Earlier this year I decided to try something I’d never done before. I was scared of what people would think, fearful of failing, and doubted myself way more than I care to admit.

When I launched my coaching practice back in 2015 I saw many coaching “programs” advertised on social media for thousands of dollars and told myself I would never be that coach. I was different. I met people where they are, offered individualized sessions and didn’t force my clients into a container that wasn’t expressly built for them. I sold a twelve session package which ended up making me about $30-$40 per session, and within a couple of weeks I had two clients committed. I was ECSTATIC.  

I coached those two beautiful and amazing women to the best of my ability. We had meaningful, open conversations and I advised them on diet and lifestyle changes to help improve their lives in as many ways as I was capable. I loved every second.

But the part I never told anyone was that fear that was always in the back of my mind, nagging at me.

Why do you only have two clients?”

What happens when these two are finished? Will there be any more?

You probably charge too much.

You think you’re worth that kind of money?

The last job you had paid less than $15 an hour and since then you’ve ONLY been a mom. What makes you think you deserve $40 now?

What if everyone sees you’re a fraud? You don’t even have a certificate.

You aren’t worth anything/no one will want to listen to you unless you have an advanced degree.

I could go on for days.

So, I shored myself up a bit by going after my “certs” and added a handful of pretty papers with my name on them to my folder that could have been named “This should help me feel better, so why don’t I feel better?” But that’s a lot to fit on the tab of a folder.

And life went on. I raised my family, I cooked organic meals, cultivated a tribe of women who supported me and found a few local business to partner with. I overcame my intense fear of public speaking by (you guessed it, actually doing public speaking) teaching a few seminars.

Clients trickled in here and there, and I appreciated every one, worked with them to the best of my ability, and continued to pump fear into my business on a regular basis.

What happens when this client is done? What’s next? What if this stream dries up?

I learned more, and as my confidence in my coaching and teaching slowly grew, worried less about certifications and more about the quality of the knowledge and understanding I was bringing in.

I set a few small goals for myself and achieved them, but still lacked the confidence to share them with others. I continually compared myself with others, almost obsessively, and I always came up short. Fear dominated my professional life, but I continued to move forward at what felt like a snail’s pace, and continued working on myself. I continued to hope that “someday” I would be confident enough to achieve “success.”

But what IS success? How do we know if or when we have achieved it? And I had read enough memoirs of famous people to know that even the rich and powerful are often just as broken inside as the rest of us.

These are big questions, and while I don’t have all the answers, I’m constantly searching for them while simultaneously running/growing a small business, raising a family and managing a busy household.

Early in 2020, one answer came to me. In all the years of pushing against the idea of a program (and all the restrictions that came with it) for my clients, a little voice asked me, “Why not?”

This time the mental chatter was different.

What if you’ve been holding yourself back by not offering a program?

What if your client work would be more consistent/have better outcomes if you held yourself and your clients accountable to a structure?

What if, by outwardly offering maximum flexibility, you’re actually doing your clients a disservice?

What if you do the work and commit to a process and trust the universe?

Oh boy, that last one, am I right? Phew. That last one really got me.

Slowly, I began to realize that by not putting together a structure of my best work, the universal themes I see most of my clients struggle with, I was literally not offering them the best of myself. I was a bit like a cork bobbing on the ocean, tossed about by the waves of scheduling, inconsistency and distraction.

Not that I wasn’t serving my clients. I was. I met them where they were each session, and we moved forward as much as we could week to week or month to month. But I began to notice a pattern.

The clients who committed to a shorter period of time actually had better results in less time.

I could barely wrap my head around it, but I saw it time and time again. The 8 session client who came twice a month for 4 months was consistently meeting their goals, while the clients who wandered in and out, sometimes every 2 weeks, sometimes after 4 weeks or as much as six months between sessions, were reliving the same problems each time I saw them.

Was this the fault of the client? At first glance it might seem like it was, but when I looked deeper, I realized it was my fault.

As a coach, cheerleader, mentor and healer my job is to help my clients in every way I can. I began to realize that by not requiring a time and money commitment from my clients I was in effect, stringing them along and allowing them to keep seeing me without achieving their best possible results. In short, my own shortage-consciousness and fear of asking for structure from my clients was causing them to have less-than-stellar results.

That was a hard paragraph to type. I’m actually sweating a little.

But back to the story. Once I realized this painful truth that my lack of self-worth was not only impacting my success in business, but the success of my clients as well, I finally began to think about how to offer more.

I spent a few months outlining a program. I listened to coaching calls. I filled two notebooks with ideas, structures and notes. I figured out how to make the program as financially accessible as possible for my clients without under-selling my own expertise, experience and time. I built webpages. I signed up for services that cost me money even before I had a single client in the program to warrant the cost. I wrote content, created ad copy and edited digital images. I built something 100% from scratch. From my head, my experience and my love for humanity, I created something that, quite possibly, no one would ever want to buy.

And I had faith.

My first goal was exactly what goals are “supposed” to be, according to whom, I’m not quite sure, but my goal of filling my program with six people felt somewhat attainable while also being pretty scary.

My goal was six clients at $1400, by far the highest cost of anything I’ve ever offered before, and, feeling scared, I waited.

I’m still pinching myself with what I’m about to share with you.

As of last week I have five out of six slots filled with amazing clients who are committed and ready to do the work. It still blows me away each time I type or say the words. And I am so incredibly grateful.

But as amazing as that is, the real reason for writing this is to ask you: what goal or desire is your soul longing for? In what way can you grow as an individual that would not only bring you financial success, but would also grow your spirit? How can you help others by loving yourself more?

It may sound counter-intuitive at first, but when we fully love ourselves enough to ask for what we want, even if it feels scary, we also respect ourselves. When we respect ourselves and feel worthy of love we can more fully love others. And when we fully love others we offer the most powerful force in the universe to humanity.

I think we can all agree more love is always needed.

If you would like more information about my six month program, click here to read the basics. If you think it might be a good fit, email me to schedule a free call or meeting to sign up.