My Journey from 9-5 to Full-Time Coaching

In every entrepreneur's journey, there comes a pivotal moment when the familiar ground of a stable career gives way to the thrilling yet daunting path of coaching. 

For me, that moment arrived amidst a family emergency while tied to the confines of a pharmacy job. 

I leaped full-time coaching, and this episode delves into the raw emotions and mindset shifts that accompanied that decision.

In this episode, I talked about THAT breaking point

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--------------------- Who Is Michelle Kuei ---------------------
Hey There! I’m Michelle! Your Visibility Marketing Coach, content and Email Marketing Strategist, Motivational Speaker, Author (…And soon to be your new business bestie!)

I help female coaches to simplify marketing so they can get seen, get heard, and get paying clients (..even if you work a full-time job!)

My job as your coach is to:

• Help you build a one-of-a-kind personal coaching brand with you so your business stands out and position you to be the authority within your coaching niche.

• Teach you how to develop marketing strategies that is aligned with your vision and value with the RIGHT brand messaging to attract your dream paying clients.

• Develop a simple and easy way to market your coaching business without being overwhelmed and burnout.

• Help you develop a course and membership...

Chapters

• 0:03 Building a Coaching Business
• 6:04 Building a Profitable Coaching Business
• 18:09 Building a Profitable Coaching Business

Transcript

Michelle: 0:03

Hey, you're listening to Make it Visible Podcast. I'm your host, michelle Kui. I am a visibility marketing coach and soon to be your business bestie in the coaching business world. Not knowing how to connect with your audience, grab people's attention and get them excited to buy from you should never be the reason you give up on your dream to become a full-time coach. I'm all about making marketing the easiest part of your coaching business, so that you can turn a passion for coaching into a visible and profitable reality. So buckle up, ladies, let's get started.

Michelle: 0:39

I thought this week we're going to do something a little different. I think in the previous videos and also podcast episode, I've been talking a lot about the how-to, the strategies and the system that you could use and how do you create content and how do you get paying clients, but I hardly ever talk about this mindset issues that a lot of entrepreneurs, including myself, struggle with when we first started our coaching business or started our business period, and so this is a story that I have shared a couple of days ago with my community member, where I was telling them about this incident I had when I was still working full time inside a pharmacy in the basement of a hospital, and I remember my breaking point was one day I was at work and I remember getting an emergency phone call from my family. It was my mom, and she called during the workday and it was a very hectic day. Usually we have like sometimes up and low and some days are great, other days are just really busy, and that was one of the day where it was really hectic. So I answered, I picked up the phone call because it was from my mom. Naturally, I've had to pick up the phone. When your mother call, you be sure to pick up the phone right. That's what we all know. So I picked up the phone and it was really hectic, and so she was saying that something's wrong with my dad and he needed to go to the hospital. But I'm the only person who's locally and my parents live with me, and so I was the only person who was available and local to them. She called me and I need to make the arrangement.

Michelle: 2:29

But then on that day, in that moment when I was on the phone call, my boss walked in and she saw me on the phone during the workday in the middle of the day, and so she had this look on her face and I knew that. Okay, so she doesn't like me on the phone. So let me go to the break room to handle this personal issue. I walked to the break room and she followed me to the break room giving me the lecture of how I was not supposed to pick up that personal phone call during the work hour. And that, to me, was the breaking point in terms of how much desperate that I was wanting to be my own CEO, to be my own boss, to have my own business, to call the shots, to have the freedom of time, to have the freedom of choice of handling personal family issues. And that moment I decided that I wanted to leap into building my full-time coaching business.

Michelle: 3:34

There's a couple of different layers to the story, right? So from a human resource perspective, if you're watching this and you're from the human resource department, yes, I totally get it. There are some underlying ethical and moral issues there that when you're at work, you're on company time, you're not supposed to handling your personal matter, no matter what it is. But then there's also part of me, because we all have these set of different values and family is definitely one of my high priority in terms of value. If you're a coach, you're a life coach, you're a mindset coach. You will probably work with your clients on this too, is that when our values are out of alignment, then chances are there's something is just not right, and so either you move on or you come to a conflict resolution where you can compromise and you can work together resolving this issue.

Michelle: 4:29

But I was at that point where it was multiple things that had happened that led to that moment of breaking point, and so for me, when I made that decision of, okay, this is not something that's serving me, this is not the relationship that I want right, it's a work relationship, but it's not the relationship I want. So I made a decision to transition into full-time coaching business and, just like you, I started out by not knowing who my avatars are and I had no idea where to find them, and one of the biggest struggle that I had was time, time and the availability of where I can connect with other business owner to get the referral to build that relationship. And we all know that building relationship takes time. Right, and time was just something that I didn't have. It was a luxury to me. I had this full-time job at work, and then I'm trying to build this as into a full-time coaching business. And it's tough, I'm not gonna lie. It's tough, right, it does take work. It does take strong mindset in order to make this happen, but it can happen. And so I share this story with my communities because I see you, I am someone who was in a complete different career and I was trying to get out of it, and the reason why I was trying to get out of it was because it was not inspiring.

Michelle: 6:04

The value is not aligned. The mission that we out of it was because it was not inspiring. The value is not aligned. The mission that we have about the future, it's not matching. And so I was trying to get out of it.

Michelle: 6:13

But what could I get into? And if you're in the spot where you don't see the future of how is it possible for you to have a full-time coaching business because you haven't been able to get any paying client? I'm here to tell you that it is possible and there's a smarter way of doing this. And am I saying that it's going to be like no work involved? No, I'm not saying that it's not going to involve any work. It does take work, but it also takes strategy of how you can shorten that amount of time, of how you get there, and this is something that I have learned. Everything that you are currently doing, I have done it, I've tried it, I have probably failed multiple times and finally finding a way and the person, the mentors, whom I need to connect with in order to know, like, what I did wrong, right.

Michelle: 7:11

So a lot of you are probably trying to put a workshop together or webinar together or you're trying to get a vendor spot put it together. You want to go ahead and order those banner. It costs you like $79 and you're probably going to only use it once and you never see it again because it's just not very effective. And not to mention a lot of these vendor spots, right, when you go to a flea market, when you go to a farmer's market, when you go to a networking conference and they offer you a space where you can talk about your business, you put that effort all into work and the money that you spend in order to reserve and sponsor that spot. The return of investment is totally not worth it. And that's what I have learned that a lot of these efforts I totally get it. It does take time to build your business.

Michelle: 8:03

But then the amount of time, amount of money that I had spent and the energy that I had put in to actually put it together with this event and trying to look professional and putting my webinar together so that everything is perfect to the T, but at the end of the day, it wasn't working. A lot of things that I had done I know now that why it's not working, but back then I was just feeling really, really discouraged, and so it took me years upon years to trying to find out, like, exactly what are the steps in order to launch a successful webinar, in order to launch a masterclass, in order to put yourself on social media, in order for the content to resonate with your ideal clients, in order for them to actually want to talk back to you. And that has been the biggest challenge, right? A lot of you are probably out there. You're already creating content, you're already posting on social media, you're already creating videos and you're already overcoming that fear of turning on your camera and just shooting that first 30 second video and put it out there. You're probably doing a lot of these things, but there's missing steps and there's holes within this big picture of how you get paying client on social media. So you're putting a lot of work but at the end of the day, it's taking you twice amount of time in order to build that coaching business. And again, I'm not saying that it's going to be like, oh, you don't do any work, you just sit back and then the client is going to come and find you. I'm saying that it's going to be like, oh, you don't do any work, you just sit back and then the client is going to come and find you. I'm saying that you do have to put in the work, but when you put in the work, you want every piece of your content doing the heavy lifting for you. You want every piece of video that you put out. It's leading people to somewhere and in order to show you all that.

Michelle: 10:03

That was the reason why I created the Profitable Coach Formula. I walked through and mapped out step-by-step, from not knowing who your ideal client is to knowing who they are, knowing how to talk to them, knowing where to find them. And we're putting together this package so that it is compelling and irresistible enough that, the moment that you put it on social media, people would be interested to learn more about what is it that you have to offer and in order to tie the oh I have this, I help statement to oh, I have this great offer, do you want it? In order to combine these two together and being able to describe it. There's a lot go into it and it took me five years to finally figure this out right, and I do have coaches who's behind me and mentor coaches who are helping me to knowing all the steps. What I'm saying is you might need someone like I have someone else for me, because that amount of time that you save in order to get to that full-time coaching business it means so much, right. It translates so much into the money that you would be able to generate the time and commitment that's finally getting paid off and that dream of you know what that full-time job was not serving me. And this is what I want and this is the lifestyle that I want that period of time where you finally decided you know what this is my full-time coaching business. I want to go into it to the time where you feel comfortable and you know that you have a system that you can rinse and reply. That is what I'm trying to help you with. That is what Offerable Coach Formula is going to help you to do. It's going to be able to. I spent five years to figure this out, to have a system, to actually have the entire system closed in a loop, right, so there's no leak everywhere. It took me five years to build it, and what I'm saying here is you don't have to spend five years to build this, and that, to me, means a lot. Maybe it took me a year or two in order to make that four figure. It might not take you for two years or longer to finally build that four figure a month. And so I look at a lot of things, whether it's online.

Michelle: 12:31

In our industry, in the coaching business industry, there's two things that you can do.

Michelle: 12:37

One is you can do this yourself. You can figure it out yourself and you can spend the time right. You invest the time that you're going to need and to overcome that learning curve. Eventually you're going to get there. You can go onto YouTube. You can Google all these information, because there's a lot of us who's creating content to reach to our audience, and we're doing this freely. We're doing this like this is me providing value to you.

Michelle: 13:02

You can spend your time doing that on your own or you can work with someone who have already done it, who have the system, who can show you how to get there, and you do it with less amount of time. So you're trading time with money, money with time, and time and money is something that usually don't have a lot of right. So you either don't have the money, then you're mentor coach, and so what I did was I was trading my time for the money, right? So I end up going to Google. I do a lot of like research and digging and, okay, so this is what's working, let me try that. And then, once I start figuring out, okay, so this is working, then let me do more of that. And so it took me five years to do that and I did my own research, and so you can probably do the same when you don't have that amount of money to hire or work with someone. Now, on the other hand, if you like to get there faster, if you like to have the system and having someone to show you, then you're trading the money for the time or the time for the money. You know one way or the other. Essentially, that's what we all do and a lot of these successful mentors and coaches and people, celebrities that you see, we did the same thing right, so you can research on your own or you can have someone else show you and how to do it.

Michelle: 14:42

But what I'm getting at is that we all have dreams and there's a lot of things that's going to come up, and this is where we're going back to that mindset work right. So when you're an entrepreneur, when you're starting out this coaching business, it's going to be like constant mental stress and also stretches. So you do have to stretch yourself in order to get out of the comfort zone, to want something that you may not believe that you are capable of, but just like a rubber band. So when we stretch, it goes, it's bigger and bigger. And that's where the resilience comes in. Right, you want to be able to stretch yourself and being able to recoil and reset and stretch again, and so that whole resilience mindset is really important as an entrepreneur and to really assess and think about what is it that I truly want?

Michelle: 15:41

And back then and this goes back to the story that I shared originally back then I knew that I don't want that. I did not want that kind of lifestyle where I don't have the freedom and time and money to do what I want to do to pick up a personal phone call during the workday and being able to be there for my family when they need me. That was not the lifestyle that I wanted. I didn't want to look at someone else's face and then say, oh, you are allowed to do this, you are not allowed to do this, including having that family value as part of my priority. I did not want that kind of life. What I wanted was being able to be in the driver's seat, being able to determine do I want to answer this phone call during a busy, hectic working day, and this is the lifestyle that I chose.

Michelle: 16:43

So my question to you this week is what is your preferred choice of lifestyle that you want to live? Are you happy with your full-time job and are you content that your coaching business is just something that's nice to have someday? If that's the choice that you're making, there's nothing wrong with that. You can go with it, right? That's just going to be something that I can have someday and I'm just going to wait and there's no urgency to build it, which is fine. It's your choice. But if you're someone who is ready to say today is my day one in my coaching business and not someday then.

Michelle: 17:26

This is my invitation to you, because this week I am opening the door to Profitable Coach Formula and the door will close at the end of the week. So this is my invitation to you Come inside to the Profitable Coach Formula. Let's take a look at who your ideal client is. How do you put that package together and how do you articulate this value through your online presence? How do you establish yourself to be the expert in your niche? How do you put all this together so that you get that consistent flow of paying client that you can replace your other full-time job?

Michelle: 18:09

And it does take time to build it. It takes work to do it. So, as you come in, you're going to have to do some work right, because, essentially, your coaching business is not going to build itself unless you show up and you do it. And so this is my invitation to you, and so, if you're interested, I'm going to share the link down in the description box below. I would love for you to down in the description box below. I would love for you to come in, take a look. Let me know if this is something that you see the value of and that you would like to make it part of your commitment for the remaining year 2024.

Michelle: 18:47

Again, the door to the Profitable Coach Formula is open this week and I'm going to share the link down below and you can check it out. Bye, thank you for listening. To Make it Visible podcast. If you love this episode and want deeper support for your coaching business, head over to elevatelifecoachingorg and see how we can partner together to turn your passion into a profitable business. I help female coaches launch and scale their coaching business faster than ever, without wasted time and money. Filling the gaps in your marketing strategies, creating a simple and easy to follow system so you can accelerate on the path of coaching business that you love to wake up to. Head over to ElevateLifeCoachingorg and grab a free strategy audit today.