150: How to Hire an Effective Coach

Introduction 

You're listening to Biceps after Babies radio episode number 150.

Hello and welcome to Biceps after Babies radio. A podcast for ladies who know that fitness is about so much more than pounds lost or PRs. It's about feeling confident in your skin and empowered in your life. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke, a registered nurse, personal trainer, wife, and mom of four.  Each week, my guests and I will excite and motivate you to take action in your own personal fitness as we talk about nutrition, exercise mindset, personal development, and executing life with conscious intention. If your goal is to look, feel, and be strong and experience transformation from the inside out, you, my friend are in the right place. Thank you for tuning in, now let’s jump into today’s episode.

 

A podcast idea about how to hire a coach  0:47  

Hey, hey, hey, welcome back to another episode of biceps after babies radio. I'm your host, Amber Brueseke. And the last, I guess about two weeks ago, I did a podcast episode based off of a listener question. It's episode number 146 and it was on a question that someone submitted about how to deal with friends and family who are unsupportive of your goals. And I got some really great feedback from that episode. So thanks for the listener who sent in that question. And today's topic is another listener question that somebody asked me and I thought, Oh, that's such a good topic to discuss. And this was sent in by Jamie Larson. And Jamie said, a future podcast idea. You're frequently encouraging us to hire a coach. How about a podcast that talks us through the process? How do you know when you need a coach? What areas of life have you found coaching helpful with? How do we find a good coach? How much money should we expect to pay? How to know when you should fire a coach or move on or switch coaches or are done needing a coach? And how to know if a coach is actually being helpful identifying self sabotage when being coached? So first of all, thank you, Jamie, for this suggestion, I thought it was such a good topic because she's right. I tell you guys all the time to hire coaches, I think coaching is such a worthwhile investment in many areas of our life. Obviously, I'm in the health and fitness realm. So I do think that that's important but I'm going to talk about where I hire coaches in my life outside of the health and fitness realm as well. And so I say, hire a coach. A coach is a great investment. And I haven't ever done a podcast episode where I really dive into the questions that Jamie asked. Well, okay, great, hire a coach Amber, how the heck do I pick a coach? How do I know which one is actually going to be worth the money and the investment that I make? So that's what I want to talk about today. That's what we're gonna sit here and discuss. And the goal is, by the end of our conversation today, that you will have a better idea about how to go out and invest in coaching, how to go out and that coaches, so that when you spend your money, you're actually getting a return on that investment. And we're going to talk about that specifically, about how to make sure that you're getting a return on your investment. And I think that comes down to what you do before you hire a coach and the vetting that you do. And then it also depends on how you interact and show up with that coach. And we'll talk about those a little bit deeper as we go through today's episode. 

 

Coaching as an unregulated industry  3:36

So before I dive into, you know, answering Jamie's specific questions, I do want to just say that overall, coaching in general, is an unregulated industry. Now, there are types of coaching that are a little bit more regulated. You think about, like for example, a trainer, there are nationally recognized training federations, or associations, and you can study and take one of their tests, and you know, they'll dub you a personal trainer, right? They have these certifications. So there are some areas where there is more regulation. But as a whole, the coaching industry isn't anything like the professional industry. And I relate that to many of you know, I'm a nurse. And so to become a registered nurse, there are a lot of requirements. I had to go, I got my bachelor's in nursing, so I had to go to four plus years of undergraduate education all based on, you know, a certain curriculum that met the expectations, that gave me the education to become a nurse. And then not only that, but then I had to take the NCLEX, which is a certifying, you know, certification test, to make sure that I knew what I was doing. And make sure I not only had learned that knowledge, but actually learned it and remembered that knowledge throughout my years in nursing school. And then moving forward, I had to do, you know, I had to renew my license with continuing education. So I had to prove that I was practicing and I was, you know, learning all the new things that were coming out and I was taking those continuing education credits. So that's a very regulated industry. Same thing goes for something like a physician or a lawyer or an accountant. There are certifying boards that are nationally recognized and it's very regimented. 

 

Coaching: It’s plusses and it’s minuses  5:38

Coaching is not that way. The coaching industry is much less regulated, which has its pluses and it's minuses. It is good because it typically means that hiring a coach is going to be cheaper than a licensed or a regulated industry. You think about the difference between hiring maybe a psychologist or a psychiatrist, or even a licensed therapist is going to be very different than hiring a coach. And, again, there's pluses and minuses to that we could say, well, there's a lot bigger disparity in the value of a coach or how good a coach is. And you know, that could be right. But at the same time, because you don't have to go through as much red tape and you don't have to go through as much regulation or schooling to get there. Typically, a coach is going to be more accessible, it's going to be a lower price point than a licensed individual. Not to say that one is better than the other, I think they hit and target different people, right, different individuals need a licensed clinical therapist, versus someone who maybe needs a coach, like a fitness coach, those are different, they're different avatars. So that's also good, because there are a lot of ways to be a really good coach. And there's a lot of different areas that coaching has kind of cropped up. You know, for lots of years, we've had business coaching, but we're at the place now where we have fitness coaching, and we have life coaching and we have Relationship Coaching and there's the industry of coaching has ballooned and, and blossom so much in the recent past, because people are starting to realize that there are lots of areas of our life that we can have value from hiring a coach for. 

 

Ranges of abilities over licensure and regulation  7:33

Now, as much as I wish that when you had licensure and regulation and hoops that people had to pass through, I also want to make the point that even with physicians, even with nurses, even with licensed clinical psychologist, even with lawyers, there is a range of people who are able to pass those regulations. And just because somebody is an RN, or just because somebody has passed the bar does not actually mean that they are really good lawyers, or that they are really good nurses or that they are really good surgeons. And so sometimes I feel like with licensure and regulations, sometimes we check off that box. Oh, yeah, you know, it's a licensed clinical psychologist, that must mean that they are good. And just recognizing and understanding that just because someone has gone through a hoop doesn't actually make them good, doesn't actually make them really effective. There is a range of abilities in any field that you go into. So just to kind of lead in with that understanding. Because there's not a certain designation that I can say, hey, go look for a coach that has XYZ credentials, or XYZ accreditation, because like I said, it's a really unregulated industry in that way. But I think there's a lot of benefits from that and then some drawbacks as well. 

 

Q1: How to know when you need a coach?  7:33

Okay, so the first question that Jamie asked, that I want to answer is how to know when you need a coach. I thought this was such a great question. And probably one that you've asked yourself, especially if you have never hired a coach in any realm of your life. So my response to this is, I will answer for myself, and you can apply this to yourself if you would like but for myself, if there is something important that I want to achieve, I consider hiring a coach for it. Because I figure, I can spend a lot of time, a lot of energy, trying to figure it out on my own, trying to figure out how to achieve this thing that I want to achieve on my own. Or I can save both time and energy by hiring a coach. Back when I started counting macros in 2016, I did it on my own. And I didn't hire a coach. And it took me a lot of trial and error. And, you know, I learned a lot by doing that kind of like experimenting and testing things out on my own. But I would have saved a lot of time had I hired a coach from the get go, who could kind of be my guide and my leader through a lot of those questions instead of trial and error. And, you know, I was willing to take a little longer, I'm not as you know, quick and invest a little bit of energy in it to be able to do that. 

 

Return on investment in hiring a coach  10:29

So I think the question is, is there a goal that I want to achieve and is it important to me? And if the answer to both of those questions are Yes, then I would consider seeing if you can hire a coach to be able to get you there faster. Now there should be a ROI or return on investment, anytime that you are hiring a coach. And what that means is the money that you invest in hiring a coach, should have the return to you should be greater than the value that you put into it. Now, when we talk about something like business coaching, this is really simple, right? If I hire a business coach, and I spend $5,000, on a business coach, and by hiring that business coach, I generate 10,000 extra dollars, well, then I've gotten, you know, a 2x return on my investment, I invested 5000. And I made back 10,000, it's very easy to put that into dollars and to say, Oh, well, I got a return on that investment. Things get a little bit trickier when we start talking about fitness coaching, which can be a little bit harder to quantify in dollar amounts. So the question that I asked myself is, What do I want? And what is it worth to me? Are the results that I want worth paying for? And how much are they worth paying for? If I could take a pill and get whatever results that I wanted to get, How much money would I pay for the pill?  So let's bring that down into a more concrete example. Let's start with the realm of fitness. If I wanted to lose 30 pounds, that was my goal and I thought, hey, if somebody was walking around, and they legit, like really had a pill that I would just take, and I would lose the 30 pounds magically, because that's magic that doesn't actually exist. But magically, I would lose 30 pounds, how much would I be willing to pay for said pill? And that starts to get me thinking in the realm of what this is worth to me. Okay, and I think that's a great question. What are the results? What is it worth to you? And you know, what are the results worth paying for? And that gives you a good place to start. 

 

Coaches cannot guarantee your results  12:41

Now, we do have to have a conversation. And we'll dive a little deeper into this a little bit later on in the episode, but I do want to bring it up here that coaches cannot guarantee your results. Okay? Know, anybody who's walking around trying to sell you a pill to get whatever you want is a charlatan, right? They're not actually going to give it to you. So please run if that happens to you. But a lot of times people go into coaching, and they want coaches to be able to guarantee their results. And the key that I think is important to understand as a client is that at the end of the day, there is a line where the responsibility of a coach ends and your responsibility as a client starts. And I found that, as I've hired coaches, coaches helped me get where I want to go faster, with less energy, less frustration, absolutely. But the coach doesn't do it for me, the coach is there to guide me, the coach is there to help me, the coach is there to motivate me and encourage me, and you know, tell me the next step. But I still have to take action. And so I think we can kind of put a mirror up to our face and ask ourselves, maybe a not very fun question of Am I hiring this coach because I want them to do it for me? Or because on some level, I want to abdicate my responsibility in creating these results? So if I hire a coach, then I can kind of like take some of that responsibility and put it on to them that they're responsible for my results, doesn't work that way. You are always 100% responsible for your results, a coach just gets you there faster. A coach helps you to not fall down as many times, a coach helps you to be able to see the end from the beginning and know the steps in order to get there. 

 

Q2: What is your definition of a coach  14:30

Okay, next question is my definition of a coach. And I think this is really, really valuable because I think because the coaching industry is such an unregulated industry, literally anybody can call themselves a coach. And so you have to be very careful in making sure that whoever you are hiring is actually going to coach you, it's going to be effective, and that it's going to get you to where you want to go. And so my definition of a coach, I believe that coaching is not just telling somebody what to do. That's not a coach. A coach helps you apply knowledge in the areas that you aren't currently applying it. A coach asks you better questions than you are currently asking yourself. Okay, so what does that mean? It means that a lot of times we think that in order to get the results that we want, we need to learn Something we need to gain more knowledge. And to some extent, that's probably true, you probably do need to gain more knowledge, I'll give the example I've been wanting to get better at Olympic lifting. So one of my first steps is gaining more knowledge, watching YouTube videos, and getting books. I've done my research in filling up my knowledge tank about the Olympic lifts. But just because I've read a book on how to execute the snatch doesn't mean that I'm actually able to apply that knowledge 100% to myself and my lifting. 

 

How lack of application of knowledge hinders you in getting your goal 14:30

So what is keeping you from getting the results that you want, there may be an element of gaining more knowledge to get there. But for most people, it is not the lack of knowledge that is holding you back from your goals. Okay, I'm gonna repeat that. For most women, it is not the lack of knowledge that is keeping you from getting results. It is the lack of application of that knowledge, application of what you know in your life consistently. And this is where coaches can really shine. Because coaches can essentially hold a mirror up to you, and allow you to see things in yourself that you didn't see. We call those blind spots. We all have blind spots. Think about it, can you see the back of your head? Do you know what the back of your head looks like? Now, if you like angles to mirrors just the right way you can see what your ponytail looks like from the back or you can take a picture of something, right. But in general, anything behind you right now is the blind spot, you cannot see it. But when we hold a mirror up, now we're able to highlight those blind spots, and we're able to see those blind spots. And that's essentially what a coach does. A coach holds a mirror up and allows you to see aspects that are holding you back that you maybe couldn't see yourself. And we're gonna specifically apply this to the realm of fitness coaching. I've coached thousands of thousands of women. And I see it over and over and over again, women who come to me who know how to count macros, like but they know how to do it. They know how to create a meal plan, they understand the process of losing weight, they logically understand it. And yet over and over and over again, they continue to start and stop and quit. And they never gain any real traction in their journey.  And so the question again becomes like, well, what's keeping them stuck? If that's you, and you resonate with that, what's keeping you stuck? And the answer is yourself, yourself and the blind spots that you cannot see, knowing something and actually executing it consistently are completely different. 

 

Analogy of having spinach in your teeth 18:32

And if you're somebody who struggles with consistency in your journey, there are blind spots that you can't currently see that keep you stuck. I like to use the analogy of it's like having spinach in your teeth. Right? If you're sitting there at dinner, you're talking to somebody and you have spinach in your teeth, you have no idea. It's there, though, doesn't mean it's not there. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there. And it doesn't mean the other person doesn't see it. And so what a coach does is say, hey, Amber, girlfriend you got a little something in your teeth, and you're like, Oh my gosh, oh, and I can like take it out and I can remove it. But until somebody told you that that spinach was in your teeth, it was gonna stay in your teeth forever. It wasn't gonna come out because you can't see it. And so that's how coaching can be incredibly valuable. And so that's where I say, coaching is not telling someone what to do. It's helping them ask themselves better questions. It's helping to highlight the places where they aren't currently applying the knowledge that they've gained, and then helping them learn how to apply it in a better way. 

Hire a coach to help you fix your blind spots 19:42

So if you are somebody who finds yourself starting and stopping and trying different plans, and hiring different coaches and going to different programs, it may be that the reason that you keep starting and stopping and struggling with consistency isn't that you need to try harder. Because that's where most women go. Most women go to the place where they say, I just need to try harder. The problem is with me, I need to have more motivation so that I can stick to things over the weekend. I just need to like, buckle down and grit my teeth and just do it. That's where most women tried to solve the inconsistency problem where in reality, that's a losing battle. Trying to willpower your way through it is a losing battle. What is actually keeping you stuck are these blind spots that we're talking about. And when you have a coach who can shine a light on those blind spots, then you can actually go into your teeth, remove the blind spot, right, remove the spinach and then it becomes easy. And then it becomes effortless to be able to get the results. You don't have to grit your teeth, you don't have to try harder, it just becomes effortless to be able to get those results. 

 

Q3: Areas of my life that I have found coaching to be helpful  21:00

Okay, next question is areas of my life that I have found coaching to be helpful. So areas that I have hired coaches in. Personally, I have had life coaches, I've personally hired life coach, I have hired lots of business coaches, it's been something that I've gotten a lot of coaching in, in my life, especially since I didn't study any marketing or business in school, I was a nursing major. And so a lot of the business and marketing principles are very, very new to me. And I've hired lifting coaches. So those three years of life coaching, business coaching, and lifting coaching, have been the areas that I personally have hired coaches, and in each of those areas, going back to this question of why would you hire a coach in each of those areas, I had things that I wanted to achieve. And I knew that getting help and achieving them was going to make it happen faster. Could I have built my business to the level that it is at today, without coaching? Perhaps, however, I know that it would have taken me at least 3-5-10 times as long as it's taken me. And what coaching did was sped up the process. Instead of trying to figure out everything on my own. Instead of trying to find all the spinach in my teeth without a mirror on my by myself, I was able to hire people to be able to assist me in that. Same thing when it came to my lifting coaching, I wanted to get better at powerlifting. And I wanted to get better at CrossFit and I knew that by hiring coaches that were going to go faster, that was going to reach those goals faster if I had a coach to be able to guide me. And then the same thing with life coaching. I haven't done a ton of life coaching. But I've had a couple of life coaches. And again, I went into it. And this is specifically what I told the coach, when we had our first conversation was that I know that I have blind spots. And I'm hiring you as a life coach to help me identify  those blind spots so that I can work through them. And each of those coaches that I've hired have been able to highlight different things that I can work on. Because once I have awareness about something, I can fix it. Right? Once we know that we have spinach in our teeth, we can remove it, we just need somebody to help us to be able to remove it. So that's for me, that's personally where I've hired coaches in my life. And I've spent lots of money, lots and lots of money over the years in hiring different coaches and it has absolutely been worth it every time that I've invested in myself. And I think that is where coaching really comes down to the question of when I hire coaches, I see that as an investment in me. And I will invest in me every darn day of the year. I know that anytime that I make an investment into me, that always pays off. 

 

Q4: What to look for in a good coach?   23:59

Okay, the next question that Jamie asked was what to look for in a good coach? And this is a good question. Because, again, we talked about at the beginning, coaching is an unregulated industry. So you have to do your due diligence to make sure that you're getting a good coach that when you're spending money, you're getting a return on that investment. So the first thing that I would be looking for, is does that coach have results themselves and have they demonstrated that they can get results for others. Now, be very careful. Because these are not the same thing. There are plenty of people who have been able to get results themselves and are able to to extrapolate helping others be able to get those same results. And then conversely, there are people who maybe haven't had dramatic transformations or haven't lost 50 pounds. And at the same time, they've had some sort of transformation and they've demonstrated that they can get other people there. I always think about if you're in the CrossFit world and if you're not I will explain it to you. But if you're in the CrossFit world, you know that one of the greatest CrossFit coaches is Shane Orr. He's coached Claire Toomey, he's coach Matt Frazier, he's coached a bunch of up and coming cross-fitters but he's coached two of the best cross-fitters of all time. And I think most would agree that he is a top coach. Shane has never gone to the CrossFit Games. He's never had that “transformation” of making it to the CrossFit Games much less winning the CrossFit Games. So while he has not had that experience himself, he's proven that he is able to help others get that experience and he has had some of the transformation himself. So I think sometimes when people go and look for coaches, they kind of look for coaches who have had the same experience that they've had. Right? If I've lost, if I've, you know, if I want to lose 50 pounds, and I go look for somebody who's lost 50 pounds, and I get that, because we make those comparisons of Oh, like, they know exactly what it's like. But make sure that you take that next step and make sure that not only maybe they have had the transformation, but they're able to get the transformation for other people. And I think that's one of the biggest things is new coaches, inexperienced coaches, not very good coaches may have transformations, but then they haven't necessarily been able to create a formula or a system that gets replicable results for other people. Okay, number two, find who you jive with. Online, the internet, social media podcasts make this easier than ever before. Like, you can, you know, get to know at least the facade of somebody very well, on Instagram, podcast, any social media platforms before you hand over your money. 

 

Find someone who resonates you  26:56

And I think we should be doing this. I'm going to give you an example of when I didn't follow my own role. So I hired a coach. And I was excited to get into his program. And as I got into his program, because everybody loved it, like, I'd heard so many good things about this program, I'd heard so many awesome transformations that people had had in this program. I'm like, Okay, this guy knows how to get results, right? So I checked off number one, he had had results himself, awesome, like, check off number two. And I got into this program, and I hated it. I hated it. Because not because the things that he was teaching were bad or that they were wrong, or that they weren't applicable. I just hated his style. Like I couldn't handle the way that he taught. I couldn't handle his call, like, I just didn't like his style of teaching. I have nothing against this guy. Probably an awesome person. And a lot of people resonate with him. But I got into it. and I was like, I just don't resonate with this guy. And looking back, I should have known that. Because I had listened to his podcast, not a ton, but I'd listened to it a little bit. And it was okay. It was good but I realized that, like the way his podcast content was presented, was very similar to how he taught the program, which makes sense. I didn't really love his podcast. It wasn't like his podcast, I would listen to every once in a while and episode, but it wasn't like, Oh, I really resonated with him. And I really wanted to listen to those podcasts. And so I really, you know, I didn't follow my own rule. I should have known that since I didn't really jive with his personality and the way that he presented things in his podcast and online, that his program would probably be more of the same style of teaching. And I didn't really resonate with this. All of that to say, there are plenty of wonderful people, myself included out there that you may not resonate with. That's okay. Don't buy our programs. Like if you don't love my podcast, if you're like, this girl's annoying, and I don't really like the way that she approaches things. I don't like the way she teaches. Don't buy my program. But what is awesome is that with my podcast, with my Instagram account, you know, with all the content I put out, you can really start to see do I resonate with this person? Do I jive with them? Do I like the way that they present things? Do I like the way that they teach? Do I like the way that they think? And if that's a yes, then that's a really good key that you may like their program. It's not always 100%. But I think that a lot of times we discount how important it is to resonate with somebody before joining the program. 

 

Have that feel of alignment in the coaching/program offered  29:39

Okay. Oh, and I guess a second example of this when I was going to pick this is actually funny because it ties into this podcast. When I was going to pick my first business coach, this was back in 2018. I was going to hire my first business coach. And I didn't know business coaches, like I wasn't following anybody who was a business coach. I didn't really have any idea about a business coach. So I asked some, I think I asked him like a Facebook group of likes, just suggestions for business coaches, and I got a whole bunch. And I started researching them. And, you know, what I would do is I would listen to their podcast, and I listened to the business coach, I ended up hiring, I listened to her podcast, and I was like, I really like this, like I jive with her. I resonate with her. I feel like I would get along with her and so I ended up hiring her as my first business coach. And it was because of that experience that kind of catapulted me into deciding to launch my podcast, because I realized that I as a consumer had made a decision to hire a business coach based on feeling like I knew her on her podcast. And so that was January of 2018. And in October of 2018, is when I launched the podcast, and it was a big part of I want you to get to know me, before you hire me, I want you to know how I teach how I approach the world and the way that I show up. And if that doesn't resonate with you, awesome, then don't waste your money. And if it does resonate with you, then it can make you a little bit more comfortable saying, Yeah, I love her podcast, I really like the way Amber approaches things. And so I want to go and get coaching from her. So it means that the people who come into my program are much more aligned with me and with how I teach, and I love that. 

 

Find somebody who prioritizes long term results over short term fixes  31:25

Okay. Number three, is to find somebody who prioritizes long term results over short term fixes. Like I mentioned before, there are a lot of charlatans out there, there are a lot of people promising really fast results, right? Get your best body in four weeks, lose, you know, 50 pounds in five days, I don't know. But there's a lot of people making these very short term related promises and I get it. I mean, from a marketing perspective,  it's good marketing, it's giving people what they want as fast as possible. And those types of posts on Instagram where you're like, look at this person, she loves, like, so much weight in six weeks, and like this huge transformation. It's good marketing, people look at that. And they're like, I want to lose 40 pounds, and in five weeks, like Sign me up, it plays on our desires. So I totally get why people do it. And it's really unfortunate. I don't know unfortunate, like dichotomy, that it's almost like what people want, because people respond well to that, like, if you offer that to people have, you know, have this amazing transformation in six weeks, people want that they want to pay for that they would like to join that. And on the other side of it, it's like, really bad coaching. Like I just have a really hard time with offering or promising something that is going to happen super, super speedy, when in reality, at least I care more about your long term results. I don't care how fast you lose 30 pounds. If you regain it all back. To me, that's not a success. Now maybe to you, that's a success. Maybe you just want to see that number once in your life. And if so awesome, I'm probably not the coach for you. But I want you to lose 30 pounds, and then never have to lose it again. And so when you start to go look for coaches who have had the biggest transformations or you know, the fastest results, that's what you end up getting is you end up getting somebody who cuts corners, does everything possible, makes it as hard as possible, cuts you as low as possible to be able to get that fast result that so often you aren't able to maintain long term. So for me, I always look for someone who prioritizes long term results over those short term fixes. And this applies to other areas as well. This applies to business coaching, it's very easy to get swept up in the like make $100,000 in 10 days type of marketing. And that's never how I've tried to find my business coach, because I believe in the long term, the long game, right? When you treat people well, you get good results. When you market not gimmicky, right when you market with integrity, that may grow your business a little slower than having gimmicky marketing. But it's going to be long term sustainable growth, because people are going to stay, and they're going to enjoy you and they're going to get good results. And they're going to refer their friends to you. And so I hire coaches who have the same philosophy, this is not about building a million dollar business this year. This is about setting up the foundation, and being able to do it in a way that feels in integrity with what I want to put out there in the world. 

 

Make sure that the coach actually coaches  34:53

Okay, number four, make sure that the coach, if you're wanting coaching, make sure that the coach actually coaches. And this is a funny one that we have to like to talk about, but a lot of people say that they offer “coaching”, that isn't actually coaching. You know, it's a program that you follow that everybody just follows like the same program, and there's nothing wrong with that. Well, I would have something to say about it, but inherently like I'm not saying that those are bad. What I'm saying is if somebody says that there's coaching, make sure that when they say “coaching” that they actually mean what you want them to mean when it comes to coaching. Coaching in my mind is not telling you what to do. A good coach doesn't just sit there and dictate what you were supposed to do. Okay, first of all, that's not actually effective long term. Because when you stop having someone to tell you what to do, you don't know what to do. So that's a short term fix. And it's what a lot of people think that they want. But I would ask you, do you just want someone to tell you what to do or do you want long term results? Because if you want long term results, someone just sitting there and spouting off, what you need to do is not what's gonna get you there. So we're going to talk a little bit deeper in one of the next questions about what actual coaching looks like, and what transformational coaching is, in contrast to many ways that some people try to do coaching. So we're gonna dive a little bit deeper into that, but I did want to hit it here that number four is, make sure if you want coaching, now, if you don't want coaching, then disregard this one. But if you want coaching, if you want to have someone help identify those blind spots, then you need to make sure there's actual coaching involved in the program. 

 

Make sure that the coach sees you as an individual 36:40

And then number five, make sure that whoever you hire as a coach is taking you as an individual, that they aren't giving you just some cookie cutter, here's your workout plan, here's your meal plan. Now go and execute, that doesn't actually end up producing the long term results that you want. It doesn't actually help you because what we've identified is that knowledge is not what's keeping you from getting your results. So just because you have a workout plan and a meal plan, you have knowledge, that doesn't mean you're gonna actually apply that knowledge consistently. And so that's where coaching really comes in, and coaching really shines. So make sure whatever coach that you're hiring is taking you as an individual, and is adjusting things specifically for you as an individual. 

 

Q5:How to know if a coach has actually been helpful in identifying self sabotage when being coached? 37:24

Okay, next question. How to know if a coach has actually been helpful in identifying self sabotage when being coached? So I haven't used the word self sabotage much. In this episode, I identify self sabotage as knowing what to do having the knowledge, but not actually doing it. Right? So it's that gap between knowledge and application. That's what I termed as self sabotage. And we've explained why that's so important, because we have these blind spots that cause us to self sabotage. And if we don't actually ever address those blind spots, the self sabotage behavior is not going to go away. White knuckling isn't going to fix it, training harder isn't going to fix it, gritting your teeth more, having more motivation or more willpower is not going to fix it, we have to actually address the root cause. And the root cause are those blind spots that are causing the self sabotage. It's just like, if you go out into a field, if you like, have a field of flowers, and there were weeds among the flowers, if you just went and just chopped off the top of the weed, like, Yes, I got rid of that weed. Well, you know exactly what would happen in like, two weeks time is that weed would sprout back up because you haven't actually gotten the roots. And so that's what a lot of people do. And it's what a lot of coaches do . They just chop off the top of the weed, they just say, okay, you're just gonna, you know, you're gonna do better this week with hitting your macros over the weekend, right? That's the goal, we're gonna like, just buckle up, try harder, get more willpower, grit your teeth, and you know, go through the weekend, and you'll be able to do it. And then sometimes people are able to do it. They're like, Oh, I made it through the weekend. Awesome. But what you haven't realized is that you haven't gotten to the root cause of why you're struggling with consistency over the weekend. And if you leave that root cause there, that root is just going to spring back up. And so maybe you'll have a couple of weekends where you feel like you are really on target. And then you go back to those old behaviors. And you're like, what the heck, why did I go back to that? Why can I be consistent? Well, it's because you haven't taken care of the actual route, the actual thing that's causing the self sabotage those blind spots that we talked about. 

 

BAB’s coaching certification program 39:34

So in my coaching certification. So if you don't know I have a new coaching certification, where I'm actually teaching coaches how to be more effective coaches, it's been really fun. It's been awesome to work with coaches who really want to coach on a deeper level, they don't want to stay on the superficial level, they want to coach on a different level. But in that certification, I teach my coaches about the different levels of coaching. And so I'm going to walk through that here, because I think it will really help you in identifying coaches, who actually are able to help you through the root cause through the self sabotage through the blind spots, rather than just giving you a plan to follow and telling you to grit your teeth and do it. 

 

Accountability Moderator 40:19

So the first level of coaching is an accountability moderator. So this would be a type of coach who simply is there to provide external accountability. We tend to do better and stick with things better when we know we have to report to somebody. And so these types of coaches just essentially provide that external accountability and that can be a piece of coaching, but it's a very basic piece of coaching. 

 

The cheerleader 40:45

The next level would be the cheerleader. And I find lots of newer coaches especially become the cheerleader, and the cheerleader looks like you can do it. Oh, you did amazing this week, oh, good job, you've got this, keep going. Right? Very positive, we like to hear things like that, that's all great. It's not bad to do that. But we can see that just cheerleading somebody on doesn't provide a ton of value, and especially doesn't provide a ton of transformational value. 

 

The teacher 41:17

The next level from that is the teacher. Now the teacher has knowledge and can pass it on. Right? Being smart is not the same thing as being a good teacher. So in order to be a teacher, you have to be able to pass on that knowledge. Now, knowledge is important, we've talked about this a lot, you need to have some sort of knowledge. However, we also have realized that knowledge is not the linchpin for your transformation. Okay, think about it. If knowledge was the key, wouldn't everybody who had the same knowledge get the same result, wouldn't everybody who had the same content get the same result and, and they don't. And so we know that knowledge in and of itself is not the thing that provides transformation. Now, teaching is important. Being a good teacher as a coach is important. However, it is not the highest level of being able to coach. 

 

The advice giver 42:13

Up from there I am what I call the advice giver. So the advice giver, coach, shares what worked for them, and tells the client what to do and what not to do. Again, a lot of beginning coaches, including myself, I feel like started out in this realm, where they're like, I had a transformation. Here's what worked for me, let me tell you what to do based on my experience, and it comes from a good place, right? I had this when I had this transformation, I want you to have it too. So I'm gonna give you all the tools that I learned along the way, it's natural to want to share advice, it's natural to want to share ideas. Why do you think that isn't the most effective way to coach? There's a couple of reasons why it's not incredibly effective. Reason number one is that when that person leaves, you don't have any guidance. So we've talked about this before, if somebody is just telling you what to do, when you stop having someone tell you what to do, you don't have any tools or resources to be able to execute. Number two, what tends to happen is people hand over responsibility with their coach. Right? When a coach is telling me what to do, it's now their responsibility to get it right. And I kind of shirk that responsibility because that's what they're in charge of . If they tell me to do something, and it doesn't work, then it's the coach's fault and it moves that responsibility of the coach and people like that. Because we want to get rid of responsibility all the time. It's human nature to try and get rid of responsibility. But in the long run, if the responsibility lies with your coach, then how are you going to be successful after you don't have a coach. And then the last thing that I would say that happens when we have advice-givers coaching, or “coaching”, is that you lose the buy-in? Right, this is somebody else's idea. And that somebody else doesn't know your life. They don't know the ins and outs of your day, they don't know your time constraints, they don't know what you like, what you dislike, they don't know that you're struggling with your relationship with your partner, like they don't know any of those things. And so they may be creating this wonderful plan and giving it to you. But if it doesn't actually fit your life, it doesn't fit what you like, if it doesn't fit, you know, the things you're willing to put in the process, it's not going to be successful. So for those reasons, advice giving comes from a good place, but it doesn't actually create transformation. It's not actually transformational coaching. 

 

The transformational coach 44:45

So then what does the transformational coach look like? How do they coach differently? A transformational coach doesn't just tell you what to do. A transformational coach asks you really good questions, and allows you to arrive at your own conclusions of your next step. Creating buy-in from you, creating an empowered feeling that you are in control of your destiny, that the results come from inside of you, rather than from the coach that you've hired. And that's always my goal. I'm not your guru. I'm not gonna like waving my magic wand and like, it's not me that's creating the transformation. It's you. All of the skills and the knowledge and the execution comes from inside of you. You create the transformation. I am a facilitator. I'm on the outside giving you help, giving you support, asking you really good questions. But at the end of the day, you create the transformation. And I think that's a very different way of approaching things. And a lot of coaches, or a lot of coaches like, oh, when my clients do awesome, then it's, it's because of me, they did awesome because of me. Whereas I really look at it like, No, you did awesome, because that came from inside of you, I want to empower you to recognize that all the power comes from inside of you, my job as a coach is just help you tap into that all of that power was always there. It's in there right now, some of you are sitting here listening to this, and you don't feel like you have a whole lot of power. My job as a coach is to help you realize that it's already in there, and to help it come out. And that's what I love to do as a coach. 

 

Coaches make you feel empowered and able for you to reach your goals 46:28

So, to answer this question of how do you know if a coach has actually been helpful in identifying those blind spots and helping you move through self sabotage, I would ask questions that relate to things like, are they just being a cheerleader? Are they just telling you what to do? Are they just teaching you? Or are they actually providing you transformational coaching? If so, then yeah, they're going to be able to help you through that self sabotage, they're gonna be able to help you through those blind spots. And they're going to do it in a way that makes you feel empowered and able to reach your goals, even after you're done working with them. 

 

BAB’s coaches certification program 47:04

Now, some of you are listening to this, and you are coaches yourself, or you've wanted to become a coach. If so, and you're like, I want to learn how to do that Amber, I want to learn how to become a transformational coach and really coach on that deeper level, then that's exactly who we have created this certification for. So if that's you, you're a coach, or you want to be a coach, and you want to coach on a deeper level, and you want to hear about the next time we run our certification program, which will likely be in the winter, go to bicepsafterbabies.com/cert, c-e-r-t, and put your name on the list. And that's who will let us know when we open up that certification. But the whole process is about teaching you how to become a real transformational coach, how to really create those results, and help your clients create those results in their journey. 

 

Q6: How to know when you should fire a coach or switch coaches or be done needing coaching 47:56

Okay, we're going long, so I'm going to try and make these ones a little bit shorter. But I have so much to say on this topic. Okay, next question, how to know when you should fire a coach or switch coaches or be done needing coaching. So, first of all, we talked a little bit about that. So I'm not going to dive deep into it. But we have to remember that there is a break between the responsibility of the coach and the responsibility of the client, and that there was a line where we both have to meet, right? The coach has to do some things a coach has responsibility, but they cannot go past that line into what is the client's responsibility in the journey. And so I always come back to this idea of making sure that you're fulfilling your responsibility in the program or in the coaching. And if you don't know what your responsibility is in the coaching, that's a really great question to ask your coach, like, what is my responsibility to make sure I'm upholding my end of the bargain so that you can uphold your end of the bargain? Now, I have “fired” a couple of coaches in my day. So I'll tell you a little bit about my experience in doing that. And you can probably learn a little bit from that experience. So I told you about my first business coach that I hired. And I listened to her podcast, and I really resonated with it. And I ended up firing her after about four months, maybe five. And the reason that I ended up firing her was because she wasn't an advice giver. Basically, she would just like to tell me what to do. And maybe you're like, Well, that sounds amazing Amber, Why don't you like that? But what I found was that her advice ran counter to my intuition. It ran counter to my gut, and it ran counter to how I wanted to run my business. And this is for any of you guys who are, you know, vetting coaches or coaches yourself, this is one of the things that you come up with, if your whole style of coaching is giving people advice, is that if it doesn't jive with them, or doesn't, you know, jive with their intuition, like you're going to lose them. And that's what happened. She? Well, I won't, I won't say specifically. But she kept telling me to do things that I was like, I just didn't feel comfortable with and after like the third or fourth time of her doing that I was like No, like, this is this isn't working, you're just keep telling like this is your only strategy is just like, tell me to do these things that I don't feel completely comfortable with. It's time to be done. So because she was telling me to ignore my gut. That to me was a sign that this was not a good fit for me. And my business coach now is like completely the opposite of that. He would never tell me exactly what I would do. But he helps me to figure out what is in alignment with my values and what is in alignment with what I want to create. And he asked me really good questions. So I definitely saw the difference between hiring a business coach who just told me what to do, versus hiring an actual transformational business coach who really worked on a deeper level. So that was the first one. The second one I fired, like fired is like such a mean word. But I stopped with my lifting coach after about two years. And for that one, it was just because I was ready to do something else. Like, there was nothing, I loved her. She was awesome. I got so much value from her. But I was just ready to do the next step, I was ready to do something else. And so that's when, you know, I stopped with coaching. 

 

Getting value from coaching 51:12

So a question that I asked myself, and that you could be asking yourself as well is, am I still receiving value from the coaching? Am I getting the value? If the answer is yes, and you're still receiving value from the coaching, then you stay with the coach. If the answer is no, I'm not receiving value. The first question I would ask myself is, am I fulfilling my responsibilities as a client? If not, then that's where you start. But if you are and you have that conversation with your coach, like, what are my responsibilities, and you're fulfilling them, Well, then the coaching may not be a good fit for you. And you know, there's nothing wrong with that. Not every coach, hey, I am not the right coach for everybody. That would be silly for me to think that I was the exact right coach for every single person on the planet. Like that's silly. But I am the right coach for a lot of people. And those people are the ones who find me and resonate with what I teach and the ones who come into my program. 

 

Macros 101 waitlist 52:07

And if you aren't on the waitlist yet for Macros 101, you can get on it by going to bicepsafterbabies.com/waitlist, we will be opening doors to Macros 101 for the last time in 2021 on August 30 so it's coming up. Macros 101 is my signature coaching program. So if you have a result that you would like to achieve, a goal that you would like to achieve, and you want to have access to transformational coaching, like I've talked about in this podcast episode that you are done with, like somebody telling you what to do. And instead, you want to learn on a deeper level that you really want to get to the root of what's keeping you stuck and what's holding you back and be able to work through that with coaches who are trained to be able to do that. That's exactly what we do inside of Macros 101. It is an inside out transformative process. I know it sounds really basic, because I suck at naming things. It's named Macros 101, it really doesn't do it justice for all the things that we do inside of it. Yes, it is. I will teach you how to use macro counting. Yes, I teach you how to use it as a tool and customize it to your journey. Yes, I teach you how to become a macro scientist. And in addition to all of those things, it's so much more and we really get to that deeper level of what's keeping you stuck. And that's what I love most about coaching clients inside of Macros 101. So again get on the waitlist if you're not on those on the waitlist we make sure you know first about when we open doors, any bonuses that we have for those people on the waitlist, so it definitely pays off to add yourself to the waitlist. So go to bicepsafterbabies.com/waitlist. And I can't wait to see those of you who join on August 30. 

 

Takeaway 53:52

I hope that this episode was really helpful for you. I hope that it gave you some things to consider and think about in terms of hiring an effective coach. Thanks to Jamie for sending in that question. I can't always answer all of your guys' questions on the podcast but when ones come through that I think will really benefit everybody. I'm happy to do episodes like this where I can answer whatever questions are on your mind. Thanks for joining me on this episode of biceps after babies radio. I'm Amber now go out and be strong because remember my friend you can do anything.

 

Outro

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