How to Truly Build Your Confidence as a Coach
I remember how nervous I felt when I coached my first batch of clients.
1 hour before each session, I would start pacing around my house, from the office to the living room, to the bedroom, and back.
30 minutes before, I would start meditating on my brown cushion to calm myself down.
20 minutes before, I would drink a glass of water and nervously make myself a cup of tea.
10 minutes before, I would sit at my desk with the zoom link in front of me, thinking that maybe the whole coaching thing was a terrible career decision.
10 seconds before the session, I could hear my heartbeats. I would need to take big, intentional breaths, telling myself: “I choose to show up no matter what.”
That was back in 2016 when I started my coaching practice. I felt like a baby bird in the coaching space.
But my calling was bigger than my fear. So with the help of my trusted business coach, I began.
Before that, I hadn’t gone through a formal coach training program. What I had was rich personal experiences and successful results in the coaching specialty I chose: self-love and couple relationships.
I also coached my team during my years working in a big NGO. So I knew I enjoyed coaching and was good at it.
However, the insecurity I felt was real. I felt it perhaps constantly in my entire first year of being a coach. After that, as I slowly master my own coaching style, as I master the tools to help clients create results, and as I work with more diverse clients… my insecurity shifted into a quiet, bone-deep confidence.
I know I have the capacity to support my clients and I know I can always count on it.
I’m sharing this to let you know that if you feel insecure as a new coach, you are not alone. And confidence will come to you.
Now as I help new coaches launch their brands and businesses, confidence is the topic that often comes up.
“How to feel confident to call myself a coach?”
“How to feel confident during coaching sessions?”
“How to feel confident about my ability to deliver the coaching at the rate I quote?”
My answer to that now is simple:
Your confidence in coaching depends on 3 factors: your niche, your sense of worthiness, and your real coaching experiences.
1.
What you have most is what you can confidently give most.
Choosing a “niche”, or a coaching specialty is the first step you need to take to grow an impactful coaching business. So you do want to take this step with strategy and intentionality.
It’ll take a whole training session for me to walk you through the steps of finding your niche. But right now, what I can share is: I encourage you to choose a specialty in any area of life in which you have the richest experiences and the most visible success.
Do you have a fulfilling marriage? Do you excel in your career? Are you a great leader? Did you overcome major struggles in motherhood? Did you teach yourself how to invest in unit trust?
There are 5 broad areas in life: career, business, finance, health, and relationship. Within each, there are smaller sub-categories. (For example, in health there are fitness, nutrition, mental health, and more.)
Pick an area where you have the most to offer and start there.
This helps with your confidence because you’ll be able to draw from your rich experiences to assist your clients as they stumble on their own journey. And you’ll feel a lot more motivated to support someone whose struggles you’ve lived yourself.
Picking your niche also helps you to design what I call the “signature framework” - a 3-5 stage process that you’ll guide a client through to go from where they are to the desired results.
The clarity of being able to see all the steps you can walk your clients through will give you a boost of confidence. The bonus: your clients will also feel more confident about working with you because you have a framework.
2.
Your sense of worth defines your level of confidence.
If you hold deep patterns of doubting yourself, feeling like an imposter, and self-criticism - there’s healing work that needs to be done to unblock your sense of worthiness. This one is trickier and would require the support of a skilled coach, healer, or therapist.
Somewhere in you, there’s a child who’s hurt and afraid. And the situation of becoming a coach is triggering for this child.
If you don’t do the healing, you’ll be projecting limiting beliefs created from childhood to your present situations. Your inner child will keep on screaming for your attention through anxiety, doubt, a sense of dread, inability to act, and inability to focus….
When I started my business I had no idea the depth of healing I would need to go to have a thriving business.
I thought I would only need to learn things like marketing, coaching skills, and how to keep track of my business finances! Turned out there were a lot of inner transformations that must happen if I want real business success.
When you have the support to heal your inner child, make peace with the pains of the past, and shift limiting beliefs, you will notice a significant shift in confidence.
Last week, one client told me this: “I’m more confident and have less fear of uncertainty. I realized that failing and learning are part of the journey and feel at peace with it.”
Feeling at peace with the possibility of failing. What a courageous shift!
Growing your business takes both the inner work and the outer work. Like yin and yang, if one is missing, your mission, your business, and yourself as a coach will not thrive.
3.
Confidence is experiential.
Rich Litvin, the author of The Prosperous Coach, said that the two fastest ways to become a great coach are: firstly, get coached by a great coach, and secondly, coach your asses off.
This, I do agree.
I believe that the fastest way to gain confidence in coaching is by doing it, especially by coaching real paying clients (not just coaching friends or coaching for free).
When there’s no investment involved, the coachees are simply not as committed. And you won’t feel pressured to bring your A-game. Pressure isn’t always a bad thing. Pressure can be just the eustress you needed (which is different from distress) to expand your capabilities.
When new coaches feel insecure, the knee-jerk reaction is to get another coach training certification or go back to grad school.
Here’s my controversial opinion (and the coach training institutes may not like it):
Don’t look to outside authorities to give you the permission to follow your calling. You need to give yourself permission.
I want to be very clear that I’m not bashing coach training schools. I was trained at the Martha Beck Institutes (MBI) and I found the experience truly valuable for my growth.
But I didn’t look to MBI for permission. I gave myself permission. I took the leap.
I joined the training because I admired Martha Beck’s work and I wanted to be in a community of coaches.
The truth is during my training, different from the rest of my cohort, I was already in business for 1 year, with high-paying clients in coaching programs from 3 to 6 months. (I actually used the money I made in my business to invest in my coach training.)
Because I was coaching real clients, I had clarity about the kind of coaching tools I’d need in order to serve them better. That helped me to be more intentional with the coach training program.
Now, I know this may not be the path for everyone. You may feel strongly about getting a certification first. And I respect that.
I’d just encourage you to make your decision to join any coach training from a place of empowerment, not from insecurity.
The earlier you can start coaching real paying clients, the earlier you can start developing your confidence muscle in coaching. So don’t make the mistakes that I see many coaches make: getting a certification and then doing nothing to launch their practice.
If you’re motivated to get started and you’re thinking: “I really don’t know where to start!” I highly recommend you consider applying for a complimentary Breakthrough Session with me where you’ll have the opportunity to learn my step-by-step guide to launching and growing your coaching practice.
If you feel called to help others, I want you to hear this…
The Universe didn’t put that calling in you by accident. The Universe only gives us what we can handle. The fact that you have a calling is proof that you have what it takes to follow it.
There’s a coach in you already. Like there’s a mighty oak tree in an acorn.
An acorn doesn’t second guess itself, it doesn't say: “I’m not sure if I have what it takes to become an oak tree. Who do I think I am? If people know I want to become an oak tree they’ll laugh at me.”
An acorn never does that because everything in nature always remembers who they are.
Only us, in our human forgetfulness, lost touch with the truth of who we are.
Remember who you are. You’re born to shine. And the world truly needs your light.
Plant the seed now. Take the first action. Set free the mighty oak tree within you.
PS: FAST-TRACK YOUR COACHING BUSINESS TODAY!
It’s possible to start a thriving coaching business. All you need is a little help.
Which is why I created a value-packed FREE guidebook called “The 7-Part Enrollment Session Success Blueprint”, so that you can feel confident to enroll clients who adore you and are willing to pay you without question.
Click the image below to download the guidebook. I’ll see you inside!
I help YOU get paid to change the world.
Hey, fellow purpose-driven human!
I’m Milena. When I was 24, I said no to corporate job offers to “do my own thing.”
9 years, some major fumbles, 3 TEDx Talks, 1 published book, 50,000 followers, and hundreds of clients (from 15+ countries) later…
I make a multi-six-figure living as a coach while spending most of my time walking barefoot in my apartment. #introvertgoal
I know you want to make a difference in others’ lives.
I’m here to help you turn that calling into a sustainable coaching business, a freedom life, and a real impact — while transforming yourself, changing lives, staying away from the hustle, and skipping the pitfalls that trip up most new coaches.
Quit your 9-to-5. Move to a paradise island. Slow yoga every morning. Work from sunlit cafes. Make time for loved ones (including yourself). Grow your influence. Wake up excited about your day. And serve only the clients who light you up…
All of that (and more!) is possible, once you have the right support.
Let me help you shine.
The 3 ways to cultivate authentic confidence as a new or aspiring coach