Welcome to episode number 97. I am your host Becca Pike, and it is time for your weekly dose of Hell Yes Coaching. Let’s go. 

Hey, guys. I’m Becca Pike and welcome to The Hell Yes Entrepreneur podcast, the number one show for entrepreneurs looking to create their first six-figure year. If you’ve got the drive and you know how to hustle but you’re not sure where to channel your energy, we’ve got the answers. Let’s dive into today’s show.

Hey friends, what’s up? Okay, so this episode is gonna be fun. I am going to be kind of just pointing out some bullshit in the coaching industry. Not about coaches. I’m not going to be talking bad about coaches or talking bad about the coaching industry. I’m really just here to shine some light on a couple things that are fishy. 

This episode might be very healing for a lot of you to be honest. There might be a lot of like wow, that’s why I feel this way about being coached. Or wow, I am so thankful that my coach isn’t this way. I feel very taken care of and protected and supported from my coach. It just might make a lot more sense. Some of the stuff that you’ve been seeing in the coaching industry that hasn’t been setting right, things that are being brought up that you can be aware of when you are going to hire a coach, when you are coaching your clients, this can be something that you take with you. 

So these are just all opinions. These are all just random things that are coming straight from my tummy right to your ears. So if you don’t agree with them, that’s fine. These are all just my words. But I think that for a lot of you, I’ve been around enough coaches, I’ve been around enough coaching clients that I think this is gonna resonate pretty hardcore with a lot of you all. 

But before we get to that part of the episode, I want to give a huge shout out to my 30 More mastermind. Guys, I am absolutely forever impressed with you. I am seeing you all do the work. This goes out to Whitney, Hillary, Britney, Ashley, Lindsey, Jerry, Nathan, Katie, Christine, Sam, Andrea, Kim, Sara, Beth, Noreen, and last but definitely not least, Joseph. 

You guys, this is a pure love note to you all. I am watching your all’s profitability increase. I’m watching your revenue increase. I’m watching the friendships that you guys are creating. I am beyond proud to be the mastermind leader to you all. I’m honestly impressed. I am not just saying that I am super impressed with the way that you guys have grabbed this round by the horns. We are only three months into the six month mastermind. We are coming up on the halfway mark. 

Some of you guys have increased your profitability by 10, 12, 15, 25% if you’re Ashley. Some of you guys have increased your revenue already. You’re already looking at numbers way bigger than what you had last year. There’s gonna be several of you that are doubling your revenue. You guys have just taken the assignments, taken the tools, taken the advice, and just freaking ran with it. I am absolutely in love with it. I’m so proud to be able to witness it. 

This is just a quick hi. A quick thank you. A quick love note to you guys. Even though it feels hard sometimes, even though it is scary at times, I know we’re doing big things. I know we’re doing things that you’ve never done before. I’m just forever impressed with you all because you continue to do it even though you’re scared. 

On top of that, the thing that I think is the most satisfying is watching how many of you have let go of a lot of stress. So you’re making bigger moves, you’re making bigger decisions, but you’re not in that stressed out Chihuahua energy. You’re doing it from a place of like foundational, mature CEO mindset. I’m proud of you all and you should be very proud of yourselves. 

Okay, let’s move on. Let’s move on to the episode. So I just typed these out right before I came on here, I bullet pointed them. It looks like I’ve got eight talking points. So I’m just gonna go through these one through eight. I’m going to talk to you all about things to look out for in the coaching industry, whether this is you as a coach, whether this is you getting coached by another coach, or if you’re just looking to get coached at some point in your life. These are great ideas and thoughts and opinions to have in your pocket. 

So number one, beware. Beware if your coach says that you have to do it their exact way in order to be successful. It’s just not true. They’re trying. Coaches that tell you things like this, it’s not that they’re bad people. It’s just that they are biased to the way that they did it because it worked for them. 

So you might have a coach that says you have to do this exact email sequence. A coach that says you can only have one offer, a coach that says you should do it this exact way, you should run your social media this way. They have gained evidence from this because it has worked for them in the past. And so they saw it working, they think other people should do it this way. They don’t have experience with doing it any other way. 

This goes for all coaches. All coaches on the planet only have experience in what they have experience in. So we are all biased in some way to do things a certain way. But there’s a big difference between being slightly biased and knowing that there are other ways versus this is the only way to do it, and this is the only way that you can do it if you want to be in my group, and you want to be in my mastermind. 

What happens here is it shuts down so much creativity, and it produces shame. So I’ve been a part of masterminds where it has been a very specific way. This is how you grow your business. If you do it outside of these parameters, something’s wrong. You need more coaching. You’re not coaching yourself. There was a lot of shame around it. 

It took me breaking out of that to realize how dampened my creativity had been, and how I had always built businesses just on pure creative modalities. Just purely having ideas and trying them like a scientist and seeing if they worked. If they didn’t, giving up on them and trying it a different way and all of that, right. 

So if you’re in a container, and your coach is telling you you have to do it this way in order to be successful, just notice that. Just notice that because it’s not true. People have built businesses more ways than we could ever count. People have built businesses without ever having social media. People have built businesses without ever going to a networking event. 

People have built businesses in ways that nobody’s ever heard of before. They just tried it because their brain got a download to try it that way. It worked, and it worked really well. People built businesses that came straight from the inside of their soul, and they had no evidence that it could work and it worked. So when you get caught up in a container that says you have to do it one specific way, it can dampen all of that creativity. 

Now, with that being said, even the healthiest coaching containers are going to try to direct you in a certain path. Here’s all your options, but this one feels like the best option. This is what you should be looking towards doing. This is how you should be brainstorming, right? The best coaching containers do that. But that’s not what I’m talking about. 

What I’m talking about is genuinely this is what you should be doing. This is exactly how to grow the business. There is no other way. Don’t even look around. That’s a big red flag. We don’t want that. That feels yucky. That feels like stomach cramps. We don’t want that. 

All right, number two. Guys, guys, y’all, y’all. Listen, I’m just gonna be completely honest with you. This makes me so sad. I have been a part of many coaching circles. I’ve been a part of circles. I’ve been a part of masterminds. I’ve been sitting at the boardroom table listening to the behind the scenes of everyone’s coaching. 

I’ve been in the groups where you can get on Facebook, and you can talk about things that are going wrong in your coaching and you’re getting coaching from your coach. I’ve been a part of all the conversations, okay, in many different little avenues of coaching from different mentors all over the world. 

Here’s a little thing to know, coaching makes really good money. This is something that the public doesn’t know, but the coaching industry does know. So there’s gonna be a lot of coaches listening to this just nodding their head, but there’s gonna be a lot of people in the public that are gonna be like what the fuck. 

So, in the coaching world, there’s a lot of money to be had. For some reason, a lot of coaches believe that business coaches make the most money. I don’t necessarily agree with that. I think business coaching is a very profitable piece of coaching, but I think relationship coaching or weight loss coaching can be just as profitable if they know how to sell it. 

So what happens is I see a lot of coaches who are getting coaching from their coach, and I’m in the room like a fly on the wall listening. This has happened literally dozens and dozens and dozens of times in the last few years. Where they’re like I’m a relationship coach, but it’s not making the money that I want it to make. So I’m going to be a business coach because business coaches make all the money. Okay. This is like part of the rhetoric, part of the dialogue. They will switch from relationship coaching to business coaching because it makes more money. 

But here’s the thing. Here’s the problem. Now we’ve got someone who failed at relationship coaching, and now they’re going to teach people how to grow a business. The reason that they’re going to teach someone how to grow a business is because they just failed in the other business that they’ve ever owned, and they’ve never owned another business. So they’re going to take money from clients to teach them how to own a business of which they’ve never really had success in, and they’re gonna call themselves a business coach. 

Guys, I’m gonna piss so many people off when I say this. I’m sorry, kind of. I kind of am. I don’t want to piss you off. But for the love of God, if you’re a business coach that has never owned another business, you’ve never owned anything, or you chose to be a business coach because there’s more money in it, or you have this dialogue going through your head that like weight loss coaches can’t make as much money as business coaches. So I’m going to be a business coach. That’s not the reason to be a business coach. Stop taking people’s money. 

So when you’re looking for a business coach, guys, please, please, do your due diligence. Do your homework. Ask the coach what other businesses have you owned? How successful were they? Why did you stop? Did you stop? Did you stop owning those businesses? Right? How much success have your clients had in business? Right? 

Because guys, again, it’s like the public doesn’t know this. The coaching industry does know this. The coaches are always pointing at the business coaches acting like we have hit some sort of jackpot that we can make way more money than them because we’re business coaches, which, again, is bullshit. 

Because if you don’t know how to sell your relationship coaching, you’re not going to know how to sell business coaching. Right? You’re damn sure not gonna know how to sell business coaching if you’ve never had a successful business or credentials to talk about in business. That’s neither here nor there. 

This is to you guys. You’re looking for a business coach, big red flag. Don’t hire a coach whose only business is business coaching. That means that you are giving them money to learn on the spot. Yes, it’s a business that they have, but they’re learning on the spot while training you and giving you advice on how to run a business. It’s no bueno. It’s no bueno. Okay.

Okay, let’s go to number three. If in the coaching atmosphere that you’re in, in the container, in the relationship, there is any sort of like hard work shaming. So this is actually something that goes down quite a bit. This is the way I see it. There’s two types of growing a business. There’s a very feminine way of doing it. It’s a little bit more hands off. You’re doing the meditations. You’re doing the manifestations. Very feminine, and it’s very needed. I do a lot of that in my business. 

There’s a very masculine approach. A lot of people call it bro marketing. I hate that, first of all. You know what I really don’t like is people that call themselves feminists by putting men down. That is not cool. Like, I’m all for women’s rights, but I don’t hate men. If you hate men, you have some unresolved trauma that you need to work through. How about that? You want to be a bold ass strong, feminine female power, resolve your issues first. How’s that? 

All right, so there’s feminine, manifesting, brainstorming, thinking, and then there’s masculine, which is much more like go, go, go just hardcore work your fucking face off. Like think like 1990s Jerry Maguire kind of shit. You’re just working out of your mind. 

Oh, no, it’s like Leonardo DiCaprio in what’s that movie where he’s like on Wall Street? Leonardo DiCaprio, Wall Street. He takes that drug, and he can’t use his legs. He’s trying to get into his convertible. Anyway, so that’s more like masculine. Like you’re going all the time. You’re just like doing. You’re aggressive. You might not be sleeping at night. You’re up at night.

Here’s the thing, I think that there’s a balance. But unfortunately, it feels like it’s a civil war between feminine and masculine energy. I see things online that are like masculine type of marketers that are like you can’t manifest your way all the way to success. I agree with that. But then there’s this feminine side that’s like making fun of working hard. There’s almost this shame in you shouldn’t have to work so hard. 

Again, I’ve been a part of this container. Okay. So I’ve been a part of the container that was very much like anti-hustle, do not hustle, do not overwork. If you’re working too hard then you’re not working smart enough. There was a lot of shame around it. 

Here’s where I think you should stand. I think you should stand knowing that there’s two sides of the spectrum. I think you should stand knowing where you work best. I think you should stand in a place that doesn’t dampen your lifestyle and allows you to get to the goals that you want to get to while also keeping the life you want to keep. 

So no, I don’t believe in the masculine like work yourself to death. You have no relationship with your kids and you have no relationship with yourself or your life, right? But then there’s this other side that’s like you can’t just meditate your way to success. You have to do. 

So when you’re entering a container ask yourself is this a balanced container? Is this person telling me that I can get rich by just meditating? Is this person making fun of other people for working hard? Right? Or is this person going to tell me to work so hard that I don’t ever see my kids again? You don’t want that. All right. So if there’s hard work shaming in the container because it’s led by a very feminine leader, that can be a problem. 

Number four, I feel like it goes without saying, but I have to say it. Okay. I have to say it because I have experience in it. If you feel like you can’t show up to the live events or to the in person meetups dressed the way that you normally dress or want to dress, this is just a hint into the world that you aren’t being yourself. Okay. 

So if you’re not being yourself, why? What is it? What part of you feels dampened? What part of you feels not good enough? What part of you feels like you need to be different? What part of you feels like you need to impress? What’s actually happening there? If you go to these live events and you are so torn up about what to wear because it’s not the way you normally dress because you don’t feel comfortable doing that. Why? What’s happening? Just something to think on. 

All right. Number five. There are a lot of phenomenal coaches out there in every niche. They are weight loss coaches, there are business coaches, divorce recovery coaches, eating disorder recovery coaches, and they are really good at what they do. They are really intelligent at their craft, but they aren’t willing to say the hard things to their client because they aren’t willing to risk the relationship with their client because they’re in lack. 

So if you have a coach and you feel like that person is supporting you, and they are loving you, and they are listening to you, and they are telling you that you’re on the right track, but they’re never actually redirecting you or giving you strategy advice to kind of turn you in a different way to try something new.

Like you’re getting all the love and you’re getting all the support, but they’re not willing to have the hard conversation with you. They’re not willing to say hey, that’s not working. Or hey, this is the way it could look if you did it this way. Or why are you afraid? What are you afraid of? 

Like having those hard conversations. This is something that I pride myself in. I’ve always been willing to have hard conversations. I’ve always been willing to risk the relationship with a client if I feel like it is going to benefit them in the long run. 

It’s kind of like raising children. I know that it is going to benefit my children in the long run to show them how to eat nutritionally. Will they like it at the time? Will they throw a fit at the time? Will they stomp off whenever I tell them that the only snack that they can have is a carrot or cucumber or a bell pepper? Yeah, it happens all the time. But I’m okay with that because I know that I’m willing to risk the relationship over the course of the next 10 minutes in order to benefit them over the course of the next 100 years of their life. 

Same thing goes with coaching, right? So I’m willing to risk the relationship with someone if I notice that they are spinning in circles. They’re doing the same thing over and over again. They’re falling into the same thought patterns. They are obsessed with the wrong thing. I’m willing to point that out. I try to do it as lovingly as possible. 

I’m still working on that, but I’m willing for them to literally never come back to me, to not reup with me, to not resign, to not leave me an amazing review. I’m willing to do that if it means that that thing that no one else on the planet is willing to tell them just got said. No one else was willing to say it to them. I did. I take pride in that. I think that’s probably why I’ve had some success in coaching. 

But I think not being willing to say it only comes from lack. That’s the only place it seems – Like in my mind, that’s the only place it could come from. I can’t think of any other reason or any other place it would stem from other than I’m not willing to say this because I want to make sure that they stay comfortable in my container so that they continue and come back. 

All right, next up number six. If your coach is not tracking your progress in some way, this could be a red flag. Whether you are in a weight loss program or a lifestyle program or a business program or a wealth program, your coach should be tracking in some fashion. Now this is more broad and it’s also more tangible, depending on the industry. 

So like in business, it’s very easy. I can track my clients revenue and their profitability. It’s all numbers based. With weight loss, it might be different. It might be like you’re tracking their hydration. Maybe they’re getting blood panels done every three months and you’re tracking that. Maybe it is that you’re tracking a diary of how they’re feeling. Same with life coaching, same with divorce recovery coaching, all of that stuff. But your coach should be tracking you and noticing a pattern and taking ownership of the patterns that you have. 

Here’s another thing, too, this wasn’t even written on my piece of paper, but I’m gonna go into it. If your coach puts all the responsibility on you, that’s not a good sign. Okay. I think there’s part of this coaching world like where the dialogue has become well, my clients need to show up. As long as they show up at 100%, then they’re going to get really good results. But it has nothing to do with me. Like, they just need to show up 100%. 

I don’t agree with that. The coach needs to show up 100% too. The coach needs to be constantly looking at their containers and editing them and making them better and making it really hard for people to fail. 

Like, for instance, I feel like it’s really hard to fail inside of Three More. So in Three More, it’s you get three more clients in 30 days or your money back. I wouldn’t be willing to say that or provide that if I didn’t feel comfortable with what I’m providing. So it’s not just like I don’t know how you’re gonna get results. You’ve got to show up and do the work, and it depends completely on you. 

It’s not true. It depends on you, and it depends on the coach. It depends on the client and the coach, and they both have to take full responsibility. The coach has to have really good programs and really good containers and really good teachings. Sometimes it feels like it’s just an offload of responsibility to put it on the client. I just don’t agree with that. That’s something you can ask them too. Like how will you be tracking my progress? Or how will we be tracking my progress while I’m working with you? It’s a great question. 

Okay, this one is very subtle. I think the only reason that I know that this happens is because of conversations I’ve had with my clients who are coaching clients okay. So I’m coaching a coach. They’re talking about their relationship with their clients. I’ve noticed a pattern. I’ve noticed it with several people. So now I think it’s worth talking about because I’ve tried to dissect it and process it enough that I can put it into this podcast, but here’s how it goes. 

If you are a client to a coach, and their communication or their coaching quality dips after you pay them, but then it comes back and it’s stronger when it’s time to reup. So I’ve been on calls with coaches who are telling me very clearly like now that it’s almost time for this person to resign with me, maybe their package is almost over, the containers almost over. It’s almost time for them to resign, and they’re wondering if their client is going to resign. 

Then boom they change the quality of their communication. Like they were just driving on autopilot. They were kind of just doing the bare minimum. Now it’s time for them to reup, and they’re going to turn their coaching brain back on. Then once that person pays and says yes, they kind of allow it to dip back down, and they’re back on autopilot. 

This is something to just notice. Are you in a relationship where this is happening? Or are you in an awesome coaching relationship where you’re few months in, and they are just as present and easy to talk to. They’re coaching just as strong as ever. 

Now with that being said, there’s always going to be ebbs and flows. If you’re in a six month or a year-long container with your coach, there’s going to be weeks where energy is lower and then weeks where energy is higher. Or there’s gonna be like little dips in the culture where people aren’t making as many jokes or they’re not sending as many GIFs, or there’s just not as much communication. Like that’s normal. That’s not what I’m talking about. 

I think it’s almost toxic to think that for six months or a year that your coaching container is going to stay extremely high energy. That’s not the way it works. But that’s not what I’m talking about. What I’m talking about is you can tell that your coach is kind of checking out when it’s not time for you to pay them and then checking back in when it’s time for you to pay them. That’s a red flag. It doesn’t feel good. It doesn’t look good. It’s not in the best interest of the client. Something to notice. 

All right, last one. This should seem obvious, but I’m gonna go there. If they are talking poorly at all of other clients, huge red flag, guys. Huge red flag. This is so far out of integrity. Here’s one thing. So it’s one thing to tell about an example. Like if the coach is telling an example of something that happened with another client, they’re not giving that person’s name. They’re not giving any telling descriptions to where you could figure out who this person is, but they’re teaching you a lesson about it. That is honorable. That is fine. Totally cool. 

But if they’re telling you who this person is, or they’re talking and you can sense a frustration in their voice, you can sense that it’s not going the way they want it to go. If you can sense that they’re blaming the client, that’s their own ego that you’re hearing. That’s their own issues that you’re hearing. The fact that they’re bringing it up to you. Like think about it this way. Someone has paid them a lot of money to be supported in their darkest times or in their hardest times or with something they’re struggling with. 

They took that money, and they’re turning around and telling you about it with a frustrated voice. They’re blaming, and they’re basically, for lack of better words, talking crap about this person. Huge red flag. That is such a lack of integrity, and I see it happening too much in the coaching industry. So you do not want that. Need I say more? 

Before I go on to what you do want in a coach, I just want to say this. It’s really hard to be a coach. It’s really hard for coaches to separate their own needs and their own worries and their own revenue goals and their own ego to be able to remove that from the equation. 

Like I get it, I really do. The fact that I do feel in line with integrity in my coaching business is because of years and years and years and years of self-development. So I’m not shaming coaches. If anybody’s listening to this, and you’re feeling gutted because you’re a coach, and you feel like you do one of these things, it’s just time to change course. We are all humans. Okay. 

So here’s what you do want in a coach. All right. You do want a coach that is gonna push you. You want a coach that is masculine and feminine, right? That goes with both of those because it is a full spectrum look. Like business is not just masculine. It is not just feminine. It is both. You want a coach that is going to push you that is also going to help you imagine and manifest what you want, and goal set. All of that is appropriate. You want a coach that is oozing in integrity. Like you can just tell that they are an honest person, okay.

You want a coach that’s willing to say the hard things to you, that’s willing to risk the relationship, right. You want someone that’s gonna let you decide and doesn’t pressure you. You’re gonna know just from your gut when you’re looking for a coach if someone has you in the best interest at heart. You want a coach that is willing to put their ego down, even if that means that you’re gonna go to another coach. That that coach stays in integrity and allows you to go to the other coach without pressuring you, without shaming you, without being frustrated with you. 

That coach is so in line with integrity and with their own work and comes from such a place of abundance that they would be willing to allow you to go to a different mentor without any problems, right? Like that is grade A queen bee top notch coach. That person has done some work, okay. 

Just remember, your coach should bring out the best in you. The most stable, the most confident, the most relaxed, the most chill, the most motivated. However you want to dress, however you want to be, however you want to create. You feel like your coach just highlights that and doesn’t dampen it. 

That’s the beauty of coaching guys. That is where coaching just excels over anything else. This is the reason that coaching is the biggest accelerator for growth. When someone comes into my coaching world and they are allowed to be who they are, they’re allowed to go full throttle. They’re allowed to be creative. 

They’re allowed to be messy. They’re allowed to be sloppy. They’re allowed to try things, and they feel a sense of happiness that they’ve never felt before because they’ve never felt like they were allowed to do that. That’s what I’m talking about. That’s what it’s all about. I fucking love it. I love you guys, and I can’t wait to see you guys next week. Adios goodbye.

Hey guys, this podcast is the blood sweat and tears of a lot of different people. The planning and the preparation of each episode is extensive. My team and I are really proud to bring you this free and abundant content each week, and we hope that you’re loving it. If you are, the very best thank you that we can receive from you is a review and a share. 

When you share this episode with a friend or leave us a five star review, it is like pouring a little bit of magic into our podcasting bucket. It is what gets our work recognized. It’s what gives us energy and keeps us going, truly. Not one share nor review goes without recognition from our team. As always, we fucking love you here at Hell Yes Coaching. Have a beautiful day. 

Hey, thanks for taking the time to listen to today’s episode. If you’re looking to get more clarity and momentum for your business, visit hellyescoachingonline.com. See you next week here on The Hell Yes Entrepreneur podcast.