Ep #252: Consults When You’re Feeling Emotionally Wrecked

Welcome to the Make Money as a Life Coach® podcast where sales expert and master coach Stacey Boehman teaches you how to make your first 2K, 20K, and 200K using her proven formula.

Hey, coaches, welcome to episode 252. Today I had a different episode planned. I was going to talk about advanced consultations and I will. I will record that episode for a future episode. It’s what I teach in my 200K Mastermind and I was really excited to share that message with you. So I’m still excited to share that message with you in the future.

But I wanted to do an episode, sometimes when you’re coaching and you have a plan of what you’re doing, especially if you’re doing some kind of challenge week or challenge month. Sometimes you want to always move forward with the plan that you have, trusting yourself that you laid out that plan and it was the best plan for everyone. The way I like to think about my content is I’m going to plan based on what I think my people need to hear from my experience.

But I’m always going to be listening and watching and actively engaged and connected to my audience and my people. And also looking for what they need from me that maybe I hadn’t planned. I do that in my courses and my programs. In my 200K Mastermind, for example, we do six month cohorts. And so everyone’s a little bit different and I’m always like, “This is the lesson plan that I’ve planned.” And I create so much space for us to be able to go off the plan and focus on what people really need in the moment.

And so I think what people really need in this moment from the conversations I have had on Instagram, on Facebook, in my communities. A lot of the private conversations I’ve had is people really need, my coaches, my people really need to address how to show up specifically for consults, which are very intimate and typically a one-on-one interaction with you and someone thinking of buying coaching. How to do that when you are emotionally wrecked?

And I really wanted to use that terminology because I think it can encompass a lot of things when you are struggling in your own life really, truly, anytime where you just feel like your emotions are all over the place. And I just kept coming up with the word wrecked, where you just feel so drained, depleted, defeated, hopeless, anxious, stressed, disappointed, angry, hurt. All of those really on the emotional scale, all of those emotions that are really far down the scale that make it to where it feels like we can’t show up. It feels impossible and it may be. I’m going to talk about that.

There is space in this episode for me to speak to when you might need to reschedule, but I think so many of us are so much more powerful than we think. And so I just want to kind of talk through the times where I have shown up when I feel drained, when I feel deeply depleted in my emotions. What has allowed me to still show up for my clients, for my own client coaching calls, for webinars that I’m scheduled to do, for launches I’m scheduled to execute, whatever it is, team meetings I need to be on. How do you do that?

How do you find the place where you feel like you have nothing left to give and you are so depleted emotionally, so sad, so wrecked, how could you still show up for other people? And so I think this episode is exactly what all of my students need to hear. I also did a post @staceyboehman on Instagram, where I talked about this in a very constrained way. And so some of this content is pulled from that post. And so I just want to give you some tips, some things to think about, some processes that will allow you to do that.

So the first thing is so challenging, especially when we don’t feel like we invited this experience in. When it feels like this experience has been put on us, shouldn’t happen and all of the thoughts and emotions that go along with unexpected terrible news or events or experiences, maybe diagnoses. The first thing you have to do to be able to do a consult during this time, when you are actively engaged, your emotions are really activated is you have to allow what you’re feeling. You don’t even have to know exactly what it is.

I’ve done a lot of work with clients where they can’t name the emotion but we name what’s happening in their body when they’re experiencing it. Their chest might feel tight. Their face might feel flushed. They might feel a tight ball in their shoulder, almost like a drop in their stomach, a pit in their stomach. It might feel really, really, really fast and almost uncontrollable or really, really slow and dull and achy.

So even if you can’t name that emotion, even if it’s 1,000 emotions all at once, there is something that’s vibrationally happening in your body and can you go to that place in your body and be with that experience? You don’t have to do this forever. Especially there are different scales of emotions. There’s different skill levels we have and different availability we have to really allow and process emotions. And I think sometimes there’s just a certain amount we have in any given moment.

So you may not be able to allow it all day. You might not be able to allow it for an hour, you might. But whatever amount of time that you think you could give to allow it and be with it in your body is going to help start to kind of break it up and let it move through. Something that I’ve often told myself, I’ve had a couple of really challenging times.

I did a training in 2K for 2K, it’s under the bonuses and many of you that are my students have taken it. It was a really old training back in the day called the interrupt training and it was about interrupting your self-concept with yourself. And one of the final days of the training I had just gotten news that I lost a dear friend of mine in a skiing accident and I was really devastated. He was very, very young and part of a community that I had been a part of and I was wrecked.

I was really wrecked, and it was very difficult to show up. But one of the things I’m going to talk about several things actually that day that allowed me to show up but one of them was telling myself, I think I might have been on that training for maybe an hour that day. Maybe it was 30 minutes. I think it might have been an hour.

But for whatever timeframe I was going to be on that training I told myself, “All we have to do is allow this emotion to be here for this amount of time. And as soon as I’m done training my people I’m allowed to fall apart. I’m allowed to bring up all of the emotion and scream and cry. I’m allowed to be with myself in that just for however long I have after that.” Just really telling myself I can allow it for this amount of time. And then I can just really be with it.

There’s a difference between allowing it to be there, but you can’t quite be present for it. And then allowing it to be there and you’re able to be fully present for it. So on a consult or on a training or a webinar you’re being present for other people. That’s our job. And so in that moment, you’re allowing that emotion but you can’t be with your emotion. Because the moment you’re with your emotion, you’re not with their emotion. So you just tell yourself, it’s going to be this amount of time and then I’m going to be with my own emotion after. Maybe that’s a full day and that’s okay.

There have been times where I’ve had to be on stage and I’m like, “When I’m off stage, I get to be with my emotions.” And just telling myself, knowing that I have that time coming and waiting for me has been really, really powerful. And then if you are going to show up for other people, come with compassion and openness for this moment. This moment that you’re going to be there for someone else, be compassionate for yourself. Be more compassionate for them and what they’re experiencing.

And just be open, let’s just say an hour. That’s typically what I tell my students is a good timeframe for a consult. For that hour I’m going to be open to whatever happens in this moment. And I’m looking specifically to feel connected to this other person for this one hour, to serve this person, to be in community with this person for this one hour. And I’m just completely open to this experience being whatever it is which might be different than my expectations.

So I might have expected when I’d signed this consult, when they signed up with me or when I planned this webinar, I might have expected it to be very different than it is. I might have expected my energy to be very different than it is. I might have thought this was going to be really, really, really exciting and instead it feels really low and really slow and I feel really down and that’s okay. Maybe that’s the experience I’m going to be, I was always supposed to have for this moment, for this consult, for this webinar.

Come with compassion. Come with openness for whatever the experience is going to be and to be in that moment looking for connection. The other thing that’s so important that I actually learned when selling mops in Walmart you all, I got life lessons there, is be authentic, even if you’re selling, be authentic, don’t pretend.

So I’m going to give you an example of this. I would walk up to the stage and if I was feeling low and depleted for whatever reason. Sometimes it might be I had a cold. Sometimes it could be I had just had a really negative experience with a customer or a manager or a store employee or gotten in a fight with my boyfriend. Whatever it was, in that moment, I might be feeling really down. And inevitably so the first part of the show is you walk up and you greet the audience.

And we always said that was the most powerful moment of the show because it set the tone for everything else. And you only had about 20 seconds to get an entire group of strangers to connect with you. And if they didn’t, they would literally walk off or they would stay and make you miserable for the next 20 minutes. And inevitably, what would happen is if I greeted that crowd and I tried to be positive or I tried to be something that I wasn’t feeling in that moment, it doesn’t matter, whatever it was, professional, whatever it was.

Whatever I tried to be thinking I need to be this way for this audience. Inevitably what they saw was inauthenticity and they didn’t know what it was, but it made them feel distrust and lack of safety. It made them think I was a liar, I was fake, I was phony. And then of course, we already associate those things with salespeople, so it heightens that emotion of, you’re trying to get one over on me. And it could be that I was just sick and trying to not be a drip to my audience, but they saw that as you’re trying to take advantage of me. You’re going to try to get something on me. This person isn’t real. I can’t trust this person.

And so at times where I would walk up to them, and let’s just say I was mad, I was angry. I was angry at the store manager. I might walk up to them and be like, “Hey, how are you all doing today? I’m doing okay, I mean, I’ve had a little bit of a run in with the store manager, so hopefully that gets better or I’ve had some run-ins with some employees.” Whatever it is, I don’t know if I would say it exactly like that. But I would say something like that. I would just be like, “Yeah, kind of having a crappy day”, for whatever reason.

I know that sounds so crazy. Now, I’m not telling you to tell your client that you’re having a crappy day. I’m going to talk about this in a second. But just the energy and sometimes it would just be me being like, “Hey, how are you guys doing today? Good. Alright, I’m glad you’re having a great day. So, listen, here’s what we’re going to do. We have some free gifts to hand out to everybody. I don’t have a ton of time. They’ve asked me to move really quickly.” So you hear the energy in my voice?

I’m not even telling them what’s going on. Sometimes I would, sometimes I wouldn’t, not even telling them what’s going on but I’m not trying to be different than I am. So how this translates to coaching is that’s what you want to do on your consults. “Hey, how are you doing today? Are you having a good day? Awesome. Alright, I’m so glad you’re here.”

So typically what I do with my clients, when they do this first call with me. “I have an exercise that I like to run you through. And then it just helps me get all the information that I need to see if I can help you. And then if I can I’ll outline exactly what that would look like if we were to work together, exactly what we would be doing together and how I can help you. And then I like to save time for questions at the end. And if you want to know how to work with me, we can talk about that.

Just anything else that feels open-ended by the end of the conversation, there will be plenty of time. How does that sound? And also I also like to just check-in. If there’s anything that’s weighing so heavily on your mind, that you couldn’t even focus on anything like that if you’ve just had a fight with your spouse or received bad news at work. I’m also happy to just have you talk through that as well. Anything that would come up that feels like a distraction to this conversation we can talk about that too. We really have enough time for all of it.”

Do you hear my energy there? Do you see how I’m not trying to be happy and positive and I don’t have to be rah rah for this person? I think being authentic with where you are when you don’t have unlimited amounts of positivity and energy. I think this is your opportunity to show someone that a life coach is more about rah rah and accountability. And that it’s a safe place to be able to experience whatever you’re experiencing. And I think that if you show up that way, you give them permission to show up that way.

And you might be the first real person that they’ve experienced all day or ever in their entire life. So again, day one, you get to show your client that coaching on a call with you is a safe space to be real. They don’t have to perform for you. They don’t have to come back and tell you that they had nine million transformations between calls and that their life is so much better because they hired you. And they’ve done all the homework and they’re the perfect student.

They get to come however they are with whatever is going on with them because you’re going to create that safe space for that by not always being rah rah in accountability as well. You truly might be the first space your client has ever been allowed to drop into and experience their negative emotions. And again, you’re not making this about you. You’re telling them how terrible of a time you’re having, you might be able to share. I think if it’s something that’s happening worldwide.

I had a client that reached out to me and had said, “Based on your post, I had a consult and I just checked in with my client about how she was feeling with what’s happening in the world. And we had a really powerful conversation. And my client was able to express things that they hadn’t been able to express before and then we were able to do our consult.”

So sometimes you will open up space to be able to have an authentic conversation for something that’s weighing heavily on everyone’s hearts but you don’t have to. But just be with where you are and be authentic. Don’t pretend, that pretend will make them afraid. That inauthenticity will send their brain on alert, thinking that you are someone to be protected against. It’s just what happens. They won’t even know what’s happening on a deep, self-conscious level, their alerts will just be going off a little bit if something is off.

So you want to do your best to connect with what energy is happening for you before you get on a consult and be allowing that in just authentic energy where you are right now.

Before I move on, I just want to say I did that so many times selling mops in Walmart. And one of the things that’s so interesting is those shows where I was the most tapped in with where I was, whether it was positive or negative. I was just being me in that moment with my real emotions, being at the energy level that I’m at, displaying authenticity, I sold the most. Those are the times where the people loved me the most.

I used to think I’m doing the show and it’s so monotone and it’s so boring and it’s so low energy. And the things people would say to me at the end of the show, like, “Oh my. Gosh, this was so amazing. I had so much fun. You were so engaging. I couldn’t stop watching the show.” I’m like, “What? It’s terrible.” But they got that from the authenticity.

The other thing I think that you want to consider is that showing up for others. This is something that helps me, showing up for others proves to ourselves we have something to give. And so the thing that you might get out of the consult, whether they buy or not, because you showed up, it might give you hope. It might actually make you feel better to give to someone else in a moment where you feel like you have nothing. The other thing that you can do is focus on your process and your value.

I teach this a lot in the 200K Mastermind, is what creates consistency in business is being able to access your value. No matter how you feel at any given moment on every work day to really, truly in the majority of your work day show up and get your work done, regardless of what’s happening with your life or the world. I teach them that positivity is not a prerequisite for selling. Again, people are not buying your rah rah-ness. They’re not hiring a cheerleader.

They don’t need you to be positive Polly. And in fact, sometimes that turns people off. If you are missing when the world is struggling, when the world is grieving, when the world is deeply sad and going through it. And you miss that because you were tuned out and off of what’s happening with your people. Let’s just say you even actually are feeling just amazing and positive, but you missed that for them because you’re thinking positivity is the solution to making money as a life coach. You might turn them off. They may just not think you’re the coach for them that you get them.

So really think about, I want you to work on, especially in this time right now, letting go of the tie you might have in your brain and your belief system about positivity and selling going hand in hand. I always tell my 200K students, “Value is what sells. What you do, your unique thing, how you work to help your people, your intellectual property, the tools you have, the concepts you teach, the process you take your clients through, that is the value.”

And in times where life has been very difficult for me like when I went through postpartum anxiety, I was deeply struggling in my brain. That’s what I focused on. Even if my brain is super struggling and afraid of the world and all the terrible things that could happen to my child and to me and to my family. When my brain is activated in that way, and it was literally running me down. It was making me sick. I was getting sick all the time. It was literally running me down in my body so badly. But even then I knew the things I know about selling in business can still help my people. It’s still hugely transformational.

So if you think about it before and after or then and now of your student, you’re the after, you’re meeting them at their before. So you at your lowest emotional point in your after is still further than where their before is. So you are extraordinarily valuable, even if you don’t feel extraordinarily positive. Focus on what makes you valuable to that person and what the value is that you can create for their life. And then trust yourself that you can deliver and help someone even when you do feel low. You’ll never know until you try it, until you do it.

Some of the best coaching that I’ve done has been when my energy is low. And I’ve been trying to think about what that is that creates that. And I think it’s because of two things. Number one, I think I tend to focus even harder, almost like an accommodation making up for something, when you’re feeling really bad. Or let’s just say it’s if I’m having a hard time in my life and there’s a lot of things happening in my personal life. And I come to a call. In order to leave that behind it just requires a different level of focus than when everything is going great.

And so sometimes I’m just focused so hard that my coaching is actually better. And the other thing that I think affects this is I think when we are emotionally depleted, we have less brain chatter, we actually have less drama. It slows everything down. So you’re not thinking as much. You’re not having as much of that heightened overactive self-talk that’s happening. You literally don’t have the energy for it. So your brain chatter is down and then you’re focused because you’re thinking you need to be focused.

You’re actually actively focusing harder than you might normally so that you can put the emotions you have going on aside. And that has resulted in some of the best coaching I’ve ever done, some of the best calls. I remember recently I did a 200K call a few weeks ago. And I was feeling really low. I’d had some things come up. I’m still on a semi liquid diet, so I was starving. And I had a call with my 200K Mastermind and I thought about getting someone to do the call.

And then I thought I just really want to be with my people right now, because sometimes that gives you hope and fulfillment when you’re feeling low. And I recognize that. I recognized it was an opportunity as a recharge versus an energy depletion. And so I did the call, but I felt my energy was much lower than it normally is. And at the end of the call, I had so many people reach out to me and tell me it was such an incredible call and it was one of the best ones we’d had in a long time. And they’re like, “They’re all great but this one stands out to me as profound and impactful.”

And I was like, “What?” And it just reinforced that again. It reinforced to me that some of my best coaching is when I’m feeling at my lowest. It’s how I built my entire business, I was emotionally wrecked and devastated and humiliated and just heartbroken. Thought I might actually die from the heartbreak physically, it was so painful to feel in my body. And I built $150,000 business from that place but I wasn’t being rah rah cheerleader on Facebook.

I was teaching people about pain. I was talking to them about how to move forward, how to pick themselves up, how to allow emotions. How to process grief. How to recreate a life plan when you didn’t expect it to go this way. And I attracted a ton of people who were looking for that and who needed that.

And then the last piece of this, and I have a couple of other things I want to offer to you before I leave you. But the last kind of piece of this is I do think I have to talk about this as well is knowing your limits is very important and knowing when you actually might need to reschedule. And this is for me and I’ve done this before, I’ve done this, this year.

I talked about this last episode, that the day after I choked or had food stuck in my esophagus and almost died, I was emotionally wrecked. I knew, I was like, “There’s no way I can hold space for anyone today. I just need to be with my family and my baby and myself and just hug everyone so tight.” And so I had people cover my calls. That was the greatest thing I did for my clients. They blew the pages up, talking about the guest instructors because they got a different experience and a different perspective. And I got to care for myself.

And then it was the next week that I had that insanely powerful call. I gave them double the value the next week. But knowing your limits when you might need to reschedule so that you can care for yourself, knowing when you can’t hold space for someone, when you’ve reached that line. That’s in service to your client as well. It’s wise and I’ve had this happen not to myself, but this has happened in our community where people have talked about this is when they’ve realized they’re halfway through a consult and they’ve asked to reschedule the consult. That’s fucking authentic. Kudos.

I’ve heard that so many times, especially in 2K and 200K, kudos. If you’re willing to be that authentic and say, “You know what.” I don’t even remember the situations but clients have actually said, “I’m so sorry, I really need to reschedule this call.” And I don’t know if they gave reasons or didn’t or how they handled it. But just the fact that they knew that was their limit. And then many of them ended up re-signing their clients when they did the reschedule.

What it just requires of you is to believe that your client wants to be coached by you so badly that they will reschedule and they will show up. If they’re a best client, if they’re going to do the work of the entire package that you coach them, say it’s six months or three months or a year. If they’re going to show up for themselves to lose the weight or save their marriage, they’re for sure going to let you reschedule.

And if they don’t, if they don’t let this be the reason that you don’t is you’re like, “Oh, I’ve lost a client because of this because I couldn’t get myself together.” No, they were never going to be your client. If they couldn’t handle you rescheduling, if they didn’t want it bad enough to show up twice, they were never going to be your client. That was always true. Or if they were, they were going to be the worst kind of client where you would never be able to not show up without them falling off themselves or being upset or whatever.

So I always love to think this is a test of how the relationship will go. Because they’re human and I’m human. Sidenote, also when they need to reschedule the consult, that’s an opportunity for you to decide also how the relationship will go. Are you going to be the kind of coach that is compassionate with that? And does it make that mean that they’re not committed? And are you going to go immediately to something about you? Or are you going to be like, “I’m going to create such a safe space for them to do that. No problem whatsoever, people reschedule all the time, things come up.”

Life coaching is about making your life easier, not harder. Life coaching is about helping you apologize less in your life. So you’re not going to come apologize to me constantly. So let’s just reschedule. It’s absolutely no problem. It’s such an opportunity for us to all be human and show our humanness. If you’re at your limit, that’s okay too. You’re not weak. Nothing has gone wrong. We’re human beings. We all have limits to what we’re able to hold at any given time.

The final things I want to leave you with is don’t let your brain tell you that showing up for a consult when you are emotionally wrecked or depleted or grieving is about you being money obsessed. I never tell myself that. It’s about being client obsessed. It can be about you seeing pain in the world or your life and wanting for you to leave your mark and better things.

When I see terrible, horrible things in the world that I can’t control and it feels so awful and scary. I think about the things I can control. I think about the impact I can make. I think about the people’s lives that I can touch. And that makes me feel better and it makes the world a little bit better of a place when we all do that.

And then the final thing is, I’ve already kind of talked about this, but I just wanted to say it in this way. Is it can be just as therapeutic and I’m using that word on purpose, it can be just as therapeutic to strengthen your ability to show up when you think you can’t, as knowing when you’re in a place where you need to put your oxygen mask off first. Both are transformations. Both are available to you. Just decide in the moment which one you’re taking that moment. Doesn’t even have to be the perfect one or the right one. There is no right one.

Today the transformation I’m showing up for is believing that someone wants coaching enough that they would reschedule. And I’m showing up for the transformation of knowing my limits and when I can’t hold space for someone. Today I’m celebrating the transformation of finding new limits within myself to show up for people when I didn’t think I can.

And actually I have one more thing which is if you do show up, be prepared to make it all about them. And the way that you do that is by getting your own support, your own help, whether that’s with a community like 2K for 2K or 200K Mastermind or a life coaching group, or a one-on-one coach or a friend. I mean I really believe in paying for coaching because I’m selling coaching. So I really believe in getting your own help in that professional way with a therapist that’s getting help as well in the field that we’re in.

But I really believe in getting my own help and having my own support so that I can go out at a different level and support others. If I’m not taken care of, then I can’t take care of other people. Ultimately, I’m the asset so I have to have my own support and the more the better. I have lots of support. I have colleagues, the business mastermind I’m in. I have a one-on-one coach. I’m in a coaching group community.

And sometimes my own community lifts me up in ways they have no idea, they don’t even know they’re doing it, just by allowing me to show up for them. But get your own help, get your own support, ask for it from your spouse. Ask to be held. Ask to be heard. Ask to be witnessed in processing emotions.

I woke up at 5:00am this week and processed some really heavy emotion in my personal life. I never wake up at 5:00am, but my husband does. And I had been awake since maybe 4:30 and I had just been waiting for him to wake up. And as soon as he opened his eyes, as soon as he made any movement I was like, “Are you awake?” And he was like, “Yeah.” And I just started crying my eyes out. “I just need you to talk to me. I just need to process some emotions.”

And he did, he sat on the bed with me for half an hour and listened. If you ask for it, the people in your lives, they will do it. Most of them will do it if you ask sincerely. But get your own support.

Alright, I hope this was hugely, hugely helpful. I know that we are all experiencing a lot right now in the world. And I wanted to give this as my gift to you and to help you go out and continue to help people in the world who are also suffering for so many reasons. Okay, I hope you have an amazing week. I love you and I will talk to you soon.

Hey, if you are ready to make money as a life coach, I want to invite you to join my 2K for 2K program where you’re going to make your first 2,000 the hardest part and then 200,000 using my proven formula. It’s risk free, you either make your 2K or I give you your 2K back. Just head over to www.staceyboehman.com/2kfor2k. We’ll see you inside.