Ep #8: The Fraud Complex

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.

Welcome to episode eight. We’re going to talk about the fraud complex today. I’m so excited. But first, before we dive in, we have to celebrate. You know, one of the things I wanted to do on this podcast is share with you real life stories from my 2K for 2K program because I think success looks different for everybody. It shows up differently at different times in different ways.

And so I really wanted to share like, real examples of coaches coming in and doing this work and learning how to make money for the first time, or learning how to uplevel themselves in a huge way. So today I want to give a shoutout to Hannah.

Hannah says, “Woo-hoo, celebration time. I haven’t done much of it yet here so after a hard week emotionally and having some big insights about how I’m showing up, I get to end my week with a big win. Just signed a client, my first since signing up for this program, and earned my 2K back. Happy dance.”

She also goes on to say, “I also had two articles go live on great sites and have group my Facebook group in three days by 50 people and my email list by 90 in just a few days. Super happy dance. The shifts in me have been big and I’m so excited to see how I keep creating amazing results.”

Hannah, you are so awesome. One of the things about Hannah is she has shown up in that group every single day. She has been willing to do the hard work. She posted in our group some copy that she had been writing, and me and the mentors in the group like, really gave her some tough feedback. And in a very loving way, but she went and she just kept rewriting and kept rewriting and the last version of it, we were all like, yes.

I was like, when I read this, I felt chills. I was so emotionally connected and she’s just really been willing to get in and do the work and it’s been so fun to see her showing up at that level for herself and now to see the results come through for her.

Okay, so we’re going to talk today about the fraud complex. I am so sick right now when I am recording this for you, but I’m leaving for vacation for 10 days. Something I haven’t done for myself, I don’t think since my – ever. Maybe ever actually. I don’t know that I’ve ever been on vacation for 10 days.

But definitely not since I started my business. I have worked, y’all. Like, I launched my business and I have worked. My goal has always been to get to a million dollars and I worked to get there. That was always the mission. Everything else, you know, I always knew – I’ve had so much fun along the way but to actually take 10 days off, I’m like, what is going to happen? What do we do?

I worked very hard to where I don’t have to work when I’m gone, but it feels a little weird. But of course, I got sick right before we leave. Day before, we have to record these podcasts so that you can listen to them while I’m gone, so here we are. So I’m going to try to speak as clear as possible because I’m really excited about this topic. So good.

I think about two things actually when I’m recording these podcasts. I think about what will make you money and what’s keeping you from making money. Basically that’s all I’m ever thinking about. And I’ve been coaching – I coach so many women. There’s over 200 people in my 2K for 2K program and I coach 35 women in my 200K mastermind.

And this comes up a lot for everyone and at every level. I don’t think people – like, I just experience this a lot in coaches. I don’t know that anyone’s exempt from it at some point, but it’s not something that you have to grow your business with, but I do think it’s something that holds people back in a big way, and it’s the fraud complex.

So we’re going to talk about it because I think the entry bar for life coaching is super low. It’s really low. Anyone can be a life coach. Anyone can call themselves that. The same with business coaching, but the success bar is super high. We aren’t technically regulated in this industry. I mean, we aren’t at all, yet we are.

And I think we are in the most relevant way by the work that you have done on yourself. Therefore, your ability to sell. Because selling is an action you take when you believe. So the entry bar is low, but the success bar is super high, and I think that in your work in yourself, that’s where successful life coaches are born.

And where hopeful entrepreneurs die as hobbyists. It’s kind of like lobbyists, but they’re arguing for the opposite of change. Your transformation is the bar. Your transformation defines whether you make money or not, and I know some of you listening haven’t gotten it yet.

Listen, real talk. Some of you have never even hired your own life coach. You have never had the experience of getting coached every week, of developing the relationship with your coach. You know how I know this is when you ask what you do on calls with clients. You don’t ask that question when you’ve worked with your own life coach. You know exactly what happens on calls.

When you ask how to onboard a client, like, I’ve had someone ask me that. And if you have had a life coach, you know exactly how they did it, right? Now, let me be clear, I don’t think you have to have hired your own life coach, but I haven’t met anyone yet who has been super successful without having had one.

But I really do care less about the how and more about the result. The result of transformation. When you have transformation, a ton of it consistently, not like, three years ago you lost 20 pounds and then you’ve been stuck ever since. Consistent new transformation, selling life coaching is easy, y’all.

You are just sharing all of your results and breakthroughs and a-has and decisions you’re making to be different. You’re talking about the hard things and the results of them. You know exactly how to explain how it feels and what it’s like, and that’s your best copy, when you can just explain what something’s going through so clearly.

Like, it touches their soul and they’re like, this lady knows exactly what I’m going through. So many people tell me I can explain things in a way that really makes their brain understand, and the reason is because I’m constantly living in my own transformation.

So many clients come to me and they are so stuck in the niche and the program and their offer, and they think that’s the reason they aren’t making money and clients aren’t coming. It’s really hard for them to get that this very tangible business thing that they see other coaches having isn’t what will make them money. It’s not the actual thing that makes them money.

Like, what the hell do you mean? Of course it’s my program and my niche and my offer and my website, right? That isn’t making me money. But if this is you, you aren’t looking for what the other successful coaches have. You’re not seeing this other part, this intangible thing, the transformation. This deep understanding of the work, the intangible that you can’t see.

The being able to explain the problem and the solution to a potential client better than they understand it themselves. I call this bridging the gap in my sales process. If you’re in my 2K program and struggling with understanding this step, this episode is made for you. Like, I was thinking of you when I created it and this is why I almost guarantee it.

This is why you get stuck in bridging the gap. Your experience with your own transformation is what makes you an amazing coach and an amazing salesperson. Not your title of certified life coach or master coach. None of that shit matters if you aren’t doing the work on yourself.

And many of you did the work to get that title but you stop maintaining it the moment you start trying to sell and think about your business. It’s very interesting. I see this happen all of the time. It’s like, everything you learned about how to create any result goes right out the window when money and other people are involved.

So I recently was actually teaching my 200K mastermind this concept called obstacle thoughts, and really, it’s just like, all obstacle thoughts, in the most simplest way, are just thoughts that limit you to getting what you want. It’s just a thought that’s a limiting thought. One that doesn’t serve you.

Now, keep in mind we’re life coaches and they were freaking out. They were like, what do you do with an obstacle thought? I don’t understand, what’s the process? And I’m like, I don’t know y’all, you tell me, what do you do with your clients? Hopefully you’re helping them through their own obstacle thoughts. What would you tell them to do?

But listen, this is what happens. It’s not that they don’t know what you do with a limiting thought. It’s that when it comes to money, when it comes to their business, it’s literally like we forget we’re life coaches and the rules, we think they don’t apply. It’s like, wait a minute, no, money is a whole different thing. There’s clearly a different set of rules, it’s not thought work, it’s not mindset, it’s this other thing. It’s got to be strategy, right?

Like, your business is seriously no different than any other part of you. How you process your decisions and your life is how you process decisions in your business. But insert the circumstance of sales in your business and you forget you’re a coach. The rules go out the window. You go right back to your default thinking. It’s the craziest thing. I see it happen every day.

So, there’s that. There’s sometimes you just forget the work when it comes to sales and business. You forget the transformation you’ve had, you forget the thing that made you want to be a life coach to begin with, to share and to go out and get clients and work with them. You just forget.

But then, many of you haven’t done the work. You understanding coaching tools logically and you see it in other people and how they can change using the tools, like your clients. Isn’t that how our brains work? We’re always wanting other people to do the work. It’s like, really easy to see all the ways somebody else can change but when it comes to you, you haven’t done the work on a deep level.

I used to teach the one-on-one clients I would work with that were life coaches, they would come to me and every time they had a client situation that they didn’t know how to coach on, I would always tell them, where is that showing up in your life? The reason you don’t know how to coach on it is because you have that going on in your life, and so you don’t have this mastery perspective from experience, and that’s where you have to start the work. To be an amazing coach, you have to really get the work.

And it’s the same on being an amazing salesperson because I think coaching and selling are the exact same thing. They’re inspiring people into action. They’re helping someone change their mind. And all of the successful life coaches that I know have had major life change. They might even tell you that coaching changed them so deeply they feel like a different human being.

Like, I feel like I’ve literally lived two lives on this planet. The one where I was a victim and helpless and asleep, and the one where I powerfully took over and meticulously created my dream life. And it makes it so easy to sell coaching and overcome objections because my before and after are so profound. And I know every little in and out of change and the process of change and the impact of it.

In all the little ways you can’t even imagine when you’re standing at your before with everything going wrong and you’re just thinking how amazing it will be to make 100K or to lose 30 pounds. You think of the money you can spend or the money you can save. You have no idea how much more profound the impact will be than just having the money.

Like, I had a conversation the other day with my fiancé and he said, “You know Stacey, I am just so grateful every day that I met you and every day for the person you are.” He said, “I am having life experiences and have the opportunity to have life experiences that I would have never imagined possible for myself.”

He was talking about one of his friends invited him to watch the opening weekend of the NCAA tournament in Vegas and he already has plans this year but he was like, I realized next year, I can go do that. I have the time – he’s retiring March 15th, yay. We’re so excited. So he has the time now but we also have the money so he can go do things that have been on his bucket list and it’s like, blowing his mind because we’re doing more and more of it lately.

We just went and saw Duke, his favorite basketball team play in North Carolina, and then we just watched them the next week play in Louisville. And might I say, they had the biggest comeback in Duke history. It was really amazing. They went from being down 23 points with eight minutes to go to winning the game and stuff like that, it’s blowing his mind that he gets to be a part of it.

And so that’s what I mean – I went off on a little tangent, got really excited, but that’s what I mean by like, when you’re thinking from the before, it’s like the surface level impact of what will happen and like, how it will be and then there’s the deep, deep level of things you don’t even realize making other people’s dreams come true.

That’s not even something you’re thinking when you’re building your business and it’s something your clients aren’t thinking when they’re trying to make the decision of whether they’re going to move forward with coaching or not. They’re thinking of how it will affect them maybe. Mostly they’re probably thinking about all the negative ways it might affect them if they pay the money and don’t get the result, but they’re not thinking of like, how it will change the relationship of their marriage.

They’re not thinking about how it will impact their kids. They’re not thinking about how it’s going to impact vacations and their daily life and how much energy they have and they’re not thinking of the deep impact. But I’m able to speak to that because I’ve been through it.

And that’s why I’m not afraid to sell my 2K for 2K program or my 200K mastermind. I know what’s at stake. It’s not just my dreams. It’s other people’s, and I’m living it. And that’s why I know how to sell it because I can speak to all of these things that maybe you haven’t even thought of. If you’re a coach, thinking about the importance of making money.

But before I ever made any money, I transformed my relationship with my boss at work, I got a promotion I would have never dreamed possible, I decreased my time at work by half but increased my income by 50%. I went on a mission to become a relationship expert and find the man of my dreams. What else did I do? I overcame my biggest fear. I went skydiving.

I learned how to feel emotions. That was huge for me. It changed my entire life. It changed the way I show up in the world like night and day. I took back all of my power in my life when I wasn’t being a victim and delegating my emotions and making other people responsible. And then after all of that, I changed my finances. I went from investing all of my savings and my personal coaching in my business to below negative in my account on the journey to become a coach and then I came back making more money than ever imaginable in my life.

I’m like an expert on the before and after, where you are and where you want to be. So it’s so easy for me to sell it. But some of you aren’t living, walking, breathing proof. You aren’t living in the transformation as a result of the transformation every single day.

I actually want to give you a really good visual of what’s happening in your mind at all times. So I want you to imagine your brain is a courtroom and your mind is the defense and the prosecution and the jury, and your like, spirit or your thing inside that allows you to kind of watch your mind think, that’s the judge. You have the ability to watch yourself think, so that’s the judge presiding. He doesn’t really do anything, he just watches. He just watches over the proceedings.

And the defense is arguing the case of what you want to believe and the result you want to create. The prosecution is arguing for all the reasons it’s not going to work. Why you’re a victim and not enough and see I told you so. Whichever presents the strongest case with the most convincing argument and the one who has sought out the most evidence to support its case wins.

The jury decides, you take action or you don’t take action. You either get what you want or more of what you don’t want. If the prosecution always wins in your brain, each time it has stronger evidence and keeps winning. You have to do the work of strengthening the defense, of creating evidence to support your argument, of practicing your argument over and over.

Remember from the last episode, in order to make money, in order to sell, you have to be sold on yourself. Sold through belief, like the jury is unanimous. Not guilty. We can do this. We are paid life coaches. The defense rests. Hallelujah.

Most of you, your prosecution is dominating the trial. Alright, I got to calm down. Not feeling well, got to save my energy. But that’s where the fraud complex occurs for so many of you. When you are out there selling life coaching as this amazing thing that people should buy right now, but in your head there’s a trial going on and the prosecution is winning. It feels out of alignment.

I think this is the reason most people don’t want to sell or market their business. They’re out of alignment. They’re out of integrity. They’re trying to sell this magical amazing thing called coaching, but inside, they’re not the living, breathing, walking proof. They’re not doing the work. They’re like, a hot freaking mess and nothing in their life is shifting and changing and they’re stuck and they’ve been spinning for weeks. Like, you’re not going to sell any coaching when you’re spinning for weeks and weeks and weeks.

When you’re super negative, when you’re being a victim, you’re not going to sell any coaching, darling. None. I’m telling you this because I love you. Someone needs to tell you. When you go to sell life coaching to tell other people it will change their life but you don’t actually believe it for you because you aren’t creating results from that belief, you will feel like a fraud.

And here’s what I want to tell you. You are. So what are you going to do about it? I think you’re strong enough to hear this. If you feel like a fraud, most likely you are. I’m not going to give you this well just change your thought. On some level, you are and you can feel sorry for yourself and focus on it being just your thought and you just need to change it and it’s magically gone forever, or you can go out and do something about it.

You can strengthen your defense. You can build your argument. You can live deciding not to listen to the prosecution. You can keep going anyway. You can pay more attention to the defense, to what you want to believe. Yes, you can. You get to decide. It’s just easier and it requires less work to let the loudmouth awfully sure of itself prosecutor take the reigns.

Now, some of you might be like, I can’t believe she just said I’m a fraud, but here’s why I say this. You can say it’s just your thought, and to be clear, it is, and change it, or you can ask why you’re having it. And I can tell you this from experience, I rarely get the thought that I’m a fraud and when I do, it’s because I’ve stopped doing the work. I’ve checked out. I’ve let my brain go on default. The prosecution has started up again.

But I would say 90% of the time I don’t have it because I am doing the work and I’m in the process of the work even if I don’t have the results I want, even if I’m in the river of misery, like I am dying in my growth. It’s hard and I haven’t achieved the other side and I’m working through all my shit, I’m still working through it.

And some of you just need to get to work. Stop whining about it and get to work. If where you have to start to make money is getting your own results, so many of you whine about that to me and you say that you don’t have the time, that you have to start making money now but you’ll never make money without having gotten your own results. So you better just cut it out and get to it. There’s no room for a pity party on the bus to freedom, my friend.

It aint a bus serving up whine. It’s a bus serving up the integrity cocktail and you got to drink it. This is also why I love starting your business with selling because it’s going to bring up all your shit and you’re going to have to go to work through it. Fear of being sales-y, fear of being pushy and making someone mad, who do you think you are to help anyone, that I’m not good enough, that I have to be an expert before I get started.

So much of that is coming from not having the results yourself and not being living, walking proof of the results. It’s going to bring up all your disbelief in yourself, in coaching, and the ability for somebody else to get change. Like, some of my clients come from my coaching school, The Life Coach School where they teach the model. That’s the coaching tool they teach and I always tell those clients, the degree to which you create results in your life and in your business is the degree to which you believe the model.

The degree to which you believe every result is created through a thought is the degree to which you will create results with your thought. Some of you are out there trying to sell mindset coaching but go to build your business by thinking taking the right action is what’s going to get you there. Of course you feel like a fraud. You’re offering one thing but you’re doing the other.

But seriously, don’t get upset about this. What if this was just a neutral thing? What if feeling the fraud complex was just an indicator for you for where you were and a big flashing light of this is what you need to work on right now? It’s like a clue. It’s like, directions to the gold. So good, right? What if you had no drama about it?

What if you were like, you feel fraudulent and you’re like, ooh, I wonder what’s creating this feeling? Why? I’m going to look into this, instead of I feel like a fraud, I can’t sell coaching, it’s awful, we’re all going to die, I should quit. There’s so much more growth available when you lose the drama about it and you take responsibility and you get to work to do something about it.

If you aren’t making money, you need to be the living, breathing transformation for yourself. I was Tony Robbins in the am, in the pm, and all throughout the day. Every second when I was trying to change my life, I was listening to audiobooks and free YouTube videos and podcasts of him, of other teachers and leaders. I was reading every day, I was filling my brain with transformation.

You need to be working on your own growth like it is your job because guess what, it is your job. Welcome to being a life coach. The standard is high. Alright, so if you are struggling with this, if you’re struggling with feeling like, well, I’m not going to be able to help my clients, that’s another version of the fraud complex. What if they don’t get results? What if I can’t get them results? Those are all versions of the fraud complex.

If you’re feeling like, out of alignment to go self-coaching, fraud complex. It’s all coming from not being the living, walking, breathing proof of the work. If you go do that, I promise you, you will make money. People will seek you out. I am telling you, 100% if you start getting your own personal transformations and breakthroughs for whatever’s coming up for you right now, it doesn’t matter what happened in the past, even if it’s the business thing.

That’s where you’re getting stuck and selling is the hardest thing you’ve ever done or marketing is the hardest thing you’ve ever done, or coaching your clients is the hardest thing you’ve ever done, if you breakthrough that, people are just going to see that radiating all over you and they’re going to come knocking on your door. You’re not even going to have to go after them. It’s going to change your life so get to it.

Alright, I’m going to go on vacation. 10 days. Napa, Cabo, hopefully I’ll have a wedding date when I come back and I will see y’all next week. Bye-bye.

Hey, if you’re 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 using my simple 5 step formula for getting consults and closing new clients. Just head over to www.staceyboehman.com/2kfor2k. We’ll see you inside.