Ep #211: Dismantling Coach Shame

Hey friends. Welcome back. I hope you are enjoying all of this… creating something new, having the new identity, co-creating, ending cycles, decluttering the old so you can have something new. I feel like it’s kind of a series I’ve been along on. And I’m loving it because it’s where I’m at and my focus this year is on.

So, I like to kind of stay in line with that. I’m a little selfish about my podcast, but it’s also where my clients are, so, I hope y’all are getting a lot out of that. You know, the last thing I wanted to add about the ending cycles last week was in, in our business, in our organization specifically, is how I noticed it show up whenever I—when we moved into scaling.

So, you know, there’s growing, there’s launching your business. That’s when you are basically moving from the entrepreneur space into the full-time. And then growing is where you’ve, all right, you’ve figured it out. You’ve made that base, like I was talking about on the last show, where it’s 50 to 60, whatever it is, to get you out of the old position and into the new.

That is kind of that beginner part. And then the growth is when you multiply that. So, you can see those stages, right? First, it’s kind of messy, and then you finally hit that 50 or 60, and then we want to grow it to a hundred and beyond, and then scaling. And the reason I’m saying that is when we’re talking about ending cycles, you actually will not scale your business the same way that you grew it. And you won’t be the same person that grew it, that scales it because it takes a whole different perception to move from that.

So, it’s the same thing when—I’m going to correct myself. I don’t want to get off because I really, that’s not what today’s show is about. I just wanted to kind of bring that in from last week; the ending cycles and how it also shows up with the growing versus the scaling. Because that’s another place that you have to lose the old way of doing things. You cannot do business the same way in the growth phase, as you will in the scale phase. And that’s why a lot of this is coming up for me.

But today specifically, I want to talk about coach shame. This has been coming up a lot. Some people call it impostor syndrome. But let me tell you, I think it’s coach shame. It’s when someone decides to tell the world they are a coach. And I’m going to tell you why I think they have shame about it. Because new coaches often believe that they have to give advice. Like direction and advice.

And it actually—

Let me tell you what I think a coach is. A coach is going to give you a 360 view of someone’s life or someone’s world. So, think about the basketball coach that’s watching from the sidelines or the football coach. The plays are already predetermined, right? But what the coach does is help the players to see what else is going on the field that they can’t see.

And it’s the same thing with coaching clients. There’re things that they are doing habitually, subconsciously, unconsciously, that they don’t even know that they’re doing. And so, when you can give them the 360 view and show it, they can figure out exactly what to do next. So, we don’t want to give advice. I was doing some coaching last week; I think it was, and it was a lot of relationship stuff.

And some things, like, I wouldn’t have done personally, but that is not my job to tell my clients what I would or wouldn’t do. It’s theirs. I don’t know, ultimately, what they want, what their soul wants, what the big picture is.

And so, if you have coach shame… in other words, you are afraid to tell the world that you are a coach, you’re afraid to put it on social media. You are afraid to stand in the authority of coaching. It’s likely because you’re not quite sure what a coach does. And you might have the interpretation of, or I shouldn’t say, the interpretation—the assumption that you’re supposed to know more than your clients and that you’ve had to experience all that, whatever the thing is that they’re getting coaching on.

And that is clearly not true. You need a strategy, a system, a technique. You need to basically have an understanding, an underlying understanding. Like in my coaching, I do Advanced MindBody Coaching. I use the Punchline Approach. The Punchline Approach is a framework on how to create change.

So, clients come to me when they have a coaching certification. They have a lot of experience. Maybe their past career—most of my clients are coming from either medicine or massage therapy or a service-based industry. So, what I help them do is integrate their skill set and experience with this coaching process.

So, I help them plug it in so that they have a unique system that puts them in the authority of the product that they offer. So, with that said, that’s a part that I think is creating this shame. That you may have a misunderstanding. Whether it’s you hiring a coach or you being a coach, the bottom line, the framework that you keep coming back to is meant to empower the client to make decisions for themself.

We can’t decide that for them. We don’t know if they should move, or they should leave, or they should quit. We don’t know that. But what we can do is peel away the layers of chaos and confusion so that they can see exactly how to get to the goal. So that they can see what’s in the way. Does that make sense? I ask that every week as if y’all can answer me what?

But there are enough coaches that I hear who are stuck in this coach shame or this impostor syndrome that it was worth doing an episode on. So, this is what I want to tell you. If you are a coach or if you want to be a coach—and you do not have to be certified, but it would be great if you had some training and actually understood what a coach was. I am triple coach certified, by the way. Health coach, life coach, and business coach. I’m also a certified hypnotherapist, massage therapist, yoga, and meditation teacher, and I’ve had a gym for over 20 years. And I’ve been in business—I had tanning, and nails, and hair—for over 27 years ago.

And so, I integrated all of my experience from being successful in those businesses and created a framework to help other service-based or healing-focused entrepreneurs be successful also. So, the framework that I help them integrate and embody (I will say that’s a very important part), is so that they can feel confident as a coach and so that they can do their own work first. So that they can be clean and clear about what it is that they offer. Because otherwise, if you’ve got your own shit to heal, then you’re going to be projecting that into your clients, and then you’re going to try to give them advice or make assumptions about how you feel. It is your job and your duty to get your crap cleaned up first. That is why I have the 10-week Advanced Coach Intensive. It is for you to position yourself as a better qualified and trained coach.

So, that’s what I think could help you if you have coach shame, and you’re not feeling confident, and you don’t have a particular style or a process. You don’t even know, like, what to put in your packages or in what order to help your clients, then you might be interested in the Advanced Coach Training.

Because it’s going to help you integrate your certification, plus your specialty, in a unique five-step system that’s going to differentiate you in the market. So, maybe I’m putting a plug in today about why coaches should come through this. Matter of fact, if you’re a massage therapist and already seeing physical manifestation show up in your client’s body, and you know it’s not physical—that it is actually coming from their mental and emotional state—this would be ideal for you also.

Because then you can integrate coaching in your massage practice, and you can do a combination between body work, physical body work, and online work. It is a great bridge that takes you into retirement. Because as massage therapists, we already see the conditions of the body, and we already know where it’s coming from, and we know, physically, that we’re working on it, but it’s coming from an energetic or emotional level. So, that’s it. That’s what I want to bring home to you is if you have coach shame, it could be because you need more practice or you need more training, and there is no shame in that.

This is a skill set. It is a talent. It is a craft. And it needs to be practiced on a regular basis. So, if you have a coach certification and you have not been seeing clients, you have not been practicing, and you have not come up with a unique strategy or technique that you implement in your style of coaching according to your niche, then I want to invite you to the Advanced Coach Training.

You can send me an email at [email protected]. You can come into the More Than Mindset group and ask questions. You can meet other coaches who have gone through this program. They’re not all coaches. Some of them are massage therapists, physical therapists. We’ve got functional pharmacists that have gone through this process because it helps them understand the way the mind and the body work.

The brain is the most powerful organ in our body, and we don’t know how to run it. We don’t know how to use it. We don’t understand the science behind what’s actually happening and why we have physical conditions in the body. And so, that is, if you go back and listen to the podcast, that’s called The Cycle of Transformation.

I talk about it in there, like, exactly what happens on a physical level, in a relationship level, on an emotional level, as well as financially. These are things that come up when people are making big changes in their life. It will show up in the physical body. And then we misinterpret it, or the mind misinterprets what’s going on, tries to make a story of it, and keeps us stuck in a loop.

So, if you are working with clients, and you keep going round and round, almost arguing with them about the same thing and they are not getting change, consider coming to the Advanced Coach Training, I really think it’s going to help you. We have done a couple of rounds of this in the last… We’ve done two rounds since the end of last year. And this next one, we will be doing some live in-person integration.

So, I think that is where the magic is. To be all-day-long immersed in the actual work and practicing it, and then extending it into the online forum. Because it’s just not enough for you to feel clear, and confident, and to come up with your actual strategy, and technique, and process by doing an hour or a call a week.

So, I want to invite you to that. If you’re a coach, or if you’re considering becoming a coach, this is for you. And also, if you’ve been doing personal development work and you want this for yourself and your family, we have had a few people that have come through it for that. But just so you know, it is very advanced.

It is very intense. I’ve called it a 10-week intensive for a reason. So, no more coach shame. Take responsibility and get your butt trained. Get some practice. Put yourself in a community with other people who are getting better at it. You will not just eliminate the coach shame. You’ve got to actually change things.

So, first you have to recognize that it’s happening and then you have to understand it so that you can unlearn the old habits and behavior the way that we were basically trained or brought up to be, like, solving other people’s problems. You’ve got to unlearn all that crap. You’ve got to do your own work. You’ve got to get this, whatever’s going on in your body, your unresolved traumas and stuff. You’ve got to get that cleaned up.

You’ve got to get it integrated so that you can stand in a very clean space when you’re working with clients, and you don’t take this stuff personal, and you don’t give them advice, and you don’t try to fix them, and you don’t feel sorry for them.

Guys, this is really, really important. And then you have to have the new way to do it. You have to pivot from the old habit and behavior of the giving advice and telling people what to do and learn how to be their guide so that you can show them, and then help them make empowered decisions for themselves. So, no more coach shame. Stop it. Take responsibility. Quit procrastinating, by the way.

It’s because you’re trying to be perfect, but it’s actually you just procrastinating because you don’t feel confident. But again, you’re not taking the actions in order for you to feel confident. And that looks like practice, practice, practice. And get the training that you need. Because you want to be responsible. For God’s sakes, you’re working with people’s lives. You’re working with their minds,

And I have seen a lot of coaching trauma. Matter of fact, the majority of my clients were coming from a master coach certification, and it was to resolve the trauma and to get over the PTSD from that program, from that experience.

This is serious stuff. But still have fun and play. That’s what I got for you. If you have coach shame, take responsibility so that you can release it so that you can become empowered, so you can help people, so you can create impact, and you can break generational cycles. That’s the beauty of the Advanced MindBody Coach Training is when we can identify what’s going on in the body. And that takes us right to the root cause so that we can dismantle it and help them create permanent change.

Not just change in their thoughts. Matter of fact, I don’t think thoughts are a problem. Thinking our thoughts is the problem. Thoughts? Thoughts are just thoughts. They’re irrelevant. They’re just sentences that come out of your brain. This work, the advanced coaching, understanding the mind body, understanding the way your brain and your mind works, understanding physical manifestations that are showing up, showing up in the body and how they’re playing out as triggers, and that’s what’s breaking—

Like, so much of what’s happening in relationships is coming from those triggers. And then, them not having the tools and the skills to communicate better. You can help people with this. You can break generational cycles. You can end all of this miscommunication and misinformation and create an impact in the world. And it starts with you and your family. And then it bleeds into your clients.

But you’ve got to get yourself taken care of first. All right. Have a great week. Send me an email if you’re interested to know when the next one’s going to be.

Thanks for listening to this episode of More Than Mindset.