Ep #31: Over-Giving vs. Over Delivery: A Vital Distinction That Frees You To Grow Your Coaching Business

Hey coach, if you've ever been tempted to put more and more into your coaching packages then you've probably been hooked into over giving. Over giving is a huge issue in the coaching space because it leads to burnout. It leads to overwhelm for you and for your clients, and it severely limits your ability to grow your coaching business.

I'm Kendall. Join me for today's episode where I'm going to get you crystal clear on the distinction between over giving and over delivery because they are not the same thing. Once you understand the distinction, you can free yourself from that exhausting loop of giving, giving, giving, and instead open up to fully embracing all of the value you bring to your coaching. So if you want to grow your coaching business without burnout, this is the episode for you. 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 have been so looking forward to bringing you today's episode. What we're going to do together today is get 100% clarity on the difference between over giving versus over delivery. Because from what I hear from my certification students all the time is it sounds like this has not been clear for many of you. That over giving and over delivery are often seen as the same thing, which they are not.

Because they're so often mistakenly seen as one in the same, what happens is then you don't give yourself the opportunity to engage in a business growth strategy that feels so good and works incredibly well over time to bring in high quality clients that you love working with.

So today, we're going to get that clarity so that you see the distinction between over giving and over delivering. One’s good, one is not good. You're going to know the difference here in just a few minutes. Then I'm going to give you ideas on how you can incorporate one of these into your coaching business so that you're making more money, you're working less, and you're truly loving the level of value and contribution that you're bringing forward for your clients.

Now before we dive in, I want to mention that we're going to be opening up the next round of Secret Energy of Money. This is money mentoring with me and a small intimate group coaching container where we go beyond just money mindset. Secret Energy of Money is where you're learning incredible growth strategies with money. You're discovering those deep seeded money blocks, and you are ridding yourself of them once and for all.

You're learning my practical strategies for how to think about money in ways that support you in making more money, keeping more money, which I am such a huge fan of, and increasing your capacity to grow your business. Because often your present self-concept about you and money is keeping an invisible lid, an invisible ceiling on your income.

So Secret Energy of Money is open to women at all levels of income. So there is no gateway or barrier there. The center point of secret energy of money is you're getting the closest proximity access to me as your money coach. Our focus is eliminating the invisible barrier between you, inner worth, and greater income in your business. So if that sounds intriguing to you, be sure to get on the waitlist over at secretenergyofmoney.com so that you're first to know when we open up enrollment, which is going to happen here in just a few days. I'll make sure and link to that in the show notes.

All right. So let's start with getting crystal clear on over giving versus over delivering because one is a great thing that you want to bring more fully into your coaching business. The other is something you want to avoid engaging in. Otherwise you're just going to burn out and feel pressured or stressed about your business, which is totally unnecessary.

Here's the distinction. Over delivery is when you create an amazing experience for your clients. I remember when I bought my Mercedes. The dealer gives you champagne. They have fabulous coffee drinks available. I don't drink coffee, but guess what? They had the most beautiful hot chocolate. I loved it.

Or think about if you've ever gone to a really wonderful hotel. They may give you chocolates with your turndown service or have fresh fruit waiting for you in the room. I always notice the hangers. I'm sort of a hanger geek. So the hangers in the really nice hotels, they're all beautiful wood instead of metal or plastic.

I remember when we went to Maui one time, and we stayed at the Four Seasons. Beautiful hotel. We were greeted as we walked into this open, beautiful area. So even before we registered, we were greeted with a person there giving us flower leis around our neck, finger bowls, and little towels we could wash our hands with even before we checked in. I loved it.

So over delivery is really creating that gorgeous experience for your clients. I like to think of it as creating memories. You're creating an experience where the client feels incredibly valued. They feel important. I'll share some more ideas with you on how you can do this in your coaching business in just a few moments.

So now let's compare that to over giving. Over giving has a completely different feel or vibe to it. Over giving feels smothering. It is overly solicitous. It's too much. It's too much for both the giver and the receiver. It's draining. It's exhausting. If I'm the receiver, I feel like somebody's trying to put clothes on me that are just too tight. It just doesn't feel good. It has a feeling of pressure or just plain overwhelm.

So, for example, I remember in the early years of my coaching business, I hired a life coach to help me with some mental emotional health issues. She was an over giver. How that manifested was that the sessions were supposed to be a certain length of time, which I had blocked out in my calendar. But then she would go over and over and over and over. I felt like I was trapped in every single coaching session.

I don't remember how long they were supposed to be, I think 45 minutes. Then they would be an hour, and then 75 minutes, 90 minutes. I felt so trapped. Like I couldn't escape. I just wanted to get off the freaking phone and end that coaching session. But she kept asking questions and kept going. It was super uncomfortable for me. It happened so often that I finally stopped coaching with her. So she lost me as a client.

She's giving and giving, but I didn't want all of that time. I didn't value it. I felt pressured. I started thinking you know what? This coach has zero sensitivity and has zero boundaries.

So the distinction in a nutshell is this over giving is pressure. It comes from a needy place. A place where the giver is trying too hard. They're not aware of the receiver’s feelings. Over giving, it's a boundary issue. Contrast it to over delivery where what is being delivered feels valued. It comes from a place of generosity. The receiver feels valued and does not feel pressured. The receiver feels delighted and not overwhelmed. The receiver feels special and appreciated, not smothered.

So now let's talk about what happens for the giver. Over giving, because it is coming from a needy place. It's coming from a place of people pleasing or trying to manipulate someone into feeling a certain way about the giver. It's exhausting. It can quickly lead to resentment.

Because when you peel back the layers here, the over giver is over giving because they want something back in return. If they don't get that back in return, either get it back fast enough or in enough volume, then they easily flip or switch into resentment. It's very much a victim way of operating because the giver quickly can start feeling like the victim from that icky place of resentment and not getting their needs met. It's also coming from a place of let me give and give so that I'm seen as good enough. So, again, there's a neediness to it. That's icky.

In coaching, it creates a really messed up dynamic with clients and makes it very difficult to attract high quality clients. It's overcompensating for a feeling of lack somewhere inside of the giver. It's the giver not fundamentally believing in the value of what they're offering. So they overcompensate with more and more and more.

I believe that over giving is centered on the giver, not the receiver. I know for over givers, they initially may say oh, no, no, no Kendall. I just really care. Especially in my sacred money archetypes system, I'm speaking to you my beautiful nurturers and connectors. You know you can slip into over giving so easily. When you do, it's not truly coming from a caring place. It's coming from a place of not feeling enough, just as you are.

So contrast to over delivering. So for the deliverer, over delivering, it feels generous. It feels joyful because you know that what you're delivering is coming from a place of not needing anything back in return. Now practically speaking, over delivery is delivering more than the client purchased and not expecting anything back. Energetically, it's not coming from a place of lack. It's coming from a place of abundance. It's very centered on the receiver.

So that's the opposite of over giving, right? Over giving is focused on the giver, over delivery is focused on the receiver, I think of over delivery as recognizing with my actions that my clients are valued and special. Over delivery is saying I see your value. I'm able to do that because I see my own value. Whereas over giving is saying I don't see my own value. So let me try to fill that hole by over giving.

I think that's such an important distinction because when I am receiving over delivery, I feel valued and seen. Believe me, I love that special hot chocolate in the champagne at the Mercedes dealership, absolutely loved it. When I'm receiving over giving, I feel smothered. I feel unseen. I feel invalidated actually.

So why does all this matter? Why is it so important for you to understand the distinction between over giving versus over delivering? Here's the reason why. Because over giving repels clients. It exhausts you, and it just keeps you in a cycle of not good enoughness. Compared to over delivery, which is light and joyful. It takes a little forethought, not much, but basically no energy from you. It attracts amazing clients who get great results with you in your coaching.

The mistake I see coaches making is when they confuse over giving and over delivering, or more specifically when they think they're the same thing. They're not the same thing. So then what happens is the coach wants to pull back or to put up barriers between themselves and their clients.

For example, inside of our certification trainings, we give a certain number of private coaching sessions. But we also encourage our students that if they need additional support, all they have to do is ask, and we are happy to help them. That's over delivery. We love it. We never worry that we're going to be taken advantage of because we know that most people are respectful of our coach’s time, and they're not going to abuse it.

On the very, very, very rare occasion when that might have happened, we just handle it, and we handle it easily and with respect. So we over deliver in the private coaching that we offer rather than saying oh no. You only get X number of private sessions, and that's all there is. We don't need to put up that barrier. So we get to stay in this lovely energy of generosity and caring.

Another example. Over giving would be running over on coaching session times, which we don't do. Over delivery is offering an additional coaching session when a client needs it. Do you feel the difference? By the way, I just did an episode here on the podcast. I think it's episode number 30, on how to end your coaching sessions on time. So I'll link to that episode here in the show notes.

Let me give you another example. Over giving is stuffing your coaching containers full of access to you, full of too many coaching sessions, full of too many assessments or lengthy articles you want a client to read are lots of in between session work you want them to do.

Contrast that to over delivery, which is, for example, instead of giving all kinds of access to 24/7, which is ridiculous. You don't need to do that. Instead saying we're going to coach whatever it is for you, two or three times a month. If you need a special session, just let me know. We'll make that happen. So the 24 by seven access with no parameters around it, it may sound generous, but it actually isn't. It's just plain over giving.

Instead offering what you feel is the right amount of sessions and then being willing to slip in an extra session here or there, that's over delivering. Awesome, right? It's pure generosity, and it's coming from a place of valuing you, yourself, and your energy and your time.

Now I promised I would share ideas on ways you can create an experience where the client feels incredibly valued. They feel important, where you're creating memories. So here are just a few ideas that we've used in my own coaching and certification trainings.

So every client who comes into either of my certification trainings gets a hand signed thank you card from me. I love doing these. Every week I do them. In the higher end certification training, they get a special email from one of my coaches checking in to make a personal connection and to make sure that certification student knows what to do first so that they can get off to a great start.

Every client who comes into either of my certification trainings also gets a thank you call if they're in the US or Canada. So if they're in North America. If they're outside of North America, they get a personal thank you email. This all comes from one of my coaches. So this is not cookie cutter. It's not automated. We do it manually with one of my coaches who does it.

Another example is I used to run between six and eight large workshops a year, and our goodie bags were legendary. Legendary. We stuffed them with gorgeous custom made journals, a wonderful pen, wonderful old dark chocolate that was embossed and branded. The label was all branded to the event. It was really cool. The bag itself was a keeper.

For my high end group coaching programs, we would have typically a gift from Tiffany's for each client or a handblown glass heart that were favorites of mine that I would select. Every single one was selected specifically for each client. So something really special that was memorable, and it created a wonderful anchor. The whole point was to create a memorable experience.

So to go into our wrap up here, first be honest. Notice if you're an over giver. If you have been then recognize that and start exploring what need all of that over giving is trying to fulfill. Trust me, no amount of over giving is ever going to heal that need. So you are far better off being able to name it and then look for other ways outside of your coaching clients to feel fulfilled. How do I know? Because I used to be an over giver. I get it. I really do.

The power shift I made to stop doing that was to first recognize that all that over giving was coming from a place of not feeling good enough. Then I listed the ways that I was over giving. It actually wasn't a very long list because I only had a few ways that I was over giving. But oh my gosh, I over gave in those ways all of the time.

So I listed them. Then I wrote down next to each one what I was going to do instead. Mostly that involves creating a new boundary with myself or talking through with my team what I was planning so they could help course correct me if I wasn't seeing where I might be slipping into over giving again. So by doing the internal work, looking for ways to have my needs fulfilled outside of my coaching, and by having a written list of alternate behaviors and boundaries and decisions, it really didn't take very long to break that over giving habit.

Once I did that, I immediately was able to start rapidly growing and scaling my coaching business. Switching from over giving to over delivering is how I went from a stagnant income in my coaching to leaping into seven figures and staying there year after year after year after year.

That's because when you're over giving, you know you can't sustain that. So you subconsciously and consciously you put a lid. You put a ceiling on your growth. But once you shift out of that, and you just focus on over delivering, which is so easy to do. You can do it in a very leveraged way, in a very organized, easy way that takes up very little of your time. Sometimes none of your time. When you switch into that, all of a sudden you rip the ceiling off of how much money you can make and how much you can grow and scale your business.

So do that first. Get really clear if you're an over giver. Next take a look at where you can over deliver in your business because you want to over deliver and really have fun with this. There are so many ways you can over deliver that are either free or really expensive and yet have a huge impact for your clients.

So, for example, I love sending out these really pretty rose quartz stones with an inspiring word engraved in gold on them. I love buying gorgeous journals for my clients and a really nice pen. You can send flowers. Of course my go to is always a thank you card, which I'm so well known for. I love them. I love writing them. I love sending them.

Other ways can be offering a surprise PDF download or a downloadable audio or a video, something special that your client will appreciate. Remember that over delivery is not usually more of your time. It's more of your attention. It's your thoughtfulness, and that's really what shows that you care.

So a quick example. Inside of certification, we send out twice a month an email to everyone, whether they've already graduated or not. We send it out to everyone with a well thought out accountability coaching question that gets our certification students and alumni thinking about their mindset and what they're capable of. We rotate the question. So it's not the same question every time. Each student gets that email from one of my coaches. So it's planned, but it's not generic.

One of the other ways I always over deliver is to go really deep with my coaching and teaching. My work is thorough, and it is well thought out. No fluff. I love to include lots of examples. So for me over giving used to look like just more and more and more. Once I kicked that habit, I could embrace that over delivery is all about quality, not quantity.

That's why I go deep here inside of the podcast and in my free trainings. I don't hold back. I go deep because I believe in over delivery, not only because it feels generous, which I love. I'm a Taurus. So we're naturally generous by nature, but it's also a great business growth strategy.

Remember that over delivery does not mean more for you to do. In fact, it's far, far less than over giving. But more importantly, oh over delivering makes you and your business delightful for your clients to be a part of. As far as over giving goes, well kiss that goodbye because it's time to be done with that.

Here's what I want to leave you with your enough just as you are. I really want you to take that in. You are enough just as you are. All right, thank you for listening and be sure to drop me an email at podcast@kendallsummerhawk.com. Ask me any question you want about money, about pricing, and, of course, ask me about all things coaching. I am here for you. I will see you in next week's episode. My love to you. Bye, bye.

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