Ep #22: How Coaching Frameworks Transform Your Business

Have you ever been the kind of coach who finds yourself coaching by the seat of your pants? Relying on intuition, it's amazing, and I'm all for it. But if that's the only way that you're coaching, then it can kind of feel like you're jumping off a cliff without a net with every coaching session, right?

A lot has changed in the expectation of clients in today's world. But often, how coaching is still being taught and done is stuck in the Wayback Machine from when coaching first emerged as a real profession 20 and 30 years ago.

I'm Kendall. In today's episode, I'm taking you behind the scenes of what coaching frameworks are, how to self-assess if your coaching is, I'm sorry to say, stuck in that old school style, which may be limiting your ability to attract and sign on clients. Plus, I'm going to share a few essential key things to consider about using what I call framework style coaching to get the types of results clients expect today. It's all here for you in this episode of The Money Coach School Podcast. Let's dive in.

Welcome to The Money Coach School Podcast. To really excel at coaching women, you have to be skilled, confident, and even fearless at money coaching. If you're passionate about women holding genuine money power and love supporting women entrepreneurs, then this is the show for you. Now, here's your host, money feminist Kendall SummerHawk.

Hello, beautiful coach. I am delighted to be here sharing space with you. I am so excited for several reasons. One is I bought a new horse. I'm just like elevating, walking around on air. He is the most beautiful, bay Spanish Andalusian. I am over the moon in love with him.

Now if you've known me for more than a hot minute, then you know I am everything and all things horses, and in particular the Spanish horse or PRE, as they're called. I have been totally obsessed with Spanish horses for the past couple of decades and equally obsessed with riding dressage and with creating relationships with my horses through what's called groundwork, which then leads to liberty training.

Now I know this may not be fascinating if you're not a horse crazed girl like I am, but I'll just say this. Spending hours every day with my horses is my number one freedom goal. So that's what I do. We now have three horses, all Spanish PREs. So they keep me busy. I also have my fabulous horse assistant who helps take care of them as well.

Every day my horses teach me about leadership, clarity, mastery, simplicity, presents, self-regulating my emotions, and did I mention leadership? Horses are always looking for leadership. In the absence of it, they will take it for themselves.

What that means is being present, settling into yourself, keeping your thoughts and your mental imagery really focused on what you want, and really using your energy as a primary tool. Sounds a lot like coaching, doesn't it? That's what sparked what we're going to talk about here today, which is dialing in on answering the question should your coaching follow a framework?

Now the other reason I'm so excited is I have a brand new free download for you called 31 Coaching Questions That Work With Every Client, and I'll put a link for it in the show notes. This is not your typical random list of coaching questions. You know me, and you know that the content I share with you is of a much higher caliber than that.

So what I did in this free download is I outlined for you four distinct styles of coaching questions and why each works exceptionally well to create all that transformation that you desire for your clients. Of course, I included over 31 coaching questions so you can see each of the four distinct styles of coaching in action.

Wherever you currently are in your coaching journey, whether you're just beginning or you're already seasoned, I created this download to inspire a new level for you in your coaching skills. Exactly why are your coaching skills so important in today's world? Because you can't succeed beyond your current coaching skills. It's so true. Let me say it again. You cannot succeed beyond your current coaching skills.

I so want you to succeed. I want you to pop the champagne, or in my case that would be organic, sparkling cider, celebrating you and your success as a coach. So check out that new free download 31 Coaching Questions That Work With Every Client.

Now let's talk about frameworks. I love frameworks. I love them for training my horses. I love them for coaching. I love them for coaching on money. I love them for running my business, for creating content. I love frameworks for just about everything.

For your coaching, what I mean by a framework is having a framework within a coaching session. Then also when you zoom out a bit and you look at how your coaching sessions are flowing one after the other, should you also be following an overall framework? Of course, I think the answer is yes. I see a lot of confusion about this in the online coaching space, especially if you're coaching women entrepreneurs.

The confusion comes because as the coaching industry has evolved and progressed, the original way of coaching stayed static. Sure the argument can be made that people are still people. While I agree with that, what's changed are people's expectations.

Some of the key factors that have changed so dramatically since coaching first started as a profession, as a business 30 years ago, is that the pace of life and business has quickened. People are now much more exposed to self-growth than they were when coaching first emerged, and people have higher expectations of themselves and higher expectations of the results that they want to achieve more so than ever before.

The biggest change by far is the skyrocketing numbers of women starting and running businesses. 30 years ago, sure, women were in business for themselves, but the opportunities were much more limited. A lot of women focused on multilevel marketing as their business opportunity. Without social media back then, women just did not have exposure to the wealth of success and potential that is now so fully visible and available. So we're talking about a surge in a whole new market, women entrepreneurs, that scarcely existed 20 and 30 years ago.

What this means for you is two things. Number one, the landscape has changed so dramatically in terms of opportunities for you to coach. The numbers of women in business are going to keep skyrocketing. I just saw statistic this last week, and I don't remember where I saw it. But it said that in the next six years, half of the women in the United States will be a one person business owner. That is tremendous opportunity for us inside the women's entrepreneurial coaching space.

The second thing is the old days of just being able to ask a client what do you want to coach on, those days are gone. That style of coaching, what I call passive coaching, is just not going to fly. Which means if you're trying to make significant income as a coach using that style, it's going to get harder and harder to attract and retain paying clients at all, and almost impossible to attract and retain clients at high ticket price points. Which is where you're going to want to be to meet your income and your lifestyle goals.

Women entrepreneurs have needs and expectations about the coaching that they want to experience that the old school passive style just can't deliver on. So to be clear, the old school style of coaching that I'm referring to is based on a paradigm where there's no real framework to the coaching. It's very much what just comes up in the moment. The coach does not offer coaching exercises or very rarely does that. The coach doesn't offer ideas. The coach does not utilize a framework. The coach usually does not present options, and the coach is looking to the client to lead.

Now what I experienced in my coaching business early on, and I've been in business now 24 years. Oh my God. Was that this style of coaching can take up a lot of time without any real results to show for that time invested. It can be really frustrating for the client. You can tell if this is the style of coaching that you've been doing if you're asking your client, so what do you want to coach on? Or the client has something that they want to accomplish, and you're asking well, how do you want to get there?

Questions like that tell you I'm sorry, you're in that old school passive style of coaching because you're following and maybe somewhat guiding, but really the client is leading with this type of coaching. That, my beautiful coach, is what makes it very difficult to market and attract new clients and to really deliver the kind of results that a client expects in today's market. Plus, it causes clients to bail on coaching with you. It causes a whole host of other issues.

I believe that this passive style of coaching originated from the therapy world, which is where coaching kind of came from anyway, obviously without it being therapy. So it makes sense that old school style is passive, taking a lot of time in sessions, which means very long coaching sessions. I'm not a fan of those at all. It means taking lots and lots and lots of sessions.

I see it causing a lot of doubt and a lack of clarity for coaches because they're left feeling unsure of what they're supposed to be doing to support a client, especially a woman entrepreneur in moving forward. So let's switch gears and contrast that to coaching with the framework.

Framework coaching does not mean you're constantly telling a client what to do. That's not even coaching. That's consulting. What framework coaching is, is having a process or a series of steps, a framework, that you're going to coach your clients through to create results.

The results are, of course, going to be individual to each person that you're coaching, but the results will be happening within your framework because of your framework. What this gives you is incredible clarity about your coaching. It creates a positive ripple effect that impacts your marketing and your ability to attract and sign on great paying clients in truly phenomenal ways.

You're creating clear results your client wants. So now your marketing can speak to those results. You're feeling confident because you know in your heart that you can fully deliver. Because you have a framework that breaks down achieving that result into specific steps you know will get her there. It's really as simple as that.

Let me give you an example. What nearly every woman entrepreneur client you are ever going to coach is going to say if she wants to, quote, make more money, end quote. But it isn't just make more money is it? They want to work with clients they love. They want time freedom to live and love their lifestyle without being strapped to their business. They want to stop undercharging, because trust me every woman entrepreneur, no matter what her industry, is undercharging.

They want to feel inspired and connected to the service that they're offering, whatever that is. They want to leap out of a plateau. They want to keep all of the parts of their business that work and release all of the parts that don't work. They want to create breakthroughs around money and to evolve in their relationship with money.

So when you, as a coach for women entrepreneurs, have a framework, you have a set of steps you're coaching your client through. You're kicking off your coaching with money mindset and lots of coaching on boundaries, on saying no, on what to say yes to so that her day to day is in alignment with her vision.

Maybe your framework includes steps like coaching her to step up into a new higher level of clients, what I call diamond clients. Your framework includes a process to uncover what her best service offerings can be. Your framework includes coaching exercises to support her in ramping up her pricing. Having a framework like this one I just gave you as a quick example is how your client feels empowered, courageous, and open to what is possible for herself, which is so exciting. So exciting for her. It's exciting for you as her coach.

Now, when I started using a framework like this in my coaching, I quickly made the leap from charging just a few hundred dollars per month to immediately charging $10,000 per year per client. I made that leap literally overnight. That was a huge, huge leap. But I could do it because I had the framework, which supported both myself and my client’s emotional confidence. Also the framework was something I knew I could lean on to get results for my clients.

Now, I know that $10,000 per year is common now, but back then it wasn't. So since then my private coaching fees, of course, have increased by multiples of that original 10k amount, but the framework has stayed the same. I did not have to add more, do more, or stress out. I delivered the framework over and over again.

I got more and more confident in the results it produced, and I kept raising my coaching fees, launching coaching groups, coaching in workshops, VIP days, retreats. Basically all of the exciting ways to make money as a coach. Frameworks are so successful to use that they're the backbone as to how I've made nearly $30 million dollars since 2008 in my coaching business.

Now, you may be asking, well Kendall, what does framework coaching look like? So here's a simple example. Inside of my certification trainings what framework coaching looks like is students are getting certified in the framework. The framework has a series of steps they're getting trained to deliver. Then within each step, there are various coaching exercises or visualizations, coaching questions, different things that they're learning how to lead a client through.

What makes this a true framework is that each step creates what I call micro results for clients. Those micro results just unfold naturally and easily. Often for the client, they feel quite magical, which is really awesome to see. But here's what makes a powerful framework so effective. It isn't rigid. There's flexibility because you're coaching humans. If you're coaching women entrepreneurs, you cannot be cookie cutter. You're following a proven pathway, but you're also always, always integrating emotion and alignment for your client at every single step.

This is the way that women entrepreneurs want to be coached. They want you to show up as a leader with your framework, and they want to feel that it's personalized for them.

Now I've been certifying women as coaches since 2009. So for about 15 years. The success of our certification students happens for them because they use framework coaching. Their coaching isn't the masculine all business. It's this beautiful integration of saying to a client I have a framework that I'm going to coach you through, and I'm going to coach you through the emotions, the soul part every step of the way.

So to wrap up, if you're looking for a way to get results for clients so that you feel amazing about your coaching, so that your clients are thrilled, and so that you feel you have a foundation under your feet when you're marketing and attracting clients, then definitely consider framework coaching. Whether you're using my framework, or frameworks I should say, that are inside of my certified coach training programs, or you're using your own, I really want to encourage you to embrace and do this. It truly is the miracle behind all of the money and the impact that I've made as a coach, which is why I believe in it so, so much.

Okay, so be sure to check out the new free download I have for you 31 Coaching Questions That Work With Every Client. Again, I'll put a link for that in the show notes. Remember, inside this download it's not just a list of questions. I outlined for you four distinct styles of coaching questions, and why each works exceptionally well to create all that transformation that you desire for your clients. Of course, I give you the over 31 coaching questions as well.

As always, I am so honored to share space with you here inside our episode together. If you feel inspired to leave a five star review, that would mean the world to me. All right. Thank you, my beautiful coach. Have a fantastic week as a coach, and I'll see you here next week in our next episode.

Thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode of The Money Coach School Podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, make sure you follow so you never miss an episode. Also, I would so love and appreciate if you would leave a 5-star review. Your review supports women just like you in discovering all of the juicy tips and insights I’m sharing here on how to coach women on money.

And if you want to learn how to excel at coaching women on money, definitely go to KendallSummerHawk.com and check out the wealth of money coach trainings that we have for you. Thanks so much for being part of this money coaching movement and for tuning into the show every week.