Coach Pony

It can seem like celebrity entrepreneurs won the jackpot, but there's more to the story. Behind the blockbuster coaching programs, offers, and live events are stories of careful development, fixed mistakes, and strategy. On this season of the Coach Pony Podcast, I'm sitting down with successful business owners to ask them, how do you build that? I'll talk to a wide range of coaches and leaders, di...

Life coaching has changed A LOT in the last 20 years. But what I want to know is what happens next. To get answers, I wanted to talk to smart people with a pulse on what’s happening in the industry...and what better place to start than with coaching schools, since they’re actively shaping new and upcoming coaches! Today I’m joined by: Sherri Gerek from IPEC, the Institute of Professional Excellenc...

No matter what level you’re at or what niche you’re in, you’ll make mistakes. It just means you’re human. And you can still run an amazing coaching business even when you make mistakes. All season on the Coach Pony podcast, Bobbi Palmer from Date Like a Grownup and I have taken trips down memory lane to share our biggest flops and what we learned about messing up with clients, contracts, events, s...

There are a frightening number of ways to make mistakes on social media. Today on the Coach Pony podcast, Bobbi Palmer from Date Like a Grownup joins me again to dish on where we’ve screwed up on social, so you don’t have to! We’ll take you back to a time before Instagram even existed let alone TikTok, (no, dinosaurs did not roam the earth) and talk about the pitfalls of trying to be everywhere at...

If you want to have a business, you have to make sales. Otherwise, you’re just coaching people for free. If that’s your jam, cool! But if you’re here...then you probably want to make a living with your coaching. This is why Bobbi Palmer from Date Like a Grownup is here with me to talk about sales mistakes. This is a big one and there are a lot of ways your sales process can go sideways. Bobbi shar...

Ooh, shiny! Everyone gets distracted by something sparkly now and again. But shiny object syndrome can slow down your business...big time. Of course you want to chase that shiny new idea, but dividing your attention across too many projects and programs at once can lead to disaster. Whether it’s burning out after working umpteen hours a week trying to juggle it all, or your programs not taking off...

Live events have their rewards: When an event goes well, you get the satisfaction of being hands-on and seeing people make progress in real time. Not to mention that attendees learn and make connections with your work (yay!) and each other! Everyone wins! But when a live event goes badly, those mistakes can be hugely detrimental to your business and your reputation. If people leave your event feel...

Making mistakes with your website can cost you. It can cost you time, it can cost you peace of mind (oh the stress of redoing things!) and of course, it can cost you money. Whether you’re paying an agency to design and build your site or you’re DIY-ing it, having a site that doesn’t do what you need it to can hinder your business’s ability to grow. Building a website from scratch can be intimidati...

We’ve all had clients we regret.  It’s almost a rite of passage for a coach (so yes, it’ll probably happen to you!). Maybe you saw the red flags from the beginning and ignored them because you really believed you could be the one to help them. Coaches want to help people! Or maybe it took a few sessions for you to realize that what they need isn’t what you offer. Either way, it can be incredi...

Investing in your business is a fact of life. It can help you learn, grow and be a better coach.   But what if when you need advice, consulting, training or something else, you fork over an enormous amount of money only to have it not work out the way you wanted? OUCH.   This season of the Coach Pony Podcast, it’s all about mistakes. I teamed up with Bobbi Palmer from  Date Like a Grownup to give...

We all make mistakes in life. And as a coach, you’re going to make mistakes with your clients. You’re not perfect and your clients (usually) don’t expect you to be. But they will–consciously or not– take advantage of contract loopholes, poor enforcement, unclear terms and other not-so-fun ways to ask for services outside of what your intended agreement is. This season on the Coach Pony Podcast, I’...

Do you ever worry about making mistakes in your coaching business? Of course you do!   Everyone makes mistakes. No matter what level you’re at– whether you hung up your shingle yesterday or you’ve been at this for years– mistakes are a normal part of moving your business forward. Welcome!   And not only are they normal, but coaches in all niches, at all revenue levels make many of the sa...

  Writing a book is a great way to create some passive income while you also cement your coaching knowledge and life experience into one lower-cost, marketable item that you can sell for years to come.   Books are great tools to help people get to know you and enter your coaching world, and build the trust that can ultimately turn them into a client.   Your book can also help raise your profile an...

  I have so many online course stories for you guys!   My book, Zero to Passion , was my first real online DIY program, because I offered several different tiers of learning beyond just the book. (Fun fact: I still sell plenty of them today).   But that’s a story for another time…   Let’s get to the good stuff!   In this episode, I'll share the inside story of how I got paid $7,000 to build my fir...

There’s nothing like waking up to money deposited overnight in your bank account and knowing you’ve been helping people while you were sleeping, no?   Online programs offer you that satisfaction and more.   But as always, there are drawbacks too.   In this episode we’ll be taking a much closer look at online DIY coaching programs, because who doesn’t want to make passive income, right?   DIY onlin...

Do you enjoy embarrassing stories? How about learning from my mistakes so you don’t have to? Then this is the episode for you!   I’ve done several retreats now in my business and in hindsight, they were super fun. However, two of them started out as absolute disasters.   So I want to talk about what happened and, more importantly, what I did to fix them.   Our story begins back in 2013 with my fir...

A retreat can sound like an absolute no-brainer for you to do as a coach.   Taking your business on a fabulous vacation? Yes, please.   And they do have some fabulous pros.   You get to do intense hands-on work with clients, some of whom will even become retreat regulars, which makes it easier to sell out your retreats over time.   There’s group bonding and the magic of taking yourself and your bu...

Our story today starts, like most of my stories, on my couch.   In the last episode, we talked about the gritty details behind the group coaching business model. Today, I want to tell you the origin story of my very first group coaching program–one that eventually grew to over 500 people!   Our story begins with another company. It’s true! Because besides Coach Pony, I also own and operate a caree...

I personally love group coaching.   There’s something magical about working with a group. The community that grows in a session, the support and validation participants get from each other–these programs fuel me in a special way.   And group coaching was how I first reached multiple six figures in my business and beyond seven figures now. Group coaching programs are the backbone of my business for...

A private hotel suite, room service, a $5000 client…   That definitely sounds way dirtier than I thought it would. But it’s part of the story of how I grew my business to six figures all those years ago.   In the last episode , we talked about the gritty details behind the private coaching business model. Today, I’ll share the inside story of how I got to a stable six-figure income from just priva...

  Low overhead, high profit potential. Private coaching can sound like a dream. But is it your dream?   In season two of the Coach Pony podcast, we’re exploring all of the different ways coaches can make money. And we’ll take a brutal look at the pros and cons and how much you can actually expect to make as a coach on each money path.   If you’re debating between group coaching and private coachin...

  As a life coach, one big question you've got to answer right away is how will you make money? Should you coach privately, group coach, write a book, host a retreat or something else?   Frankly, it's an important question because if you choose the wrong money path, you could waste time, energy and money. For instance, you don't want to spend months trying to write a book only to discover you hate...

  Specificity is everything.   Knowing who your client is inside and out connects you with the right people. The ones who you know you can really help. The ones you’re excited to work with. The ones who will tell their friends about how you’re a total game changer.   It’s more than demographics. It’s knowing their pain points, their worries, their fears and how you’re the best person to help them...

  Know your power. Know your worth.   When you’re first starting out, it feels amazing to get paid at all, but amazing can turn into agonizing when you’re taking on the wrong clients just to get paid.   Your worth isn’t just about the number of clients you have or the size of your bank account, it’s about making sure you have the right clients for you.   Attracting the right clients means getting...

  We became entrepreneurs so that we can do the work that we love.   If you're going to have a crappy job and be miserable, have a regular old jobby job! There is no reason that you have to build a business model that makes you miserable.   A lot of people want to get out of doing client work because it’s a model that they don’t love or they have just gotten tired of it.   There is no shame in loo...