Ep #148: 12 Reasons Why You’re Stuck in Your Coaching Business

You are listening to The Life Coach Business Podcast with Amanda Karlstad episode number 148.

Welcome to The Life Coach Business Podcast, a show for coaches who are ready to up-level their business and take their impact, leadership, and results to a whole new level. If you’re ready to start taking powerful action and become the leader your business needs in order to grow and thrive, this show is for you. I’m your host, Amanda Karlstad, certified life and business coach, and entrepreneurial leadership expert. Now, let’s get down to business.

Hello and welcome everyone. So glad to have you here today. I hope you’re doing amazing. I am doing really well. I have been working on some really exciting things here, some things behind the scenes that I’m really looking forward to sharing soon.

With that, I’ve also been enjoying summer and enjoying these last—I can’t believe it, but these last few weeks of the summer. I can’t believe we are already in August, and that the kids are going to be heading back to school in just a few weeks. We have been having so much fun this summer and have one more trip planned. In fact, the day that you are listening to this podcast, the day that this podcast launches, we will be on our final trip of the summer on the lake on a boat and possibly doing some sailing and just spending some quality time together before the summer comes to an end.

So the last few days, I’ve been thinking about how awesome the summer has been. Being able to be really present with my kids and doing some traveling and spending some time with friends and family and how my business, the way that I have intentionally structured my calendar, my coaching schedule, how I’ve structured my programs, has really allowed me to be fully present with them, and also be really present in the business and with my clients.

I’m just really proud and grateful to my past self for building my business in this way that really allows me to work with the most amazing clients, and to be a really present mom and to be present in my life at the same time. It’s a very cool thing to grow a business and be a mom and to be able to do all of it and not feel like I’m sacrificing one for the other.

I think that’s one of the most beautiful things about building a coaching business is the opportunity that we all have to make a huge impact, to do the work that I believe is some of the most important work in the world. Honestly to make a huge impact and to make a ton of money doing it. It’s really an extraordinary thing.

It really hit me even more as I spent two days in person with my High Level Mastermind clients. These are my clients who are in the process of scaling their businesses to multiple six and seven figures. A couple of weeks ago, we were at our quarterly in-person retreat. Because in this program, I hold quarterly retreats for these clients where we go deep into their businesses, and I really teach on the most up to date strategies and do high level coaching that is really intended to always help them unlock their next level.

When I look at them, and I look at now so many of them too that are growing and scaling their businesses and doing it in a way where they’re able to do it and be present in their lives, be present with their families. Some are doing it in just a couple of days a week. Some are doing it in three or four days a week. Others are doing it in about 20 to 25 hours a week, and some are doing it in more of a full time schedule.

That’s really, I think, a personal preference. But it’s one of the beautiful things about this type of business is to be able to grow a very successful business and do it in a way that works for you, do it in a way that works for your life.

Now, does this happen overnight? No. For myself and for my clients who are doing this, I will tell you it’s the result of being very intentional. For me, it’s been the result of being very intentional from the get-go with my schedule. How I’ve structured my business, how I have chosen how I want to grow my business with the high level of intention that I have really approached everything in my business.

So the great thing about that is that when I look at that process that I have gone through, it has really challenged me to think from a different lens. It’s challenged me to think from a much higher level and has allowed me to create a business that I truly love and have that life outside of the business that I also love.

So I just want to share that with all of you. Because I know for me and for the work that I do with my clients, yes it’s about growing the business. Yes, it’s about building and getting that business to six, multiple six, eventually seven figures, but it’s also about building an intentional life outside of the business and doing it in a way that’s sustainable. So it’s truly an honor to be able to do this work.

For me, the journey, and the process, I really believe it’s an honor. It’s an opportunity of a lifetime. So I felt compelled to share that with all of you today because I know so many of you are desiring to take your business to the next level, to grow your business, to that six figure level, to that multiple six figure level, and eventually seven figure level and beyond.

I just want you to know that it’s totally possible. I want you to know that yes, it takes work and know that it doesn’t happen overnight. But I want to encourage you to stay the course. Really lean into today’s episode and what I’m bringing you here today in the podcast. Because what I’m about to share with you, the lessons that I have learned, that I have gleaned in my own journey, and now in coaching hundreds of coaches is that the reason that you’re not where you want to be in your business, whatever that means to you, is likely because of what I’m bringing you here today.

So I want to go over 12 reasons why you’re not where you want to be at in your coaching business and why you might be feeling stuck. I want to give you some really specific coaching here in this episode as to why you’re not yet where you want to be. Because my intention is that you really hear what I’m bringing to you today, and you really lean into this episode. Also use it as a tool to assess where you might be stuck. So with that, let’s dive in.

So I want to go over 12 reasons why you’re not yet where you want to be, and why you might be feeling stuck. So the first reason that you’re not where you want to be, and you might be feeling stuck is because you don’t have clarity.

What I mean by that is so often when I’m meeting with new clients who are coming into my programs, either in my six month mastermind program, my business accelerator, or in my High Level Mastermind program for clients that have already hit that six figure mark and want to take things to the next level, what’s happening is that more often than not they lack clarity.

They lack clarity in terms of what it is that they want to offer. They lack clarity in terms of how to structure their program, or how to price their program or how they want to deliver the program. It might even be clarity in terms of how to grow the business or how to actually take their marketing to the next level.

So a lot of times clients come to me because they’ve been relying on methods of marketing that aren’t sustainable, that aren’t successful, and aren’t helping them achieve what it is that they want to achieve. I will tell you, sometimes it is about not knowing where they want to take the business.

So something that I do with every coach that I work with is really help them hone in and develop that clarity, and develop clarity on all of the aspects of their business. Because what happens is until you have that clarity, until you know where you’re going, you know what you’re building, you know why you’re building it, you’re going to continue to spin.

When you’re spinning, what I have found is that more often than not, it’s going to lead you down a path where you start to question yourself, where you start questioning the business. That can be a very difficult place to be in. So it really does start with clarity, which is why this is a foundational aspect to the work that I do. All right.

The next reason that you’re likely stuck in your business and not where you want to be is because you’re likely entertaining and/or believing excuses rather than operating from a place of empowerment. With that, taking powerful action in your business.

So here’s what I mean. Regardless of where you are right now, the results that you have in your business. Again, I see this every time I bring on new clients is that there’s a belief system at play. There are certain thoughts about things in the business that quite frankly are a form of excuse that end up ultimately holding a coach back from doing the things that need to be done in order to grow or scale the business.

So let me give you an example of this. One of the excuses that I see very often in the coaching space is the belief that paid ads don’t work. Now, there is a time and a place to use paid ads in your business. I personally am a big fan of paid ads. It’s actually something that I teach in both of my programs, and something that we help all of our clients with.

But very often a coach will come to me and not be sure whether or not they want to use paid ads in their business. This might be due to what they’ve heard, or they might have just some resistance around paid ads. Maybe they have had a bad experience with them in the past. Maybe they’ve tried even running them before, and they weren’t successful. Or maybe they just seem too complicated, and they don’t want to learn the important skill of running them for their business.

But at the end of the day, the reality is that for most coaches unless you already have an established audience, unless you have another system or another way in your business to generate new clients predictably, the fact is that in this day and age where the market is, you’re going to be stuck. I see this over and over again for coaches who resist using paid ads or allow their excuses, their belief systems to get them in the way of actually taking the powerful steps forward and learning what they need to learn about them and truly implement them in their business.

These businesses, the truth is, have a very hard time growing beyond a certain level. It’s because the reality that I want you all to really understand is that the way the market is and the way that the algorithms work, it is you’re either going to be investing time or money to grow your business. So while yes, you may have an investment in paid ads, you’re also offsetting that with the acceleration of being able to grow your business.

So this is an example where I want to encourage you to question your beliefs about what you might be thinking about your business, about what you think will or won’t work for your business, about the narratives that you’re entertaining right now as it relates to the very important things that actually matter in growing the business. Because your marketing system, your lead generation system, your sales system is critical to your business growth.

If you’re letting a belief like “paid ads don’t work” into your mind, into your language, just know that this is impacting your business. Whenever I hear a coach say this, it’s always an indication for me that it’s something that we need to look at. Because here’s the truth.

If you are truly good at what you do, if you are a coach that provides real transformation, that solves a problem for people who are willing to pay to solve this problem. I’m telling you marketing works. Paid ads will work for you. That’s actually one of the things that my team and I are very good at helping our clients do within our programs is to create and run very profitable ad campaigns that allow you to truly scale your business.

All right, the next reason you’re likely stuck and not where you want to be in your business is because you likely don’t have an irresistible offer. It’s something that I spent some time last week with my high level clients on this particular topic during our retreat. I delivered, in fact, a whole workshop on creating their million dollar offer.

I want to emphasize how important having an irresistible offer is. Because if you’re just selling coaching and not specific about the problem you’re solving, and you’re not specifically solving it for an audience that actually wants to solve it, it’s probably one of the reasons that you might be stuck, and you’re not where you want to be.

Listen, there’s a lot of things to consider when it comes to growing your business. But being able to reach the clients and the people that you can serve with your programs, that you can serve with your coaching, that you could be helping right now is huge. Because unless you’re able to clearly articulate and communicate with them how you can help them, it’s going to be very difficult to grow your business.

I want you to think about something. Let’s say that you received a diagnosis from your doctor. I’m just going to share with you an extreme example here because I want to illustrate my point.

So this is something that I haven’t really shared on the podcast before, but my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer several years ago. It was uncovered through a series of tests. It started by some tests that were done by her general practitioner. Of course once they found the results of that test, they immediately started to do more tests. Okay.

From there she was immediately scheduled to see a specialist, to see an oncologist to help her address the diagnosis and to perform the next series of tests. Throughout the process, the oncologist that she saw became more and more specialized to the degree that a doctor ended up performing a surgery that was highly specialized in her particular diagnosis. He was literally one of only a very small percentage of doctors in the United States that would actually perform the type of surgery that she needed.

I shared this with you because it illustrates the point. Because she needed to find a specialist, a doctor that specialized in exactly her type of cancer. What the result was is that she had a really successful surgery. That surgery, we are so grateful for her doctor, for all of her doctors, and for all of the healthcare staff, all of the nurses.

But that doctor, that surgery, the result of that was that it allowed her to live for a few more years. It allowed her to meet her last grandchild, my son, because we were able to find a doctor that specialized in exactly the problem that she had. Had she not had that surgery, she likely would have passed much sooner than she did. So, again, I share this—It’s an extreme example, but I share this because I want you to see the relevance of what I’m saying.

Her general practitioner, who was fantastic and whom she had been seen for literally years before her diagnosis, was not the doctor that actually ended up helping her with this acute diagnosis. She instead needed a specialist and a very rare specialist at that to help her. I want you to just see how important this is for you, for you to be able to share with the people that you can help that you can help them, and that you can help them with their specific problem.

So while yes, you might be able to enroll clients initially and promote yourself as a general life coach, at a certain point you must niche down and decide who you’re going to help and how you’re going to help them specifically.

All right. Reason number four why you’re stuck in your business and not where you want to be at is because you don’t have a compelling why behind what it is that you’re doing. Now, I have talked about this in the past and in several podcast episodes, but one of the reasons that I see so many coaches not reach their level of potential in their business is because they don’t have a compelling why. A compelling enough reason why they’re doing what they’re doing.

For me, this is something that I revisit each and every day. More often than not, I am spending time connecting to and reflecting on and doing my own personal work on my compelling why. Why I am doing this work, what it is that I am building, why that matters, what that really means to my clients, what that means to this industry, to my family, to society.

 I think the more and more your business grows, it’s something that becomes even more important. Because as the business grows, new challenges will arise. Bigger challenges will arise. I have found that it requires a very strong, compelling reason and why as to why you’re choosing to do this work and why it matters. So this is really important.

The fifth reason that you’re stuck and not where you want to be in your business is related to your beliefs about money. Now, this is a really interesting topic for most of my clients. I will say that for most of them, they are achievers.

They have been very successful in their careers, whether that’s been in some type of corporate role or some type of professional role, whether it be a doctor, a lawyer, a therapist. They’ve generally reached a pretty high level of success already in their life. So for most of my clients, they have already established themselves. They have had established careers where financially they have already make or have made great money in their careers.

What’s really interesting is that as their businesses grow and as they surpass the income that they were making in their previous job, or if they’re still working part time and they start making significant money in the business. What tends to happen is that all of the money beliefs start to come out.

I was, in fact, just coaching one of my high level clients on this and one of our recent group calls. What was coming up for one of my clients whose goal is to make $100,000 per month is that this was a “ungodly” amount of money for her because she had been brought up in a very religious household in a very strict religion. Now that she’s taking these powerful steps in her business, and she’s becoming more visible, and she’s starting to create a business that will create those results on a monthly basis, it was so interesting to see how her money beliefs and how her conditioning and what she believed about money was presenting for her.

So another high level client, I will tell you, who last year she hit her first million dollar year in her business, and she will likely double if not triple her revenue again this year. I will tell you a lot of the work that we focus on is around money beliefs. It’s around her identity around money. It’s been a huge part of the work that we’ve done this past year and will continue to do as she reaches these higher and higher levels of success in our business.

So just know that no matter what your beliefs are, that your beliefs about money will surface, and it will present in different ways just like it does for my clients. A lot of times you might not even recognize how it’s presenting for you. So being aware of your money story, being aware of your belief system, and redefining that in the process is really, really critical.

All right, reason number six why you’re stuck and not where you want to be in your business is because you’re overly reliant on organic methods to grow your business. Now, I’ve alluded to this earlier, but one of the things that slows down and stalls the growth of businesses that I have worked with when clients come to me is because they’re throwing spaghetti at the wall with their fingers crossed, hoping their posts on Facebook, or hoping their posts on Instagram or LinkedIn are going to equal clients.

I want to be really real with all of you on this. I want to start bringing more and more of this conversation to you because I think there’s a lot of misperceptions in the coaching industry as to what it takes to actually grow a business to six, multiple six, and seven figures and beyond. That is that there are very few examples in this industry where coaches have built seven, multiple seven, eight figure businesses without using some form of paid advertising. The ones that have, again, they’re a very small few have had other pieces working in their business.

Now, what are some of those other pieces? Some of those other pieces might be speaking on certain stages, or having access to different audiences, very large audiences, or having something go viral, which may have led to an instant audience. Others might have quietly been building their organic audience for years.

But the truth is, is that every single coach that has reached that seven, multiple seven, eight figure mark has at one time or is right now using some form of paid advertising to grow their email list, to generate leads, to generate clients. So while you may be able to grow your business to a certain level without paid advertising, and I do believe that you can, but what I also see is that your business will also be capped at a certain level when you don’t integrate other forms of advertising into your business. For most people, it’s just not a sustainable strategy.

All right. So reason number six is that you are overly dependent on organic methods to grow your business, which at a certain point you will feel the result of that. Okay. Reason number seven why you’re stuck and not where you want to be in your business is because you don’t have a blueprint to follow.

What happens is when you don’t have a blueprint to follow, what generally happens is that you’re trying to what I call DIY your business. You’re trying to piece things together, and you’re trying to put together all different types of strategies, and it becomes extremely fragmented. Because of that you keep chasing strategy after strategy and buying course after course hoping that this next one is going to be that silver bullet that changes everything for you.

Here’s what I want to say. That will never work. When you are unfocused, when you are jumping from strategy to strategy, or from course to course, or I will even say this from coach to coach, you will stay stuck. You will keep spinning. Why? Because one of the most important and valuable things that you can do for your business and that’s essential to your growth is to stay focused.

While there might be different ways to achieve success, when you don’t put the time in and master the strategy, when you don’t master the skill of whatever it is that you’re trying to achieve when you implement something, and it doesn’t work immediately. So you jump to another program, or you try to implement something new.

You’re not giving enough space and time for whatever it is that is actually going to help you do what you want to do. You’re not mastering the skills and what’s actually required to build the business to the level that you want. So having a blueprint and having a cohesive growth strategy and building an ecosystem in your business, which is what I teach all of my clients. If you don’t have that, you’re going to stay stuck.

While you might get that initial dopamine hit from that new strategy or from that new course or even from that new coach, what will happen very often is that that will be very short lived. Because if your pattern is to jump ship and not actually follow through on things, and not actually play the long game, you’re going to land in the same spot. So this is why it’s very important that you have a blueprint, that you have a streamlined approach. That you’re not throwing spaghetti at the wall, and that you’re playing the long game.

All right. Reason number eight is that you’re overly attached to the result, and you don’t value the process of what it takes to grow the business to the level that you want. I have to tell you all this is something that I feel very strongly about. I feel very strong about all of the reasons I’m teaching you here, but this one, I think this is one that the sooner you embrace this lesson, you embrace the process.

The sooner you truly understand the fact that it is about who you become in the process of building your business, when you get overly attached to creating the money, to creating the result, and you’re not valuing the process of what it actually takes to earn that result, it’s going to be a much harder road. So one of the things that I teach all of my clients is the importance and the value of truly honoring the process, of growing your business to a six, multiple six, seven figure level of revenue.

It’s something that we do a lot of coaching on. I do that because the sooner that my clients can release their attachment to the outcome, and we can truly understand and embrace that it’s a journey. That it’s an evolution of them and their business, the sooner they can also take their foot off the brake pedal and release their resistance about not being where it is that they want to be at. Which allows them to move faster and take so much more powerful and deliberate action in the business.

So valuing and honoring the process of growing a business like this is extremely important. And maybe I’ll do an upcoming episode on this because it’s a really important part of being able to build your capacity to grow your business.

All right. Reason number nine that you might be stuck and not where you want to be in your business is because you haven’t raised your necessity level. Now, here’s what I mean by this. Growing a business takes determination. It takes focus. It takes belief, effective strategy, consistency, the right mindset, proper energy levels, time, money, just to name a few.

So when your necessity to grow the business is not there, when perhaps you might be “good” with where you’re at, when your level of necessity to grow the business and take it from good to great is not there, what I find is that it’s one of the reasons why I see a lot of coaches that also stay stuck. That reach a plateau in their business that really prohibits them from taking things to the next level.

The reason for this is because their level of necessity isn’t strong enough. Sure, while the desire to build a highly successful business might be there, the tenacity to show up and do what it takes every day to grow that business, and the meaning that gets assigned to things tend to be much more dramatic. It’s actually a subtle way of self-sabotage.

Because the truth is as a human, our brains, they are always looking for ways to seek pleasure, to avoid pain, and conserve energy. It’s literally how we’re hardwired. It’s actually called the motivational triad. It’s at the core of how we’re wired. So unless your level of necessity has reached a high level, your brain, your subconscious, which by the way is the strongest force, will always be attempting to bring you back to seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, and conserving energy.

All right. Reason number 10 is that you might be lacking resilience on finishing, and staying with the things that actually matter. So this is a big one. Again, I see this over and over. It’s one of the reasons that I see a lot of coaches who end up staying stuck and struggle to build and grow their businesses to the level that they want. It’s because they lose sight or might not even fully understand what it is that the business actually needs to grow.

So because of that, a big way that I see this with coaches is that they spin with different strategies. They might be jumping from strategy to strategy or moving again from program to program and never truly finishing and giving enough time and enough space for certain things to work in the business.

One example that I see happen all the time in this industry is so many coaches who launch a certain strategy in the business. Because for most coaches, when you launch a new strategy in your business, it’s likely not going to work right away.

Because that can be very disheartening and it can be very disappointing, and because more often than not, the coach might be feeling having thoughts about their business or themselves and start to doubt all the things, what happens is that they don’t really truly implement the strategy. They don’t really give the strategy the time and the space and the tweaking and the iterating to the level where it really works in their business.

So a great example of this is when it comes to paid ads. So one of the things that I teach all of my clients about is how to implement and how to run, how to scale paid ads for their business. It’s one area for so many coaches where they might have in the past tried boosting a post here or there, or maybe they even tried running a paid campaign.

But because they haven’t gotten traction, they move back to organic methods, or they start to doubt whether paid ads will work for them. With that, they end up taking their focus off of it. Before you know it, they’re really back where they started. So this is huge. It’s something that I see happen all the time.

What I want to say about this is that paid advertising, when it comes to growing a coaching business, assuming you are a professional, assuming that you are offering value, assuming that you are truly helping your clients solve the problem they are paying you to solve. The truth is things like paid ads, your marketing will always work. So whenever I hear a coach say that paid ads don’t work, what I see is that they haven’t actually stuck with it long enough. They haven’t actually developed the skill that’s required to be good at running paid ads. They haven’t likely done the foundational work that’s essential to running a successful paid ad campaign.

So there are a lot of factors, I’m telling you, that go into running paid ads. Like I always say to my clients, it’s like learning a new language. It’s like learning your toughest subject in college. Learning ads is like taking one of your toughest classes in college. But once you learn the process, once you stay with it and you build your resilience, you have then the potential to accelerate your growth at a tremendous pace. So if you’re stuck in your business, or you’ve reached a plateau, it’s likely because you haven’t built the resilience and honestly finished what’s important.

All right, the next reason, reason number 11 that you might not be where you want to be is because you don’t have a predictable, reliable marketing and sales system in your business. So for many coaches it’s common, very common, to spin for months and even in many cases years in a place that quite honestly, it’s not needed.

So if you think hustling and doing things like posting on social media and posting in groups and going into DMs and networking, and all of the things is the answer. While you may get some traction with that, and I’ve had many clients that have come to me having built six figure businesses through social media and working with clients one on one. I’m not saying that you can’t have success. But when you are serious about taking things to the next level, when you’re serious about playing the long game in your business, there comes a point where you must also get very serious about your marketing and sales process.

Rather than resist it, I encourage you to lean into it and implement a solid marketing and sales process that allows you to reach your goals, that actually has the capacity for you to grow to the level that you want. So take your marketing your sales process, which is a core pillar again of what I teach and what I help my clients implement is a requirement if you want to grow and scale your business.

All right, the last reason, reason number 12, that you might be stuck in your business and not where you want to be yet is because you’re giving your power away to things that actually don’t matter. Now, the difficulty with this is that in my experience unless you’re working with a coach who can help you identify these beliefs, unless you’re actively identifying your belief systems that are holding you back, what ends up happening is that you unknowingly start giving your power away to things that don’t serve you.

To thoughts and beliefs that lower your frequency, that lower your physical energy, that deplete your energy, and negatively impact your focus and your ability to show up in a powerful way in your business. So I encourage you to be very aware of what you’re giving your power to and make sure that you’re not giving it away to something that at the end of the day just doesn’t matter.

All right everyone, I encourage you to go through these 12 reasons. Use them to help you assess where you might be stuck and to help you develop a deeper level of awareness as to where and why you might be stuck and what you can do to move forward. Have an amazing week. I’ll talk to you all again very soon. Take care. Bye, bye.

Hey if you’re ready for a real breakthrough in your business and want to grow and scale your business to at least six figures or more in annual revenue, I invite you to apply for my exclusive program The Mastermind at amandakarlstadcoaching.com/the-mastermind. I look forward to seeing you there.

Thank you for listening to this episode of The Life Coach Business Podcast. If you want to learn more about how to build, grow, and scale your business and accelerate your results visit amandakarlstadcoaching.com.