The Courage to Coach: Embracing Your Role as a Leader
The Courage to Coach: Embracing Your Role as a Leader
Let’s be honest. Coaching isn’t just about helping others feel better. Coaching is leadership. It’s not optional. It’s not a side role. It is central to the work you do.
And if you’ve been hesitating to own that—if you’ve been waiting to feel more ready, more experienced, or more polished—this is your wake-up call.
Coaching Is Leadership
A lot of coaches separate the idea of “coaching” from the idea of “leading.” But here’s the thing. If you’re guiding someone through change, you are already in a leadership role.
Leadership doesn’t mean being the loudest in the room. It means being clear. It means being committed. It means helping people move forward.
You can be kind, empathetic, and heart-centered—and still be decisive and powerful. Those things are not in conflict. That’s the kind of leader your clients actually need.
Avoidance Is the Real Issue
Most of the challenges coaches face aren’t about strategy. They’re about avoidance.
You avoid showing up online because you’re not sure how it’ll land.
You avoid selling because you’re afraid of rejection.
You avoid making bold decisions because you’re scared to be wrong.
But let’s be real. Your future is not waiting in the comfort zone. It is on the other side of all that resistance. Avoidance doesn’t keep you safe. It keeps you stuck.
If you want clients, income, or more impact, you have to stop dodging the discomfort and move through it.
You Don’t Need to Shrink to Be Effective
I see this all the time. Coaches apologizing for what they believe. Softening their words to stay likable. Holding back instead of showing up strong.
You don’t need to do that.
A true leader owns their voice.
You don’t need to yell. But you do need to speak clearly.
You don’t need to be the most experienced. But you do need to take responsibility.
Stop shrinking. Start stepping up.
Lead Yourself First
You want people to follow your lead? Then start by following through with yourself.
Look at your calendar.
Look at your habits.
Look at how often you show up.
Are you making your business a priority or just fitting it in when you feel inspired?
Leadership isn’t about being motivated every day. It’s about being committed no matter what.
The Commitment Curve Is Real
In this episode, I shared the idea of the Commitment Curve. And it’s something I’ve seen play out over and over again.
We all start as dreamers.
Some stay stuck in dabbling.
Others jump from thing to thing looking for shortcuts.
But the ones who really grow? They decide to go pro.
That means owning their time.
Taking full responsibility.
And showing up even when it’s hard.
If you want sustainable growth, you have to move up the curve.
You Become a Leader by Choosing It
No one is going to give you permission. No one is going to tap you on the shoulder and tell you that you’re ready.
You become a leader when you decide that you are one.
You choose it.
And then you create the environment that supports that choice.
That might mean setting boundaries.
That might mean showing up when it’s uncomfortable.
That might mean making decisions without knowing how they’ll turn out.
Leadership isn’t handed to you. You build it.
You Have What It Takes
I started with so little. I had no audience. I barely knew anyone in the space. I didn’t have a clear strategy. But I decided I was going to lead anyway.
I believed I had something worth saying.
I showed up even when no one was listening.
And over time, people started paying attention.
You can do that too.
You don’t need to be chosen.
You just need to choose yourself.
And you need to keep choosing that—over and over again.
Ready to Lead with Courage?
If this message speaks to you, here’s what I want you to do:
Get honest about what you’ve been avoiding.
Show up, even if it’s messy.
Decide to lead yourself first.
And if you’re looking for support inside a space that’s designed for coaches like you to grow and lead, DM me the word courage on Instagram. I’ll ask you a few questions and, if it’s a good fit, we’ll talk about what’s possible inside the Level Up Academy.
You’re already a leader. Now it’s time to act like it.
Chapters:
00:00 The Courage to Coach
05:37 Coaching as Leadership
11:11 Overcoming Fears in Coaching
19:02 The Curve of Commitment
23:24 Understanding Agency in Leadership
25:55 The Commitment Curve: From Dreamers to Doers
28:35 Navigating Change: Lessons from 'Who Moved My Cheese'
33:35 Embracing Change as a Coach
39:22 Courageous Coaching: Believing in Yourself and Others
Full Transcript:
Amanda Kaufman (00:00)
You don't become a leader by waiting for other people to validate you. You become one by choosing it and creating the environment,
Good morning and welcome to my weekly training. My name is Amanda Kaufman and I'm the founder of The Coach's Plaza and I help coaches to scale a business that they absolutely love without all the burnout, the exhaustion, all of those things. We're gonna build a business we are thriving in together. And so thank you so much for joining me today.
Good morning. Okay, I'm so glad that you're here. Well, hey, today we're gonna talk about something that is super near and dear to my heart, which is the courage to coach. Okay, so the courage to coach.
So, and by the way, as always, the replay for today is gonna be in our Clients Over Chaos community, which you can access at next number five clients.com. That's next five clients.com. Tell your friends, let them come and join us. so today's message is really from my heart to yours.
Okay, it's really time for all of us to step into our power as a coach. Okay, so stepping into our power as a coach. So if you've ever held yourself back, you know, maybe second guessed what you were saying, or you were maybe waiting for someone to notice that, hello, I'm an amazing expert. I'm an incredible coach. I'm like,
the nicest human, will you please pick me, pick me, pick me? If you've ever felt like that, then this live stream training is for you. And I know exactly what that feels like because that's exactly, exactly what I've gone through myself. And you know what? I often say when I first started my coaching business, but on this one, this one is one of those things that just kind of keeps coming back.
So I call this a boomerang lesson. know, like you were like, right, right, got it, got it, you know, toss it from your mind. And before you know it, it's come right back around and smacked you upside the back of the head, you know? And it's, we're gonna talk a lot about confidence today. I see we've got Jessica on here. We got, my gosh, we got everybody here today. So I'm super excited. Look.
This live stream is your moment and we're gonna just start with this big idea and this is the thing that kept whacking me upside the head. Coaching is ultimately a leadership role. Coaching is leadership. I am leader, you know, I am a leader. And you know, I got into coaching.
because I sort of accidentally did it. When I was in my corporate career, I had progressed through different levels, but my secret sauce was my ability to have the conversations that mattered. So I'm gonna share with you a little bit today about how coaching really is leadership. I've had people working for me in the past where I've had to say, look, you are not a waitress.
You know, being a servant leader is not being not being a servant, you know, service worker. You're not bringing somebody a beer, right? You're not just making everybody around you cozy and comfy. Now, this is also not licensed to be a butt head or a jerk, right? We're not here for that. You can be kind and compassionate and empathetic, but you can also be a leader.
Right? So let's also add to this. I am strong. I am decisive. I am committed. OK, I am strong, decisive, and I am committed. You can be all of those things at the same time. So for me, the boomerang lesson is just remembering this reconciliation between the strength and the power that I have with my with my my softer skills, you know, my softer side.
And so it's really common in the coaching space for people to start talking about the divine masculine and the divine feminine. And like, sure, if you wanna have like flowery language around it, fine. But what I'm saying is an intelligent person can allow multiple things to be true at once. I can be kind, committed and empathetic, but I can also be a badass. I can also...
love math and make decisions according to what the data is telling me, right? If you're just like a great leader, cause great leaders love to look at the data. I can be grounded, right? While at the same time, being able to like accept and process my emotional experience. Okay. So to me, this is not about, well, maybe it is divine, but you don't have to use that language, right? You don't have to, you don't have to use that.
those words if you don't want to, but you can, but you don't have to, but you don't have to, right? Because to me, it's a sign of intelligence. It's a sign of being like multifaceted and complex, and it's beautiful. And I wish more people gave themselves permission to be beautiful in their complexity. Okay, so today what we're gonna do is we're gonna stop separating your coaching from your leadership. We're gonna bring those two things together. I'm gonna bring...
forward some ideas, I got a story for you that is gonna that really changed my whole perception about why leadership is so important as a coach. So I very briefly alluded to my accidental stumbling into the coaching experience. I'm going to share a little bit more about like why how that happened and most importantly what you can take away from that that's going to inform what you do for the following week, right?
I love it. You guys love data and stats. My kind of people. I love it. I love it. Okay, so we're going to talk about the three big things that courageous leaderly coaches do differently so that you can start noticing your own decisions and your own behaviors and start to build stronger habit in the things that are going to bring you what y'all want. And I mean, if you want more clients, if you want
more structure, if you want more time for what actually matters to you in your life, if you want fewer distractions, if you want more money, I can't promise you money, but I'm just saying, if that's something that you wanna manifest, if you want more self-care so that you feel really good as you are helping other people because you're leading through role modeling,
if you are here for today's live, because I'm super here for it. And wow, we're like lighting up on that gram. So hey, Instagram, I know things get lost really fast. So just so you know, the full recording and the live stream with the community is at next number five clients.com. That's next five clients.com. That's our clients over chaos community. And we'd love to see you inside there. Okay, so let's talk about coaching as leadership. So.
I think the first thing is we have to, look at this, look at all these role models in the chat, I love it. Okay, so we need to stop as an industry, stop separating coaching from leadership, right? If you're coaching someone, but you're rejecting the leader role, that's called being a meddler and a bossy pants, okay? And so what do I mean by that? A meddler and a bossy pants.
You're basically projecting your judgment on people without also accepting the mantle of leadership. That's what so many like low pay grade coaches are doing is they're sitting in their little armchairs at night scrolling through the feeds, being hyper critical of somebody's not spiritual enough. They're not kind enough. They're not candid enough. They're not organized enough. They're not enough in some way, right? And I know that this is true because I've worked in the coaching space
for over eight years and I've been a consultant for over 20 years and I'm here to tell you that the separation between the very highest performers of consultants and coaches and the lowest is the sense of responsibility that that person has and how do you know they have a sense of responsibility? Well, it's a few things. Number one,
It's how they cross their T's and dot their I's. So it's how do they take care of the details? Number two is they think about the ramification. So it is so easy to be an armchair critic. It's so easy to wag your finger and say, so and so should show up in a different way that I would prefer. Like, goodness, you know, that's not leadership. That's again, meddling, right? So if you are accepting the role of coach,
You are accepting the responsibility of owning the relationship, of asking powerful questions that are helping people to gain clarity, to move forward, to take responsibility themselves to change. Okay? No one's gonna change because you wag your finger super hard. All you're gonna do is dislocate your index finger. You know what I mean? So this distinction, I think, is super important.
And I wanna call it the specific behaviors that I see a lot of coaches, obviously present company excluded, but just in case, I want you to know what they are. You know, number one is you hesitate. Leaders are very deliberate and they are thoughtful, but then once they've made a decision, they act with conviction. So I see a lot of people, this is a boomerang lesson for myself, I gotta like check myself before I wreck myself on this one.
is leaders follow through. They don't shrink. They've chosen the direction that they're gonna run in and they go hard. Now that doesn't mean that you don't check in. That doesn't mean that you don't have a retrospective on the actions that you've taken to see that you're getting the results that you were hoping for with that action. But leaders don't shrink, they step up, right?
So what are the ways that people shrink? Well, they diminish their tone. So I literally mean your tone of voice. So if you find yourself talking in a whisper, right? If you find yourself talking in a whisper, saying that louder for the people in the back. If you find yourself using baby voice when what you really mean is like strong you voice. So that's when you like soften everything to make sure that everybody likes you. Whoa.
Just like check in. Okay, the people pleasing run strong when you are not in your power. Okay, people pleasing run strong. So that means you disguise your voice, you excuse your opinion. So this is a big one that I've had to train myself out of and I still have to remind myself of is I'm sorry, you I just have this opinion, right? No, a leader speaks with conviction.
Right. They are OK with saying the words I think. But you know what else? A great leader is able to say I thought, meaning they can change their mind. But in the moment, they know what their mind is. Y'all tracking this, right? So this tendency to apologize in advance for what you're about to say. Or here's another big one that I see all the time is people diminishing what they said. Right.
They diminish what they said. So that's like the tiptoeing. So if you have a real like belief or a feeling or a knowledge or a wisdom that you have, but then you immediately follow up with something like, yeah, but other people might feel a different way. Of course other people might feel a different way. That's not part of the conversation. What we're talking about is what you're talking about, right? So owning...
your perspective and owning that if your perspective needs adjustment, that you can change your mind. Right. And I think that when we tiptoe around the truth or we downplay our expertise, that's another thing. When you when you acknowledge like other people are more successful than I am. Duh. Right. On a Monday, I'm just gonna say duh. Of course, there's people that are better than you at this. Right.
But you don't need to introduce that into the communication. Why is this so super important? Why am I like really getting me about how we're communicating? Because when you speak with conviction and you're able to have discourse and debate and learn new data and expose yourself to new things, people will trust you more because you have conviction, because you have commitment to what you're saying.
So I want you to really think about your specialty as a coach. know, leadership's not about being the loudest in the room. It's about being clear. It's about having commitment to what you're saying and what you're really all about. I am all about high performance for coaches, right? Specifically, I want you to have more time capacity. I want you to improve your health. I want you to make more money. I want you...
to show up as the leader you are or profess to desire to be, and I want you to therefore activate your courage. I want you to be a courageous coach. Why is that so important to me? Because I know what it's like to be tiny and timid. I know what it's like to be afraid and to let fear win. And there's three kinds of fears that win all the time, unless you have intention, unless you can really access your power.
unless you make the decision that they are not gonna derail you. Three, okay? Number one, your fear that it'll be hard. Okay? The fear of effort, the fear of work. And this is absolutely bananas to me because when I work with my clients, like they've worked hard for their whole lives. It's just that they worked hard for other people's goals. So you're not afraid of hard work. You know, you're not a teacup. You're not delicate. You've got, even if you work 20 hours,
Check this out, check this out. Even if you work 20 hours a week on your business, you have time for eight hours of sleep, for three hours of socialization, for a two hour morning routine in the morning, for free time to do whatever on the weekend. Not the whole weekend, right? We gotta be able to fit the work in somehow, but there's definitely ample time for date nights, for family get togethers, for friend get togethers.
There's all this time available to you, but most people act as if they have no time at all. And the reason why they do it is because most of their time is still built in old patterns and routines. That's all. They're just being in reaction to what has always been. When you want change, you've got to make change, which is why you have to lead yourself first, right?
The most courageous people will lead themselves through thing number one, which is of course the effort. Make the effort, which basically means make the time. Make the time. You don't need that much time in recovery. You don't need that much time in your learning. Some, yes, right? But if more than 10 % of your hours are going to learning every week, that's too much. You need to do more doing, right? And I'm talking waking hours. You need to do more doing, okay?
The second big one, the second big thing that challenges our courage, that activates our fears, is the fear of discomfort. Okay? So you're afraid of pain. Now here's what's really interesting. There's lots of different kinds of pain. There's like physical pain, of course, right? A bear eating you in the woods, ick, right? So there's like physical pain. There might even be real physical pain, just associated with activating your energy more.
Right? So, but I'm going to call it discomfort because there's also psychological pain. Right? How many of you have a past, right? And maybe that past included painful experiences, right? I'm just guessing that you had a, you have a past, you, you have a past that included painful experiences. Why? Because life has pain. Life has struggle. That's absolutely guaranteed. I don't know what kind of pain I don't.
know what kind of struggle, but I can guarantee that you've had pain and struggle that you've experienced, right? Fair, fair? So what happens is we take all those past experiences and we either live in them, meaning we spend a lot of time thinking about those past experiences that are long gone, right? But we also can extrapolate forward. So we take those past experiences and we say, okay, well, that's probably a mirror of the future. So if you spend a lot of relative time thinking,
about the negative things that have happened in the past and extrapolating and painting that forward as your perspective of what's going to happen in the future, then you're going to do whatever you can to avoid the pain and the discomfort. Is this tracking you guys? I know we all talk about the comfort zone, but like, what is it really? It's your belief that you're going to keep repeating the past. It's your belief that everything that was painful in the past is going to also happen in the future. And so you, you tend to
on autopilot, avoid, right? Your future is never gonna be found in avoidance. I'm gonna say that again. Your future, your positive, better future is not gonna be found in avoidance. But that's the thing is that people fear discomfort. So they're uncomfortable thinking about it, they're uncomfortable talking about it, they're uncomfortable getting help to process through it. You don't think the discomfort is palpable, right? Like there's a lot of discomfort.
Third big thing that people let win all the time, right? So the first one was the, gosh, was the effort. The second one was the discomfort, right? The third one, and this is a biggie, is uncertainty, okay? So, so many people are moving through the world freaked out.
about the uncertainty. So it's the uncertainty of AI, the uncertainty of the allegiances of your friendship. It's the uncertainty of the political atmosphere. It's the uncertainty of the economy. It's the uncertainty of the world events. Like there's uncertainty that is both far and close to home that leaders have to reconcile that it will not be certain. It cannot be certain. will because no one can tell the future exactly, right?
But what a lot of people do is they obsess over the possibility of not knowing what the future is going to hold. And then that again sabotages their action. So this is true for your clients. This is true for you. This is true for me. This is true for all human beings. We all struggle with effort, discomfort, and uncertainty. So what do we do about it? We have to demonstrate our commitment.
Right? How many hours is too many hours spent on learning? More than 10 % of your waking hours spent scrolling and learning far too much. Far too much. So I'm gonna do the math for you so that it's like really crazy abundantly clear. Okay, so 168 minus, let's see, 56 for sleep is 112. So if you're doing more than 12 hours of learning a week, that is far too much. Far too much. I'm gonna divide that into a daily, more than two hours a day.
If you're more than two hours a day in coursework and coaching and scrolling and all those kinds of things, it's understandable that you need to learn a thing, but there's one exception. Are you following along with something and implementing at the same time? So I have a program called The Level Up, right? And it's about to be the Level Up Academy. And with that one, you might have five hours of video.
that you're walking through in a given day, but at the same time, you're like pausing, implementing, pausing, implementing, pausing, implementing. I'm saying if you're doing more than two hours of just like sit back and learn, or if you're doing more than two hours of note-taking learning, but you're not able to implement what you're learning, too much, too much, right? Because you're more of a consumer than you are a creator at that point, right? So let's talk about this.
The first thing is to understand there's a curve of commitment to everything. There's a curve of commitment to everything. So what do I mean by that? The curve of commitment is basically, it's like I kind of want to draw, I should have had it, but maybe next time. So I want you to imagine like you've got this curve,
at the, X axis, so along the bottom, we've got your time, right? Your time and your energy. And then on the Y axis, you have your commitment level, right? So the curve is like, the more time and energy I put towards something, the more committed that I really am towards it, okay? So at the top of the curve, which is where everybody wants to be, you're the master.
Okay, you're the master. So what's a master? A master is teaching pros. A master is teaching other people how to carry forward their knowledge base. So I think a lot of like karate or something like that. The master is the one who's earned all the belts, understands all the nuance and is probably even creating new moves, right? That's a real master is they're able to create new moves that are really going to stick and work because they understand the fundamentals and practice the fundamentals.
so well they can create. They can authentically create. A lot of people are creative, but they don't understand the fundamentals and they don't practice the fundamentals. So although they're being creative, they're not being effective. I'm going to say that again. A lot of people will access their creativity before they've really mastered the fundamentals and they're they're being creative, which feels good, but they're not necessarily always effective because they haven't actually developed the mastery yet.
Let me know if you know a person who's ever been through that. OK, so one down from master is the pro. And every last one of you, if you're listening to me, if you can hear the sound of my voice, you must pro up. So what does proing up mean? It's so basic that it's just honestly laughable. But most people really struggle with this. Number one, you need time ownership, right? Time ownership. Nobody owns your calendar except for you.
you're allowing everything on your calendar. So when you have a week and you're like, I wasn't all that productive this week, your fault, right? Like a pro knows that it's your fault. And so pros also have high agencies. So we don't, we don't say it's your fault, cry, cry, boo hoo. It's like my bad. I didn't take into account whatever you didn't take into account. I can do better this time. That's a pro. That's what a pro does, right?
They are very committed to their agency. They're very committed to their time. Agency, by the way, is your ability to make a new decision, right? People with low agency, they blame everything around them. They blame the circumstances. They blame their past. They blame the future. They blame, you know, the structure. They blame like everything. And they have a really hard time really pulling in and absorbing. It's me, right? And today we're talking about leadership and we're talking about power.
If you understand that you are the one that has the power, you're the one that gets to decide whether you're gonna keep doing what you always done or whether you're gonna do something new. That's the truth of it, right? Like it's the real, real truth and it's so uncomfortable. It's so uncomfortable because it's way more convenient to blame society and it's easy to blame the industry and it's easy to blame that program that you enrolled in that wasn't good enough, whatever, right?
But the thing is, is when you do that, it revokes or removes your ability to make a new decision because we just leave it with them, right? And yeah, this is competing priorities. This is a really, really big one, right? You have agency. I love this. Okay, so one step down from a pro is what I call a hacker. And a hacker is somebody who's always looking for the fast track.
They're always looking for the easier way. They're always looking to avoid discomfort, have more certainty. They're always looking for the lowest effort, right? And look, hey, I am all for being smart when you work, right? If you also appreciate having leverage and being smart when you work.
but that's very different than being a hacker. So being a hacker means that you don't believe that anything you do is gonna be effective, so you're constantly jumping from thing to thing to thing to thing. Everybody goes through this. By the way, I should mention in the commitment curve, everybody goes through this, right? Because we try to virtue signal that I'm not like that. We try to virtue signal that I am patient. We try to virtue signal that, you know, like, I don't believe in get rich quick. Really?
Have you followed through on the strategies that you were being taught? Just check, right? Just check. It's just a thing to check, right? So, yeah. So fundamentals are gonna be things like sparking conversations with people. Fundamentals are gonna be maintain your visibility on Facebook, right? Or Instagram or your chosen social media of choice. Really fundamental stuff. But most people avoid the fundamentals because they're still looking for the hack. So that's a hacker, right?
The next level down from a hacker is even less committed. They're dabbling, right? So, and I think dabbling is actually a really important aspect of developing your mastery. It's only problematic when it's standing in the way of you really honoring your commitment. So dabbling is like when is, I actually think of it as like testing. You're testing a bunch of ideas. You're not really sure what's real. You don't really know what's gonna work. You don't really know what the standards are. You're still just like learning. So you're gonna read a lot of books. You're gonna go to a lot of the free stuff.
you're gonna like do low commitment things that are less likely to hurt if they don't work, right? So that's where we dabble. And like I said, it's really important, right? There should be a lot of dabbling right now in using AI, for example, right? Cause I don't know what the be all end all is gonna be for you of your AI stack. That's for you, that's your business, you decide, right? But you might test a few different things and kind of dabble in it before you start going pro with it.
is a very experimental phase, right? So dabbling is okay as long as you recognize that if you stay a dabbler, you're never gonna get real traction and real results, because you're not risking anything, you're not making any effort really, right? And then the very beginning of this commitment curve is the dreamer. And I'm a big dreamer, I love dreams, we need dreams, we need the vision, we need to be able to see the possibility for the future, it's super important.
But again, if you just stay there, you're not really riding up that commitment curve. You know what I'm saying? And so I knew when I was talking about commitment curve today that you would probably start having a lot of questions come up in your mind. You might be asking yourself like, and by the way, feel free to actually ask questions, especially if you're in the clients over chaos community. But if you feel like you're being a little hypocritical.
in asking people to follow you when you're not following your own plan and you're not following your own vision as fully as you could, you know, it's just a moment to really just pause and say like, Hey, I can own my decision. I can, I can own how I show up differently. And you might even ask yourself like, am I lacking support? Am I lacking information? Am I lacking clarity? Those are fair, honest questions, right? Those are fair, honest questions. So
Here's the thing, if you really are committed to this coaching thing, then you're probably really committed to helping people navigate through change, right? You're helping them change from a before to an after. So I want to share this really quick story with you. And it's called, Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson. And there's a book, a whole book is a parable. And I'm going to paraphrase the parable, okay? So who moved my cheese? Sniff and scurry are two mice.
And then there's Ham and Haw, which are two tiny people, and they're all in this big mouse maze. And together they discover a large cheese stash at Cheese Station C. So you can just imagine the big maze and that like there's these mice, giant mice and tiny people. So the mice are very alert and cautious because they're just really kind of operating on instinct. But Ham and Haw...
You know, they're like, sweet, there's all this cheese. It's awesome. Let me just like hunker down and enjoy. Well, one day they wake up and the cheese is gone, right? It just completely disappears. Now mice being mice, right? Sniff and scurry take off throughout the maze, trying to locate more cheese, which of course they found. So they found a bigger stash of cheese elsewhere in the maze. They didn't waste any time about it. Now, Ham and Haw being human, they were really distressed because they, they,
wanted the cheese that they had and they just keep sitting there waiting for it. And they refused to accept the change. They're blaming others. Let me ask you, do Hem and Haw have agency in this story, right? Now the mice appear too. They were like, no more cheese, bye bye, right? They made a decision and off they went. But Hem and Haw, just stayed there at this empty cheese station, right? So, Haw,
Eventually realize the futility of waiting and I just want to ask you a question Is there a change that you've been meaning to make? That you know, like if we're being brutally honest You have to make this change if you're going to see your better brighter future You have to make this change. Maybe this is a personal health change Maybe this is how you show up in your business change. Maybe this is a hard conversation. You're not having change, right? But if we're just being brutally honest
Is there a large, significant one? Right. Because when I was first asked a question like this, I'm like, my God, there's so much that has to change. My life sucks. And I'm like, look, you're objectively your life does not suck. If you can watch me on this Internet thing, that means you have Internet access. That means you've got a device in your hand or you're watching through a laptop, even fancier. Objectively speaking, your life is pretty awesome. So I'm not asking you, is your life perfect?
specifically not asking you that. What I'm saying is, is there one major decision or one major change that has been necessary that you're like kind of hanging on to the idea that you won't have to do anything, that you can just sort of stay at cheese station C, right? And I know that that has been a really big question for me over the years as well, that I have to revisit. Now, Haw decides that it's futile to keep waiting for cheese that's not appearing, right?
So he sets out into the maze and starts leaving motivational messages behind for Ha for him, excuse me. So him was the one that stayed. Ha was the one that left. Well, guess what? Ha eventually found a more abundant stash of cheese, right? Because they were willing to move through the difficulty and the courage to find it. Him, on the other hand,
couldn't move past the denial and just stayed where he was, right? And that was an unfortunate outcome for him. So Ha discovers this important lesson about expecting that change will happen. One of the reasons that we as coaches really struggle is we probably have been through a big struggle in the past. And that's what motivated us to become coaches. The thing is, that
once we're victorious, once we've learned the new thing, it can kind of feel like you found your cheese stash and you just kind of want to stay there. But the truth is that if you're going to be a really good coach, you need to continuously strive. You have to continuously find new ways to improve and stay in the game of change. Right. Expect the change is going to be necessary. Expect that there's going to be new challenges.
But you don't have to be at high vigilance all the time. Just know that it's gonna happen and have like a basic monitoring, which is why I always teach people have a weekly review, right? Weekly, just start reviewing your life. And my clients, by the way, that do this, I have a weekly review inside of my program. The clients that do this, they have the most growth over time because they are slowing down and taking the time to monitor. And then the final thing is when change is necessary,
You have to be willing to embrace it. And when you do that, you're leading as a coach because what's a coach anyway? A coach is someone that someone else has chosen to lead them through the transformation and change. So looping back to the story, you are ha. You're ha. You're the one who is overcoming
the discomfort you're overcoming, the difficulty, the effort, you're overcoming the uncertainty to take action anyway, and you're leaving clues behind for your clients. And when they sit down with you and they have a coaching session with you, that's where they get to really explore the lessons and the learning for themselves and develop their wisdom, right, for themselves. So if coaching by definition is someone who someone else has chosen,
to lead them through transformation and change, then let's check in. If no one is choosing you, ugh, on a Monday, Amanda, shut up. I know, if no one's choosing you on a Monday. Look, I've been through seasons in my business where it felt like selling coaching was the easiest thing ever. And I've also been through really quiet seasons where I'm not acquiring new clients very effectively. And it's been like that the whole.
time, right? So there's no arrival state. There's just kind of growth and learning and growth and learning. So if no one's choosing you, then let's check in on a few things, right? If you already want to just embody the vibe of like, hey, pick me, pick me. I'm the one that's going to be courageous. I'm going to be the one that's going to make the effort. I'm going to be the one that's going to walk tall, even if things are uncertain, right? That's the first step. You got to just really own that. Pick me, right?
So the first thing to check in on if no one is choosing you is are you exploring and presenting the opportunity to anyone? Are you presenting the opportunity for anybody to choose you? Meaning, do you have visibility? Can they even see you? If there is visibility, is it dopamine feeding visibility? Which you can talk about in another session, but is there payoff?
to somebody following you or are you just noisy? And by the way, it all starts with noisy. I don't care if you're posting your favorite quotes every day, just make some noise. First, you have to be seen. Second big thing is are you showing up believing that what you have already is enough?
Right? Are you showing up? Now, here's the thing, and I had to really learn this when this big boomerang lesson keeps coming back, is how you feel about the effort is not material. It doesn't matter how you feel about the effort. The effort is either working or it is not working. And very often we think that we're putting in the effort because it feels hard. But we haven't put in enough
volume of activity, it's called volume of activity to really create the result we're looking for. So for example, I was posting to social media, to Facebook for years, about three times a week. Okay, long time. And I was like very thoughtful in my posts. I squinted when I wrote so that it was very extra hard.
But you know what changed the game on Facebook that made it that I was consistently growing and gaining new audience and new conversations and new connections? Upping the frequency. Just posting more. I went from posting three times a week to posting 50 or 60 times a week. Now granted, I'm counting everything including like a story post or resharing a reel or reposts and things like that. But still.
You know, I'm still doing goodness. Probably, I don't have to say probably. I know exactly how many. So eight times four plus 24. Yeah, so I'm consistently creating 56 posts a week. Original posts, right? And that volume and that frequency of posting really increased my audience. And I didn't...
squint really hard for a lot of them. Some of them are just repeating questions you guys have asked me in my coaching calls. Cheater, right? But seriously, and I mean, do I have help with? No, I do it myself mostly. You know, I'm starting to train team members to be able to give me a first draft, but I generally am still posting it myself 56 times a week. It takes four to five hours. And by the way, if you are not a subscriber to my Facebook profile, I have a behind the scenes.
setting on the profile. So when you're a subscriber and it's like 99 cents, I want to say it's 99 cents a month, something like that. I did a live stream yesterday walking through exactly how I do it. And it's actually way simpler than you're thinking it is. It's way simpler. So it me typically anywhere from three to five hours a week, but then I don't touch it again. Right? Yeah.
Okay, so are you showing up that you believe that what you're doing should be enough, but it's clearly not enough? That's like the, that's the question. The major issue when people are not choosing you is you don't have a system for them to be able to.
you don't have a system for them to be able to choose you. So even if you show up in high volume, if you don't have a converting conversation happening, and if the conversation doesn't feel good to the people that are going through it, i.e. if it's too salesy, if it's too pushy, or if it's too flowery and too soft and not really valuable enough, there's this beautiful sweet spot of conversation where people actually wanna have it.
And so if you can find that beautiful sweet spot, then you're gonna find more people are tuning in. You're gonna find more people are finding out about you and it's gonna be pretty awesome. okay, so we talked about the story. We talked about kind of the don'ts, the don'ts part. Let's talk about the dos, right? So when you're a courageous coach, you're gonna choose your self-belief over your self-image, right? So, shadow, I believe in myself. If you're gonna choose that, so.
Perfectionism, that's a self-image thing. If you're letting perfectionism win, that means you're letting the image of you win instead of the truth of you, which is just your belief in yourself. So that's the first thing. The second thing that courageous coaches do is they believe for their clients until their clients can believe in themselves. Every single person, if I know your first name on here, which I think I do, I think it's every person who's seeing this.
Live anyway. I believe in your ability to build a six figure business. I do believe in that ability. I can't promise you that you will, right? Well, FTC moment. Can't promise that you will because you're the one that ultimately has the agency. You're the one that has the decision making. You're the one that has to show up and then question how you showed up to show up better. Like you're the one that has to develop that and to adopt that. And most people
just don't, I'm not saying you won't, but I'm just saying most people just don't because they've got so many competing priorities, they let these three things that I talk about win. So one of the coolest things that you can do as a coach is believe in your people, believe that they can do the thing and mean it, right? And the reason I believe that you can do this and that like for the names that I recognize, I believe you can do this is I started with so little.
I had so few friends when I started and I made them. I had so little experience and I got it. I had so little expectation and I grew it, right? I know you can do it because I know that I've done it, right? So what does that have to be for you that you really believe in other people and in their, you know, I think one of the biggest things that a lot of coaches need to do is stop trying to rescue people.
Again, that's being a nosy meddler, right? You're just trying to rescue people from their dumbness, right? Or their bad decisions. And first of all, those are terrible clients, right? Like if somebody's just that far away. And number two, people choose you as a coach because of who they are, not who you judge them as, right? So if they see themselves as strong, capable, able, and they then hire a coach,
that's gonna be a premium amazing relationship. If they see themselves as weak, as incapable, and as not having any agency at all, why would they have the agency to pay you? Why would they have the agency to show up on time to your calls? Why would they have the agency to follow up on the things between the calls to get amazing results? You know what I'm saying? So, you gotta hold vision. The third thing, and this is really, really hard,
And again, a boomerang lesson I have to keep reminding myself. It's brave boundaries. It's brave boundaries. So, you I have a fellow in my messages sent me a DM that was over seven minutes long. was like a voice memo over seven minutes long. And so I had to, I said to the guy, was like, hey, can you, you know, thank you so much for being thoughtful in your message. Would you kindly summarize it in text? Because I don't do five minute plus voice memos.
And he said, no problem. And he took the time to put it into a format that I could read in less than 30 seconds. And for me, that's a boundary thing. Because if I'm spending seven minutes to work out what you're saying when it's a very casual connection, that's not good for my boundaries. It's going to be really, really frustrating. So I have to ask for what I need to be successful. Is this making sense, you guys? OK, cool, cool, cool.
You don't become a leader by waiting for other people to validate you. You become one by choosing it and creating the environment,
right? You choose that you're gonna be the leader and you create the environment for leadership. Okay, so let's tap in. I wanna know, what did you love about today's session? I loved, and tell me what you loved.
Next week, we're gonna be back with our next session and we're gonna keep going on what it takes to be really, really successful as a coach. We're gonna keep working on this capacity engine. I'm gonna be introducing to you more and more about this capacity engine, but today it was really about hitting you in the gut in a really good way about being more of a leader so that people can really choose you. When I'm working with somebody, it's not just about getting clients, it's not just about...
helping you make more money, you know, it's about helping you show up with the leadership energy that you need so that you can have an authentic impact that paying you is a no brainer, right? So if you're interested in chatting about that, or if you're really interested in what we do through the Level Up Academy to help people to have the visibility to be able to lead and to teach and to grow, then make sure you DM me the word courage.
Right, so if you're on Instagram, just DM me the word courage, and then I will have a few very simple questions for you. And if you are a really great fit for the Level Up Academy, then I will send you the application for that, and you can apply. And of course, if you have any questions, just let me know. And hey, it is me. Okay, so I don't have setters on my team. I don't have closers on my team. I'm being very selective about who I'm working with.
especially as we go into 2026. So hello, fellow clients, if you're already here. But if you've been thinking about becoming a client or enrolling or re-enrolling with me, just DM the word courage and I'll walk you through what's possible when you really own your role as a coach and a leader. I love it. my God, Megan, I'm so glad you're here. I'm so, thank you so much. said, I loved your never ending.
Positive Energy AK, thanks for being you. Well, thanks for being you too, and thanks for being here. I'm super excited that you came. Let's see, I love the concept of the weekly review with myself, fantastic. After we're done live, I'm gonna go ahead and post in the clients over chaos group. I'll post my weekly review that you can use or you can load it into your chat, JBT, however you wanna use it. I'll make sure to share that and tag everyone, Tracy.
And let's see, Debbie said, it made me think about my competing priorities and trying to change that so that my time is more available for what's really gonna move the needle. So good, I love this higher level experience. And if you loved it too, make sure you share it with at least three of your friends. Just send them a note and say, hey, I just got finished with a really great training with my coach, Amanda, and I really feel that you would benefit from this and love this as you're growing your own business.
and you can join us at next number five clients.com. So it's nextfiveclients.com. We'll redirect them straight to the community where they can get the full replay of today's training. Thank you so much for being here and we will see you next week, 9 a.m. Central.
