Earlier this month I ran a series of 3 videos covering the Key Areas that you need to get right if you’re going to grow the Coaching Business you dream of having – (maybe you caught them?)

The first two were about your business model and marketing,and the third was all about mindset.

Guess which one I got the most feedback about? Yep, the Mindset one.

And really I’m not surprised! Because I firmly believe that your mindset, your thinking, affects everything you do, or don’t do, to create the business you dream of having.

I’ve had clients who have gone on to create 6 figure coaching businesses, and I’ve got others who are happily enjoying £4000 – £6000 a month income, and who still have plenty of free time for the things that are important to them outside of their businesses.

But, I’ve also seen way too many coaches give up. I’ve seen too many coaches struggling and never, ever achieving the level of income they wanted, sometimes even better coaches than the ones who did succeed.

It’s such a shame!

And yet both groups have the same information available to them, they’ve got access to the same resources as everybody else. It’s a level playing field in that respect.

But what I’ve come to realise over my years of working with coaches who are trying to build a business from doing what they love, is that it’s not a lack of quality information that stops them from being wildly successful, it’s what goes on in the old grey matter that lives between their ears.

EVERY – SINGLE – TIME

[bctt tweet=”It’s Mind Mischief that stops you – Every Single Time!”]

Your mindset affects your business more than anything else. More than your knowledge, more than resources or lack of them, more than circumstances, more than the effect of other commitments like a job or a family. And that’s because it affects your decisions – all of them!

Flawed thinking, or mind-mischief as I like to call it, pushes you into making bad business decisions.

And these bad decisions are what underpin your lack of success in building your coaching business.

Problem is, this old mind mischief is sneaky, and even though as a Coach you can probably spot it in your clients, it’s not so easy to spot when it’s your own mind mischief messing with you 😉

So what can we do about it? How can we make sure mind mischief isn’t wreaking havoc with you and your business?

The first thing is to recognise that what you have been doing, and the decisions you have been making, are the result of some form of mind mischief. Once you spot it you can change it – right?

Here’s some of the most common and dangerous ways that I see mind mischief sabotaging your efforts on a regular basis – see if you recognise yourself in any of them.

Niche Resistence

This is where you believe you can coach anyone, and you resist narrowing your market and focusing on a specific niche or target client.

It is possible that you don’t know that you need a niche, but that’s unlikely now isn’t it – you must have heard it before, and if you hadn’t, you have now 🙂

What’s more likely is that mind mischief is making you afraid to commit to a niche. You’re afraid to narrow and reduce your potential market size; you’re afraid that you may be turning away potential clients; you’re afraid in case it doesn’t work.

But in actual fact it works the other way around. The tighter your niche the better you can market to it, because you are better able to get into the head of your ideal client, and really talk to them.

Business Butterfly

This is flitting around from one pretty flower to the next in search of more nectar, or from one bright shiny object to another looking for the “secret formula”.

You know if you’re suffering from the Butterfly Effect if you are trying to run more than one business, maybe a little sideline to your Coaching, or if you find yourself trying one tactic after another with no plan of what you are going to do when.

Either way, you’re spreading yourself too thin, depleting the energy you are putting into any one thing, and not giving anything time to work properly.

Money Matters

How is your relationship with money? It may not be as happy or healthy as you think, and it could be affecting your business in a couple of ways.

On the one hand if money is tight you may try to do everything on the cheap to save money. So you waste hours on free or low cost resources that don’t really do the job you need them to do in your business. That is a “false economy” and you need to shift your thinking, get what you need for your business and believe that you will make enough money to pay for it.

On the other hand maybe you are undervaluing you and not charging what you are really worth. Do you find yourself discounting, even sometimes when you haven’t been asked? Do you feel nervous about asking for your fees, and afraid to ask for the amount you really want?

By the way, it’s common that the two sides of the coin come together! So if you’re not investing in your business and you’re trying to save money there’s a good chance that you’re also going to undercharge.

Lone Ranger Syndrome

This is really about thinking that you have to do it all yourself, and you should know how and what to do. and be capable of doing everything that needs to be done. Absolute nonsense! None of us can do everything by ourselves, even the Lone Ranger himself had Tonto (for those of you old enough to remember).

Lone Ranger Syndrome could be affecting you in 2 ways, and often if you’re doing one then chances are you’re doing both.

The first one is where you don’t get help with your own learning and development, believing that you “should” know what to do, and how to get past your own blockages.
You have to realise that it’s okay to put your hand up and say I need somebody to help me with this, or I need to invest in me and my own development before I’m going to be in a position to help the number of clients that I want to help, and have the business that I want to have.

The other aspect of Lone Ranger syndrome is where you literally physically try to do everything that needs to be done within your business yourself, so you don’t outsource. This also ties in with your relationship with money as it’s another false economy, and can seriously hold you back in your business.

The Invisible Coach

Oooh this one is deadly to your business!! It’s when you’re not really marketing your business.
So this might be you if you’re spending all your time getting your programmes, or your website, or your irresistible freebie just perfect, but you haven’t really put any effort into offering any of it to anyone.

What it really comes down to is that you are afraid to put yourself out there. It’s easier to stay invisible pretending that you’re working on your programmes, pretending that you’re putting your plans in place, pretending that you’re getting ready to launch, than it is to face the fears that crop up about whether people will like you, what they’ll think of you.

t’s safer to stay hidden, it’s safer to stay relatively invisible for the time being than to actually risk putting yourself out there and facing people’s judgement.

Pest Control

No, I’m not talking about wandering around with a can of insect repellent.
I’m talking about you not allowing yourself to be a “pest”.

You desperately don’t want to be seen as a pest to your followers or your subscribers, so you hold back on marketing your business, or making offers to them in case you come across as being too pushy or salesy, and instead you post lots of nice safe quotes and pretty pictures on Facebook, and you hold back on emailing your list.

But you cannot be in business if you don’t make offers, and you cannot make offers if you’re not in contact with your list. If people get sick of you they can unsubscribe or unfollow you, that’s fine, that’s their prerogative. It’s not a judgement about you, it just means they’re not really your ideal client. The people who do love what you do won’t see you as a pest at all. That’s your misconception.

The “What if” Effect

So you’re all set to take a big step forward when you start running different scenarios around your mind and you say but what if, what if, what if.

What if nobody signs up to my programme, I’ll look silly.
What if I only get one or two people on my programme?
What if my membership group only has a handful of people in it and it feels like a ghost-town?
What if when I’ve sold my programme people don’t think it’s good enough?
What if they ask for a refund?

This is mind-mischief telling you it’s actually safer not to offer, not to push, not to try, than to face the embarrassment that you would feel in any of those situations. Best not risk it says the part of your sub-concious where your mind mischief lives – time to evict it!!!

Ringing any bells? I’m willing to bet you saw yourself in at least one of them. You would be unusual if you didn’t!

Over the course of the next few weeks, I’m going to dig into each of them individually, and help you to see what’s really going on, and what you can do to give the mind mischief a bashing and change what you’re doing so you can get better results.

Karen x