Wendy McCallum (01:37)
Hello, welcome back coach. I'm Wendy McCallum, your host. And today we're going to be talking about investing in your coaching business. So really talking about business coaching support. So programs that are out there around, you know, building courses, setting up systems in your business, maybe sales support, masterminds, all of those things.
⁓ We're going to talk today about the three critical times when I think it's very important to think seriously about investing in your coaching business. And I'm going to give you my own story in terms of how I did that in these three points in my, in the sort of the journey of building this coaching business that I have now.
do you know when it's the right time to invest in your coaching business? And then next week is gonna be really about how do you know if a specific investment is actually worth it?
So these two episodes go together. I want to encourage you if you are listening to this episode to take the time next week to listen to the second part of this, because they're really going to be tied together. One of the things that I hear most often from coaches that I support within my programming and also coaches that I know through my own social circles and professional circles is that
It is really hard to know when to invest in your business. We get really overwhelmed with the cost of things like certifications and big ticket masterminds and then all of these smaller programs that are out there. And it's really hard to know like when to invest and what to invest in because, you know, there's all this sort of shiny object stuff happening out there. And I think we can get caught up in that really easily. And I know that I've made some mistakes in the past.
in terms of signing up for things at the wrong time and signing up for the wrong programs. But I've also done things right in many cases. And I just want to share what maybe experience I have in all of this and just my thoughts on this for you, if you're a coach and you're thinking like, get it in order to build a successful business, I have to get some training, I have to learn some things.
This is not intuitive to 99 % of people who start businesses. I don't actually know any successful coaches who have not invested in a fairly significant way in business training in order to become successful. So this is just part of the process. But the real question is like, how do I know when it's the right time? Like, should I wait until I've got some stuff done and I've got some paying clients? Do I wait until my revenue starts to plateau and it's time for me to...
you know, look at scaling somehow, like when is the right time to do this? So I'm going to hopefully answer all of those questions for you today. And then like I said, next week, I'm going to talk about how to know whether a particular program course Mastermind is the right investment for you. I'm not here to pressure you to spend money on your business, but it is, as I said, a reality of being a business owner, you have to invest in your business. And for most of us as solopreneurs, that involves investing in some training.
⁓ because certainly in the early years, most of us do not have the funds to pay somebody to be solving these problems and doing these things for us. We need to learn how to do it ourselves. Not to mention just generally learning some of the bigger picture strategy around how to grow and scale a business. So let's talk about the, these are kind of the three pivotal.
times to invest. So I thought long and hard about this one. When are the times when it is most important for coaches to be thinking about making an investment in their business? And I am not suggesting that you pick one of these by the way. But I'm gonna go through each of these because I know that coaches listening to this podcast are at different stages in their business. So some of these may not, the timing may not be applicable to you, maybe past that time now, which is totally okay.
or you may be somebody for whom all three of these times are still relevant.
So let me start with the first one and this one's probably gonna be pretty obvious, but I really think it's pretty critical to be thinking about making an investment before you launch your business. This is when you're just finishing certification or you're at that point where you've wrapped up your job or you're about to wrap up your other job and you're ready to get out there and start taking on paying clients. The problem is,
is that a lot of people think that they're gonna get this from their certification or their training. in fact, and this is very unfortunate and it makes me very frustrated, but a lot of certifications and trainings out there actually include this promise as part of their marketing. And when people are making these very high ticket investments in certifications, they think that they're going to be getting this business coaching and training that they need to...
build a business fairly quickly after they get certified and they don't get it. That has happened to me twice. I have done two very expensive programs that have promised business training. One of them didn't promise it like the other one did. So one of them was a little light on the promise, which was more in alignment with what we actually got from that program. The other one promised almost like a business in a box. Like when you're done this thing, you're gonna know exactly how.
to launch your business and you can get up and running and start making lots of big money quickly and also made some promises around how much money other coaches were making, which I have found out since is not actually accurate. So that does happen unfortunately in this industry. And that of course is the main reason why I do what I do and why I started doing the business coaching. If you haven't been listening to this podcast for very long.
My business coaching of other coaches was not something that I had been doing that for 15 years. I've only been doing that for about five years. And that started after my last certification when a lot of coaches were coming to me saying, how are you doing this? How are you making enough money to be as profitable as you are? I don't have any idea how to do this. And I thought I was going to know after this training, but I don't know. So
Unfortunately, it's common, it happens, and that might be you. If you're listening, I just want you to know it's not your fault, and ⁓ I'm sorry that that happened to you if it did, but it is incredibly common. And so we are hesitant to spend more money after a certification. I get it, I have been there. And oftentimes what I see is that coaches go out and they try to do it themselves, they try to launch themselves, and they flounder. They flounder in that first year. And you know the statistics,
on success of coaching businesses. I've quoted it many times here. It's one of the only statistics out there I've been able to find that's actually clear and helpful is that 82 % of coaching businesses fail within the first two years. And I am convinced this is one of the main reasons why. It's because trainings and certifications are not giving coaches any actual meaningful, helpful, real life business support. ⁓
and they are leaving these coaches or leaving these certifications feeling like they should be able to do this all themselves and they should be able to make a profit. And it becomes incredibly frustrating and incredibly exhausting and overwhelming. And it feels really lonely. So it's a tough spot to suggest that you invest because you've already made a big investment. But if you don't invest, you are increasing the likelihood enormously that you fall into that 82 % who fail, honestly.
And so I really want to encourage you if you're at the pre-launch or just at the launch stage, could just maybe you've been doing this for a year by yourself. You're kind of spinning your wheels to think about investing in your business because I feel very, very confident that if you make the right investment and again, next week we'll be talking about how to know whether something is the right investment for you. If you make the right investment, that can make a huge difference in profitability and helping you get to that third year and that fourth year. So.
That's the first time, the pre-launch or the early launch phase, that is a really important time to be thinking about investing. Why? Because it helps with a bunch of things. The first thing it's going to do is going to help you avoid wasting money on stuff you actually don't need. So this is...
pretty much always the case when I meet with new coaches who have been trying to do things on their own for a while. I can easily identify at least one to three areas where they have spent usually a fair chunk of money on stuff that is completely unimportant, completely non-essential, and frankly, stuff that is going to get changed down the road anyway, so it's gonna be a total waste of money. And that is really frustrating for me to see as a business coach, but also really common. So.
Investing in some business support early on can help you to avoid spending a lot of money on stuff that actually is not important, that you think is important because you don't know any better, because you actually haven't had any business training, so you don't know. So that's one thing, it helps you avoid wasted money and the time that goes along with that in creating systems and things that are not important. It also helps you get to a place where you have
paying clients and more paying clients sooner. So you're gonna get up and running a lot faster if you get some support and some systems in place.
in your business that will help you to generate regular, reliable revenue. So let me talk to you about my story of the early days because I am talking from experience. I have been there. I got certified. My first certification was in natural nutrition and that was about 15 years ago when I first started coaching. I decided to hang up a shingle.
There was some legal and business advice given in that program as a past lawyer. So I had practiced law for 12 years before retiring from law and starting that certification. I can tell you that I was shocked at the...
legal advice that was given and the lack of business advice and legal advice that was given. So I thought it was all, it was not great in my opinion. And I had zero small business experience. So yes, I'd been practicing law for 12 years, but I worked in a huge firm where I was a partner and I had people who did all of the things for me. So I actually learned how to do very little except communicate well and maybe be a good.
public speaker and interviewer. All of those skills have helped me in being a great coach, but they didn't help me build my business. So I started out thinking that I should be able to do this because I was told all the things in that first training about how I could make money in this industry. And I was shocked at how hard it was to get a client. And eventually after probably...
four months or so of spinning my wheel. So I didn't wait too long, thank goodness. I ended up hiring a business coach, a private business coach, because I couldn't find any online programs at the time that were good fit for me. And I hired a business coach. It was expensive, but it felt like it was worth it. And I think I met her through a networking group for entrepreneurs that I had joined. And I got some good information from that, but it wasn't...
the business coach was not a coach for coaches. So, you know, I didn't get kind of the focus support. So it probably wasn't the best place to spend my money, but also 15 years ago, there weren't a lot of options. The other thing that I did is I did a lot of little piecemeal programs. So I kept taking little pop-up programs whenever I would see something online that I thought might be helpful, I would sign up for it. So I ended up spending a lot of money over the course of a lot of smaller ticket offers and this one-on-one business coach.
So that was a fair bit of an investment that I made there. Some of it was helpful, some of it wasn't, but it was definitely better that I did that, that I didn't do it. But what ended up happening, unfortunately, is I made so many costly mistakes because I didn't have any comprehensive support. And a lot of it wasn't the right support. I spent an awful lot of money on branding and website. That's probably the place I wasted the most money. I'm gonna say like at the time...
probably close to $5,000, which 15 years ago was a ton of money. It's still a lot of money, but then it was a lot, a lot of money, maybe even more because I felt like it was so critically important that I had the perfect website. Well, guess what? My business completely changed within the first year.
So most of what was on that website had to be changed anyway. It wasn't even relevant anymore. The branding stuff that I did was only useful branding for a very short period of time. Then I started to get clear on what I really wanted to be doing as a coach. My niche started to shift and I realized I had all this branding that actually wasn't very helpful to me. So I spent a lot of money. I wasted a lot of money and time on stuff that wasn't important. If I had just put that time into my business doing activities that would actually get me to paying clients faster,
that probably would have made a big difference for me in those first years. So I think it's important to be thinking about that. If you are a coach and you've just recently completed a certification or you've been trying to do this on your own for a while now and maybe you're in your first or second year of this and you're thinking to yourself, like, I'm not getting anywhere and I am worried that I cannot keep doing this, I really encourage you to think about getting some support. Now, of course, I'm gonna...
tell you that the BBB is probably a great fit for you. It's definitely a really good fit for people at this stage. So at this particular pivot point for people who are pre-launch or just in the early stages of a coaching business, that is what the BBB is for. It's for coaches in the first five years of business. So it's a perfect time to come and check out the BBB. There's an open house happening on November 20th. Come on out and join us there. I'd love to see you. You can register through the link in the show notes or at wendymcallum.com forward slash BBB.
The whole point of the BBB is to help coaches avoid those costly mistakes and launch more simply and more efficiently so that you can get to revenue quicker. That is the whole point. So that's the first time when I think it's important to be thinking about is this a good time for me to be investing my business. The second stage in business development as a solopreneur coach that I think is pretty critical time is what I'm going to call
the crisis of confidence point and everybody gets there at some point. It's usually when you've been doing this for a couple of years. So somewhere between one to kind of two and a half years, coaches find themselves in this place where they are working very hard. They are spending so much time in their business but they're not getting a lot of traction. They are starting to feel very uncertain about their choice of career.
they're exhausted and they're probably entertaining thoughts of quitting. They're probably thinking, wouldn't it be easier if I just went back to that job, that nine to five job, or if I did something else? Sometimes this is when coaches start to think about getting another expensive certification, because they think the reason they're not making money is because they don't have enough training. By the way, that is almost never the case. So really check yourself if you're thinking about doing that. I think that's a terrible idea at this point.
It's not about training and certification at this point. It's a confidence thing. This is a really great time to think about investing in your business. If you have always had this sort of intuition, this deep down knowing that coaching is the thing that you're meant to do, I don't want you to give up. If you're feeling this way, I want you to think about like, is this the time for me to be getting some very focused support to help me get out of this rut?
and get me to a place where I'm in profit and I can feel really good about this business.
oftentimes what's happened at this point when I meet coaches at this point in their journey,
they have spent a lot of money on branding, on technology stuff, on, hiring somebody to help them with social media before they actually need it. And so they are never making any profit because their overhead is so high because of all of these costs. So investing at this point helps because it can help you figure out like,
what you should actually be focusing on and spending money on right now and what you can let go of.
when I talk to coaches at this stage, they're sort of spinning their wheel stages, I like to call it, I look at what are you spending money on monthly and I can help them cut expenses right away, which can obviously help pay for whatever support it is that you're investing in, right? And it can help you to get a fresh perspective on blind spots. So really get clear on
places in your business where you're really missing the boat. And they're always there. That's why we call it a blind spot. We can't see them, but they're there. And sometimes it's really helpful to get somebody else's eyes on your business to help you see those spots. So where are you leaving money on the table? Where are you spending money that you don't need to be spending money? It's also a great time to clarify and revisit your niche and your messaging. So after a year or two of coaching, you usually have...
a much better sense of what you do well, where you maybe are little more challenged as a coach, the problems that consistently are coming up with the clients that you're serving, the types of clients that you love working with the most, and what your special sauce is as a coach. So what you're sort of getting known for, what your clients tell you they appreciate the most about working with you. And it's great to kind of...
get a bead on all of that and get really clear on all of that and then revisit your marketing, revisit your website, revisit your content and make sure that you're actually being really clear about who it is you serve, what problem you solve and how you help people solve it. So this is a really great time to be doing that. It's also a good time to...
put some accountability in place around your business because often the coaches that I see who have been at this for a year or two by themselves are, I've also just lost their mojo, right? They're just feeling like burnt out with all of this and all of that excitement and hope that they had when they first launched their business has really dried up. And they're also often feeling like really alone and exhausted by all of it. So investing in a program can be so helpful. I can tell you that there have been times
when I have been feeling that way in my business and have joined either some kind of ⁓ a specific group program that's targeted there to help you maybe scale an offer or learn how to improve your sales or a mastermind. I've done a few of those over the years or a program that's sort of similar, I guess, to the BBB where there's content and also live coaching. And it has just added this, been like an injection of energy into me and also
⁓ really opened up some creativity for me, listening to other coaches talk about what they're doing, and also getting some fresh eyes on my business so that I can see without blinders, really take the blinders off. What is actually working for you? What's not working for you? What do you really wanna be doing? What do you not wanna be doing? What's lighting you up? What's not lighting you up? So for all of those reasons, I think that that...
time in a coach's career is a really good time to be thinking about investing in your business. So that's what I call the crisis of confidence time. You know it when you're in it. You've been doing it for a while, but not too long. And you're starting to wonder like, is this actually gonna pay off? Am I actually gonna be able to make a go of this thing or should I maybe think about quitting? Okay, the third point where I think it's really important to be thinking about investing in your business is when you are...
about three to five years in, this is when it usually happens, you're at that point where your one-on-one roster is pretty consistently full. So you're working a lot of hours a week, but you're also still having to hustle for that. So there's still a lot of work that's going into that, which means that you are, you're steady busy and you're making decent money, but all of your time is full and you're still tired. You're still feeling tired. Oftentimes,
The pain points that go along with this point, which like I said, is usually like somewhere around three years, maybe three to four years is probably more accurate than five years, honestly. But you've been at it for a few years and you're starting to feel burnt out because you're having to work so much because you are busy with one-on-one clients, but you're also still doing all the other stuff, all the marketing that goes along with that. And you have hit a bit of a ceiling or a plateau with your revenue. So you're stuck, it's not going up.
and it doesn't really feel like there's any flow or any predictability in it. You're still having to hustle for it every single month. This is a great time to think about investing in some business support for your business because at this point in time, you want to be starting to think about scaling, scalability. So this is a really good time to start thinking about, starting to think about ways that you can work less and make more money.
on an hourly basis, which is what scaling is all about. So can you, for example, start creating, know, create an online course that you're selling? Can you start running groups instead of doing so much one-on-one coaching? And what would that look like? And getting some support around all of that is critically important. I mean, this is why I have that CCC program, which is the coaching course creator program that runs in, it usually runs in October and November.
every year and there's a self-guided version available in all of the months outside of that that you can purchase. But that course is there to help you build scalable courses and not just like try to do that yourself because trying to do that yourself is, my gosh, what an exercise in frustration. There are so many small pieces that go into building a really great course and then doing all of the work around that to actually market and launch a beta. So you're gonna wanna look for a course.
or some support, maybe it's live support to help you do that, to help you scale. The other thing that investing in your business will do at this point in time is that can help you bring more systems in. I'm a huge fan of systems. I'm always talking about systems inside the BBB. I have so many systems in my own business. In fact, if you listened to the first episode this month where I was talking about how to take December off and the seasons of coaching.
⁓ That's all about systems and that, you know, is talking about how I have these very set sales cycles, for example, around the BBB, which is like my flagship one year program for coaches. It's my big sort of bigger offer. And I have an eight week sales cycle on that that in the the sort of seventh week of that sales cycle, there's an open house and then there's some follow up marketing that happens after the open house. And then the sales cycle starts again. And that is a system.
And I have very specific things that happen in every week of that eight week period, including two weeks where I get some downtime and rest, which is at the beginning of each sales cycle. So that's a system. I also have systems for onboarding and offboarding clients that make that so much easier. I have systems for gathering really, really amazing testimonials and feedback every single time I run a group program or every time I work with a one-on-one client. I have systems in place for my podcast, how I pre-
schedule, pre-sketch out episodes, record, draft, edit, all of that stuff and turning it into newsletters. that's a system that I have in place. At this point in your business, you should be looking at putting some really great systems in place, because that is what creates some ease. That is what helps you get out of that feeling of constantly hustling and always having something to do in your business to a place where you can feel like, whew, I can take a breath. That is a big piece.
of making more money by working less is getting systems in place because you're not spending nearly as much time in your business. Okay, and then of course, getting some support at this point in time and starting to build these scalable offers and also starting to create some systems that help with that ease piece is gonna allow you to reclaim some of that time and energy. And when you reclaim time and you reclaim energy,
you create space for creativity. That's the truth of it. And from there, you will continue growing. I've had this experience so many times where I've invested in specialized trainings as a business owner. Things like I've taken course creation programs, I've taken copy programs where I learned how to write better copy, marketing copy. I've taken programs around, specifically around sales strategy and how to sell different, sell better, all of that. Those courses have allowed me to create more
systems and more scalability in my business and really given me a chance to take a little bit more time to do some of the more fun parts of my business and do more creative things and also just take more time
And obviously one of the programs that I have for scalability is that CCC program, which is there for course creation and scaling through online programming. So I just wanna pull all of this together. This is not about if you invest, it's about when and in what. Today we're talking about when, next week we're gonna talk about in what and how to know whether it's the right thing.
And why I'm saying it's not if you invest, it's because you have to invest in your business in order to be a successful business person. Like I said, at the very beginning of this podcast, everybody I know who's successful does that. And all of the coaches I know who don't make a go of this thing, don't get any support or help. That's just the way it is. So if you've been thinking to yourself, no, no, no, I can do this myself and it doesn't make any sense for me to invest in my business, you're wrong. You can't.
Unless you have a background in small business and you have done this before, you have built a small sort of consulting coaching business from scratch, you need support. And it is unfortunate, but also totally normal and common if your coaching certification promised it was gonna give you that and it didn't give you that. So I just wanna dispel that myth. This is not about like, should I or shouldn't I invest in business support while I'm building my
money that I have spent in coaching for or in consulting or support around building and growing this business has almost entirely paid off significantly in terms of what I got back from that in revenue.
It's not about if you invest, but it's about when you invest in what. There are three pivotal times to recap when coaches need to be thinking about investing in their business. One, pre-launch or early launch. So, you know, that first like year after getting your certification. Two, the crisis of confidence phase, which usually happens when people have been trying to do it alone for, you know, somewhere between one and two years. And you start to think, maybe I'm just gonna throw in the towel. I don't know if I can do this. And you haven't gotten any support in your business.
or you haven't had any support since before you launched and you're really, really struggling. You're overwhelmed, you're burnt out and you're not at all feeling optimistic or hopeful. That's a great time. And then the other one is when you get to that sort of natural, I don't know to call it, like a plateau, which is very, very common in building businesses. And I think my business is like, it has always worked that way where I have the sort of steady growth cycle and then I plateau for a while.
and then I shift, I change it up. Usually I invest in some training at that point and then I have another growth curve where I'm going up in profit and then I level out again. That's really, really common. But when you find yourself in that sort of plateau stage where it feels like you've reached a revenue ceiling and you're also feeling like you're all out of great ideas and you're kind of exhausted because you're hustling all the time, that's time to be thinking about scaling.
That's time to be thinking about putting some systems in place to create some more ease and some space and some flow in your business. And that is a great time to invest. Okay, so now that you know the three sort of turning points or critical points when investment makes sense, how do you evaluate whether a specific program mastermind or coach is actually worth it? That's what I'm gonna cover in part two. We're gonna talk about all of the things to consider when you're looking at a specific.
investment opportunity in your business. So some kind of an online program or a live mastermind or a group coaching program or one-on-one business coaching. How do you know if that's right for you? That's what we're going to cover in next week's episode. Just a reminder, the BBB, my business building bootcamp, my one-year program is an option for support that fits multiple stages. So it works for people in all of the stages I have talked about today in this episode.
So if you're looking for support and you like my vibe and you enjoy this podcast and the information that I share and it feels like it makes sense to you, then it's definitely worth checking out the BBB. You can come to the next free open house. If you're listening to this in November of 2025, the
next open house is on November 20th.
You can register through the link in the show notes or at wendymcallum.com forward slash BBB. If you're listening to this at some other time, there is an open house upcoming. Just go to that same link and you will see when the next open house is and you can sign up there. I would love to meet you. So the BBB obviously is an option, but the real takeaway from this podcast, I hope is to just really remind you and give you some clarity around the fact that
You do have to invest in your business, but the key is to be investing intentionally and at the right time. And hopefully today this episode helped to shed some light on when some of those key right times are. Okay, that's it for today. Thank you so much for listening and tune
for part two of this episode next week.
