Wendy McCallum (00:38)
Hello and happy new year. I cannot believe it is 2026 as you are listening to this podcast episode. I am recording it at the end of 2025 and I cannot believe how quickly the last few months of 2025 went by. I hope that you have had an amazing restorative, relaxing, joyful holiday season, whatever that looks like for you and that you are back here with me today ready to make 2026 the best year yet in your coaching business.
We are talking today about a topic that has come up a lot in the last month or two inside the BBB, which is my business building bootcamp for coaches. It's a really intimate cohort of coaches, many of whom I've been working with for a long time, like over three years, but we have new coaches who join all the time. And inside that group, we talk about a lot of sort of timely topics, things that are coming up. It's a really great way for me to keep my finger on the pulse of
how you guys are feeling about being coaches right now. And so I often take my lead from the conversations inside office hours and bring topics out to talk about to the bigger audience that I have through this podcast. And today's topic is a good example of that. So we're gonna be talking about the importance of...
celebrating and embracing your ability as a small business owner to change your mind. Okay, so I'm going to come back to that in a second. Before I do, I want to remind you of last week's episode. So last week I hosted a virtual business retreat for coaches. So if you have not listened to that podcast episode yet, please go back and listen to it. I talked about a framework for your small business.
the compass framework, I talked about the north, the south, the east and the west of your business and what is involved in filling out and staying in touch with each of those parts of a reliable, sustainable business. It was an opportunity for you, I think, to look at your coaching business through a different lens. I hope it provides lots of clarity for you in terms of...
the, you know, what feels like a never-ending to-do list in your coaching business. It'll help you sort through, where do I actually need to focus now and where do I not need to focus? Where am I stronger and where am I a little weaker or a little more challenged? And help you identify really specific action steps that you can start taking in 2026 in that area of your business. So that live virtual business retreat that I did comes with a workbook.
It's all free. You can download the workbook through the link in the show notes, and then you can work through that workbook at your own pace. I think it's gonna provide a really great basis for setting some flexible and responsive goals, which we're gonna talk about today. And also I'm gonna be coming back to that Compass framework in other episodes in 2026. So it's just, it's a foundational episode that I hope.
everybody listens to and don't forget to download the workbook that goes with that. Again, that was last week's episode. Okay, so let's get on to the topic for today. The topic for today is, as I said, how to build a flexible and responsive coaching business in 2026. And we're gonna do that by reminding ourselves every single day that we get to change our mind and really celebrating the fact that we get to change our mind, okay? So,
2026 is not the year of rigid business plans. In the past, you may have had a business coach, could have been me frankly, who got you to do a really extensive and detailed goal setting exercise where you set a plan for yourself for the coming 12 months. This year is not the year for that. I am gonna be encouraging you to be setting some goals, but to be setting them through the lens of being responsive and flexible. So knowing that,
some of the ideas that you have for how this year is gonna go or things that you wanna try are probably going to change, okay? So this is the year of building flexibility, responsiveness and adaptability into your coaching business from the ground up. And there are reasons why this is especially important this year, many of which I have been hinting at in past episodes, right? The landscape has changed. There has been a trust recession. People are not...
as trustworthy as they were before. People are skeptical, especially of online businesses right now. And most of us are operating at least in part online businesses. It is a weird buyer's market right now. And people are just spending money much more carefully and are willing to take on significantly less risk. you know, I have been seeing those behavior patterns shifting in
both my coaching audience and the audiences of the coaches that I support. So this idea of being responsive and flexible this year, it's actually based on what I'm seeing happening in the market itself. So this is in response to all the things we were talking about last year. This is how I am gonna be governing myself going forward. And in fact, today I'm gonna give you an example.
of me applying this exact philosophy in my own business, this idea of like, you get to change your mind. And if you want to do something differently, because what you're hearing and seeing is that people want something different, you get to create that for them. So I'm gonna give you an example from my own world of how I've done that. I'm going to remind you of the importance of the beta mindset. So we have talked about that in other episodes, but it's the cornerstone.
of being responsible, sorry, responsive. You wanna be responsible too, but being responsive and being flexible in your business. So I'm gonna talk a little bit more about that and how it's really important to treat everything in your business as a test, as an opportunity to try something, an experiment, a learning opportunity, and not a referendum on your worth as a coach, which I think is what a lot of us do. Like if it doesn't work exactly the way we thought it was gonna work, then we have failed and usually,
We are a failure. Okay, so why is flexibility not optional anymore? It's not optional, it's mandatory because the market is changing faster than most of us can update our offers. That's the truth of it. Like the market has been shifting so rapidly in the last 24 months that most of us can't even keep up with it, with our offers. So we have got to adopt a flexible attitude towards business in order to have a shot of keeping up.
The whole idea of having a, like, this is how it has to be formula for how you deliver content and offers is just completely mismatched with what people actually want right now. And I think a lot of us have been taught to do that in a fairly rigid way, right? You develop a freebie, you have this funnel or you have this webinar and it converts to this. gets people on your list and then on your list you do this with them and then that converts to this and.
I think what we need to do is recognize that that is an old antiquated model that is no longer matched with the current buyer's mindset. It's just not. So the other thing that I think is really important to me as a burnout coach, so you probably know that on the personal coaching side of my business where I still work one-on-one with some clients, I support professional women who are struggling with burnout. So burnout is a big deal for me and it's a big deal for me when I'm supporting my coaches because it is so easy to burn out.
in small business. Burnout risk increases when you cling to something that is past its due date.
And that might be like your offer structure. might be old pricing. It might be an old way of thinking. might be like your marketing channels, the places that you're focusing on doing your marketing. It might be on how often you're putting out your content. But like, if that is based on something that no longer works and it's no longer useful, you are going to burn out a whole lot faster because you're not going to be getting what you expect to get back from it. And so you're going to start to get resentful and exhausted and all the rest. Flexibility.
is the same really as responsiveness. They go together. And if you stay responsive, then you can stay relevant. And if you stay relevant, then you can stay making profit. You can stay in profit. And if you can stay in profit, then you have a sustainable business. So flexibility leads to responsiveness. Responsiveness is what leads to relevance, to you staying relevant. If you stay relevant, you can make money. And if you keep making money, you have a sustainable small business.
So at the very foundation of all of this guys is that flexibility piece. That's why we're talking about it today. So a little reminder or refresher on the beta mindset. The beta mindset is this approach or lens that says everything I do in my business is an experiment. I might make some assumptions around how it's gonna go, but I'm gonna try my best to let go of those assumptions and instead just get out there and test this thing.
I'm gonna do the best that I can with the first iteration of it, but I'm gonna know when I put that thing out there that it is not going to be perfect and that there will absolutely be places where it's going to need some tweaking and changing in order to improve it and make it better. And so every offer is a draft, right? Every launch is data. It's a way to gather some really useful information.
Every drop in sales is information. Every spike in sales is information. Every success that you have is feedback and every, and I'm putting this in air quotes because there really is no such thing as failure. Every less than what you expected experience in business is also feedback. So we get feedback from everything.
Okay, so, but the beta mindset gives you and it gives all of my coaches inside the BBB and they love this beta thing. We talk about beta all the time, but the beta mindset gives you permission to experiment. It makes it a lot easier for you to try new things and to take risk if you're not trying to, know, nail it right out of the gate. Instead, you're thinking, no, I have to go try this thing in order to figure out how to get to the really great version of this thing, right?
Permission to change your mind is a critical piece of the beta mindset. It really is the beta mindset. You get to, not only do you get to change your mind as a small business owner, you have to change your mind. If you are not changing your mind, then you are not creating something that is responsive, which means you are not gonna stay relevant, which means you are not gonna make money, which means you are not gonna have a sustainable business. You're gonna have to close up the shop at some point. So we have to stay in this beta mindset.
All right, so in 2026, I want you to remember that perfection is impossible. It's not even the goal, but iterating, so creating something in one version and then iterating that version and tweaking it and putting it out there again and then putting it out there again and learning from that and putting it out there again, that is absolutely within your control. That's what the goal is, okay? So,
One of the key pieces of having a responsive business is listening real time. So most coaches that I work with inside the BBB don't have a sales problem. They come in and they say, I'm so bad at sales, I can't sell. It's not that they have a sales problem, it's that they have a listening problem. So they are not listening to what
is actually out there in terms of evidence of what people want and need and they are not being responsive to that. Here are some signs that your business is asking you to change something. So here are some things that when they show up in my business and like, I gotta listen to that, this is a sign something needs to change. Lower conversions. So lower conversions on.
whatever your platform for sales is, like if it's discovery calls and your conversion rates are dropping, or you have something like, I have like an open house for the BBB every couple of months if conversions from the open house are dropping, or if you do like a live event or a workshop and you're not converting people into your one-on-one coaching practice like you used to, that is a sign that you need to probably look at changing something. Drops and engagement. Also, people are no longer interacting with you.
in content when you send it out there. No one's responding to your newsletters and your social media posts crickets, okay? Now, to be fair, the algorithm is a, I want to swear here, but I'm not going to. The algorithm is a mess right now. And that is often why no one's interacting with your posts. It's not your fault. But when you see that happening, that is a sign you need to change something. Maybe you need to get off social media as your main platform for top of funnel and be looking at other options.
More objections. So when you're hearing more and more objections, people are saying things like, this is too much of a commitment for me, or I am really struggling with making this kind of an investment right now, or this doesn't feel like exactly the right thing for me. You want to listen to that. Another one that we don't pay enough attention to, and I'm probably like the most guilty of this, is how we're feeling as coaches. That can often be...
A little sign from your business that something needs to change. So when you start to feel exhausted and like you're resisting everything, and this is just natural guys, like this has happened to me so many times over the course of the last 15 years, I get into a funk. I feel like, ugh, I don't want to do this. And I'm just resisting the next thing. And I'm generally feeling kind of burnt out for lack of a better word. That's a sign. You need to change something.
And definitely when your clients are specifically asking you for something you don't have. So they're asking you for a format that you don't have, for pricing that you don't have, for structure you don't have, or for content that you don't have, listen to that. Paying attention without taking it personally is such a skill, and it's hard. But the better you get at recognizing that all of it is just
data and this is really going back to that beta mindset, you depersonalize all of it and it's just like, okay, what can I learn from this thing and how can I respond to that? How can I stay flexible and respond to it? That is really, really key to being successful. This is how you're gonna stay aligned with what your clients want right now, not what they wanted like two years ago, okay? Which is exactly why I'm doing this episode right now because I think this is so critically important right now given the current market, okay? People do not want
what they wanted two years ago and they don't want it in the format they wanted it in two years ago. So you've got to start listening for that. Here's a personal example. I think I told you I was going to link this into like some changes that I've made in my own world as a result of this way of thinking, which is part of why I am as successful as I am as a coach. I have always been very responsive and very flexible. And this whole beta mindset thing that I teach my coaches is the way I have built my business and I still use it every single day. So.
Here's an example of me being responsive and flexible in my own world. I decided, and I've been thinking about it now for the last few months, but I decided to change the format and the pricing of the BBB in 2026. So as of today, as you're listening to this podcast, the BBB format and pricing looks completely different than it did for the last couple of years. Now,
The BBB has been a one-year program for the last two and a half years. So I had two different, three different, I think actually layers of beta in it, which I've talked about in other episodes. And then once I figured out what people wanted and what was gonna serve them best, I decided to convert it to this 12 month format where people, would join and they would have a one-year commitment. And then after the one-year commitment, they could stay on as continuing members on a monthly basis if they wanted continued support.
That worked so well for two and a half years. People loved it. It was the perfect balance for people. People were like really interested in committing for a long period of time. They recognized it takes a while to build a business. They wanted that continuous support. They wanted to be able to work through things at their own pace and the investment of time and money that went with that felt like really a no brainer to them.
That's shifted. And I've been noticing that now. And I've been talking about this on the podcast, right? So over the last 18 months or so, I have noticed that things have shifted. And I've been talking a lot about the buyer's market. People are more cautious. People want shorter commitments. And people want to test things before they invest in like a really significant way. And honestly, I'm the same.
So my buyer mentality has shifted in the last 18 months. I'm feeling exactly the same way. I'm not committing to some of those enormous commitments that I have in past years done. didn't join a mastermind this year, for example. I'm not taking a really expensive course. Normally I do like some kind of a continuing sort of business education course. I'm not doing that this year. And it's because I'm no different than you.
and I'm feeling more cautious about things. I'm feeling like I don't want to commit to something enormous. I'm feeling like I really want to know the value is there, right? that I work with who are new coaches or coaches in the first like five, six years of growing their business, that's my market and that's probably who you are if you're listening to this podcast, are even more sensitive to cost and to commitment and to risk in the current economic environment because you have to make money yourself in order
to invest in business training. And all of that has led me to recognize this mismatch between the old BBB model that worked really well for people of this 12 month commitment and what the market is actually asking for right now, what people are actually telling me. And so I decided to do what is the hard thing really in this situation, which is to actually listen to that instead of digging in and hoping
that things would go back to normal. It's been a consistent shift that I've been watching for the last 18 months. And if you're a podcast listener, you know that because I've been talking about it on this podcast. And I decided, okay, I got to listen to that because things might not go back to quote unquote normal. This might actually be the new normal or it might continue shifting in this direction for a while. But the old model isn't working the way it was for people. It's not the right fit.
So what can I do? How can I be responsive here and pivot in a flexible way?
The BBB has shifted to a six-month entry commitment.
and is now priced under $3,000. So where it was priced at about $5,000, depending on what payment option you chose and a 12 month commitment, it's now a six month commitment. That's it, you can leave after six months and the price is under $3,000 now to join.
So that is much more aligned with the buyer psychology that I have been seeing. It's lower risk, it's shorter commitment and it feels much more doable for most people.
It still delivers what people need. And I was careful, you know, I had to think about this. I didn't want to make it too short because it is a very comprehensive library in terms of content and all the resources and support I have. There are lots of different modules that coaches like working through. Like I can't offer this as a month long program or even a three month long program. That would just be unfair and overwhelming for people.
So it's enough time to learn, it's enough time to implement, it's enough time to get like tremendous value out of the content library and also those weekly office hours calls with me and the master classes and the copy calls. It's enough time to build some really great traction in your business and put some systems in place. And then if you wanna stay, once you've done the six months, if you feel like this is so great, my gosh, I'm getting so much back out of this, I've made my investment back.
then you can stay on for the continuing membership. So there's a continuing membership option after that. So people get the safety of that short-term commitment, but the opportunity for longer-term support once that trust has really been cemented with them. This shift did not come from some kind of trendy strategy advice I got from somebody. This came from listening. I was hearing this from people there.
Ugh, I'm really, I love this idea. I really need support. I know I have to invest in my business, but I'm feeling so nervous or anxious about investing like $5,000 in a year of my time into this program. I was hearing it from people. And so this shift, this pivot really comes from me being a good listener. And I really want to encourage you to do the same thing, right? So this is me responding.
to real humans, real people that I get on calls with, real people that I meet in open houses, real people that I interact with through the DMs or through my newsletter, not some avatar client that I developed like six years ago, right? This is my ideal client right now. The people that I meet with are perfect fits for the BBB. They're coaches that I really wanna support. But what I've been hearing increasingly over the last 18 months is I want something smaller. And so,
That's what I've done. And I think it's a really good example, this is why I'm sharing it with you, is I think it's a good example of how small businesses need to evolve. And I really want you to start thinking through this episode, where do I need to start listening? Or if I've already been hearing something, how can I respond to that in a more flexible way? Remember, changing your mind is a skillset. It is not a failure.
And I think a lot of the coaches that I support feel like changing your mind makes you kind of wishy-washy, sort of flaky. It might be confusing for your people. It might seem unprofessional, but it's not. It's actually really sophisticated stewardship of your business. It is something that big companies do all the time. Look at all those big companies out there. They pivot all the time, but for some reason, small...
Business people often forget that they have permission to do the same. And that's because we are the ones who have to give it to ourselves, by the way. But I want you to remember that, like reframe that concept of changing your mind. It's not flaky, it's not unprofessional. It's actually super professional and responsive. And it is the key, the key to staying relevant and to actually staying in profit, okay? Changing your mind means that you are paying attention.
It means that you're using data and not pride to steer directions, decisions, sorry. It means you're committed to serving your clients really well. It means you are designing a business that supports you as well. So we didn't even talk about that, but you may, if you're in that place where you're feeling burnt out and exhausted and resentful, maybe your offer needs to change because it's not the right offer for you anymore, right? So it also,
represents designing a business that supports you when you're able to change your mind. And it shows that you're willing to evolve. And like I said, that's the only way small businesses are going to survive long-term. So that's really critically important. Here are a few more reasons why flexibility keeps you profitable. And I'm just gonna throw these out there in case I haven't convinced you already that this is the thing you need to adopt for this year. You reduce your risk of building the wrong thing. And I...
actually never built the wrong thing because every time I've built something, it's been through that lens of a beta mindset. So I have thought to myself, well, this isn't the final thing. This is just the first version of the thing, right? Which makes it impossible to build the wrong thing. Because what I do is I learn from the first version of it, the first iteration, and then I iterate again and I make it better. And eventually I get to the right thing. This is how you prevent building the wrong thing. You stay flexible. That means that
You avoid the wasted time, money, content, and energy that happens when you are super rigid. And flexibility lets you do that course correction before you're too far down the wrong road. So it is absolutely key in my mind to building a profitable, sustainable business is staying flexible.
It also helps you to avoid burnout. I've hinted at this, but I think this is really important because you're not dragging dead offers over the finish line. Like you're not constantly trying to flog something that nobody's interested in, that you don't even want to run anymore. A lot of coaches burn out from overwork. And it's not overwork from coaching. It's the overwork that comes from pushing the wrong offer. And, you know, just doing that really out of sheer stubbornness.
or because they feel like they need to because they said they were gonna offer this thing and so if they don't, they changed their mind, they're somehow gonna look unprofessional or like a flake. The other reason why flexibility is gonna help keep you profitable in 2026 is that you are going to stay ahead of your competition. Most coaches don't iterate at all. They create and launch it and then cling to it for years and...
And even when it stops converting, and I know that you know of examples of this, there are lots of really big coaches out there who do this, who are pushing the same offer. It sounds exactly the same, it's got the same name, it's got the same format, it's got the same structure, and they've been pushing it for like 10 years. You get to be different, you get to be responsive, which means you get to be relevant, which means you get to make money, which means you get to stay in business, okay?
Responsive coaches stand out because their offers, their pricing, and their messaging stays aligned with what their clients actually need and actually want right now. Okay, so how do you build more flexibility into your business in the coming year? You think of every offer, every new thing that you create, whether that's...
and your newsletter or you start a podcast or you launch a group program or you put a new free lead magnet out there. You think of that as version 1.0 and you do that frankly, even if it's like the 50th time you've done it. It's actually your 50th version. Every time you put something out there, you're going to learn from it and you're going to tweak and change something. Eventually the goal is obviously to get it kind of dialed in, right?
But there will be pieces of it, like maybe it's how you market it and the copy you use to market it. Maybe it's like the welcome sequence that you have attached to it. Maybe it's the platform on which you offer it. Maybe it's the length of the coaching sessions. Things will always be changing. So every time you put something out there, you think of it as version 1.0. And then you build in review. This is something that I'm really adamant about inside the BBB is that coaches continually look at their systems.
look at their offers and change things if they need to. So you have a system for review built in. Maybe it's like a quarterly thing that works well for a lot of people, but you have a system for that so that it doesn't just like slip away with the busyness. And then before you know it, you've been offering the same thing and exactly the same iteration for five years. You check your assumptions. What is still working? What is not working? What needs a tweak?
Right? Like what you look at those things, you look at stats. I'm so big on stats. I will say often to my coaches, like, what is your conversion stat on your discovery call? What is your conversion stat on that lead magnet? How many people are actually downloading it? How often are they staying on your newsletter list? Who's bouncing? Right? You need to know these things. You have to pay attention to the data and then you need to shift accordingly if things aren't working.
Listen to objections instead of resisting them. I know it is hard to get criticism. It is hard to hear that maybe things aren't perfect or you're not delivering things in a way that's making everybody happy. And you've got to shift through the feedback. You've got to figure out what feedback's the relevant feedback. But frankly, if you're hearing the same message over and over again, that's important feedback to be listening to and you need to stop resisting that.
and actually start asking yourself, can I work this into what I'm doing? How can I respond to this in a helpful way? And I really want you to start paying attention to what your clients are actually doing right now instead of what you hoped they'd be doing. And this is like, it's hard.
It was hard for me last year to think, shoot, like this model and this format that I thought was the best format for the BBB, I actually don't think it is the best format anymore. And that's the thing to remember, right? It can be the perfect format for a particular period in time and a particular group of clients and not the right format for a different period in time or a different client, right? So you have to be paying attention to that all the time and looking at what they're actually doing and actually saying right now.
I'm just gonna invite you as I wrap up this podcast episode to really start this new year by giving yourself permission to treat your business like a living breathing experiment because that is actually what it is. You get to change your mind. You are not married to your offers. They can change and they should change.
And you can build and refine and reposition at any time. If things don't feel right to you, or if you're getting feedback that they're not landing with the people that you need them to land with, you get to change your mind. Flexibility does not make you unpredictable, it makes you sustainable. I'm gonna repeat that. Flexibility does not make you unpredictable, it makes you sustainable as a small business owner.
So I'm asking you this year to listen, to experiment, to stay in that beta mindset. If you need to put a sticky note on your office wall or your computer that says beta, I want you to remind yourself every day that everything you do in your business is a beta. And I want you to review the data and the information that you get and learn from each iteration and then iterate again. And if...
You are curious about this new six month format for the BBB. I have an open house coming up on January 22nd, 2026. And if you're listening to this episode at some other time of the year, there will be an upcoming open house. You can go and sign up for that open house through the link in the show notes or wendymcallum.com forward slash BBB. I would love to meet you. I feel really excited about this new format for the BBB.
it offers exactly the same support, exactly the same content. Nothing has changed in the library. Nothing has changed in the call schedule and the support, except that the format is different and it allows you to come in at a lower risk and a much lower price point. And then you make the decision as to whether you stay after that. So I'm super excited about it and I would love to meet you and I'd love to support you as you build your business in a responsive and flexible way in
Thanks for listening and I will see you next week on The Coaching Edge.
