Ep #94: The 3 Most Common Fears That Are Slowing Your Business Growth as a Coach

You are listening to The Life Coach Business Podcast with Amanda Karlstad episode number 94.

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 well. Welcome to any new listeners. So glad that you’re here. I hope you’re all doing amazing. We are doing great. I cannot believe that the summer is almost halfway over. It is flying by. It’s just been a great summer so far. I hope yours is going great as well.

All right. So today we’re going to talk about three common fears that I see holding most coaches back. These three common fears, the reason I want to have this conversation with you today is because these fears are actually what I see so many of you deal with. They actually slow you down when it comes to growing and ultimately scaling your business.

Before we dive into what those three fears are, I want to take a minute and I want to celebrate and acknowledge the amazing work that my clients are doing. So I shared this in a recent podcast episode. One of the things that we do inside of my coaching program The Mastermind, which is my foundational business accelerator program. It’s a group coaching program for coaches who are building to their first six figures. And in my High Level Mastermind, so this is my high level group coaching program. So this is for coaches that are now scaling their practices. So coaches that are building their practices to multiple six figures, even seven figures.

We are continually celebrating wins. This week we had some amazing wins inside of the programs. I’m just so proud of my clients. I want to take a minute and share with you what some of these wins are so that you can understand what’s possible for you too.

So a major win that was shared this week in my High Level Mastermind was from one of my clients who, again, I’m just so, so proud of her. She’s been making such a huge impact with her work. What’s amazing is that as of this week she officially became a published author. So her book, which she’s been working on for quite some time. Her book was officially published last week. She is now an official published author, which is so, so exciting. We’re just all so proud of her. It was just so fun to be able to celebrate and acknowledge her in this week’s call.

Another win that I want to share, which is also from my High Level Mastermind, is from a client who—to give you a little bit of background—literally a year ago when she came to me, when she reached out and set her initial call with me. She, at the time, was having a hard time even selling a $400 coaching package. Okay? So in no way, and she will tell you this, did she ever believe she was going to make six figures in her business.

Now I will tell you this client is way beyond six figures. In fact, she has already generated, received in her business multiple six figures in her business in less than a year. So we are now in the process of scaling her business to the high multiple six figures.

What was really, really fun to celebrate for her this week is that she just hired her first official coach that will now be coaching underneath her in her group program, all right. So her program where she literally less than a year ago was coaching clients one-on-one charging clients about $400 for a one-on-one coaching package to fast forward to today.

Now she has hundreds—yes, you heard me right—hundreds of clients in her group coaching program that we’ve now scaled over this past year. She’s now hired a team of support. So she’s working on her second virtual assistant hire. She just hired her first coach. She’s essentially assembling a full team here.

So this coach is going to be supporting her clients in her program. It’s actually going to create even more revenue opportunities for her, and the ability to impact more and more clients. I just cannot tell you how proud I am of this client.

So not even talking about what she’s done revenue wise, but just to give you a sense of what that looks like. So in the last two months, this client has done over $126,000 in sales in just the last 60 days. So if you do the math, if we don’t even grow her business, if we just continue to maintain, which is now what we have done over the last several months. This consistency that we’ve established, which is the power of doing this work. So if we just keep doing what we’re doing in her business, this client is poised for a $756,000 year. Less than a year you guys. So this is what’s possible.

I also want to tell you. As her coach, one of the things I’m most proud of her about is who she has become in the last 12 months. To see her phenomenal growth in the last 12 months. Not just from a business perspective. Yes, that is amazing. It’s extraordinary. It’s who she has become. Becoming an official CEO, becoming a business owner who now has a team underneath her, who now has a team supporting her clients. It’s amazing.

So I want to share these wins with you because no matter where you are right now in your business. I know some of you might be in a place where you’re just starting out. I know many of you listening to this podcast are already working with clients, and you’re looking to take your business, you’re looking to go to that next level.

I share these examples with you because this is the power of doing the work. This is the power of putting yourself in a powerful environment like The Mastermind. Putting yourself in an environment like the High Level Mastermind around other coaches who are doing big things in the world, who have extremely large goals. And being able to support those goals in the containers that I’ve created with a powerful business strategy, with very powerful mindset support. This is what can be possible for you too. It can happen in a very short amount of time.

So I want to encourage you. If you are listening to this right now, and you’re in a place where you’re working with clients, where you know that you’re ready to grow and scale your business, but you also know that you need more help. You know that you need expert mentorship and guidance. You know you get phenomenal results for your clients, okay. So you’ve already worked with clients.

You already know that you get amazing results, but you also know that where you’re at in your business and the way that you’ve built your business to this point, it just isn’t sustainable. So you’re either working with clients one-on-one and you’re getting to the point where you’re maxed out or you’re close to it. You’re probably not hitting the revenue numbers that you could be. You might be in a place where you’re ready to launch a more leveraged program so that you can actually scale your business and leverage your time, leverage your revenue.

You understand that you need much more when it comes to your marketing strategy. At the end of the day, you know that you need a real business strategy, okay? I’m not talking about posting on social media. I’m talking about a real business strategy that’s based on real and proven business principles.

If you’re ready to do the work and you understand that growing and scaling a business requires a much higher level of strategy and it requires a much higher level of thinking from you as the business owner and growth from you as the business owner, then I want to invite you to join my mastermind program. Just like these two coaches did. One just about a year ago and one less than a year ago. You can see just how far they’ve been able to come.

So I want to invite you. If you’re feeling a lack of clarity in some areas of your business, but you know without a doubt that the work you do with clients that you do amazing work. You know that the work that you do with your clients is also important, and you know that you get results. I want to invite you to apply to my upcoming cohort of The Mastermind.

This is my foundational program. It’s a business accelerator program that I have honed over the last few years. I’m going to be honest with you all. It’s really good. It’s truly the program that I believe if you’re a coach and your desire is to grow and scale a highly successful coaching practice, I firmly believe every coach needs this program. It does not matter what niche you’re in. It doesn’t matter what types of clients you coach. This is the most comprehensive program for coaches that I’ve designed to help take you from wherever you are today to your first six figures and well beyond. It’s designed to do that very quickly.

So if you know that you need more than a course. If you are done trying to DIY your business and just piece things together. If you finally understand that tactics are not going to actually build your business, right. So the so-called latest and greatest tactics, you understand that they’re not actual business strategies.

If you’ve taken other programs, you’re still not where you want to be, you know that you need expert coaching. You know that you need expert strategy. You know that you need more than just general mindset coaching, but you know you need expert mindset coaching that is specific to you and specific to becoming a high level coach and entrepreneur. I want to invite you to apply right now. Spaces are limited.

In this program, we go much deeper than any surface level coaching that you’ve likely experienced. So I’ve developed this experience to be an extremely transformational experience that will, I promise, change the trajectory of your business. It will change you through this process. You will become the leader this business needs.

Because this program is a combination of group coaching and also one-on-one coaching, and you essentially get full access to me. You get my brain, my eyes, my entire expertise not only in the coaching industry but two full decades of growing and failing startups. Because let’s be honest. If you are building a coaching business, you are in a startup environment. I’ve done this my entire career. I’ve built lots and lots of startup organizations to multi millions in revenue.

So if you want full access to everything like I’ve just given these clients that I’ve shared with you today. If you want results like these clients that I’ve shared with you today then I invite you to apply, and to set up a call so that I can learn more about your business, your goals. I’ll give you some clarity in the areas you need, and we’ll talk about what’s possible for you in the next six to 12 months.

So because this program is extremely high-touch, you should also know that I am selective with who I take on as a client in this program. The reason I am is because of the full support that I give and the level of expertise that myself and my team provide. So if you’re ready to seriously take things to the next level, I want to invite you to apply at amandakarlstadcoaching.com/the-mastermind. We’re going to link that up in the show notes.

I will tell you this. I highly recommend that you take that next step. I highly recommend that you take the step and apply it sooner rather than later. We are already more than halfway through 2021. So spots are filling up in the program, but most importantly I want you to consider right now the fact that you have an opportunity right now to move into and step into next year, 2022, into the new year with a whole new business, with your dream business becoming your reality.

All right. Once again, it’s amandakarlstadcoaching.com/the-mastermind. I look forward to speaking with you and learning more about your goals and putting together a real strategy on how you can do that this year.

All right. So let’s talk about the three fears that are holding you back as a coach. So before I dive into these three fears and why it’s so important to recognize this if you’re a coach, I want you to know that for purposes of this episode I’ve decided to just talk about the three most common. The truth is that there are plenty more fears that we could talk about that I see come up for clients that I see so many of you struggle with. Today I want to talk about the three most common fears that I see holding my clients back, and that I know hold many of you back as well.

I think it’s important before we dive into the details to understand the fears that I’m talking about in this episode. In almost every case, we’ve been conditioned with these fears for our entire lives, okay? So if we fast forward to today and we are in a position where we are growing and scaling a business, this is exactly why I say growing a business, being an entrepreneur is really a spiritual journey.

It’s because we’re faced with all of the conditioning. We’re faced with all of the belief systems. We’re faced with all of those parts of ourselves that, let’s be honest, in order to put yourself out into the world, in order to put yourself out in a way, in order to grow a successful business, it’s going to require more of you. It’s going to require a new level of thinking. It’s going to require a new level of being from you.

I would say that for all of my clients, this is actually the biggest transformation that they go through. It’s who they become in the process of growing and scaling their business. That is what I experience as being so, so profound. The business results, the revenue, the clients, those are the byproducts of who they become. Of that true internal transformation that my clients experience.

So what we’re talking about here today is a really big deal. It’s a really big thing that I think all of you, no matter where you’re at, are going to deal with whether you’re dealing with it right now, you’re going to deal with it at one point or another. It all starts with our belief systems.

So the fears we’re going to talk about here, they come from a belief system that, again, in most cases is conditioned throughout our lives. So from a belief perspective, it’s important to understand that a belief is similar to a lens that we look through.

So I like to think about, for example, if you’re putting on a pair of sunglasses. Let’s say that you’re putting on a pair of sunglasses that have a certain tint to their lenses, right? So they block out the UV rays. They change the colors of your surroundings, right? So I always think about the glasses that are, there’s so many different colors, right? Like the yellow tint, purple tint lenses, green, all of those different colors of lenses, right.

What happens when you put those glasses on is that the tint of those lenses actually change your surroundings, right. They change the color. They change how you see your surroundings, right? It changes the tint of the things around you.

So it’s the same thing with our belief system. That’s the same thing our belief system does as we approach our business, as we approach things in our lives. That is what our belief system does inside our brains. It’s like the filter that everything in our lives, everything in our business has to first go through in order to filter the information, in order to decide what to do with that information, right?

So when you think about putting on a pair of glasses like that, and just imagine if you’re looking at your surroundings. It could be grass. It could be mountains. It could be water. It could be people, right? It’s placing a filter over those things that slightly change the way that you see those things.

So I want you to keep that in mind as we’re talking about today’s topic because our beliefs work the same way. They’re really the filter that determines the decisions that we make. Once we start to make decisions about things, and I’ve talked about this in depth before. Our brain actually goes out and starts to find evidence of those things being true, right. So whatever we truly believe within our subconscious is actually what our brain is continuously trying to provide evidence for.

As we start to see more and more of that evidence, the case builds. We start to believe those beliefs as our true reality even if they’re not true. So they become what we believe the world to be.

What happens then is that we attach this filter to the circumstances in our lives. So whether it be our business, our children, our partner, anything in our life. It’s why it’s important to understand because these beliefs, these filters, in every case they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Because once you accept that belief, once you’ve subconsciously accepted that belief, whatever it might be, your brain and more specifically your reticular activating system is going to always be working to provide that belief to be true. Because those belief systems are so strong, they can completely sabotage you as you go out and you try to grow your business.

So depending on that belief, that belief system can either support you in growing your business or—and this is the most common scenario—the belief systems that you’re carrying do not support you in growing a highly successful business. A solid business. That’s why this conversation is so important.

So the first fear that comes up for so many coaches is the fear of what other people will think. It’s the fear of other people’s opinions, okay. It’s the fear of what others will think of them as they go out and build their business. I will tell you that with all of the coaches that I’ve worked with over the years, this does look slightly different for each of them, right. It ultimately comes back to the fear of what people in their family or their peers or their friends, coworkers, even clients will think of them.

What happens very often is that my clients… Again, I’ve shared with you some really great examples today. They’re amazing coaches. They’re really good at what they do. They get great results for their clients. When it comes to getting their work out in the world, when it comes to them stepping out in a much bigger way, getting their message out in a big way in the world.

When they are needing to hit send on that email or put that social media post up or hit publish on those ads, whatever it might be, their brain immediately says, “Wait a minute. Wait. What are people going to say about this? What if no one likes what I’m about to say? What I’ve created here. What I’m saying. How am I going to be judged? What will people think?” What happens is it stops them in their tracks. It stops them in their tracks at least until they get coached through it.

So if you’re not getting coached consistently. If you’re not putting yourself, again, in an environment where you are fully supported, where a coach can see this, your coach can see this for you and knows what to be looking for. I’m telling you. This can stall you out for weeks. It can stall you out for months, even years.

What’s so interesting about this fear is that it’s so deeply rooted in wanting to be a part of the pack. So if we think about genetically who we are and how we have evolved throughout the years. Really when you think back to the caveman days, the fear of being ousted by the pack, the fear of not being a part of the village, that’s a really deeply rooted fear. So this, in a lot of cases, goes even beyond our mental conditioning. It actually gets into our cells. It gets into the genetics of how we’ve actually evolved over the years, about how we actually have this deep desire, this deep need to be a part of the pack.

So this is a really common fear that comes up. I have to say, I think I’ve seen this with almost every single one of the clients that I’ve worked with over the years. I know I too have dealt with this definitely early on in my career.

So one of the things that I want to offer to all of you with this fear is that rather than avoiding what you think someone else might say or think or do, I want to encourage you to accept that this is going to be part of the journey. That this will be part of the journey that someone in your life whether they make a judgement about what you’re doing or what you’ve said or the fact that they might think you’re crazy for going out and building a business after you’ve built up an already successful career.

I’ve just learned that when you start to accept that this is part of the process. When you understand that the only thing you’re truly trying to avoid is the feeling of what you’re making that judgement mean, that is when you can move forward in such a more powerful way. When you understand that any judgement, even if it’s directed towards you. Even if that judgement is placed on you, that you can understand that it’s actually not about you. That it’s actually about that other person. It’s about their thoughts, their belief systems, and that it truly has nothing to do with you.

So when that happens regardless of anything or anyone outside of you, you can carry on. You can continue to move forward. You can continue to bring your very important work into the world.

So what I want to offer to you is that the only opinion that matters is yours. When you can look in the mirror knowing that you’re living up to your values, knowing that you’re working in integrity, knowing that you are working to your own standards even if you get knocked down a little bit. It’s about coming back to center. It’s about being able to pick yourself up and remind yourself about who you are, about the great service that you’re offering to your clients. Of the life changing work that you’re able to do.

The second most common belief that I see holding coaches back from growing and scaling their business is the fear that no one will pay them for what they do. The fear that no one will want to pay them for the coaching that they offer. That no one wants what they have to offer, right?

I see this happen so often. Especially as coaches are putting themselves out in a big way. Once they start to market themselves and start to make offers, and in some cases before they even start to make offers. It’s something that stops them from going out and making more offers to begin with or offering the program that they most want to offer. I see that one come up a lot.

So another thing I want to say about these beliefs is that not only do they manifest as these beliefs as sentences in the mind, but they also manifest in so many other ways. A lot of times they manifest in procrastination. A lot of times they manifest in not taking the action that needs to be taken. They manifest in thinking small, right. In staying really small.

Here’s the great news with this fear. This particular fear, when I’m working with clients, once we are able to go through the process that I’ve developed—The Karlstad Method, which is the process I’ve honed over the last few years working with so many coaches. Which helps them achieve just extraordinary results. That when this coach has this fear, when they have this worry about whether or not someone will actually pay them for what they’re offering.

This is where going through a process, like I’ve created, being coached, and being guided through a process. What it does is it ensures that you are positioning yourself in a way where people do want to buy, okay. Where people are confident in what you have to offer, right? You as the coach, more importantly, are confident in that. You know that you have the marketing and the messaging that also supports that.

So this is one of the ways that my clients are able to get past this fear very quickly. In so many cases, if this is a fear that a client has, if this is something that is coming up for them and I can see this, it’s something that we can move through, again, very quickly because of the process. Because of the support as they move through the process. So if you’re currently feeling like this is a fear that you have, that this is a fear that’s coming up for you, I want you to really think about what it is that you’re offering.

So for some of you, this might be a scenario where maybe you’re not articulating what it is that you’re selling in a compelling way. For some of you, maybe you haven’t fully developed your program. Maybe you haven’t fully developed an offer that people want to buy. Maybe you haven’t positioned your program in a way that’s irresistible to your clients.

What I will say about this is this goes back to my conversation just a couple of weeks ago that I brought to you in a podcast where I talked about the fact that there are so many intricacies and so many nuances when it comes to the actual pieces of your business. So I believe it was two episodes ago. I talked about this in depth, right?

So when you’re actually implementing these things in your business. When you’re actually going out and marketing your business, it’s not in a lot of cases so much about the information. It’s about the execution. It’s about the actual implementation and making sure that you’re doing things in a way that’s actually positioning you for success.

What I will tell you the great news here is that once you know your ideal client, once you know who it is that you’re actually talking to. Once you have a level of clarity that you’ve likely never had before, which again is something that I work with every single one of my clients. That is when you can start to move beyond the fear.

I will tell you. Once you’re truly able to overcome this fear, once you know 100% without a doubt that people will buy and that people do want to buy what you’re seeing, you can become unstoppable. I’ve seen this happen over and over and over with my clients.

It’s why so often when coaches come into my program when they are unclear about certain things as it relates to their offer whether or not someone wants to pay them, even if they’ve had clients pay them in the past. I find that there still tends to be this lingering doubt a lot of times that slows them down even if they’ve made money in their business.

This is why it’s so important to be thinking through these things. It’s so important to be supported in this process. Even on a larger scale, something I want to offer to all of you is this. The life coaching industry is a billion dollar plus industry, okay? Life has become more and more mainstream, especially in the last couple of years. That’s really significant for you to understand. Because now more than ever people are looking to work with life coaches more than ever. Life coaches have never been more in demand.

So whether you’re working directly with clients or whether you’re working with organizations, life coaching itself is becoming what a gym membership was 20 years ago. Look at that industry today. It’s one of the fastest growing industries with no signs of slowing down. It’s a great place to be.

So I tell you this because if you’re a life coach, people want what you have to offer. Now a caveat to that is if you’re not positioning yourself correctly, if you don’t know how to articulate that correctly in the market, it’s going to be hard to sell your services. I want to encourage you to not allow your beliefs, to not allow your stories to get in the way of helping your clients that you know you can help.

So this leads me to the third fear, which is imposter syndrome aka “why me?”. So the third fear that I see that holds so many coaches back is imposter syndrome. It’s really, really common. It’s something that I see come up with for newer coaches, but it’s also something that I see come up with experienced coaches as well. So it’s this question of why me? It’s this fear just like all of the others that we’ve talked about. It shows up in so many different ways.

What I’ve experienced to be a very powerful cure for this fear in particular. It comes not just through experience and helping clients get results, but it also comes back to being extremely clear on how you help your clients get results. So being extremely clear in how you facilitate transformation, how you actually help your clients get results is very, very important when it comes to this fear. This is a really powerful antidote to this particular fear. So really understanding and being confident in how you help your clients achieve results, this is where I really start to see this fear start to dissipate with my clients.

So I will share with you, I was recently coaching one of my clients on this. She came to our weekly group coaching call. What she wanted coaching was surrounding this, was surrounding her feelings of imposter syndrome. Her questioning even though she has made really good money in her business to this point, and her business is just blowing up right now with all of the work that we’re doing. She still found herself in a position where she was asking, “But why me?” It was really affecting her.

So what we really got to in that coaching session was going back to exactly how and why she’s able to get her clients amazing results. So we went back to her process, the process that she developed through the program. How she actually works with clients, which actually leads them to get amazing results. She has amazing testimonials from her clients, and she’s able to do that in a really quick way. So what was so fun to watch was that it was almost as if that fear that she came to the call with—that why me, that imposter syndrome. It was almost as if it just melted away as soon as she realized just how powerful her process really was, as soon as we were able to center her back in that. As soon as we were able to go back and really anchor her again in her process and in the work that she’s doing.

At the end of the session, I could see physically even that she had just shifted into such a more powerful state. That week she went out, and I think within that week I think she enrolled two new clients. She generated over $10,000 of revenue in her business.

So I hope you can see here why it’s so important that as a coach and as a business owner, why it’s so important that you’re aware of these three most common fears. Really looking at whether or not these fears are present for you. Because these fears, whether you’re conscious of them or not, they will color the way that you show up in your business. They will color the way that you think about your business, about yourself, maybe even your clients.

So it’s very important that you’re looking at this, and that you’re moving past these fears so that they’re not hindering your growth or the growth of your business. If you like help in doing that, I really want to encourage you again to go ahead and apply for the upcoming cohort of The Mastermind. You can go to amandakarlstadcoaching.com/the-mastermind. We’re going to link that up in the show notes. I really look forward to helping you. All right my friends. Have an amazing week. I will talk to you all again very soon. Take care. Bye, bye.

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.