00;00;03;05 - 00;00;24;28
Unknown
Welcome to the Coaching Edge podcast. I'm your host, Wendy McCallum, a seasoned and successful life coach. Every other Monday, I share my hard earned wisdom from well over a decade of coaching so you can avoid the mistakes I've made by provide practical and inspiring bite sized strategies, coach stories, and thought provoking conversations with industry experts about the business of coaching.
00;00;25;00 - 00;00;33;15
Unknown
If you are craving the freedom and joy that comes from building a profitable and fulfilling coaching practice, you're in the right place. Now let's get down to business.
00;00;33;18 - 00;00;53;02
Unknown
Hey, coach, I want to share something that's been in the works for a while. For years I ran the Business Building Bootcamp, this intimate, live intensive where I got to coach new coaches through all the messy, exciting and overwhelming stages of building a real business. About 75 coaches came through the program, and honestly, it was some of the most fun and rewarding work I've ever done.
00;00;53;03 - 00;01;11;21
Unknown
But over the years, I also had coaches reach out and say, I love what you're doing, but I'm not sure I'm ready for the whole thing. I just need help with this one piece. And that stuck with me because I remember what it felt like to be new at this. You don't always know what you don't know yet, and jumping into a big program can feel like a lot when you're still finding your feet.
00;01;11;23 - 00;01;42;16
Unknown
So I've rethought the whole model. The BB is now the business building boutique. Same content I've spent years building and refining, but now it's organized into individual self-guided courses you can choose from based on what you actually need right now. The 101 series covers the foundations, like launching your business, building a one on one practice, marketing, and starting some group coaching the advanced programs, the Master Class fault, the confident Coaching Skills Intensive, and the coaching course creator are there when you're ready to go deeper.
00;01;42;22 - 00;02;06;07
Unknown
The All Access pass gets you everything at an incredible price and the VIP All access. That's everything. Plus six one on one coaching sessions with me. There's something for every coach and I'm really proud of how it turned out. So go have a look at Wendy MacCallum for and see what fits.
00;02;06;10 - 00;02;21;04
Unknown
Hello there! Welcome to the inaugural episode of the Coaching Edge Podcast. I'm your host, Wendy McCallum, and I am so happy to be here. Some of you might know me from my other podcast, which is called Bite Size Balance, and it's going into its fourth season.
00;02;21;06 - 00;02;55;20
Unknown
This is a completely different podcast. This is a podcast by a coach for coaches, and I am going to be talking about all of the things that I have learned in the last 13 years or so of being a professional coach. My goal with this podcast is to provide you with what I think is the missing information in a lot of certification and training programs, and that is that the basics of launching a business, but also everything you need to know about building a really resonant, successful, profitable coaching practice as a solo printer.
00;02;55;20 - 00;03;18;20
Unknown
So this podcast is really for those of you who are out there building a business by yourselves. I know how lonely that can feel. I have been doing it for the last 13 years, but again, I've made tons of mistakes and I've learned from all of them. And I have now, you know, in in the last, I would say six or so years got into a place where I really feel like I know what I'm doing and I have found my groove.
00;03;18;20 - 00;03;37;05
Unknown
I am making good money, I have a solid revenue stream, I am working with the people I want to be working with, and I love sitting down at my desk every day, so I want to help you get there. So this podcast episode is the first of many. We're going to be dropping episodes every couple of weeks. There'll be a few right out of the gate for you guys.
00;03;37;05 - 00;03;55;10
Unknown
So if you like this episode, go and look in the podcast area and you'll see that there are some more that are already uploaded for you. But after those first few episodes, we're going to be dropping them every two weeks. And my goal is to do a variety of episodes with a variety of topics. Sometimes I will have guests on.
00;03;55;11 - 00;04;17;19
Unknown
It might be experts in business, small business, in coaching. They might be some of the coaches from my own coaching school membership, the BB who are going to come on and talk about their areas of challenge as a coach in their business and what they have done and learned in those areas to get past those challenges and succeed.
00;04;17;21 - 00;04;36;02
Unknown
Might be me doing solo episodes like this, but it's going to be a variety of things, and I am committed to keeping these episodes at less than 30 minutes. And I'm going to do that today. I promise you. That's because I respect your time. And I also know that you're busy, busy, busy. And I want to give you as much concise, helpful information in an as efficient way as possible.
00;04;36;03 - 00;05;04;03
Unknown
So today, my goal is to fold one. I want to tell you a little bit about myself and to I want to give you some of the biggest mistakes that I have made as a coach, hopefully to help you prevent those or pull yourself out of those situations sooner than I was able to. Now there are so many mistakes I've made, I couldn't possibly cover them all in one podcast, but I have picked sort of the top, let's say, ten or so of them, and I'm probably going to split them over two episodes.
00;05;04;03 - 00;05;25;05
Unknown
I will split them over to episode. So this is going to be part one of a two part, all of the Mistakes Wendy's made episode. So let me get started by introducing myself, telling you a little bit about how I got to this place that I am in now. So this is a second career for me, but I have now been doing coaching longer than or as long, I guess, as my first career, which was in law.
00;05;25;05 - 00;05;48;20
Unknown
So I graduated from law school in 1996. I moved out to the west side of Canada to work in a very big law firm, in a job that was, you know, by all accounts, a pretty great job. And I did that for about 13 years, and it was never the right fit for me. And it's so clear to me now in hindsight why that is.
00;05;48;20 - 00;06;08;18
Unknown
But at the time I wasn't really sure. But I kept doing it because it was what everybody said I should be doing and because honestly, I was good at it and close to. I guess I'd been doing it for about seven years when I adopted my son at birth, and I made partner two months after that, and at the time I was a few months pregnant with my daughter.
00;06;08;18 - 00;06;29;27
Unknown
So we had this crazy situation happen where I had two kids within seven months, and I also made partner there. So that led to a five year period, 4 or 5 years of me being a partner and trying to raise these two little kids. And not surprisingly, it was completely overwhelming. And while I, you know, on paper looked very successful, I was falling apart in so many ways.
00;06;29;27 - 00;06;50;16
Unknown
My physical health, my mental health was not great. And I made the decision to leave that job, which in hindsight, one of the best decisions I ever made, allowed me to change my trajectory and life, changed my path, and actually figure out what I really wanted to be doing and then create that life for myself, both personally and in in business.
00;06;50;19 - 00;07;07;13
Unknown
But at the time, it felt really, really scary. So I left that job and we moved across the country back to the East Coast, which is where I'm from, the east coast of Canada, and I took a year off to be with my kids before they started school. And then when they started school, I went back to schools.
00;07;07;13 - 00;07;30;03
Unknown
The first training that I did as a coach was through the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition. I did a year long, pretty intense program where I went into classes, two full days of classes every week for a year, and wrote all kinds of tests and exams and all the rest of it, and left that after a year with the certification of a holistic nutrition consultant.
00;07;30;03 - 00;07;49;26
Unknown
And then I had to decide what to do. I didn't want to try to get a job with anyone, and actually that was really difficult with that designation. So really the only option felt like starting my own business, hanging out a shingle. And that was terrifying for me because I was raised to be very risk averse. Nobody in my family was a business person.
00;07;49;26 - 00;08;18;12
Unknown
Everybody worked for the man. I'm putting that in air quotes, although it actually probably was the man at the time, not the woman. And so this idea of creating a business starting from scratch was just really, really scary for me. But I was really lucky in that I am married to somebody who has a very strong entrepreneurial background in spirit, and who had been running his own successful company and completely different field for many, many years at this point and who really encouraged me to do this.
00;08;18;13 - 00;08;48;04
Unknown
You said you can do this, and who helped me with a lot of the basics. Some of the things we will be talking about on this podcast. I was lucky that I had someone so close by who I could talk to it any time when things got tough. But the truth is, I realized over the years he didn't know anything about coaching, and there was a lot of stuff that he couldn't help me with, and that led to a whole lot of spinning of wheels and a whole lot of mistake making, and a whole lot of money spent in places that it shouldn't have been spent, which we will again talk, be talking about in
00;08;48;04 - 00;09;13;26
Unknown
many future episodes. So I started, I incorporated, I created a logo and a brand and a website and started working as a food coach. And that was a that was a slog building that business. And again, we'll talk about at some point how I did that and a lot of the things that I learned in that in those early years.
00;09;13;26 - 00;09;31;26
Unknown
But one of the things I realized after a few years was that this wasn't really what I wanted to be doing, and in fact, it wasn't even really what my clients needed. So I was working mostly with really busy working moms, and they could find out what to eat and get recipes and meal plans and all of the rest of it.
00;09;31;26 - 00;09;53;17
Unknown
They could do that online. They could just Google that. They didn't really need me to tell them what to eat or how to eat. What they really needed was someone to help them figure out how to make these things happen in their real, busy, stressful lives. They needed someone to help them identify what the thoughts and beliefs and patterns were that they had around food that weren't serving them.
00;09;53;17 - 00;10;19;05
Unknown
They needed someone to help them create a toolkit of healthier coping mechanisms that they could rely on. They needed something different than what I was equipped to give them, and I started coaching around that intuitively. But I knew that I wanted to get some really specific training around these types of things, helping people shift mindsets and and get unstuck when they were stuck.
00;10;19;05 - 00;10;46;07
Unknown
And that led me to go and get a second round of intense training through what was then the Coaches Training Institute is now the Training Institute. I did five weekends, five, three day weekends over the course of about six months or so, in all of the fundamentals that they teach through at CTI and basically left with this life coaching training that has just been amazing.
00;10;46;07 - 00;11;08;26
Unknown
It's formed the it's been the foundation for me of all the coaching that I do. And I absolutely am so grateful that I did. That program was fantastic. Then I started coaching more around wellness and balance for busy women, which felt like the at the time, more like the place that I wanted to be. And at some point, I began to realize that I wasn't really feeling like I was in alignment in my own life.
00;11;08;26 - 00;11;44;11
Unknown
Things were personally feeling a little off for me and I. It was hard to get to this place, but at some point became pretty obvious to me that the biggest problem for me was the way I was using alcohol as a coping mechanism myself, and I was seeing this reflected in my coaching practice. Women were using it as a primary coaching stress management tool, and just like I was, and I did not feel like I could coach them around that given what I was doing myself at night at the end of a long, hard day, which was pouring myself a glass or three of wine.
00;11;44;13 - 00;12;15;17
Unknown
So I did my own work around that. I did my first 30 day alcohol free experiment, and I have now been alcohol free for almost five and a half years, and that led me to go and get specific certification around alcohol free coaching. Through this naked mind. And for the last few years, I have been coaching in an even narrower niche, which is women who are professional women who are incredibly busy, overwhelmed and stressed using alcohol as their primary coping mechanism.
00;12;15;17 - 00;12;38;03
Unknown
And that is almost exclusively who I work with now. And I absolutely love it. We're going to talk about niche in a second. That's my niche story. So started really, really broad and ended where I am now quite narrow. And to be honest, it gets narrower every year because I get clearer and clearer on who this person is that I love to work with and what this problem is that I love to help women solve.
00;12;38;04 - 00;13;01;00
Unknown
So that's my story of how I got to where I am now. And the other thing that's happened kind of just sort of serendipitously happened, I think over the last five years or so, is that new coaches started coming to me. They were seeing that I was having some great success in my business, and they were coming to me and saying like, how did you do this in particular?
00;13;01;00 - 00;13;21;13
Unknown
After I finished my last certification, I had many, many coaches who were in that certification with me come to me and say, I'm ready to get started, but I don't know what to do or how to do that, and I need help with that. So I started coaching coaches one on one, but after not very long, honestly, after about a year and a half or so, I realized I can't do this.
00;13;21;13 - 00;13;47;19
Unknown
I don't have the capacity to coach these coaches one on one, and that's also really expensive as a new coach, to be hiring a private coach to help you with business, what I want to do is create some kind of a group program, a group platform for coaches, both new coaches, coaches who are still in certification, who are getting excited about creating their businesses, and also coaches who've been at this for a while, but who aren't growing in the way they want to be growing, or who aren't feeling the way they want to be feeling about their coaching business.
00;13;47;22 - 00;14;18;11
Unknown
I'm going to create a program that actually allows me to help many people at once, and that is how my Bebe program was born. So that is my business building bootcamp, which is now a one year program followed by continuing membership. And so that's the other thing that I do as a coach. I run that program, and that's really why I'm doing this podcast, because in the process of helping those coaches, now we're in a beta for the first six months, and now for about the last six months we've been in the full the full program.
00;14;18;16 - 00;14;30;22
Unknown
I've realized that there's a real need for this, and my coaches encouraged me to start this podcast because they said, this is the type of information that everybody needs. So that's why I'm here.
00;14;30;24 - 00;14;51;12
Unknown
Hey there! If you're listening to this show and daydreaming about launching your coaching business, first of all, I'm so excited for you. Coaching is a deeply rewarding career that can offer a great income, real freedom, and a genuine connection to purpose. That's really tough to find in many other career tracks, but the early stages of launching your small business can feel so overwhelming.
00;14;51;13 - 00;15;12;00
Unknown
How do you go from this dream? You have to actually making money. What do you need to know to get this right? That's exactly what I cover inside my Free Launch Fundamentals checklist. This step by step guide breaks down exactly what to focus on when you're launching your coaching business and what you don't need to worry about yet so you can get strategic and avoid overwhelm.
00;15;12;03 - 00;15;31;25
Unknown
You'll cover all the crucial steps. Stay on track and stop second guessing yourself every time you sit down to work, ready to turn those daydreams into real action and a life changing coaching business? Grab the guide now at the link in the show notes to get started.
00;15;31;27 - 00;15;42;24
Unknown
So that's my story. I'm sure I've forgotten a million things, and I'm happy to answer any questions you have. So if you've got topics that you want me to cover on this podcast or you want to know something, send me a message.
00;15;42;24 - 00;16;07;15
Unknown
You can always do that through my social media channels. So I'm at Wendy McCallum coach on Instagram. Or you can find me at Wendy at Wendy McCallum. You can just send me an email. Love to hear from you. But that's my condensed story. Now let's get into some of the biggest mistakes that I made. And I'm only going to probably be able to cover maybe three, and the others I will save for part two of this podcast.
00;16;07;17 - 00;16;26;17
Unknown
The first thing I wanted to talk about is the niche, and I have told you now my story of how my niche started very, very broad, basically just a food coach for everybody and eventually got to this place where I'm now a I now am a burnout and alcohol coach for professional women who are overwhelmed and using alcohol as a primary means of coping.
00;16;26;23 - 00;16;44;15
Unknown
So you can see the difference between those two niches. I wish I'd niche down earlier. I wish someone had had that hard conversation with me about the need to get really specific about what it is you do and who you help. Nobody did, and as a result of that, I sort of floundered for a long time trying to figure out what that is.
00;16;44;15 - 00;17;06;02
Unknown
This is one of the things we talk about from the get go in the BBC, and it comes up on almost every live office hours call that we have. I push somebody, I challenge somebody to get clearer on their niche and to narrow it down. It's really scary to narrow your niche because it feels like, oh, but if I do that, then there'll be people that won't feel like they're welcome, that I can't actually help.
00;17;06;02 - 00;17;25;29
Unknown
And, you know, that can be rooted in a scarcity thing where you're worried that you're not going to get any pain clients, which, by the way, good thing to be concerned about. Obviously, you need to make money. And we're going to talk a lot about money on this podcast to but just this general fear that you won't be able to reach people if you get to specific and narrow with your niche.
00;17;26;00 - 00;17;47;24
Unknown
Here's the thing. If somebody gets to your website page or your social media channel and they don't know what it is you do, it's just so unclear because your niche is so broad, they are not going to feel like they are in the right place or the wrong place for that matter. They're just not going to know, and they're going to bounce off that page so quickly and go look for somebody else.
00;17;47;24 - 00;18;08;03
Unknown
So what you want is when a person lands on your website, social media channel, whatever it is you want them to know, they are in exactly the right place or they're not in the right place. And I know the second part of that feels scary to you, but that's how you get people signing up for discovery calls. That's how you book clients.
00;18;08;03 - 00;18;25;19
Unknown
It's by them landing on the page and thinking, oh my gosh, this is it. This is exactly what I'm looking for. This is the person who knows what it is I'm dealing with. This is the person who knows how to help with this problem that I am struggling with. So your niche needs to be very narrow for somebody to know that, right?
00;18;25;21 - 00;18;44;22
Unknown
Case in point, my Tunisia's wellness. That was my for a while there in the middle, I was like a balance coach for women. Nobody knew what that meant, first of all. And second of all, they did not know they were in the right place when they got there because the language in the copy was really vague and kind of purposefully vague, because at the time I thought, well, that'll just help me, you know, cast a wider net and catch more people.
00;18;44;22 - 00;19;04;02
Unknown
But that's not how it works. Now women get to my website and they're like, oh, I'm not using alcohol to cope. I'm using food to cope. This is not the right place for me. That's great because that is not what I do anymore. And I don't want to exclusively coach women around food. I know lots of people who do that really, really well, and I'm happy to refer people over to those people.
00;19;04;02 - 00;19;24;03
Unknown
But that's not what I do anymore. But I get women who land there and they say, oh my God, that is me. I am a professional, highly successful woman who on the outside looks like she has it all together, but who is using alcohol way too often and not feeling good about how it is showing up in her life and doesn't know how to change this.
00;19;24;03 - 00;19;41;21
Unknown
I'm in the right spot. This person can help me with this. First of all, she's been there. So it's clear from my story that that is my story. And second of all, this is what she does. And that's really clear from this first page that I land on, on her website that says something like, how would it feel to be, you know, have less stress and drink less?
00;19;41;23 - 00;20;03;21
Unknown
You know, it's very clear. And then it says, I help professional women. So it's very, very clear what I do. And that's what you need to do as well. It will lead to more paying customers. So remember the goal is when someone lands on your website or your social media channel, you want them to be able to know right away whether you're the the right person for them or you're not the right person for them.
00;20;03;21 - 00;20;27;22
Unknown
You don't want there to be any confusion about that. And the only way to do that is to have a really clear, specific niche. Okay, that's the first mistake I made. The niching thing took me way too long to figure that out. Second thing, I spent too much time on branding the name of my company, a cute little tagline, a creative pretty logo, you know, beautiful graphics from my website, all that stuff.
00;20;27;24 - 00;20;47;27
Unknown
I spent way too much time on that and way too much money on that over the years. This is what I tell my coaches, and I'm going to tell you guys this first of all logo doesn't matter. Nobody cares about your logo. It is not important. Second of all, and this one's probably going to blow your mind. Your business name doesn't matter that much either.
00;20;47;29 - 00;21;06;29
Unknown
In fact, I recommend if you're just starting out and you haven't picked a business name yet, that you go with your name and then coach or coaching. So, for example, I am Wendy McCallum coaching. Why do I recommend that? Because I made the mistake of not doing that. I made the mistake of coming up with a really cute name for my company, Simple Balanced Consulting, which by the way, nobody knew what that meant.
00;21;06;29 - 00;21;29;07
Unknown
And a tagline underneath it that said something like real life, real food. I think at first it was real food for and then it became real food for real families or something like that. Anyway, when I got to that stage where I realized, oh, not really what I want to do, and this is a really pretty broad area that I'm in, and I'm trying to serve everybody and not doing a great job of serving anyone.
00;21;29;12 - 00;21;58;24
Unknown
I want to narrow this down. I want to really focus in on women's wellness and balance and stress management. That logo didn't work anymore. It was a green apple and the slogan underneath it said real food for real families. I needed to change all of that. That cost money, you know? So then I worked on creating a new logo that was a little more general and anyway, eventually changed the name of my company, which was Simple Balance Consulting, changed the name that I do business under anyway, to Wendy McCallum coaching.
00;21;58;24 - 00;22;14;17
Unknown
And I now use Wendy McCallum. Com as my website, and I've been doing that for well over five years now, and it was one of the best business decisions I made. Why? Two reasons. First of all, you are your brand as a solo printer. You're your brand. People are going to get to know you. You want them to know your name.
00;22;14;17 - 00;22;42;18
Unknown
And when they search online, they're going to be searching for your name. So securing the domain that is your name or your name with coach or coaching after it is really smart. If you haven't done that yet, go do it. Even if you have another business name, I recommend you do that. And then you direct that to your existing website and you just keep that domain, because at some point you might take my advice and decide to actually switch to your real name and then coach a coaching after it.
00;22;42;18 - 00;23;00;12
Unknown
So I did that about five years ago. I'll never go to anything else, because the other reason that that serves me is that it allows me to grow as a coach and to grow as a business, right? I'm not pigeonholing myself into one particular niche. I'm not being too specific about the problem that I solve with my actual name and brand.
00;23;00;18 - 00;23;20;02
Unknown
I'm really specific on my website when people get there. But with the the, the, the logo and the name of my company, it's just Wendy McCowan coaching that allows me to do everything. That is what is allowed me to go from the alcohol coaching that I do for professional women and create this second piece of my business that I absolutely love, which is coaching coaches.
00;23;20;03 - 00;23;41;27
Unknown
Right? It all can fit very well under Wendy McCallum coaching and I am known now by name. So I have my existing podcast. I have this podcast, I have a pretty big following out there. I have been on the news many, many times. I've written two cookbooks like My Name Is Out There and my it's my name, it's Wendy McCallum.
00;23;41;27 - 00;23;59;13
Unknown
It's not simple balance. It's not some other name. So don't spend too much money on a logo. Go make one in Canva Pro. That's what I recommend for my new coaches, and I also recommend that you secure your own name as a domain if you haven't done that yet. Last thing I'm going to squeeze in here under the wire is don't.
00;23;59;14 - 00;24;14;26
Unknown
I'm torn here because I want to talk about under pricing and the problems with pricing. But I'm gonna save that for the next episode for you guys. So in the next episode, I'm going to talk about pricing your coaching a bit, and we're going to have like dedicated to the topic of pricing as well as we go forward with the coaching edge.
00;24;14;28 - 00;24;33;21
Unknown
But what I'm going to talk about is the another trap that I fell into, which was creating too many offers or programs. This idea that I had that, oh gosh, somebody told me that they would they would like this. Like there was someone who asked me if I had this thing and I don't have it, so I'm going to create that for them, because that means I'll be able to sell that and I'll be able to make more money.
00;24;33;21 - 00;24;56;09
Unknown
And I basically just made something every time somebody, 1 or 2 people asked me for that thing, and that stretched me super thin, first of all. So creating valuable content takes time. You can't just slap something together. It needs to be good quality programing for you to sell it at the price you need to sell it at to be a successful business person.
00;24;56;09 - 00;25;18;05
Unknown
So I was working on the weekends, I was working at night. I was always creating videos and, you know, doing programing because I had this mentality that if somebody was interested in it, that meant I had to create it and I should create it. And I ended up with a lot of different products and offers that I was selling, which was frankly just confusing, more confusing for my audience, who already probably didn't quite know what it was that I did.
00;25;18;05 - 00;25;43;23
Unknown
And also, you know, leading me to burnout as a coach, honestly. So what I've realized and what I have done since then, and what I do quite well now, is that I don't have a million programs. I have a coaching program and I only have one, a private coaching program. It is a 12 session program. I don't offer a six session and a 12 session and a 24 session and a 21 day kickstart and all of that.
00;25;43;23 - 00;26;04;16
Unknown
I just offer a 12 session coaching program. Why? In my experience and I have a lot now, it's really hard for women to make permanent change in less than 12 weeks, and it allows me to support them in a way that's actually really meaningful for them, and it allows them the greatest chance of success. And me, the greatest likelihood of feeling successful as a coach when that 12 session program is finished.
00;26;04;17 - 00;26;21;14
Unknown
Now, that doesn't mean that I don't sometimes coach women for longer. I do, and there's an option to continue with me, but that is my base level program. I also offer a back end membership. We will talk about back end memberships on another episode, so really great way to fill a group without all of the stress of launching and selling.
00;26;21;14 - 00;26;37;16
Unknown
But I offer that back end membership that is only available to people who have worked with me through that 12 week program, one on one, and it's by invitation only. So they need to be a good fit for it. And then I have one self-guided program that I sell, which is my six week rewind, and that is basically my down sell.
00;26;37;16 - 00;26;57;07
Unknown
So that's the thing that if a person is either not a great fit for one on one coaching, maybe not quite ready for it yet, but if they are, they cannot. They simply cannot afford private coaching. That is the thing that I offer them. And that product is also the only thing that I coach in a in a group form.
00;26;57;08 - 00;27;21;18
Unknown
And I only do that once a year. So once a year I coach through that program. But I also have a live group that runs with it. So it's a pretty minimal number of products. Right. And then of course I have my BB program, but that is just one program that I run as well now. But my point is, is I don't have like a, you know, a four week option and a 12 week option, a 24 week option, a, you know, half an hour session option versus an hour session option.
00;27;21;18 - 00;27;35;10
Unknown
And I don't have a 21 day kickstart. I sell online and but you can also just get the meal plans from that here. Or you can get, you know, a little mini course here on this thing or you can get that many. I don't do that. I don't have all of those things anymore. For a long time I did.
00;27;35;10 - 00;27;53;06
Unknown
I had way too many. So don't create too many programs and offers if you're just starting out, especially if you're just starting out, focus on your one on one coaching program. That is the place where you can actually make some decent money, and you need to make some decent money in order to stay afloat as a coach. Group programing is great.
00;27;53;06 - 00;28;17;14
Unknown
It's scalable. You can make more money on an hourly basis and work less once you're going to position where you have the capacity to sell a group program. But selling a group program in your first year is really, really tough. And honestly, the one on one coaching practice is the way to create that sustainable revenue stream that will allow you to then experiment and start building and trying other ways of making money.
00;28;17;14 - 00;28;36;08
Unknown
So start with a one on one coaching program. It doesn't need to be really complicated, but you do need to have a very clear understanding of what is included in that program and how much you're charging for it. Now, again, pricing whole other issue. We'll talk about that. But those are my three, the three mistakes I'm going to share in this episode.
00;28;36;08 - 00;29;04;00
Unknown
And then I will be back in episode two to share more. So that was your first episode of The Coaching Edge. I hope you enjoyed it. I packed a lot into it. I'm excited about all the episodes to come. As I said, I have experts on. I'm going to have other coaches on who are going to share some of their success stories and some of the challenges that they've encountered as business people, and I am open to any suggestions you have.
00;29;04;05 - 00;29;21;20
Unknown
Send them my way if you've got them. I hope you loved this episode. I hope you listen to the next one. You will see that there are already a few episodes waiting for you, and then after those episodes, we will be dropping a new episode every two weeks. If you liked this episode, please leave a review for me.
00;29;21;21 - 00;29;43;25
Unknown
Do me a favor as another one small business person to another small business person. It is so helpful when people leave reviews and you know, star podcasts because it just lets other people know, oh, this is a thing worth listening to. We're inundated with information and just bombarded with content now, and it's hard to figure out what's worth it and what's not.
00;29;43;26 - 00;29;56;15
Unknown
My goal is to make this podcast a half an hour worth setting aside every two weeks. So thanks again for listening. I look forward to seeing you next time.
00;29;56;17 - 00;30;23;26
Unknown
Thanks so much for joining me for this episode. I hope you're coming away with renewed energy and some creative inspiration for your coaching business. If you're looking for more business support and community with like minded coaches, please follow me on Instagram at Wendy McCallum coach and check out my popular BB membership for coaches at Wendy McCallum. And if you love what you heard today, please leave a rating and a review to let other coaches know that this is a podcast worth listening to in advance.
00;30;23;26 - 00;30;26;20
Unknown
I really appreciate you and I'll see you next time.
