Serving this community since 2017, I’ve seen so many talented practitioners either intentionally or accidentally sabotage, complicate and generally trash their chances of success.
Here are seven of the most common self-installed roadblocks I’ve seen from online coaches and therapists:
1: They waste years on learning coaching, over-studying and over-qualifying themselves till they’re completely broke and no closer to getting a paying client. You only need to be a few steps ahead of your ideal client and they’ll pay you to reveal their blindspots.
2: They spend money on mindset coaching and confidence courses. Then they still don’t have a clue how to build a business. Learning a strategy beats trying to manufacture confidence 100% of the time. In fact, having a viable strategy automatically creates confidence.
3: They refuse to treat it like a real business. Imagine you had a coffee-shop in town. Now list the 101 daily activities you’d need to turn a profit. There’s 8-12 hours a day of structured work to make a few thousand each month. An online coaching or therapy business is not as hard as that, but you still need to take it seriously.
4: They project their own feelings onto their clients. They don’t like getting cold DMs, so they don’t send any. They don’t like getting friend requests from strangers, so they don’t send any of those either. They hate being “sold” to, so they make no effort to sell to anyone else.
5: They play small, forever. Someone told them to give away 100 hours of free coaching, so they start to believe they’ll never be worth paying for. Meanwhile, people all around them are earning six and seven figures a year with no more core skills than they have.
6: They refuse to implement what they’ve been taught by people already living the life they aspire to. Paying someone to help you, then ignoring everything they tell you is a definition of insanity. You’d have been better off keeping the money to fund a different career altogether.
7: They give up too soon. Tinkering half-heartedly with a vague idea for a few weeks before deciding it isn’t going to work is only serving to damage your personal brand, wipe out your motivation, and leave you even more strapped for cash. Relentless consistency is the key to getting the fire started, and keeping it blazing.
“So what should we do then, Jonny?”
A: Start one conversation every day with someone who looks like your ideal client
B: Offer to help them in return for money
C: Maniacally over-deliver so you have a case study, and a referral
Anything else you can build afterwards as supporting infrastructure, enabling you to sustain and scale.
Seven-Year Takeaway: Nothing needs to happen first. Take those three steps and you’ll earn money. Believe me or not. Your call.
Love you lots
Jonny