The Problem with BusinessCoaching Programs
I’m sharing my experience with business coaching programs and the lessons I learned from these experiences. Even if you aren’t an entrepreneur, I hope you’ll keep reading – these lessons apply to other relationships, too. One advantage I had going into business coaching programs was that I had already done so much emotional work (10 years) that I was deeply connected to my truth. I had already learned lessons from giving away my power over and over. One of the biggest lessons for me this lifetime has been to learn to stay in my power and not look outside myself for the answers. Two big problems I see in the business coaching industry are: 1) Trying to fit everyone into your business model. 2) Assumptions, which lead to unconsciously shaming your clients. A few years ago, I joined my first 12-month group business coaching program. I knew what was working for me and where I needed help. I had the advantage of having a BA in business and marketing, and I became an expert in internet marketing using my intuitive gifts. But this advantage put me in a unique position – you see, the coaches that were trying to help me didn’t have the experience and hadn’t even built an online business like I already had. They kept telling me that I should be doing more in-person talks, but I knew I wasn’t ready, and it had nothing to do with resistance – I just knew it wasn’t the right thing for me to do at that time based on my market.I was shamed by one coach who assumed I wasn’t motivated enough because I was a “kept woman”, meaning my husband must be supporting me and that was why I wasn’t motivated enough to be out there giving talks. Wow. Here I was working my ass off, making a decent living paying for the $9,000 coaching program and paying off my $17,000 credit card bill from my breast explant surgery by myself in one year, and they didn’t even ask if I supported myself. Not motivated? Everyone who knows me knows that I have always been self-motivated, and if anything, too motivated. They just assumed, and tried to shame me into doing what they wanted me to do. Again, I am so glad I was in my power and listening to what felt right to me and I did not take on the insult. Another time, I wanted to change my branding because I thought it was too narrow. My focus at that time was addressing the emotional root cause of Candida, which wasn’t just about Candida. The emotional healing process helped people heal and shift out of many different things such as unsupportive relationships, including jobs, and the way they related to all symptoms, their bodies, themselves, food and everyone in their family. I wanted to change my brand to Core Emotional Healing and the main coach said, “NO, stay with Candida”, and also said that I can’t help people with everything. I knew I could, because I was. Thankfully I also had a husband who sees me and my gifts. Doug was the one who encouraged me at that time to re-brand under Core Emotional Healing, which eventually became our business and we now work together! This same coach would say that in order to fill a retreat, we would have to make phone calls to all of our clients. For my first retreat, I decided to do a free webinar with my retreat partner, and guess what? We sold out our retreat within 2-weeks without making a single phone call. During the last business conference, I had a breakout session with an assistant coach who helped me get clear on my new inner child program I was creating. When I got back into the main room I came into an exercise that was in process and after everyone wrote down their questions, the lead coach said if anyone didn’t have a question to come up to the microphone. I didn’t have a question because I just got clarity with what I needed and was overloaded with information and things for me to do. So I went up to the microphone as instructed. Without asking me why I didn’t have a question, she shamed me in front of hundreds of people with a statement, without any discussion, saying “Elicia, if you don’t have a question, you are not growing.” HA! I really did have to laugh at that one as I walked away. I am ALWAYS growing.In reflection, those coaches didn’t know me at all, nor the details of my business. They never took the time to get know me, see me, and hear my truth. How could they help me in the way I wanted and needed to be helped? If I wasn’t in my power, I could have really gone down the wrong road, and would have ended up spinning my wheels trying to make it happen. And because it wasn’t aligned with me, it would have been a struggle and I may have even continued needing them to help me because it was too hard. Sound familiar? My lessons with the business coaching industry can apply to so many other relationships you may have. This pattern comes from not being heard or valued as a child, so you learned to look outside yourself for someone to tell you what to do. You may have blocked your intuitive gifts as you shut down your feelings to make others feel better. This could be the reason you feel stuck doing something that doesn’t make you happy without knowing what you want.If you are an entrepreneur and used business coaches in the past, you may have felt the same frustrations when you were put in a box and not understood. I know the power of working with the right type of coaches, and that’s why I have relied on ones who work from their intuition, and a guided connection, rather than just from a formula they created. One person I have relied on to help me has been my friend and Intuitive Business Coach, Jocelyn Robinson. I’ve used her to continually check in whenever I need help with business decisions – from how to structure my website pages, to whether to launch a new workshop, or even how to know when something is just not right for my business. I wanted to let you know that Jocelyn is launching a small beta 4-week group coaching program for entrepreneurs who want the right type of business support. If you are interested, contact Jocelyn at Jocelyn@Jocelynlrobinson.com right away – she only will be doing this with a few select people at this low cost and only this one time. When the emotional work is done in tandem with working on your business, it is extremely powerful to create shifts in your personal and professional life. Value doing the emotional work, and life becomes much easier.Reconnect with your truth and your gifts.What else can you do on your own to help yourself? Whenever someone tells you something ask yourself:
- Is this true?
- What is true for me?
- Are they taking the time to know me?
- Is this just about them?
- How does this feel to me?
- What is best for me?
- What feels good to me?
You can come back to this exercise over and over again when you need to check in on your true feelings around a situation. While it is a helpful tool, doing the emotional work will help you be able to stand in your truth like I did with my business coaches. The only way to completely value your own voice and intuition is to heal the deep seeded core wounds that have caused you to shut it off or ignore it. If you are looking for a place to start the healing around this, then my Take Care of Yourself: Codependency & Boundaries Workshop can help you to understand how to value your worth and trust your own decisions. It’s prerecorded so you can have immediate access today and start the journey back to believing in yourself, your truth, and your gifts. Journaling is the best tool for inner guidance!If you want more journaling techniques, check out my Journal Writing workshop. In this workshop, I teach different ways you can use journaling for clarity, healing, resolution, answers, and to take action. This workshop will especially help those of you who have hit blocks when trying to journal in the past!Contact me with any questions.
Lots of love!
P.S. Share this with anyone you know who needs it.