Getting Over Your Fear of Failing Your Clients

So, you‘ve taken the giant leap forward to setting up your own coaching practice and while you are excited to start helping people realize their dreams, you are also pretty nervous too. In fact, you might be so nervous that you’re not even sure how you are going to meet with your first client. Suddenly, there are all these voices of doubt inside your head, telling you that you’re not good enough to be coaching anyone, that your advice sucks and that no one is actually going to pay for coaching with you, and if they do, they’re going to be disappointed.

Guess what? Those voices are perfectly normal; unless they start telling you to do other things, that is. Every coach that starts out in the business experiences doubt, and sometimes it can be crippling. So, what do you do to get rid of this doubt and have a successful coaching business? While the only real cure for the voices in your head is some actual experience and time being a coach, and experiencing success, there are some things that you can do to bring your doubts down to a manageable level.

Offer Free Sessions: One thing that you can do is to offer free sessions for a few clients so that you can get some experience coaching. You will be able to coach them without feeling guilty that they are paying you, and those feelings of doubt will slowly disappear once you see that you actually are making a difference.

Do Short Sessions at First: Another idea is to keep your sessions pretty short, so that you can charge less for them, and so that you can get your feet wet with coaching without having to jump in with a full-fledged hour long session.

Practice with Friends or Family: If you have some friends or family members that you could help with their problems, try coaching with them first. It can be intimidating to coach strangers and a few sessions with people you know might allow you to become more comfortable with yourself and your coaching position.

Remind Yourself That You’re Supposed to be doing this: Finally, just keep in mind all of the reasons that you started coaching in the first place. Remind yourself that you chose this path because you felt as if you truly had something to offer, and you’ll eventually see that you were right the whole time.