93: How to Bring Your Full Self to Your Coaching Business

Having a coaching business may be the only income-producing role in your life where you get to bring your full personality, values and life experience together to serve others.You get to be authentic and vulnerable.Yes, put your best foot forward whenever you can. But you don’t have to pretend or puff yourself up.Instead draw from and OWN all that you are.Human beings tend to forget to OWN their intrinsic value and earned wisdom.Truly, if you’ve never had a paying client before you can be honest about that.In fact, I suggest to my clients to say with their first coaching prospects “I’d love it if you’d be one of my first clients!” It takes the pressure off. And your prospect will appreciate your honesty.But you say it with enthusiasm for the person you’re enrolling and what you offer, right?Build Your Coaching Business On Your ValuesI took my training at Coach U, one of the first coaching schools, which was created by Thomas Leonard, who is often called the father of modern coaching. He was known for an abundance of short pithy exercises. I received by mail 10 pounds of notebooks full of his exercises and curriculum!His concept was that anything you did with a client you should first do yourself. In other words be just one step ahead and make sure your come from is authentic.One exercise was meant to identify core and business values. Maybe you’ve even seen this exercise or a derivative of it out there somewhere in the coaching sphere.I’ll never forget that exercise because I learned principles about myself that have never sent me in the wrong direction — that is, whenever I let them guide me.For example … I realized that money is not in itself important to me. However EARNING is a core value. It’s important to me to deliver great value in exchange for my income. See I crave independence in thought and action and the ability to choose what’s right for me moment to moment.Those values made me a perfect candidate for entrepreneurship … for developing my own coaching business.Sometimes, I’ve gone astray from my values trying to implement something that I saw other coaches do. Sound familiar?Through trial and error and a desire to serve myself while serving others I’ve found what fits me better.Over the years I’ve made adjustments in my business to find my sweet spot – the way I love to work, when I want to work and who I want to work with. All of that is possible by making micro adjustments.It takes time to find your sweet spot. With my VIP clients we do much to uncover the clues to their sweet spot. But I also know that it’s a journey that’s worth the exploration.And this is part of what it means to bring your full self to your business.I think that being an entrepreneur and running a business is a spiritual journey.If you have a big message you can put that out in an honoring way that fits your target audience. It could be that you launch your own podcast or get on a stage with that message. Or it may be in a more quiet way where as it fits, you bring that message to a client in session.How else can you create freedom in your coaching business to fully be yourself?Look … you can dress the way you want. Let your freak flag fly. And you don’t need to worry about what people are going to think because the name of the game is attract YOUR people, your tribe.I’m not a good fit for every coach. And you don’t need to try to be a good fit for everyone in your audience. This is the secret of niching that a lot of people don’t know … you want to become known for serving a micro audience because it helps you thrive.