Back when I was coaching, I burned out and ultimately quit doing what I once loved. I don’t want to see you do the same.
In this episode, I cover 3 common mistakes I’ve seen that are doing more harm than good and will ultimately make you quit your coaching job. No one wants that.
If any of these apply to you, PLEASE make a change NOW.
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FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Hey everybody, Spencer here. Once again, former burnt out coach and founder of coach now, and the connected coach academy. On today's episode, we are gonna be covering the three main reasons that you are going to quit coaching. So let's get to it.
10 years ago, I was at a crossroads with my career. By all accounts. I had achieved the dream coaching, golf, a sport. I absolutely love while making a six-figure income and working exactly with who I wanted to work with from the outside, looking in, it was, it was great. It looked like I had all figured out, but here's the thing.
I was burnt out, overwhelmed and constantly falling behind. I was coaching 30 to 40 plus hours a week. Like most of you, but in order to support. That in person coaching. I was working another 30 or 40 hours a week. So when I did the math, I realized that my effective hourly rate back then was just around $10.
So even though I had the business, I was making the money, it just wasn't scalable. It wasn't sustainable more importantly. So all I wanted to do was.
luckily, uh, for me, I had some great friends that were working in the tech space and thought, boy, if we could solve these problems for you, we could solve it for everyone. So since then I've made it my mission to help coaches avoid this same downward spiral into resenting, what I once loved. So why am I telling you this?
Because I don't want you to. we work with hundreds of thousands of coaches here at coach now. And I can tell you that the only reason from what we can see that they stop using coach now is because they quit coaching their models. Aren't aren't, uh, in a place that support them because they're making the three biggest mistakes that lead to burnout.
So if you've been following our content here, none of these will probably come as a surprise, but the lessons bear repeating, because I keep seeing these same mistakes being made and I keep seeing coaches quit. If any of these apply to you, please prioritize addressing these sooner than later. So let's do it.
Number one, you're still selling your time for. AKA lessons. So here I go again, I've said it a million times and I'll say it a million more. It is vitally important that your business doesn't require to be at a specific time at a specific place to sell your coaching expertise, time and time again, I've seen coaches who sell their time for money, burn out just how it goes.
The lessons model doesn't scale. It is not sustainable. And worst of all, it doesn't actually help your athletes. And it definitely doesn't help you. So, what do I want you to do? Well, I want you to learn to sell your expertise instead of your. create a multitude of products and empower your clients to improve 24 7 package your expertise into bundles or better yet make your coaching automatic and subscription based.
So you aren't wasting your valuable time, manually interacting with your clients one at a time. Now this is not to say that you're not gonna provide personalized coaching as needed. That's not what I'm saying, but your model. It's gonna be a mixture of in person and remote time so that you can have asynchronous communication or what we believe to be one of the most powerful things any coach can do is utilizing micro touchpoints.
So essentially you are coaching them in person or remotely, but you're using the power of asynchronous communication to deliver them value. Whether you. Directly having that exchange in real time. The other is you need to find your ideal customer and only work with those athletes that cater to your expertise.
You don't wanna be wasting time with people that don't value what you do and that you are not enjoying working with. You need to be a specialist. I wholeheartedly believe that as the world becomes increasingly digital. Those who sell their time for money will continue to become obsolete. Just how it is.
We already saw a great dying of businesses during COVID 19. So you need to learn from the past and make sure that you make this change. Now before it's too late, you need to de-risk your business and create multiple streams of income. And make sure that you're not just selling your hours. You're not selling your greatest asset, which is time, but you are selling your expertise and you're doing it through a combination of technology and in person coaching as needed, number two, you're using tons of different communication channels.
So here I go again, repetitive for sure. But if you are using coach now, just as one more communication channel that you use in your coaching. I'd rather you not even use coach now at all. I don't want to create more disparate communication for you and more stress. What I'm suggesting is whatever channel you use.
Hopefully if you're listening to this, you're, you're a coach now member, but whatever it is go all in, I still see coaches using all sorts of different channels and wondering why they're burning. Email text, uh, disparate tools, YouTube, WhatsApp, you name it. They're using whatever they can to stay in touch and likely it's because they are victims of how their athletes want to communicate.
You are in charge. You're the coach. So you need to make sure that you are dictating not only how they train, but how they communicate with you. So sure. It's manageable to use all these different tools. If you only have a few clients, but as your business. Flat out your business won't grow. If you don't have a dedicated process in which you communicate.
And as a reminder, don't ever give your feedback in the wrong place after you make that transition, we've got other content about that, but really just make sure you have an autoresponder that says, Hey, great question. Put it in a coach now or put it. What, in whatever channel you use, number three, you haven't properly set expectations or boundaries with your athlete.
Your time is the most valuable resource. You have to be a successful coach and build a lifestyle. You love, you need to treat it as such a lot of coaches when they begin their careers will coach anyone at any time and they just do whatever they can, uh, in order to fill their, their sheet. So to speak.
What I'm telling you is that you need to be as respectful with your time as your athletes are with. So while money is very, very important. Obviously we talk a lot about that here at coach. Now we also include location and time freedom as key, additional metrics of success. I want you to do the same. It's all about what you hold fixed as the number one priority for you.
So here's something I have found to be true. The decisions you make while optimizing for your ideal lifestyle will differ completely from the decisions you make while only optimizing for your revenue. There must be a balance. So how do you set proper expectations and boundaries with your athletes? Well, in my 10 years in the industry, I've found that it's all about proactive, open communication with them.
Don't be afraid to remind them that while you love them, you do want to see them succeed. You too have a lifestyle beyond being their coach beyond holding their hand. I've seen coaches successfully set up specific. That not only that they are going to coach, they have windows of in person coaching time, but they have windows of feedback.
These same coaches are also very successful at using asynchronous communication and making sure that the expectations that the athlete has around that type of communication is very, very clear.
So here we are. Let's wrap this up. The last thing I wanna see is another coach who overworks themselves for too little money gets burnt out and quits coaching all together. It's way too common. And honestly so painful for me to witness because I see this across multitude of sports all over the world.
Yeah. I can a hundred percent relate and I'm doing everything I can to make sure that you build a sustainable business. Something that you're excited about, delivers tons of value and allows you to lead the life that you want to lead. So if any of this rings true for you, please take action. Drop us a note.
We have a lot more details on all the things that I is mentioned, and of course you can check us out at the connected coach academy. So head over to coachnow.io/education. With that. Thanks again for tuning in. I hope to see you again, next time we're here to help. So please, don't be one of those coaches that quits take action.
Take responsibility for your business, and we'll see you at the top.