Ep #55: 4 Key Goals That Will Improve Every Coaching Session You Deliver

Hey coach. Have you ever felt a little fumbling when you're coaching? Maybe wondering if you're asking the right coaching questions. Listen, at the heart of the success that I've achieved as a coach was the decision to become masterful in the craft of coaching.

I'm Kendall. Tune in to today's episode where I have three insights about mastering your coaching skills that have worked for me to create a multi-million dollar coaching business. Plus, I'm sharing the eight things I let go of in order to release self-doubt about my coaching back in those early years. The results of which are consistently signing on high-ticket clients, filling high-ticket groups, and being recognized as a leader in the online coaching space.

I suspect you're going to find some, if not all, of these eight things I let go of may apply to you as well. So let's find out. 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'm so glad you're here with me today. I want to shift gears with you just a bit here today in this episode and probably in the next few upcoming episodes as well. When I first started the podcast, my vision was clear, and it still is to this day. 

I wanted to open up the conversation about money, both your dynamic with money and supporting you creating a healthy, thriving dynamic with money that allows you to make, keep, and have more. I wanted to support you in coaching other women on money because you working on your own dynamic with money makes you the perfect coach for others who may be just a step or two behind you.

I wanted to talk about mastering your coaching skills because, first of all, it's really, really hard to be successful as a coach if you're feeling unclear about how to be powerful in your coaching, how to create results for clients in very short coaching sessions, and how to ask the right questions, the breakthrough questions, the tough questions, how to trust your intuition, how to hold your clients as powerful no matter what, and how to avoid what I call baby coaching, meaning coaching at just the surface level of action. 

So throughout this past year of the podcast, I've taken you through these topics, how to think about money differently, how to coach other women on her money thinking, and how to master your coaching skills. I think of this as like creating mini seasons. Today and for the next few episodes, we're going to focus on mastering your coaching skills. 

Every new coach wants to know, Kendall, what are the coaching questions to ask? It's so tempting to just go download questions from the internet, but that is a big mistake. Just having a list of questions, it doesn't make someone a coach because it's just a list. It's not a method. It's not a framework for how you coach, meaning it's just a bunch of questions without understanding or knowing where you're leading someone with your coaching. 

So I have heard untrained or insecure coaches, if I'm honest, ask questions that create confusion or take forever to get any type of result, or never create a transformation, or where they're just too basic and unhelpful to really make a difference for a client.

That's not the type of coach you aspire to be. Since you follow me in this podcast, that tells me that you want to be coaching women, that's what we're all about here, and more specifically, women entrepreneurs. That means asking questions that you know are going to create transformation. You want to be the coach with unstoppable confidence in your coaching skills.

You want to be the coach who has the power to create transformation for your clients in every coaching session. You want to be the coach who gets results with your clients. You want to be the coach who experiences referrals coming to you. You want to be the coach who gains amazing testimonials, which are priceless for your business.

On the money side, you want to be the coach who experiences a highly profitable business, making more than enough money to create what I call an unbreakable nest egg, and to have that kind of cash coming into your business that allows you to live life on your terms.

Yes, you need money skills, like what I share here and in my money trainings. Yes, you need great offers. But without mastering your coaching skills, none of that matters because your coaching skills are your craft. They're your foundation. They are literally what you do. A lot of coaches are flying by the seat of their pants with just a list of downloaded questions and a vague idea that they're supposed to make the coaching all about feelings. That is not a coaching method. That is what I call winging it coaching.

I think the symptoms of winging it coaching are pretty clear and obvious. You'll find yourself in a coaching session with a client, and it's like you can't even hear what they're saying because you're having one of those brain freeze moments where you're thinking oh my God, what do I say? What do I ask right now?

Or you're second guessing yourself after every coaching session. Oh my gosh, do I know what that feels like? That used to happen to me all of the time. It's where you wish you had said something different, or you're telling yourself you could have done better, or you should have asked this, or you should have asked that, or you hold yourself back from speaking your truth. That was also something that I used to do in the early days of my coaching.

Or you have clients dropping out of coaching, or you feel drained because you're thinking that you have to be on every minute or offering lots of advice, which by the way is not coaching. So you want to avoid all of that happening and avoid putting at risk the success of you being a pro at coaching and avoid putting at risk making money in your business.

I just had such a positive example of this happen this week. I was delivering a private VIP day for one of my clients who is an experienced business owner in an entirely different industry, but she's very new as a coach. She's in one of my coach certification trainings. She's learned my courageous coaching method, and she really took to heart my emphasis on mastering your coaching skills as a foundational way of building a coaching business. It really matters to her because she's someone who cares deeply about clients, their results, and the experience they have.

Now her goal, maybe you can relate this to this, her goal is to create a multi six-figure coaching business working just about 20 hours a week. So she knows that client referrals matter, and those come from clients getting results. So by paying attention to her coaching skills and setting the goal for herself to master them, she's already seeing results.

She signed on her first coaching client, wait for it, at $9,500 for a six-month coaching agreement. Amazing, right? She didn't use social media. She did not make videos. She just connected with her ideal client. She had a conversation. She used her coaching skills inside of that conversation, and she enrolled her client. Done. I am so freaking proud of her.

By the way, I will link to the Courageous Coaching Method training in the show notes. You can check that out. This is the same training that she's had, or you can go to kendalsommerhawk.com/CC, which stands for courageous coaching.

All right. So I want to dive into three insights that are going to help you here. Insight number one, courageous coaching is a skill you can master and use for a lifetime. I am absolutely convinced that I've created my success because of my skill as a coach using my courageous coaching method. I mean, let's get real. I did not jump into seven figures as a coach by being an amazing marketer with a big list, quite the opposite. I'm an okay marketer, and I have a very small list. I've always had a very small list. What I did was focus on mastering my coaching.

That meant, and here's a list of eight things that I let go of or prioritize. So that meant number one, not holding back from asking the tough questions. By tough, I mean insightful, going deep. Okay. Number two, no longer mincing around with my coaching, worrying about hurting someone's feelings.

Number three, I let go of fear that I might say the wrong thing. When you know a structure, when you have a foundation, like what I teach in courageous coaching method, when you have that, there is no wrong thing. There's literally no wrong thing. It will all work.

Number four, not consistently assessing how much a client might like me. So I let go of that. I let go of thinking, do they like me? Am I being okay here? All that self-judgment. Oh my God. It was exhausting, right? Number five, I let go of no longer feeling intimidated because a client was smarter than me, had made more money than me, had been in business longer than me, because you know what? None of that matters. None of that matters. People who are smarter than you, made more money, been in business longer, whatever, they need coaching. They can't see their blind spots.

Number six, I let go of proving energy, that always trying to prove myself. I really let the strength of my coaching skills capture attention and attract new clients, which has always felt amazing and has worked out beautifully. Number seven, I prioritized coaching on identity and beliefs, which is what creates transformation at a soul deep level and creates it very, very quickly. Of course, this is the heart and soul of the Courageous Coaching Method that I teach.

Number eight, I decided I was no longer available for showing up to coaching calls as anything less than my soul-driven, highly sensitive, insightful, loving, smart self. With that one decision, my coaching got a little badass. It actually got really, really badass. I don't mean in a pushy way, that bullying way. I've seen some coaches coach like that. It's just awful. That's not coaching.

But in a way where I hold my client's vision when she can't see it for herself. In a way where I hold my client as powerful no matter what. In a way that releases my ego from needing to be liked. I decided that no matter what, I would show up fully standing in my power as a coach. It's such a relaxing, empowering experience for me to coach someone. It's like one of the most relaxing things I do in my entire life.

So I'm sharing these details with you not because coaching is some superpower that I was born with. What I am though is a living example of what is possible when you prioritize mastering your coaching skills. Specifically the courageous coaching method, which gives you both a structure and flexibility together to use as your coaching framework.

So the point I want to make here before we move on, is that when you prioritize your coaching skills, you are going to naturally start signing on high ticket clients. You're going to get those speaking opportunities or those partnership promotion opportunities. You're going to start embodying feeling like a pro at confidently and effectively coaching women to achieve results beyond what they even think is possible.

That leads to referrals. It leads to new opportunities and so much more because it's this beautiful never-ending cycle of results for your clients and for you and really creates this deep satisfaction within yourself and feeling really proud of who you are and of what you bring to your clients.

All right, insight number two is you want to have a key goal with every coaching session. You don't need to pre-decide this. This can come up organically in the session. So no matter what the topic is that you're coaching on, the coaching questions that you're going to ask should be aimed towards accomplishing one or more of these key things.

Number one, elevating or expanding what a client thinks is possible. I love that. Number two, moving a client forward. Number three, deepening their understanding of themselves or of a situation. Number four, reframing and releasing whatever it is that's holding them back.

Now there are many, many types of coaching questions that accomplish any one of these goals. To help you here, I encourage you to download my free coaching questions guide. It's titled 31 Coaching Questions That Work With Every Client. I'll put a link for it in the show notes. Now this is not your typical random list of coaching questions. You know me. 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 outline for you four distinct types of coaching questions and why each works exceptionally well to create all that transformation you desire for your clients. What this gives you is a way to get out of that feeling of oh my gosh, I don't know what to ask, which feels so awful. I have not experienced that in many, many, many years, but I remember how awful it feels.

This guide is going to help remove the randomness that coaching can sometimes feel like, which leads me to insight number three. Great coaching is not random. When you know where a question will take a client, it gives you so much more confidence to ask the high impact questions that really create a transformation for the person that you're coaching.

Now I believe hands down, without a shadow of a doubt, that the skill of coaching is the most impactful part of what you do in your business. As a coach and wherever you currently are in your journey of coaching, whether you're just beginning or you have some experience under your belt, your skill in coaching springs from the power and the quality of asking the right question at the right time.

I've been coaching for over 23 years. I've made nearly $30 million since 2008 when I first broke into the million dollar seven figure mark. I can candidly share that experiencing a leap forward in your coaching business success and income, it does not happen to only the lucky few. Asking the right coaching questions is the key, and the reason is simple. You can't succeed beyond your current coaching skills.

So my intention with that free download, the 31 Coaching Questions That Work With Every Client, is to give you a quick introduction to asking coaching questions that ensure clients get results every time. This is how feeling confident coaching becomes second nature for you, just like it is for me.

So this is how your coaching skills begin to capture attention and attract new clients. This is how you won't miss out on coaching high-end clients. This is how you avoid cookie cutter coaching. This is how you won't hold back and instead ask what needs to be asked. This is the start of making your coaching exciting using a coaching structure that allows your unique voice to shine through and unlocks the highest potential for your clients, which is what we are here to do as coaches, right? That's what we geek out on.

So when you download this free guide, you'll find I included over 31 coaching questions so you can see examples of each of the four distinct styles of coaching in action. Now we've already had thousands of women download this since releasing it earlier this year. So I think you're going to love it. So that's 31 Coaching Questions That Work With Every Client. You'll find a link for it in the show notes.

So to wrap up, mastering your coaching skills has been the foundation of my success as a coach. Mastering your coaching skills is how you can stand out in a crowded industry that, let's face it, is filled with mediocre coaches. Mediocre coaches. By the way, there aren't too many coaches in the coaching industry. There are too many mediocre coaches, and I don't want that to be you.

Mastering your coaching skills is how you can attract and enroll high-ticket clients, just like my client did with her very first coaching client. You can get started with that free download, 31 Coaching Questions That Work With Every Client. You can click on the link in the show notes, or you can just go to www.31coachingquestions.com, and the 31 is just the numerals 3 and 1. 

If you know you want to be masterful as a coach, definitely check out my Courageous Coaching Method certification training, which I will link to in the show notes. Or you can go to www.kendallsommerhawk.com/CC and check it out there.

All right, I want to leave you with this final thought. I want you to remember, coaching changes lives, starting with yours. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for your loyalty. I appreciate you for being on your coaching journey and on your money reinvention journey with me. I would love it if you would share this episode, even with one person who's interested in coaching, learning how to be a coach. You can also screenshot this episode, share it on social, tag me at Kendall SummerHawk. I would so appreciate it. All right, my beautiful soul, I will see you here in our next episode next week. 

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.