#238: Should You Start Your Coaching Business While You’re Still in Training?

If you ever wonder...

When should you actually start building your coaching business?

In this episode, I’m breaking down why waiting until you finish certification could slow your visibility, delay your income, and keep you stuck longer than necessary.

Over the years, I’ve had countless new coaches ask me:

• Do I really need certification?
• When should I start marketing myself?
• What do I say when someone asks what I do?
• How do I build an audience if I’m just getting started?

If building your coaching business is on your list this year, this episode is for you.

Inside this episode:

✔ Do you really need certification?
 ✔ When should you begin marketing yourself?
 ✔ What do you say when someone asks what you do?
 ✔ How to build an audience before you’re “ready”
 ✔ The 3 actions every coach should take this week
 ✔ The biggest mistake beginners make when testing offers

If becoming a working coach is on your goal list this year, hit play.

🎁 Resources Mentioned

Free 7-Step Roadmap to Build Your Coaching Business & Get Clients
 👉 Get It Here

Want the referral email template I used to get early clients?
 Email me at: michelle@elevatelifecoaching.org

🎧 Coming Next

Next week: How to create a simple funnel as a beginner coach — so you always know where your next client is coming from.

Meet Your Host:

Hey, I’m Michelle — The coaches’ coach.

I'm a Business and Visibility marketing Coach who helps female life coaches build a coaching biz, get seen at all the right places, and attract paying clients.

I believe your coaching business should feel beautiful and profitable — without sacrificing your sanity, your weekends, or your personality.

Using my 7-Step Client Enrollment Method, I help you build a coaching business that clients can’t help but say, “OMG, that’s who I need!”

More clarity, more clients, more champagne moments. 🥂

Because building your dream business shouldn’t be a nightmare — it should feel like coming home.

🐦 SOCIAL STUFF:

Instagram ➔ / elevatelifecoach
Facebook ➔ / coachmichellekuei
Linkedin ➔ / michellekuei
Website ➔ http://elevatelifecoaching.org

Book a strategy call with Michelle ➔ http://coachwithclients.com/strategycall

Transcript

Welcome And Mission

Michelle Kuei 0:00

This week at Shelly Clocking to Work, we are going to fix how to build your coaching business while you are still in training and why this is something that you don't want to wait until you're done. Hey coach, welcome to Make It Visible Podcast. I'm Michelle Quay, your visibility marketing coach, and I help female life coaches to get seen in all the right places, attract happy paying clients, and build a coaching business that actually feels good to run. Even if you are still trying to figure things out. Each week I'm giving you visibility tips, simple marketing strategies, and showing you how to create the kind of content that connects with your audience so that you can stand out, build your authority, and attract clients who's already feeling like a yes before they jump onto your discovery call. So grab a notebook, pour yourself a favorite drink, and that's make your coaching business visible. Over the year I have clients approaching me and ask me, Well, Michelle, when should I start building my coaching business? And my honest answer is as soon as possible. If building your coaching business is on your list this year, then this episode is really for you. First, let's address some of the common questions that I get from the coaching community. Is coach certification required or even necessary? And the answer is yes. Maybe a few years ago, if you're not coach certified and you want to be a coach, not a problem, as long as you have the life experience and you know how to solve a problem, then chances are you don't need to go through the accreditation process. You don't need to have a fancy paper hanging on your wall to prove that you can help people solving your problem. If you have been doing this for many, many years up until this day, congratulations, kudos to you with the life experience that you were able to have up until this point. But if you are starting new and you have never coached before, this is a great time to actually enroll yourself or consider to enroll yourself in some type of ICF accredited program so that you can get yourself certified. And I say this because I see this as a trend. More and more people and shoppers, they're getting smarter and smarter. And because there's been so many scams, and people are really skeptical about what life coaches do and how life coaches can help someone to transform their life, there's so many scams out there, and your prospect is hesitating to actually sign up to a life coach because I have no idea of what I'm going to get myself into. Is this a scam? Is this another paramount skin? So before they invest in a life coach, chances are they have done some research and they want to know if this coach is certified, qualified, and what is their background education-wise. So if you are someone who's just starting out and you are getting into this coaching industry and you would like to go through the proper channel of the International Coach Federation regulation and the code of ethics, I highly encourage you to enroll yourself and go to the website of International Coach Federation and look for an accredited program that's out there so that you can get yourself certified. Yes, the certification doesn't guarantee anything. However, in a competitive market like this, you don't want to find yourself at a place where later on, for many years later, you're wondering if I need to go back and get myself certified. Because there's just so many certified accredited coaches out there in the market now. The second question I get very often is when should I start building my coaching business? As I said earlier, this is what I told my clients early, because to build a coaching business, you need several steps. And you need an audience of people who want what you have to offer. And in order to build that audience, it takes time. You might be sitting there and thinking, well, but Michelle, I just barely got into this coaching certification program. And all the people that I have on my social, I just my friends and family. Well, start inviting them to this journey with you. It's about building an audience who's excited, who want to be part of your journey, they're celebrating with you. You're going to need time in order to curate an audience who's there and who's going to be your super fan every time you have something to offer. The third question I get a lot is what should I say when I meet my first few prospects? If you are new and you are a coaching trainee, that question probably popped into your mind several times. What do I say to them? What if I say it wrong? What is that if don't sound very professional? What if there's so many? What if? I remember when I first started out on my life coaching business journey. Every time people ask me, what do you do? My first reaction was, I am a life coach. And I make it a period, a stop after the life coach. And usually it would spark curiosity, conversation that follows. And oftentimes I see coaches are just overthinking doing this. You just need to get out there and then start having casual conversation and introducing yourself as a coach. So exactly how do we fix all of this and how do you get started in building your coaching business? Now I broke it down into three simple steps. And if you do nothing else at all, these are the three steps that you should be working on this week. Step one is you want to prepare your people. Whether it's your friend and family circle or maybe it's your social media follower, if you can make a public announcement openly, that's say you work for a corporate job and you have a company and you have the HR and you don't want your work people know, then what you want to do is to reach out to people that you can trust and start letting them know to help you spread the word. And that could be your inner circle, a small group of people or individual that you feel comfortable in sharing this new endeavor. This is the beginning of your referral system that you can leverage even years to come. Getting other people to tell your story is much more effective than telling your own story. And the first thing that I did was I sent out an email to my trusted circle, all the people who I have been contact with in the past, and all I did was I told them that, hey, this is a new passion that I'm on, and here's what I'm looking for. And if you know someone or maybe yourself that fit this description, I would love to have a conversation with you. And from that simple email, I got responses back. I got friends who were sending other friends to me. So if you need a copy of that simple email, simply send me an email at Michelle at elevatelifecoaching.org and I will be more than happy to share that email with you. Step number two is to track your conversation. Listen to the commonality behind the people that you meet and the struggle that they're sharing with you. What is the common threat in your conversation? Are there things that you are just naturally good at solving and things that just come so easy for you? Let's say, for example, people feeling overwhelmed. There's a lot of people feeling overwhelmed nowadays, and you're just naturally good at creating a system, or maybe there's structure so that you can buy more free time for yourself and never feel chaotic. That could be your clue of the problem that you're helping people to solve when it comes to overwhelm. So maybe is step one, you calm yourself, sit yourself down and meditate, or doing a mantra, whatever that system that you have used and have worked for you, that would be your clue of the stuff that you can help other people to solve. So if you're someone who's struggling with identifying what is that problem that I'm solving for people, instead of going outwards, look inward, look at your own system and habit and daily routine because that is a great clue and starting point for you to put your simple package together. Step number three is you can test and try things out, but you want to make sure that you give it some time to get information back before you change it up again. One of the big mistakes that I made in my early coaching business journey is that I will create something, I would put it out into the world, and the week later I don't see any result, I wrap it up and put it away. But in reality, what you want to do is you want to give yourself 28 days as a deadline and test one thing at a time. If you want to create a workshop, great, create a workshop, but make sure that that is your priority for the next 30 days and talk about nothing else except that workshop. I see so many coaches jumping from one thing to another and never giving it enough time to see it works and what it needs to tweak, which is why I teach the client enrollment method because it's a step-by-step process and you don't jump around until you have one building block in place so that you can build upon the next building block. You need the audience, you need to know what they're asking from you, you need to create an offer for them, and you need to invite them to their future version so that by the time they hop onto the call, it's a question of yes or no, not a question of do you know what life coaching is? So this week you have a work order of taking one action step, pick one thing to do this upcoming week, whether it's making an announcement about your journey as a coach, uh, maybe it's this new identity that you're stepping into, start inviting friends and people to celebrate with you. And observe and start paying attention to the conversation that you're having and take notes of what's coming up and what's the common threat through these conversations. If you're going to offer something, make sure that you do that one thing and do it for the next 30 days. Notice what is working and what can be better, and take that as next step and not 300 different steps. This should take you about 10 to 20 minutes to decide what you want to do next and how you're going to implement. And here's what I want you to do in the action step. You're going to post three posts next week. One is your introduction post. The second one is a conversation that you had with someone related to coaching and how you're able to help that person address it. And the last post is about what you have to offer to give back this week. Maybe it's inviting your audience to hop on a discovery call with you or a clarity call with you, or maybe it's just a connection call so that you can have more referral in the future. And you want to do this today and repeat it three times this week. And that is the whole point. Now, if you're listening to this far, you're probably sitting there and also thinking, well, but Michelle, I don't know what to say. Yes, you do. Speak from the place of service, being a friend who cares about someone else. You don't need to sound like an expert, you just need to be helpful. And yes, typos and grammatical mistakes and even broken English like me is totally fine. You might also be sitting there and saying that, well, but I can't post on my social. I don't want my work to know I'm doing this. Then what you can do is start at a new place. Don't try to request your colleague. What you do off hour is what you do off hour. No one says that you have to build a coaching business on company hour. When there is a well, there's a way. If you need help brainstorming, what are some of the strategies that you can put yourself out there without letting your colleague or your workplace know? I got your back. Just send me an email at Michelle at elevatelifecoaching.org or simply drop it into the comment and I'll help you think of a few alternatives. And if you are my client enrollment method, I have a step-by-step roadmap for building your coaching business. There's a link in the description box below to get my free seven-step roadmap to build your coaching business and get clients. Next week, Shelly goes to work. We're going to fix how to create a simple funnel in your coaching business as a beginner. Because if your model is leaving no one behind, then this is the way to support everyone while making sure that you know where your next client is coming from. 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 elevate lifecoaching.org 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 wasting 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 elevate lifecoaching.org and grab a free strategy out of it today.