full-time coaches who are getting paid to wake up every day and transform lives? Keep watching because in this video you’re about to find out, Hey, it’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, the keys I’m about to share with you in this video are super important to your success as a coach.

But when it comes to getting clients, there are a number of other things you need to have in place in your business too. Otherwise, attracting great clients is gonna be pretty difficult. So if you wanna know what those keys to success are when it comes to getting clients, I put together a free client attraction guide that walks through all the details. You can get this for free, I’d love to share it with you by clicking the link above or below right now and go download this right now. So, when I first started coaching back in 2016, I spent a lot of time studying marketing strategy. And I thought the biggest thing that separated me from being successful as a coach was I just needed to understand how to market myself online and how to get clients and the tactics and the strategies I could use in order to do that.

But after a couple years, what I learned was the number one biggest key to my success as a coach wasn’t actually strategy. It was actually the mindset, the internal side of things. The truth is, I had a lot of blocks in the early days as a coach when I was first starting. And once I started, uh, really doing that inner work and understanding, you know, what the mindset was of a successful coach and, and modeling that in my business, that’s when things really started to take off for me. That’s when I was able to scale to, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 k months. It’s when I, you know, was able to really start attracting new clients consistently. It was a result of having this piece in place. And so in this video, I wanna walk through 10 of the biggest mindset blocks that hold so many coaches back.

These are things that certainly held me back and things that if you can overcome in your business, you’ll be able to move forward so much more quickly and make progress a lot faster than I did when I was at the beginning of my coaching journey. So let’s dive in. Uh, the first big block that I see holds so many coaches back is a belief that you’re not qualified enough. One of the biggest things I hear from coaches is, well, why would someone pay me to coach? I’m just getting started. Maybe I haven’t been coaching for that long. I’m not sure I have the skills. Why would somebody pay me at this level to be able to help them? So a while back I worked with a mentor who shared this story with me that really helped me see imposter syndrome and I’m not qualified a little bit differently.

He shares this story about one of his close friends who one day decided that he wanted to learn how to play guitar. So he bought a new guitar, took a couple lessons, and spent about a week studying some of the basics of how to learn how to play guitar. Obviously after a week he wasn’t very good, but he, you know, he knew how to play a couple chords. And so one day that family had a, had a party and they invited their friends over and they had a really great dinner and it was a nice night and everybody was hanging out afterwards and someone said, Hey, I heard you learn how to play guitar. Why don’t you go get the guitar and show us? And so this guy went upstairs and he grabbed his guitar and he came downstairs and he started playing his first song, which obviously was not very good.

After he finished that song, first of all, everyone you know, started clapping. They were so excited for him. And the next question out of their mouth was, can you teach me how to play guitar too? Very interesting. Now, oftentimes we have this idea that in order to be qualified to teach someone, to mentor someone, to coach someone, that means we have to be an expert. But the truth is, all you have to be is a couple steps ahead of the people you want to serve. And to these people who are at the dinner party who had no idea how to play guitar, this person was as good as a professional as anybody else, more than qualified to be able to help them take those next steps. So just remember, as a new coach, as someone who’s maybe just getting started, you do not have to be the expert.

You don’t have to be like the coach who’s been doing this for 20 years. There’s plenty of people out there who are gonna wanna hire you. And as a matter of fact, you being a couple of steps ahead, just a couple of steps ahead of your ideal clients makes you more relatable, makes you easier to connect. With all this being said, one of the biggest mindset blocks that I see for new coaches is this belief of I’m not qualified enough. And it comes from this false idea that in order for somebody to wanna hire you, you need to be a professional, you need to be the expert. Just isn’t true. You being a couple of steps ahead of your ideal clients is more than enough to be able to really create some value for them and facilitate that transformation. And if you’re able to do that, in most cases, you have more than enough to be able to help that person.

The second big mindset block that holds so many coaches back is a belief that the market is too saturated. Truth is, there’s lots of coaches out there. The coaching industry is actually one of the fastest growing industries right now in the world. So you might be thinking, well, you know, is there any room left for me? And maybe the market’s too saturated, I go out online on Instagram or Facebook and I’m just inundated by coaches. Am I gonna be able to get clients and stand out in this world where there’s so many people competing for attention? The short answer is yes, there’s absolutely still room for you in this space and, and here’s why. Well, the truth is you stand out not just because of what you do, but because of who you are. The decision that somebody makes to work with you is as much about who you are as it is about what you do.

I wanna work with people that I like that I feel connected to, that I feel like share my values, that I feel like I can connect with on a human level. And because I’m a unique individual, because I’m different than everybody else out there, the type of person that I feel like I resonate with most deeply is also going to be different. If I’m an introvert and I’m maybe a little bit more spiritual, I really like hiking and going outdoors. When I see your content on social media and you talk about being an introvert too, and you have pictures where you’re hiking with your dog in Colorado, all these things are gonna help me feel more connected to you. That makes me much more likely to choose you over every single other person out there, even if you’re not as qualified or as experienced as another health coach.

This is the thing that I think most people forget or don’t realize when they think the market is too saturated, they don’t realize that as a coach, your personal brand, you showing people who you are makes you stand out, makes you an individual. So even if you’re in a crowded space, even if you’re a business coach, how many other business coaches are there out there, right? Like you’ve probably gotten six dms this week from other business coaches who are trying to sell you stuff. How is I able to build a multi-six figure soon to be seven figure business in 2023 as a business coach in a sea of business coaches? Well, the truth is, I show people who I am and I talk about the things that make me different and unique and that pulls certain people towards you. You know, as an example, I can’t tell you how many people who are in my programs are bald and have beards.

I work with a lot of guys and it’s like the bald beard club. It’s very strange, . Like I go on zoom for our, our coaching launchpad calls, and I just see all these like ball guys. And I was like, wow, that’s really weird. Well, the truth is me just being myself and showing up as myself means that people who look like me are gonna gravitate more towards me. So this is an example of this, and there are a million other ways that this happens in your business. The key is to dial up who you are and to, to bring who you are fully to the table. And when you can do this well, you become a singularity. You stand out and you don’t have to worry about the market being too saturated because there’s no one out there that’s quite like you. The third belief that holds so many coaches back is the belief that starting a business is risky.

This is usually something you hear from your parents or people who have never started a business before who have this idea that working for someone else is safe and consistent and predictable. And starting a business is like the the riskiest thing you can do. And so it’s much safer to just be, you know, working for someone else. I don’t subscribe to this belief. And the reason for it is because I’ve had a firsthand experience that really challenged the idea of how I think about safety when it comes to my career. So back in 2020, after a couple years of running my own coaching business, I connected with a very close friend of mine who was also running a coaching business, and his business was really growing and he needed somebody to lead his sales team inside his business. So I stepped into that role as a director of sales, and we worked together for a little over a year.

I tried to do my absolute best, showed up every day, tried to give it my all. And one day after a little over a year of working together, he called me up a couple minutes before a team meeting and said, Jason, I just don’t think this is working. I think I’m gonna have to let you go. It was the first time that I’d ever gotten fired in, it really sucked. The truth is I learned a lot from that experience, but it was painful. What I learned is when you’re working for someone else, your job is in somebody else’s hands and you can do your absolute best, but you don’t have control over whether or not your job exists tomorrow. And that’s a hard fact to swallow as an entrepreneur, as someone who’s running their own business full time. I don’t have to depend on anybody else for a paycheck. I know that my job’s gonna be here tomorrow, and I know that my success depends 100% on me.

And personally, like I feel better knowing that I’m not in the hands, that my job is not in the hands of somebody else. So this experience of getting fired, like really reframe the way that I think about risk. And I think a lot of people have this idea that like to work for someone else is safe, and to start a business is risky, but actually in many cases is the exact opposite. I prefer having the freedom and the autonomy and the control over my career and over my job and knowing that there’s no one else that’s gonna take that away. And I live and die by my own sword. And you know, if I don’t make money, it’s not somebody else’s fault, it’s mine, and I have full responsibility and ownership over that, and that feels really good to me. So starting a business is not risky. And in fact, one of the riskiest things you might do is stay working for somebody else.

The fourth big belief that holds so many coaches back is the belief of, I don’t know where to start. I hear from a lot of coaches who are overwhelmed with the process of launching their business, understandably, there’s lots of information out there and it can feel confusing to know, you know, where do I focus on, what do I do first? But I hear from a lot of coaches who are kind of in like paralysis around this, and they have this idea that in order to move forward, they have to know exactly what they’re going to do next. So they’re kind of in this like starter limbo where they haven’t yet made a commitment to themselves that launching their coaching business or going full-time as a coach is what they really want to do because they’re waiting to come to some sense of clarity around what the right steps are to take to get there in order to make that decision or make that commitment.

In my opinion, I think this is completely backwards. The truth is, when I look back over the course of my life and I’ve launched and and run multiple successful businesses and different niches, I never knew how I was going to do something before I started. When I first started coaching in 2016, I had no idea how to market my coaching business online. I didn’t know any of the things that I know now, you know, uh, uh, about marketing or sales. But what I did was I made the commitment to myself that this is what I wanted to do, and I got off the fence and I said, I wanna launch this business. This is what I want. I’m no longer in the starter limbo questioning whether or not this is the right next step for me. I’m committing 1000% to doing this. I don’t know how I’m gonna do it, but I’m gonna make that commitment first and foremost to myself.

And what I’ve found is that once you make that commitment, the how starts unfolding. And as you take that next step and as you commit fully, suddenly there are resources that come into your awareness. And there are people that come out of the woodwork to help you because of your commitment, because of your conviction and your certainty and the decision that you’ve made to get off the fence and make something happen. You do not have to know how to launch your coaching business before you make the decision to do so. And I think the lack of making that decision is probably one of the biggest things that holds coaches back. The fifth big mindset block is the belief that if I can just become a great coach, getting clients will take care of itself. , I’m laughing because I used to subscribe to this before I started coaching, actually, I went to school for music and I became an audio engineer, and my first real chapter of my career was helping artists record and mix their own music and making records.

And I spent so much time developing my mixing skills, and I had this belief in this idea that I was going to become the mixer in the world. And that becoming the best mixer in the world was the key to me being able to be successful and make lots of money and to be able to really get clients consistently. This could not be further from the truth. The cold hard truth is that your success as a coach has more to do in many cases with marketing and sales and your ability to run a business than it does with your coaching skills. There are plenty of coaches out there that are, you know, kind of mediocre coaches who are really successful and have really successful businesses because they’ve prioritized the skills of learning how to market themselves, learning how to sell, learning how to run a business.

On the flip side, I see a lot of amazing coaches out there who have the ability to transform lives on a really deep level, who are struggling to get clients because they’re focused 100% on learning how to be a really good coach, but don’t prioritize the skills of learning how to run a really successful business. Your success as a coach takes both. And the coaches who are most successful are the ones who really value and appreciate those business skills and invest just as much energy and attention and money and time into developing those business skills as they do their skills as a coach. The sixth big mindset block that holds so many coaches back is the belief of I can do it alone. So back when I was a director of sales, working with my best friend before he fired me, , I had someone on my team, we’ll call him Richard, uh, that was not his actual name, but he was a salesperson who I was leading and managing.

Initially when I was brought into that business, I was brought in because Richard was struggling to make sales. And we thought, you know, I would be able to help mentor and coach him to improve his sales performance. And so I started working with Richard and we started doing coaching calls. And for about a month or two, I would meet with him regularly and I would listen to his calls and I give him feedback, and I coach him on the skills of how to be better at sales. And I had this idea like, okay, well if I can just teach him how to sell better, then he’ll be able to start succeeding. And after a month or two of this not really making any progress, one day we sat down and had a heart to heart and he told me something that I’ll never forget. He said, Jason, I wanna be honest with you.

I grew up in a family that really didn’t make a lot of money, and I have a lot of scarcity around investing in general and just spending money. I don’t think I would buy, if I’m being completely honest what we’re selling. I just think it’s too expensive. Well, no surprise to me that he was having trouble making sales. If you don’t walk the walk as a coach, if you wouldn’t invest in what you’re actually selling, then it’s very difficult to call others to that standard too. And this is what I see so many coaches doing is trying to sell coaching when they’re not actually investing in coaching themselves. It doesn’t make any sense as a coach. Coaching itself is nothing more than the belief that it’s faster and easier and better to get help and to create transformation in your life as a team through working with others who can mentor and guide you, and not by doing it alone.

And I see a lot of coaches out there who are trying to sell coaching, but don’t fundamentally believe that themselves or are not that walk by investing in mentors and coaches and working with other people themselves, there’s a reason I’ve invested at least $50,000 over the past two years into hiring other coaches and mentors and continue to bring people on my team who can help me. Not only because I’ve seen firsthand what impact that’s had on my business, there’s no way I would’ve been able to scale past, you know, multiple six figures without that help, but also because it gives me a, a different level of congruence when I get on the phone with people. And when you can step into that form of leadership and really walk the walk, it completely changes the level of leadership that you have when you’re communicating with potential clients.

It makes it much more likely that someone’s gonna sign up to work with you. Not only that, but it’s gonna make it so much easier to run your business because trying to do this alone and trying to figure this all out yourself is one of the, the easiest ways to get stuck. It’s not easy to build a business. It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. And so trying to do this alone is gonna make it much more likely to get frustrated and discouraged and don’t actually move forward. So don’t do it alone. Choose to invest in mentors and resources and support and get some really good people around you who can help you on this journey. That’s one of the best ways to succeed. The seventh mindset block that holds so many coaches back is the belief of, I don’t feel ready. A lot of people have this belief that they need to feel ready in order to do something.

In other words, if you don’t feel ready to start your coaching business, maybe you’re not gonna want to do it. My experience, it doesn’t work like this. Of course, you’re not gonna feel ready. You’re doing something completely new and the way that you’ve been operating up until this moment, there’s a lot of momentum behind that. And so you’re not gonna wake up one morning and just suddenly feel like, oh my God, I feel ready to start now. No, no, no, no, it doesn’t work like this. The most successful coaches that I work with, they don’t wait to feel ready to start. They recognize that they feel ready by doing the thing that in the early days when you’re just getting started, you’re not gonna feel ready at all. Everything’s gonna feel super uncomfortable. It’s gonna feel like you’re putting on a suit that doesn’t quite fit yet.

As you put yourself out there, as you start coaching, as you start getting clients over time, you start to feel more comfortable with that process and it becomes easier and easier and more intuitive, and you start to feel ready. But that comes as a result of doing the thing. It doesn’t come for waiting for the moment where suddenly you just wake up in the morning and say, I feel ready to do this. So the most successful coaches don’t wait to feel ready. They decide that it’s the right time today, and they make the commitment, they take the action, and over time they start to feel ready as a result of moving forward. Number eight is the belief that it’s not possible for you to create success because of some reason. Now, there’s a a million different things that you can put in this box here, and I hear all these things all the time from so many people.

I don’t think it’s possible for me to be successful as a coach because I’m an introvert and I have this idea that in order to succeed as a coach, I need to be this like outgoing Tony Robbins type person. By the way, I’m an introvert as well. So not true. I don’t think it’s possible for me to be a coach, uh, because I don’t have any marketing skills or experience. My partner, Kimberly, when she first started her coaching business, she was a social worker and she had never done any marketing before. She wasn’t like a marketing wizard or anything like that. She made $60,000 and a little over her first year. This is someone who had no business background. So there’s plenty of people out there who are successful, who are not entrepreneurial, who don’t have an entrepreneur background, who are learning these skills and succeeding.

So let’s call it a spade, a spade. What, what is all this resistance? What it really is is that part of your mind that’s trying to keep you safe. It’s not that those voices aren’t gonna be there, it’s not that those excuses aren’t gonna be there, but you can move forward in the midst of them. They don’t have to go away. They can be along for the ride. They’re just voices. They have no power. They’re neutral. It’s what we make them mean and what we do with them that ultimately determines whether or not we succeed. Ninth big mindset block is the belief that you need clarity in order to move forward in your business. Hear this a lot from new coaches. I don’t know what my niche is. I don’t know what my messaging is, I don’t know what my offer is. I’m not sure about these things.

And oftentimes new coaches have this belief that in order to move forward, in order to start putting yourself out there, you need to feel clear. You need to know what those things are. You need to feel certain that you’ve got the right answers. This is not true. This is not how building a business works. In the early days as a coach, you’re gonna feel unclear about a lot of things. You’re not gonna know what your niche is, you’re not gonna know what your messaging is. You’re not gonna know if you have an offer in the early stage that people really want. The truth is you’re gonna feel unclear about a lot of things, and that lack of clarity is not a reason to not take action and not to put yourself out there. As a matter of fact, the exact opposite is true, which is the only way that you get to clarity in your coaching business is by putting half-baked things out into the world and getting feedback and learning over time.

Oh wow, when I use these words, people seem to really pay attention. People seem to be booking calls. Well, okay, I should probably use those words more, putting out an offer into the world, which I’ve done before that maybe you’re not sure if it’s, it’s gonna work and maybe it flops. But that failure gives you insight. You know, okay, well, people don’t seem to really be interested in buying this. So let me go back to the drawing part and figure out and do some market research and figure out what people really do want. This process is messy and it’s hard to do because most of us are conditioned to feel like in order to show up, in order to put things out into the world, we need to have 100% clarity. It needs to be perfect. I mean, just think about it. When you were a kid and you went to school and you took English class and there was an assignment to write an essay, you probably wrote the first draft, and then you wrote the second draft, and then you wrote the third draft and you polished it up and you made sure there were no spelling errors and everything was perfect.

And then finally, when you were a hundred percent certain that everything was right, you turned it in and you got a grade. This is how most of us are trained to think about work. We do the thing, we perfect the thing, we make it perfect, and then we ship it. This is probably one of the biggest things that will keep you stuck as a coach. See so many coaches out there trying to perfect the thing before they put it out there. Mm-hmm. We don’t wanna do this. Instead, the opposite is true. Put the half baked thing out in the world. Recognize that in the early days as a coach, your biggest job is to just get feedback. It’s to put things out to see what people respond to, what people like, what people don’t, what people pay for, what people don’t. And you do that through putting things out into the world, not overthinking it, not trying to make it perfect.

And over time, that’s how you get to clarity. That’s the fastest way to get to clarity. And the 10th big belief that holds so many coaches back is the belief of I’m waiting for the right time. Now, this can take lots of different forms. There’s lots of different reasons you might feel like now is not the right time to launch your coaching business. Maybe you’re busy at work, you’re working on a new project, maybe you’ve got, you know, priorities in your family. There’s just other things going on in your life that make it more difficult to be able to focus on these things, and I totally appreciate that. You know, we’ve, we’ve all got a lot going on in our lives. When I was in my early twenties, I was diagnosed with cancer and I went through several years of treatment and a, a relapse and a bone marrow transplant.

And there was a period of a couple years where I wasn’t sure how long I was gonna be on this planet, and that was, you know, one of the hardest experiences of my life. But what I walked away with from that experience, and I still carry with me today, is the belief that I am not guaranteed tomorrow. Like chances are, you probably walk around like I do most of the time, believing that we’re just gonna live forever. And that’s a normal thought to have, but it’s not always true. If there’s one thing I really walked away with and I walked away with so many things from that experience, one belief that’s really helped me in my business is just feeling connected to my own sense of mortality. And that idea that I don’t necessarily have tomorrow, that it’s not a given, and that’s allowed me to be bolder and to take bigger risks and to really lean into taking action rather than having my dreams and the things that I really want on the back burner and just continuing to accept the status quo and going through the motions.

Even though I know in my heart I’m meant for more. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to someone who says, you know what, now is the perfect time to do this. I have more than enough time to be able to focus on this. No other priorities in my life. Most of the people that I talk to who join our programs are like, yeah, you know, lot’s going on right now, but I, I decided, I made the commitment that this is something that was important to me, that this is something that I’m going to prioritize because it matters to me, and I’m gonna create the time. I’m gonna make the time because I recognize there’s no better time than now, and I’m not necessarily guaranteed tomorrow. So hopefully these 10 mindset shifts were illuminating for you. And being able to just be aware of these patterns of thought that might be holding you back is going to make it so much easier to move through the coaching journey and to overcome the barriers and blocks that hold so many coaches back from just getting started, from being able to attract clients and ultimately from building a really successful business that allows them to impact the lives of so many other people.

Now, as I mentioned earlier on in the video, the mindset shifts that we covered in this video is super important to your success. But when it comes to getting coaching clients, there are some other key pieces you need to have in place in your business as well. Otherwise, it’s, it’s pretty difficult, even if you’ve got the mindset in place to be able to attract clients consistently. So if you wanna know what those keys are, I put together that free client attraction guide. I’d love to share it with you. Walk through a four step roadmap that you can apply to your coaching business to start attracting 2, 3, 4 high paying clients month after month after month, completely free. If you’re interested in checking that out, you can click the link above or in the description down below and go download that right now. Now, before you go, leave a comment down below and let me know of the 10 mindset shifts that we talked about in this video, was there one that really stood out to you, one that really resonated for you, that you heard it and you were like, oh, yeah, that’s something that I really feel like I could work on, or in shifting that, that would really make a difference for me.

I’d love to hear your thoughts down below. So leave a comment down below. We’ve got so many awesome videos to come on this channel, so if you’re interested in more tips and tricks and guidance and advice to help you in your coaching business, subscribe down below. And I believe in you 1000%. You have something so important to give and share as a coach. So keep showing up, keep doing the work, and I’ll see you in the next video.