Ep #109: Client Coach Models

Hey, coaches. We wanted to do something special through the month of January in the honor of launching our brand new 2K for 2K process and our brand-new member portal. So, we asked our students to record a video of how they made their money back inside 2K so that you can learn from them and see what’s possible to sign your first client, make your first 2K.

So, listen for their advice and their words of wisdom at the end of each episode this January and start really seeing that possibility for yourself.

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 109. Happy Wednesday. How is your January going? Have you achieved what you expected to achieve by the ending of this month? This episode will come out on the last Wednesday, I think, of January. Are you where you wanted to be?

Listen, I just want to offer – I was talking to my CFO the other day and we were talking about how notoriously, January is always an underdeliver for me. It always misses my expectations. Actually, this January ended up not being one of those, but we talked about, historically, I was telling him I always feel like there’s a lot of pressure to come out of the gate and make a lot of money so that I can believe that I will be able to hit my goal by the end of the year if January puts me on track for it.

Yet, every year, that has never proven to be true. Every year, January is our lowest month. Every year, it doesn’t even remotely come close to predicting what we will do for the entire year.

I think last January – I should have pulled these numbers. But I’m pretty sure we made a little over 100K, which put me on track to have like a million-dollar business, and instead we did 6.4 million. So, January wasn’t a predictor at all of what our success looked like for last year, the same as the year before, the same as the year before that, the same as the year before that.

And I really think we did well this January so far. I’m recording this on the 14^th. I’m cracking up. I’m like, “This January, we did well.” We’ve done well in the first 14 days of January. But what I will say is I still don’t think – I was thinking about this – even though we’ve done well this month so far is that I still don’t think it is a predictor for what we will do this year, which feels really fun to think about it in that way. Like, January feels like the warmup, right.

So, I just want to offer that to all of you. If you have drama about January and you’re making it mean the results in January prove what the results will be in December, notice it’s a thought error. It’s not true. And it has no significant impact or meaning on your potential for the rest of this year.

I like to think about this. we don’t meet for 200K mastermind, like the people who I mentor at that level in my new $2 million group, we don’t even meet until towards the end of January. Their lives are about to blow up. They have no idea. We haven’t even started.

We get started at the end of January. So, just know you have so much time, as of now 11 and a half months from when I’m recording this, but when you hear this it will be around 11 months that you have. And we always underestimate how much we can get done in a large amount of time, and we always overestimate what we can get done in a small amount of time. So, just notice if you’re doing that this January.

So, let’s dive into our topic today. So, in 2K I teach a five-step process and you’ve heard me talk about it before. We teach organic marketing, which means getting clients without paying for them, making offers, clean selling, consults, and overcoming objections.

When you are doing these things, there are two places your brain can be. Your brain can be focused on your brain and your thoughts, or your brain can be focused on your client’s brain and your client’s thoughts. This is a pretty simple concept; a pretty simple idea. There’s only two places your focus can go.

If you want to be clean in your selling, if you want to listen hard and hear everything, if you want to clearly understand your client’s problem and articulate a doable solution tailored specifically for them, you have to be focused only on them.

Again, this is not rocket science. I just know, from coaching thousands of you, this is not what’s happening. You want your focus on determining the difference between your client, when they’re talking to you, between their circumstances, the facts around their situation, and then their story, their thoughts and emotions around the situation, and then what they’re doing and not doing, and the result that that creates for them.

This is their, what we call, the model, their model, the client model. When this becomes messy for coaches is when coaches mix the client model with their model, when they’re in their client’s model and also mixing it with their model, or when they’re only in their model, their client is talking and they aren’t even listening and they’re not even present for what’s happening with their client and they’re not even looking and thinking about their client’s thinking and what’s happening with them in their models, right?

When our models are – literally, what happens is sometimes our models interrupt our client’s models. We actually try to influence our client’s models, manipulate our client’s models, and get them to behave differently on the call or in their life or during a financial decision to work with us based on our beliefs about them and what they should do, our beliefs about life, our judgments about them, when we try to get them to adopt a new model to buy from us.

Like, “You’re thinking this way but really you should be thinking this way. Because this way will create you working with me.” This is when it can get messy.

So, my work in 2K is to help my clients be clean in their selling. And what I mean by their selling is that their focusing only on their client’s models and they’re leaving their models out of it. They’re not being manipulative, unintentionally, or biased in their coaching and their selling. And remember, selling is coaching and coaching is selling, so when you learn how to do this in coaching, you can learn how to do it in selling. When you learn how to do it in selling, you can learn how to do it in coaching.

And my work is also to help my clients not bring their models into their coaching with me and their result line into their ability to make money and have the business they want. So, I have an entire training on this inside 2K for 2K called client coach models, as it pertains to objections and walking the client through a money conversation and making a decision in a way that isn’t imparting your own biases or your own agendas on top of their decision.

And then we also have an entire module called clean selling, and that’s where I really help my clients, when they’re in their marketing and when they’re on their consults, think about their client’s brain and keep their thoughts out of their client’s brain.

So, today’s episode I really wanted to be an awareness exercise. I want to help you become aware of your models and separate them from your clients’ models and to know when you should be engaging and focusing on which. When should you be in your clients’ models and when should you be in your models?

When you master this, you will become a better coach, better at selling, and this is the big part; you will get more power, more influence, more agency over your own results. A lot of coaches feel totally at the mercy of other people buying from them in order to hit their goals. But that is only because they’re mixing models. They have it confused.

They have their clients’ models in their models and they have their clients’ actions in their results. That’s usually how it shows up when your clients’ models and your model, you’re putting their action in your result. You’re saying they signed up for coaching, client signs up for coaching as your result, as something that you create.

But really, here’s what happens. There’s a consult and then there are your thoughts on the consult and your feelings and your behaviors and your actions and the result you create for yourself. If a client doesn’t buy, your result is, “I don’t create X amount of value,” however much I was charging. If I was charging $2000, I didn’t create $2000 of value, right? I didn’t create a client.

Then, there is a consult and your clients’ thoughts and their feelings and their actions and their results. So, if they don’t sign up, their result is, “I don’t get help. I stay the same.”

So, these models play together. They’re happening while you guys are talking to each other. But they don’t create each other. So, it’s important to know that. Clean selling and clean coaching establishes the line between these two, like a boundary. So, you stay in your model and you stay responsible for your model and then – especially when you’re a client, right? When you’re a client, you only work with your model. We’re going to talk about this in a second. You only have influence and ability to get coaches on and evaluate and work on your models and be responsible for your models.

When you’re the coach, the only thing you think about and focus on is you get your models ready to be open and to focus on your client, but once you’re on the call, you watch their models and you show them their models, you watch them, you find them, you show it to them. These are your thoughts, this is how you’re feeling, this is the way you’re behaving, these are your actions, this is the result you’re creating. And then you let them be responsible for it.

This is where really good selling and coaching happens. When not so great coaching happens, when not so great consults happen is when you are focused on you during the consult, so you’re consumed by your models and you go in and out of focusing on your clients’ models to being preoccupied with yours.

Think about when you do this, or you give your clients your models, your beliefs, your philosophy and you try to get them to adopt them in a way that will then get them to behave the way you want them to behave, or you start thinking that their models on the consult, how they’re behaving on the consult is, like, going to end up creating your result and you start thinking about if they don’t sign, you’re not going to hit your goal for the month. You’ve got to get them to really understand what you’re offering; you’ve got to get them to understand the value.

When you start trying to change their behavior because you’re starting to think that that behavior is going to start encroaching on your experience, your models, your results. So, here are some examples of this.

You’re on a consult and you’re thinking about how the conversation affects you, “This person isn’t my ideal client. They don’t have money to pay for coaching. I don’t want them to be mad at me because that would affect me and my emotions. That would make me uncomfortable. I don’t really want to coach on this. I’m uncomfortable talking about this. It doesn’t line up with my values or my beliefs.” So, that’s one way.

When a client has an objection and you make it about you, “I did something wrong. They don’t like me. I’m never going to be a good enough coach. I’m not a good coach. I’m not going to make money. I’m a terrible coach.” Or you make it about your ability to hit your goal, “I’ll never hit my goal now. I have to sign this client or I won’t make my money back here in 2K.” Or if you’re distracted by your own thinking so you just miss what’s happening with their thinking. You will literally have moments where you’ll be like, “Wait, what did they say?” When you notice that you zoned out for a second and started thinking about you.

This even happens when you’re marketing. So, when you’re writing your copy or you’re meeting people and you’re talking about what you do and you’re listening to them. If you’re thinking about your fear that no one wants to hire you, that you don’t know what you’re doing, that you don’t have anything to say, especially with marketing. Like, “I need to post something but I don’t have anything to say,” right, you are in your doubt.

And when you’re in your doubt, you can’t show up for your client in their doubt. It’s like you don’t have the energy and the capacity to handle their doubt and their fears and their frustrations and their problems and help them with their solutions because you need help with yours.

When you tell them that wanting to run the decision by their husband is them being afraid and really not wanting it, you kind of have a judgment about their need to run a decision by their husband and then you make them wrong for that and then you try to talk them out of that or tell them why they’re wrong in that.

When your client gets defensive and then you become defensive, you’ve got to really look for this. I coach a lot of my clients many, many times about this. we always joke because I told her created this idea of client coach models and how to teach this based on many, many coaching sessions with her a few years back.

She had lots of defensive clients and because she was mixing her models and getting in her model instead of just being present for theirs and then making it mean stuff about her and then getting defensive back, and so she was always having these combative relationships with her clients.

And of course, because she was having combative relationships and taking it very personally, the more she wanted to them to behave to make herself feel better about her coaching, of course, the crazier they behaved and she had the craziest stories of how they were behaving. And it really came down to her having this way that she wanted the call to go so that she could feel good and be who she wanted to be and have her results and it had nothing to do with the client.

So, another time this can show up is if your client is questioning you, any part of you, your coaching, your integrity, your motives, the coaching you gave them, anything about you and you go into defense and try to prove them wrong instead of just talking to them about their model, how they’re thinking, how they’re feeling, why they’re asking this, what’s coming up for them, what’s created this for them instead of coaching them, you go into defense about yourself.

This is you getting in bed with your client’s models. Or sometimes, you just never get out of bed with your models and you just bring them with you. It’s like going to work in your jammies.

So, here’s what happens when you do this, is your client’s experience suffers. They don’t experience you in your full power. They can’t. You aren’t empowered when you believe their yes determines your bank account, your business success. You can’t be in your full problem-solving capacity when you’re preoccupied with your stress about how you’re doing on a consult.

You can’t show them what it feels like for space to be held for them, for someone to listen to them without judgment or agenda. That’s what holding space is; listening without bias, without your own values and beliefs, without an agenda, without judgment. And that’s why coaching is so powerful.

Like, they have a conversation with a friend of a family member and it can’t stay about them for long before a family member or a friend tells them their opinion, what they think they should do, how they think they should react, or turns the conversation around and makes it about them. Or if it’s a conversation where, let’s just say you’re upset with your spouse so you talk to your friend about it, it’s very unlikely to have conversations with someone who isn’t a coach where they’re going to tell you how you could be in power and tell you where you might be wrong and tell you where you could find love.

They’re totally just going to be like, “Yeah, he’s an asshole. Yeah, you shouldn’t do that. My husband does this or my wife does this.” So, it’s just very rare that you get the opportunity to be in the presence of a coach who is showing and giving you space and giving you full, undivided attention. You can’t show them what that’s really like when you’re not doing it, when you have judgments and biases, or even though you’re with them, you’re totally focused on yourself.

So, getting clear about your models and separating those that are yours from your client models, being able to stay with your client’s thoughts the entire time you are with them, that is where your skill and your impact reaches its highest capacity. It’s where your money-making reaches its highest capacity. This is where your skill as a coach and your ability to get your clients results reaches its highest capacity.

This is what you can be in charge of when it comes to your goals. How you can know that you will hit your goal is you tell yourself, “I will never stop meeting people and showing up for their models and their mind, their thinking at my highest capacity. I won’t stop being responsible as well for my own models.”

We do evaluations in 2K and I don’t let my students put anything about the client that makes it the client’s fault as to why they didn’t sign the client. So, they can’t say, in their evaluation, that what didn’t work is the client wasn’t ready, they weren’t coachable, they didn’t have money.

They learn to think in their models for what they’re responsible for, which is their results, when they are being the client. So, when you’re being the client, the only thing you ever focus on, for example, my students in 2K, the only thing they focus on is their models when they’re being the client.

When you’re being the coach, the only thing you focus on is your clients’ models. So, that’s a big shift, a big difference that I want you to see, is make sure you’re not in your models when you’re being a coach and you’re not in your clients’ models when you’re being the student, when you’re being the client yourself, okay?

So, I have them write instead exactly where they think they missed the mark on the consult and why. When did the client start being un-coachable and what were they doing? The coach, like my student, what was my student doing? What was my student thinking? That created that.

Or, how can they navigate that next time better if they didn’t know how to do it that particular time. So, maybe what didn’t work for them is I didn’t know how to navigate when a client gets defensive, versus the client was defensive. So, notice the difference of that. My student is doing an evaluation and they’re saying, “And what didn’t work, I didn’t know how to navigate when a client gets defensive. They said this and I didn’t know I had this thought about it. and I got really nervous and I started thinking they hate me and they’re not seeing the value in coaching, and then I did this and then I got stuck here and then they said this and it went downhill from here.”

Versus, “What didn’t work was the client was defensive. They weren’t ready. They weren’t my ideal person.” I don’t let them say that either. I don’t let them say that they weren’t my ideal person. When you’re in the beginning of your business, I’m like, every single person that gets on the phone with you is your ideal person. You can’t ever say it was because they weren’t your ideal person. You have to say, “They were my ideal person and then why didn’t I close my ideal person?”

So, here’s why this is so important, is in the scenario where what went wrong was the client got defensive, then that coach can only hit their goal if a non-defensive person shows up. Which feels really bad, right? Like, “Oh my god, how do I know if I’m going to get a non-defensive person? I’ve got to get a non-defensive person to miraculously appear, or I’ve got to find a person that has money and wants coaching and is ready to sign up and is ideal.”

It feels like now it’s out of your control, they have to show up a certain way for you to create your results. In the other scenario, the student, the coach can learn how to navigate a conversation and coach a client who is defensive. Now it doesn’t matter if they have a defensive client.

They will still hit their goal because they know how to handle that. And because they’re extra responsible for their results and their models, they’re constantly finding new people to do consults with, so that if they mess up one consult, they already have another one coming in.

When you learn how to be fully responsible for your models, your fully responsible for your results. And what always happens after that is you create anything you want. You go into every consult situation in your full power. Your models get less and less focused because you trust your ability to create your results, you don’t need to freak out and fear other people and how they’re behaving. It doesn’t have anything to do with your results so you don’t even need to think about it when your client is behaving a certain way on a consult. It doesn’t even come across your mind.

You know that the only way you make a huge difference with your client is to be totally with their models. So, you would also know in the moment that it just doesn’t serve you or it isn’t useful at all to start panicking and making it about you.

So, this week, I want you to just notice how often you’re truly thinking about your clients and their brain and their models versus how often you are trying to write copy or be on a consult with your models and what you want and the results you’re trying to create, or the feeling that you’re trying to get for yourself.

Find specific instances where your client said something and you went to your model instead of staying with theirs. Find the moments that you start making it about you. Find the things that you think are in other people’s control. When are you thinking that other people’s actions determine your results? Where are you trying to push your beliefs? Where are you blaming other people’s models and behavior for your work and how you showed up? How many times were your thoughts louder and clearer and in more focus than your client’s? That’s a really good one.

That’s a question, you should literally do that after every consult. How many times were my thoughts louder and clearer and in more focus than my client’s during this one conversation? And what were those thoughts that were louder and clearer? And what did I miss from my client while that was happening? What do I think I might have missed?

Where are you mixing those models up? When are you mixing the appropriate time to be in each? There’s your time on your own when you’re self-coaching or you’re getting coached to focus on you and your needs and your thoughts and all your drama. But when you’re with a client or you’re marketing to a client, that’s when it’s all about them. That’s their moment. Their moment in the sun.

The amount of places that you’re doing this shows you the amount of work you have to do in order to make money. And that’s okay. don’t freak out if you see that you’re doing this everywhere. Just start one place at a time. You’re in the right place. You’re learning, right now, how to be clean when you’re selling and how to be clean when you’re coaching.

Awareness is the first step. This is your first chance to see that it’s even happening. And the more aware you become of it, the less you’ll do of it now that you know it doesn’t serve you. And of course, if you want to join us in 2K, we spend a lot of time working on this in the community, in Ask a Coach. We have entire modules dedicated to understanding how to be in your clients’ thoughts, how to build sufficiency in yourself so that you can be clear and be sufficient and focus on someone else and give someone your focus.

Anytime you’re not giving someone your focus, it’s because you’re not sufficient. You’re thinking you need something in that moment and you’re trying to give it to yourself instead of focusing on what someone else needs in the moment and giving it to them. But you’re in the right place. Let’s just start with, where’s this happening? Where are all the places? Where are all the opportunities or me to take responsibility and gain power in every one of these client interactions?

So, star paying attention. That’s your homework this week. Alright, I’ll talk to you next week.

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Denita: Hi, I’m Denita Bremer and I am a shame coach for Latter-Day Saint women. I help you stop believing you aren’t good enough. And I’ve made my 2K back. In fact, I made it back before I even joined the 2K program.

Back in February of 2019, I was a newly certified coach and I had just decided I was no longer going to offer free coaching. I got two consultations seemingly out of nowhere and I was a little bit nervous about selling my coaching and asking for money. So, a coach friend of mine suggested that I listen to Stacey’s podcast.

I went to her podcast – this was before it was Make Money as a Life Coach. It was still her Diva Business School podcast. And I picked the episode where she outlined her five-step sales process and I listened to it multiple times and I took notes. And then, the next day, she took down the podcast and I thought I had broken the podcast.

But I took those notes and what I had learned from that episode to my consultation. And I stumbled over my words. I was totally imperfect. I was nervous. I thought, “Oh my gosh, they’re not going to buy from me.” But they did. In fact, both consultations, they purchased and I made $2400.

Here’s what I’ve learned from the 2K process. The first thing I’ve learned is that selling is coaching and coaching is selling. When I think about selling in this way, it feels easy and natural to me. I love coaching, so when I show up to my consultations in service to my client and their dreams, it’s super-easy for me. Now, not everybody purchases coaching from me, but a lot of people do.

The second thing I have really learned and internalized from the 2K process is the belief triad. You need to believe in three things to be successful; belief in yourself, belief in your clients, and belief in coaching. And when I believe in these three things, I make money as a life coach, and so can you.

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 $2000, 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.