Wendy McCallum (00:02.126)
Hello, welcome back to the Coaching Edge podcast. I am your host, Wendy McCallum. And today we're gonna talk about what you actually need to have in place to launch your coaching business and what you don't. And this is actually a really important topic. So this is obviously for the newer coaches out there. I think if you're in the first year of your business, this is a good episode to listen to.
even if you've already started seeing clients, there are probably going to be a few things in this that you haven't got in place that you're going to want to get in place. And I think also the conversation around what you actually don't need to start building your business is probably going to help you let yourself off the hook. And then just for anybody who's listening to this, even if you have been coaching for a while, I think you're going to find that the conversation around what I refer to as shiny object drain.
which is that thing that keeps us very stuck and out of action in our business is going to be generally applicable and helpful to any coaches listening to this podcast. what we're going to do is we're going to talk about the very common trap that a lot of newer coaches find themselves in. Sometimes it lasts for months, sometimes it lasts for years. And I honestly believe this is one of the biggest reasons why 82 % of coaching businesses fail in the first
couple of years. Coaches spend months or years in this sort of pre-launch limbo place where they are pouring time, energy and money into the wrong things and avoiding the real and sometimes less glamorous steps that will actually get them clients. And as I said earlier, I think what we're going to talk about in this episode is going to be helpful for anybody who is in the first few years of their business. But this is really specifically targeted at
coaches who are trying to get things going, but just can't. So maybe they've technically launched, but they're not making any money, or maybe you're just avoiding like actually getting out there and owning the fact that you are now a professional coach for hire. I wanna talk today about this shiny object drain that I just hinted at, which, or shiny object syndrome you might hear it referred to, which is like.
Wendy McCallum (02:22.466)
that pull that we feel towards pretty, exciting, kind of safe projects. You guys know what I mean by these, that feel productive, but they don't actually move your business forward. Things like a really pretty website or a beautiful logo, brand colors, getting caught up in stuff that, as we're gonna talk about in a second, actually does not matter at all in the early days of building a business. So when we get sort of,
stuck on these sparkly, pretty parts of building a business, it's often to our detriment. I'm going to talk today about 10 specific things you do need to launch, you need to have in place or you need to have done to launch a business as a coach and 10 things that you don't.
And knowing the difference between these things is going to not only save you time and money, it's going to save you a lot of stress and a lot of the sort of the overwhelm that can keep coaches out of profit. So we're going to.
cover 10 things on either side. Now, obviously I can't cover everything in this half an hour podcast, but I am going to cover 10 key things that you do need to have in place and 10 key things that you do not need to have in place. The coaches often feel like they have to get sorted and that keep them from actually getting out there and starting to charge for their services and make some money. If you don't make any money, you can't stay in business.
So the goal when you're launching is to get as quickly as possible, get to a place where you can actually start charging and also be focusing on the things that are gonna help you create a sustainable stream of revenue as quickly as possible. And of course, this is the stuff that we focus on in my BBB, which is my business building bootcamp for coaches. You've probably heard me talk about it before. It's my one year signature program. It's where I suggest all coaches start.
Wendy McCallum (04:20.277)
It is for newer coaches, so coaches generally in the first five years or so of building a business. We often have coaches who come in who have not launched yet, who are still in training or certification. That's a great time to join. But we also have lots of coaches come in after they've been going it alone for a little while and they're just not getting the traction and making the money that they were hoping that they would make. We are really in that BBB focusing always.
on getting stuff done. It's all about taking action. It's all about very specific strategies and very detailed support and resources so that you can actually get stuff done. And a lot of stuff, the stuff that we're talking about inside the BBB are some of the things on that list of things that you really want to have in place before you launch your coaching business. So let's get into that. What are, what are,
10 things that you actually need to start a coaching business. Now, before we get into this, I just want to remind you that I have a free resource called the Launch Checklist that is available to anybody. And I recommend very highly that if you're a podcast listener and you have not downloaded this yet, that you go get this. Whether you are, you know, in certification and training right now, or you're actually in process of launching, or you have already launched.
go and get this free resource because it is a great checklist and you wanna make sure that you have all of these things done. And oftentimes when people come into the BBB and have been running businesses for a while, they start with that, I always recommend everybody starts with the launch module. They go and look at the launch checklist, which is exactly the same as the one that I give out for free. And they find that they have not actually done some of the steps on that checklist. So.
Before you do anything, go and grab that checklist. You can get it at wendymichalem.com forward slash launch hyphen fundamentals hyphen checklist. I will put that link in the show notes as well. Okay, so some of the things on that launch checklist are obviously gonna be in this list of 10 things you need to do before you start your business. But I'm also gonna include some other stuff. So the first thing is you need basic business setup. So what I mean by this is,
Wendy McCallum (06:34.625)
You need a business name and I do recommend you register your business. I am obviously no longer a practicing lawyer, but I have lots of experience in law, having practiced law for 12 years. And while I don't give legal advice on this podcast or in the business building bootcamp, I do give a lot of business advice that is based on some of my experiences as a lawyer. And I really recommend that you strongly consider.
separating your business legally from your personal income. So you actually register your business and you create a bank account for your business that is separate from your personal account where you can collect money and where you can pay your business expenses from. And I also recommend you purchase a domain. Now what you do not need is a fancy business name. In fact I strongly recommend against it for new coaches. I recommend you use your actual name
and maybe the word coach or coaching and you look for that domain. So for example, wendymcallum.com is my domain. That is my website and I am Wendy McCallum coaching. I wasn't always Wendy McCallum coaching for a long time. I was simple balance consulting, LTD, simple balance consulting. Felt like the right name for my company when I started. I was doing wellness work, really focused on.
keeping things easy and simple for busy people and helping people achieve balance. So it seemed like the right name, but it was restrictive. It put me in a niche. My niche changed. That was no longer the right name for me. And at some point it became really clear to me that the easiest thing for me to do was just to be Wendy McCallum coaching. And so I went and purchased that domain and switched everything over. I would love it if you didn't have to go through that process. And so what I always recommend for my coaches now
is start with your name. If you don't already have a business name and a brand set up that is different from your name, just use your name because especially when you're starting out, you are not going to know your niche yet. You might think you know your niche, but I guarantee you it's going to shift and change. WendyMcCallum.com is super flexible for me. It allows me to do coaching work in all different areas. So as you know, probably as a listener, I do business coaching for coaches.
Wendy McCallum (08:55.713)
but I also still do some personal coaching. love coaching professional women through transition. I love supporting people in making big changes in their relationship to alcohol. So the name of my business allows me to do all of those things very easily. I save my fancy names for my programs and I use those to describe my niche specific programs that I offer. So again, I would recommend that you just stick with your
with your name right now and go and look if that domain is available. If you have a name like John Smith, johnsmith.com will be taken, but you might be able to get John Smith Coaching or John Smith Coach or Coaching with John Smith or something like that. And that's what I suggest you do. so basic business setup involves registering your business, whatever that looks like in your jurisdiction where you are, getting a separate bank account for your business,
Very important to keep the things separate, makes it much easier for bookkeeping, makes it much clearer for taxes and all the things. And then purchase a domain. The next thing you need is an email address that is separate from your personal email address. And this is important because it really adds to credibility and professionalism from day one. So my address is wendy at wendymichellum.com.
I'm not offering up my personal email address as my email address. I keep those things separate and I recommend you do as well. So get yourself a separate email address. Use that only for things related to work. Basic branding. mean, keep it so basic in the beginning. In order for you to get out there and start coaching, you really don't need to have nailed down your brand colors and your fonts and
have a fancy logo, that stuff is gonna cost you a lot of money, that's unnecessary. And like I said, your niche is probably gonna shift too. And with your niche shifting, you might shift your brand. And so the colors that you thought were the colors that were the right colors for your website when you were starting out doing, coaching college age women.
Wendy McCallum (11:11.789)
Well, it might not be the right colors anymore when you shift your niche, you know, four years later to working with, you know, women in menopause or something else. Anyway, you don't need to spend a lot of time or money on brand stuff. This is one place I think where people get that shiny object syndrome comes in. People spend months spinning their wheels on colors and brands and logos and all of that. And I just recommend you forget about all of that.
You can go find a brand palette really easily. There are a bunch of different websites that help you come up with a brand palette. Maybe need four different colors. need make it something that like feels in alignment with who you are and your values and your, you know, what you know to be sort of your general niche now. But you don't have to nail it right out of the gate. And you definitely don't want to be spending a lot of money on this before you launch. It is just not worth it. You can always change the colors on your website. That's so easy to do.
So you just want something that you pick that is consistent, that has a simple look and feel that you can get started with. Don't spend $5,000 on a brand package. That's my strong advice. You need a booking system, so you need some way to organize your clients and schedule your clients. And you can do that through an online calendar. That's the best way to do it, either calendly or acuity.com. Those are great places to start. You're gonna need to pay for those probably.
And then you're to want to set up like a discovery call appointment. So, or a sales call, whatever you want to call it, that initial call that you do, you're going to want to set that up so that you have a link to book that appointment that you can then put on your website or offer up to people who are interested in working with you. So you don't need to go through all
of the steps of creating like a really fancy calendar at this point, but you do need at the very minimum an appointment type set up for that very first call. And you probably want to set up another appointment type for however long your sessions are going to be, like an hour long appointment so that it's easy for you once you have booked a client to actually get them booked into your calendar for their first session.
Wendy McCallum (13:31.915)
Lots and bells, lots and bells, lots of bells and whistles on a booking calendar that you can add, including things like intake questionnaires and you know, all of that stuff. But in the beginning, you don't need that. You can just keep it super simple. Create an appointment type for that very first call, the discovery call that usually would be the complimentary call. And then also for maybe like the one hour appointment or the 45 minute coaching session, depending on how long you plan to coach to coach. You'll need some kind of a payment process or so way to get paid.
So for most coaches, they end up eventually working with like a Stripe type platform and or like PayPal or something like that. In the early days, depending on how you're working and what clients you're working with, you may be able to get away with an email transfer to your business bank account for a while, but eventually you're gonna wanna connect with a payment processor of some sort that allows you to collect payment online.
And my recommendation is that you take a look at Stripe and you take a look at setting up a business PayPal account. You're also going to need a client contract. We spend so much time talking about client contracts inside the BBB. I provide a template of one that I use and, you know, there are all kinds of different ways to do client contracts. I tend to include all the things that I think are going to be contentious or potentially contentious so that I have a record of
an agreement between me and the client around those contentious things should they become contentious. Now, I think if you do your job right, you practice within scope, you show up as an excellent coach, that the chances of you needing to go back to a contract ever are very low. And for me, I'm not sure it's ever happened actually that I've had to go back to a contract with anyone. But it is important to have a contract where you cover things like, you know,
refunds and some you can put really anything that feels relevant and important to you can go into a contract. There are lots of different clauses that I recommend. And again, that's all stuff that we talk about in the BBB, but you do need some form of a client contract that protects you and your clients and clearly outlines the terms and scope of the coaching. You need, this is number seven we're on now guys, you need a basic website presence and by basic,
Wendy McCallum (15:59.019)
I mean, basic. This is another place where shiny object syndrome comes in to play and people get stuck for months and months and months working on designing this perfect website. They are not telling anybody that they're coaching. They're not out there trying to get clients. They're just waiting for their website to get done. And I am going to recommend that when you start, you start with a one page website. It's all you need is a place where people can find you online. That's it.
So start with a one page simple website, a home plate page with some information about who you are, what problem you solve and how you help people solve it and a way for them to get in touch with you. Book a call or send you an email or whatever it is. You wanna have that up somewhere. You can be adding to it over time but all you need to start is a one page homepage.
with a clear call to action for people so they know what the next step is, whether that again is to send you an email or to book a discovery call or the equivalent through your website by clicking on the button. Don't get caught up in having an about page and a contact page and a services page and a, you know, a page of, you know, a gallery page with photographs. You don't need any of that to start to launch your business and that will keep you stuck.
for a very long time. Those things take a long time to do. And the other piece of this is, as I've said earlier, is that you are going to change things. As you start coaching and you start getting experience as a coach and working with the people who you believe are in your niche, or maybe some people outside of your niche, you're going to change your ideas around your business, what you want to do, who you want to serve, what problems you're actually really great at helping people solve. That's all going to shift and change.
And if you do a very detailed, complicated website from the beginning that's super expensive, chances are you're to want to change all of it. I always say to my coaches like none of this is going to stay the same. None of it. It'll all change. My website changes constantly. And if you were to go back and look at my first website that I did, it would look absolutely nothing like the one that I have now. It's actually a completely different URL. I built it on a different platform and there's I guarantee you no copy.
Wendy McCallum (18:17.066)
No language from that initial website is still on my website today. So just don't bother is what I would suggest with the website. That is something that a couple of years in to your practice, you can start building a really fantastic website that's reflective of your niche. You're going to get to know who you are as a coach and who your clients are much, much better as you actually do the coaching thing.
This is something that I don't know that I've talked about before on the podcast, but I really wanted to cover is something I think you really need to start a coaching business and be successful as a coach. And that is some competence. And I know this seems obvious, but trust me, it's actually not. And scope awareness. So what do I mean by competence? I mean some training that gives you confidence. And some...
some clarity, this is the scope piece, on where coaching ends and things like therapy, consulting, or medical advice begin. I have talked to a lot of new coaches about this. I think practicing within scope is one of the most important things to do and do very well and do very consistently as a coach. Because again, I cannot give legal advice, but obviously when you start to stray outside of scope, you start to open yourself up.
to a lot more liability. So I am very, very clear when I coach and I'm clear with every client that I start with that I am not a therapist, that I am a coach. I talk about the difference between therapy and coaching. I am actually a consultant, so I do do some teaching work, but I explain all of that to my clients as well. And I am very careful to practice within scope. I also have very clear language in my contract and in programming and...
terms and conditions that makes it very, very clear that I do not provide any medical advice at all or legal advice on the business side of things and that these are the things that I do and these are the things that I don't do. And you need to have a very clear understanding of that as a new coach. You also need to have confidence as a coach. And I get that, this is a whole other topic, but confidence in coaching comes from doing, not from your training and certification.
Wendy McCallum (20:39.608)
but I think it's a dangerous idea to just go out and start coaching with zero training. Do you need a $50,000 certification? No, not necessarily, but you do need some training. You need to have an understanding of what coaching looks like because I think it's very difficult to practice within scope if you don't have any training from a good training institute or organization. I could talk about...
what that means for a long time, but I do think it's really important if you're thinking about launching a business, if you've been listening to this podcast and you, you know, or maybe you're working in a different field right now you're thinking I'd love to be a coach, I'd love to do that, but you haven't gone and gotten any training yet, I really encourage you to invest in that. Certifications are not necessarily necessary. That's again, I could talk about that for a long time and I have another episodes of this podcast, but it is definitely important that you get the training in place because without that,
you're really not going to have a clear understanding of scope of what you do and what you don't do as a coach in coaching. I also think that some practice coaching experience is important before you get going and launch and start taking paying clients, but you don't need too much. And I think this is one of those places where people end up getting stuck for too long.
So I hear it all the time when coaches, I just don't know. I don't have confidence. I have imposter syndrome. I don't think I can charge for this yet. I'm not ready for that. I haven't coached enough people. You need to coach some people. Obviously you need to practice a little bit before you get out there and do this and start charging for it. But also you just need to do it. There is something about recognizing that you can't get good and confident about this unless you get out there and start doing it.
So if you're stuck in that place right now, don't go get another certification or training. That is not what you need. What you need is to get out there and start doing it and charge for it and to charge for it. So you need enough sessions under your belt to feel like steady, but not, we're not looking for perfection. It's not required before you start charging. All coaches start somewhere. And trust me, when I say like every coach I've ever worked with has been
Wendy McCallum (23:01.994)
underconfident in the first, at least the first few months of coaching.
A simple way to start building your audience is also pretty important before you launch. Okay, so you can launch without this, but you're probably not going to have a lot of people coming to you without it. So you need a simple and I'm talking simple in the beginning. Some kind of a resource or offer that helps you.
to start attracting your ideal clients. Now, you could use your existing network. I'm a huge fan of like old school marketing, going to like everybody that you already know and starting to talk about what you do, sharing your website, sharing that description of who you are, the problem you solve and how you do it with people. You can absolutely do it that way, but it's also a good idea to start thinking about what is my basic funnel going to look like? And again, funnel, there are different ways to create funnels, but what is the thing
that I'm going to create an offer people that's gonna get me out there in front of people so that people can get to know me a little bit. And then over time, I can collect their email address and get them on my list and start nurturing them and talking to them more and offering them more things until eventually they're ready to buy from me. What's that thing right at the very top? Is it that I'm gonna start doing presentations in the community? Is it that I'm gonna start working on doing paid corporate wellness work and trying to get jobs speaking? Is it that I'm gonna start
you know, doing some kind of live thing every single week on Instagram? Is it that I'm going to create a really great free resource that I'm going to start offering in exchange for people's email addresses? Am I interested in starting a podcast? Like what is it I'm going to do at the top of funnel? You should be thinking about that because you need a way to get people on an email list and to start attracting ideal clients. The bonus thing I want to throw in here in terms of things you need.
Wendy McCallum (24:59.981)
and this is like the lawyer in me, even though I can't give you legal advice, liability insurance. This is something that I think a lot of people don't think about, and I'm sure there are lots of coaches out there who skip this step, but it is my strong recommendation that you talk to somebody about getting liability insurance in the event that you do end up having, and you end up getting sued, you're in some lawsuit over something that happened.
when you were coaching or on your coaching property or whatever, you want to be covered and you want to feel safe. So liability insurance is highly recommended by me for peace of mind and for protection. So I suggest you talk. All my coaches in the BBB are getting insured. And I think it's just such a smart thing to do as a business owner. You want to keep your business and personal separate.
and you want to have professional liability insurance in the event that something goes wrong. Now, if you're coaching in scope, if you're careful about what you do, if you are, you know, good at what you do and you're diligent and all the rest of it and you do a good job of explaining things to your clients before they start in terms of scope, in terms of expectations, in terms of like the terms of working with you and the conditions of working with you, you can really reduce your risks.
And that's like the best way to do it is to do it by being very good at what you do and acting in a very professional manner and being careful and diligent and all the rest of it. But liability insurance is something that I am always going to be recommending and I cannot underscore the importance of that enough. Okay, so those are some of the things that you need to have in place. Here are the things you don't. And some of these might surprise you.
And again, this is trying to keep you out of that place of spinning your wheels and actually not getting anything done. So you don't need an expensive certification. Yes, training matters. We talked about that earlier, but multiple high-priced credentials before you launch, this is usually shiny object territory. This is the stuff that keeps people stuck in making no money. You end up laying out so much upfront money before you start your business that it's almost impossible to make that back and ever break even and then start making a profit. Forget about it.
Wendy McCallum (27:20.547)
You need some training, you need to know what you're doing, but you do not need a bunch of expensive certifications. By all means, if down the road you think, I'd love to get that other, I'd love to learn how to coach in that area, get some more specific training on that, go get another certification when you can afford it. But the first thing you need to do is get this business going and start getting some paying clients, and you don't need another certification to do that. This is something I, I talk about this all the time inside the BBB, I have coaches who are,
really convinced that they need to get another certification. They're just really nervous to start coaching most of the time. And once they get out there and start doing it, they realize, I don't need that thing. And I'm gonna wait until I have enough money and enough of a steady revenue stream that I feel like that makes sense for me financially. remember that please. If you're looking for another expensive certification right now to get started, you don't need it. Get going now.
You do not need years of practice coaching before you launch. Confidence comes from coaching, not from waiting. Okay, so I mentioned that earlier. I wanna just emphasize that. You need a little bit, but not a lot. You do not need a fancy branding package. And I know this is like me saying a lot of what I just said, but I'm doing this on purpose, because these are the places that coaches get stuck.
You don't need to invest in a logo. You don't even need a logo. If you want a logo, go make one on Canva yourself. There are lots of little templates for it. You don't need one. Nobody has ever booked with me and said, I came to you because I loved your logo. That has never happened. And I have had expensive logos over the years. The one I have right now, I made in Canva. So, and I don't even use it anywhere. You don't need a logo. You do not need a really fancy branding package. None of that. It doesn't get you clients.
We are looking to be spending money in the early days and doing the things that are actually gonna lead to clients the fastest. Anything that is not directly connected to getting clients is not something you wanna be spending your money or time on in the launch stage or even in the first year of business. We talked about how you don't need a full website build out, you just need a one page landing page. Okay, that's all you need. Start simple, get your, you know.
Wendy McCallum (29:38.8)
get the basics that you need on there, a way for people to find you online, an online presence and a website URL that you can give out to people and a way for people to book with you. But your message and your offers are going to evolve and your website's going to evolve with them. That is the best way to do this. Ask me how I know having spent tens of thousands of dollars over the years on websites that are now completely, frankly, just completely obsolete, irrelevant to what I do.
Okay, here's some stuff we haven't talked about. need, this idea that you need a big social media following and that a bigger following is somehow gonna lead to more clients is a trap. And that is one of those shiny object places. But people get really in there like, I've gotta get be posting every single day and I need to be building my audience up to this much. I actually have some coaches in the BBB right now. You guys know who you are if you're listening.
who have very big social media followings, but who are not actually getting out there and making an offer yet. And they're not making any money. The point of this is to say that the social media following does not lead to clients and it does not lead to income. It's not that it's not, you know, maybe an important piece of many coaching practices. It's not essential, it's not necessary. I have coaches who are building businesses based on other types of marketing and promotion, leveraging networks.
doing public speaking, like there are lots of other ways to build a following and a list than social media. You don't need that. But you definitely, if you are working on social media as one of your strategies, which most of my coaches are doing, you don't need a huge audience and you don't need any audience to start charging and to actually start booking clients. I want to be really clear. Do not let that be the thing that is holding you back from actually making an offer.
and you might be making an offer in different channels. You might not be able to pitch on social media and get clients from social media yet, but you can get them other ways. And if you haven't yet watched my old school marketing 10 ways to get clients now, free masterclass, go and grab that because that thing is gold. I will put the link to that in my show notes. I'm gonna make a little note right now to add that.
Wendy McCallum (31:58.158)
to the show notes, that link. That is an absolutely great masterclass. And that is all of the ways that I encourage all of my new coaches to start marketing outside of social media. Because everybody who starts, not everybody, but almost everybody that I work with does not have a big social media following on a professional account, on a business account yet. They just don't have it. It takes time to do that. But you don't need that. You also don't need multiple social.
channels. So lot of people are feeling like, oh, I've got to start an Instagram and a TikTok and a Facebook and LinkedIn and, you know, a YouTube channel. Like you don't need to do all of those things. I usually recommend people pick a couple and focus on doing them well. And with a lot of this stuff now you can cross post. So that means you're only creating one piece of content and it's automatically posting to the other channel that you're that you're working on building. So pick a couple and do them well. Now, depending on what niche you serve and your background and experience and connections,
There's probably a platform that is a better fit for you based on the demographic of your avatar client, but also on the type of work that you do. So you can be strategic about which ones you choose, but you don't need to do all of them. You also don't need a big email list before you launch. Like nobody has this guys. We all start out and we have like five people on the email list and it's like our grandma, our sister, our mom and our two best friends, right?
It is okay to not have an email list yet. That is something that you will grow and build over time. And also when it comes to email lists, it's not about the size. It's about the engagement level. I have a very small email list on the business coaching side of things. And it's still a really good list for sales because the coaches who are on that list are engaged.
and they are interested in what I have to offer and I have warmed them up and they already like, trust me, right? So it's not about the size of the list in any event, but definitely when it comes to launching, you do not need an email list yet. Nobody has one of those. That is something that you build in the first couple of years of business and keep building the entire time you're in business, frankly.
Wendy McCallum (34:09.763)
There are so many coaches out there who started with a zero list and have become profitable. Okay, so don't let that be the thing that keeps you stuck. You also do not need complicated marketing automations. This is another thing that I hear from coaches all the time. well, I don't have like a welcome sequence. I don't have a freebie set up yet that people can download automatically. Those are things that come.
but they come after you launch. And you can be working with paying clients and setting those things up. These are all the things that we do after we launch. They do not need to be in place before. And frankly, in the early days, there are gonna be so few people in your audience and your audience is probably gonna be growing slowly that you don't need automation. You can do it manually. Somebody sends you, if you have a place for people to sign up for a freebie, for example, and you don't have it automated yet, you can just...
set, write them back and say, here's your freebie and attach the document or the video or whatever it is to your email back. And you can do that all manually. You don't need anything automated, right? In the early days, you can do that later. Okay, this one's important guys. You do not need paid ads right away. In fact, I think paid ads are the equivalent flushing money down the toilet that you actually don't have in the early days. It's very difficult to
make paid ads, especially on social media, work right now. It takes a lot of trial and error. You kind of need to know what you're doing. people end up spending so much money. And yes, maybe they get new followers, but those followers don't turn into any kind of good leads in terms of actually converting to paying clients. So I do not recommend that my coaches spend any money on paid ads in the first like
six months at least of their business, usually longer after that. So resist the urge to just start throwing money at Facebook or Instagram to be boosting posts and that kind of thing until you know what you're doing. And that will take a little bit of research and learning for you for sure. Maybe even like hiring somebody to help you with that down the road. You do not need paid ads wait until you have tested and proven your offer organically. That's the other piece too. You want to make sure that your offer is a good offer.
Wendy McCallum (36:27.502)
before you start paying to try to boost that offer. And that the language that you're using is language that resonates with the people you wanna reach. And it makes sense to them. If it doesn't, there's no point in spending money trying to boost it because even if it gets in front of more people, nobody else is gonna connect with that language. So don't do that right away. And then the most important thing here is like, you don't need to know everything.
before you start, before you launch. And if you're waiting for everything to be perfect and for you to know everything, like this is how it's gonna go, this is how I'm gonna do this thing, you're never going to launch because you will never know. That is the nature of being a small business owner. You just never know. There are always all these things that you have to figure out as you go and everything will always be changing. Your niche, your message, your offers, they're all gonna shift with experience. So don't wait for it to feel perfect because
it's not going to feel perfect ever. And if it feels perfect, that's usually a sign that something, that you're missing something, to be honest. So I really want you to start thinking about if you're in that kind of pre-launch place, or maybe you're just in the first year of your business, at like, where is shiny object syndrome playing? Where are you getting caught in a cycle of, like, we call it motion and not action. So where...
You're doing a lot of stuff, but it's not leading to a lot of action and it's definitely not leading to any more money in your business. You want to look really hard at those things. Are those areas where you should be spending your time right now or do some of them fall under the category of these shiny object things that I've been talking about today? So the key messaging here, follow what I'm talking about. Focus on the stuff that really needs to be done. Skip the shiny object stuff.
And not only are gonna launch faster if you're not launched yet, but you're also going to have significantly less stress and you're going to make money sooner, which is the name of the game here. Really reconnect to your scope awareness. start getting clear if you're not clear right now what you do and what you don't do. And make sure that you're communicating that really well with your clients from the start because that's how you protect your business, that's how you protect yourself.
Wendy McCallum (38:48.848)
And that's how you, I think that's how you are like, how you become a better coach. So lastly, I guess, before we wrap up, reminder that that launch checklist is like a great place to start. And also that free masterclass is like, has been described as pure gold by a couple of the people who've taken it. And I always get good positive feedback back from people who download that saying that was so helpful. So.
The 10 ways to get clients now masterclass and the free launch checklist. I'll put the links in the show notes, but you can grab those at wendymichellum.com under the free resources for coaches. And also if this is the, you're listening to all of this and you're like, my gosh, that's me and I've been doing that and I'm struggling and I can't get going, like common join us in the BBB. I would absolutely love to meet you. I'd love to have you in the community.
come to the next open house if you're curious or just reach out to me and we can get on a call together and talk about where you are in your business and whether it's a good fit for you. It's always open for registration. You can join any time and it's just, the perfect place for newer coaches who are really serious and really committed to building a business, but who find themselves overwhelmed and kind of spinning the wheels and feeling lonely in the whole process.
Okay, that's it for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time on The Coaching Edge.
