Welcome to the Masterful Coach Podcast with Molly Claire. If you're a coach who's ready to impact more lives, make more money, and create a life you love, you are in exactly the right place. Get the support you deserve as a female entrepreneur, master your coaching skills, grow your ideal business, and to honor your priorities in your personal life. Are you in? Let's get started with your host, bestselling author, and master life and business coach, Molly Claire.

Hey, coach. Are you ready to get to work? Let's do it. I am thrilled to be introducing you to the foundations for your coaching business series here on the podcast. The next several episodes are going to be focused on me teaching you about some of the foundational pieces of your business, those fundamentals, and also several interviews from some incredible people that you have got to know. The interviews with guests include things like legal basics, finance basics, tech, branding, all those basic things. So no matter where you are in your business, these are really good refreshers for you and definitely a great way for you to make sure you are checking those lovely boxes to have a strong foundation.

In today's episode, specifically, I'm going to talk with you about this idea of the foundations in your business. And I believe it is never too early or too late to set up the right foundations and to strengthen them. I wanna talk about, first this idea of a foundation as really giving you confidence, clarity, and courage to move forward in your business.

So I remember when my husband at the time and I were getting our first house, we were having it built. And we had a two-year-old and a baby, and we were building this house about 20 or 30 minutes from where we lived. And every Sunday we would drive up to the property and we'd look at the progress and see what was happening. And it was so fun to see when, "Oh, they've moved some ground and there's supplies there".

And then there was that day when the foundation of the house had been laid. It's like, this was official, right? How many of you relate to this? You know what I'm talking about? If you've ever been in the process of having a house built, And the funny thing about it is that the foundation of a house is not much to look at. It's not aesthetically pleasing. There's nothing thrilling about it other than knowing that this house will be built and knowing that you can have that confidence that it's built on solid ground.

Now, thankfully, in a coaching business, it is much more forgiving than a house being built because we definitely would not want a house built if there wasn't really a foundation or if there was a partial foundation. This would definitely be a problem, and yet, as many of you know, and I certainly know this as well, that you can start making money. You can move your business forward even if you don't have those foundational pieces in place. And at some point, they do need to be taken care of.

And so it's kind of like always noticing where the different pieces of your foundation are. Are they up to par? Are the holes in the foundation filled? Do I have a strong foundation? Always evaluating. That is such a great idea. And in this episode specifically, I'm going to talk about these three areas of the foundations of your business. I'm sure this will not come as a surprise to any of you here, that I believe these different foundational pieces in your business fall in the categories of personal life, the foundations within your coaching skills, and the business foundations, which is much more tangible, very hands-on, and a lot more than that as well.

So I'm going to talk about these three areas because as I have been, over the last seven years and working with coaches and helping them with their coaching skill, fundamentals, with their relationship with their self, and with those business fundamentals, what I keep coming back to is that there is power and strength in doing the foundational pieces, the fundamental pieces in all three of these areas. And if one of these areas does not have a strong foundation, it will impact the others. So I'm gonna break each of these down for you, tell you my thoughts about it, my opinions, and offer up some ideas for you to think about.

So let's dive in to the three different areas of foundation, starting with coaching skill mastery. When your coaching skill mastery foundation is strong, it means greate confidence in building your business, confidence in your ability to help your clients, confidence in selling with ease. It's very hard to sell someone on something that you are not sold on. So when you have the capability and the confidence in your actual coaching, it's easier to sell without a sales script, but from authenticity. It's easier to get referrals when you have that strong foundation of coaching.

And one of the things that I think is the most beneficial piece of it is the way it carries over into your ability to sell and market well. Because inevitably, if you are doubting in your coaching skills, and if you're not really serving your clients well, it will inevitably impact how well you're able to market, how well you're able to grow and scale your business, because there's going to be that part of you that's holding back.

So what do I mean by foundations in your coaching skills? I mean practicing the skills you already know, learning them inside and out, using new ways of using those tools, figuring out how to adapt them to different clients. I also mean filling the skill gap. It's normal for us to come up against gaps in our ability to help our clients. And so when you encounter an issue with your client that you're not sure how to handle, or maybe you're stuck with your client on a cognitive tool that you're using, not really working, or the emotion work you're trying to do isn't working, it's normal to come up against those skill gaps.

The question is, what do you do with it? And I wanna offer to all of you to commit to a lifetime in your coaching business of filling the skill gaps. Practice what you know, expand upon what you know, use different modalities and commit to filling the gaps in your coaching skills. And this is so foundational.

As you know, I have an advanced certification for coaches and in my program where I help coaches from a business aspect with the foundations. We include coaching skill mastery, and it is for this exact reason I can give my clients the 10K accelerator method business checklist. I can tell them the things they can do, I can help them with their messaging, I can help them with their life and business balance. And yet if this piece is missing, it's gonna slow everything else down.

So just to recap, the benefits of having a strong foundation with your coaching skills means less doubt and insecurity, which by the way means less doubt and insecurity spilling over into your business-building ability. It means you're more effective with your clients. It means more referrals from your clients. It means that it is so much easier for you to sell with confidence and ease and authenticity. And that right there is magic.

Let's move on to the next foundational piece, which is foundations in business. So the funny thing about the business aspect of the foundational pieces is it seems to have the biggest list. It's like, "Okay, I'm learning how to run a business. I'm learning all the tech pieces. I'm learning sales. I'm learning marketing. I'm learning how to structure a business. What's a funnel? How do I do that? Finance, right?"

So the list seems to be much bigger in the business space than it is in the coaching skill space or the life space. And I think because of this in our mind, we somehow think the business foundation's piece is more important or deserves or needs more money thrown at it, or deserves or needs more time. And what I want to offer you is that while the business piece will definitely have skill gap, it will introduce concepts, ideas, and skills that are brand new to you.

And while definitely there is a tangible list, in truth, the business piece of it is also much simpler. And I believe it's the personal space, that inner work, that certainly moves over into the business space. They support one another, but actually that's where the most challenging and important work is.

So let's talk about, though, foundations in business. As I mentioned, I'm bringing in some amazing guests on the podcast in this series for you and foundations for your business. Because I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a finance person. I don't do branding. I don't do tech. I don't do those things, but they do, and they are foundational pieces.

So when it comes to foundations in your business, this means things like learning enough business basics to get started. This includes some idea of sales. It includes some idea about how to market. It means making decisions about the structure of your business, which requires both learning knowledge, also intuition, and also a look at figuring it out as you go, right?

Because you don't always know that structure when you first start out. Foundations in your business means having a basic funnel available. I don't care whether you run paid ads or not, but do you have a way for people to get to know you and enter your world? It means all of those things I mentioned like legal, finance, tech, branding, more to come on all of that.

So the foundations in your business seems like a pretty big laundry list, but I just wanna reiterate to you that it's also very simple and the beauty of it is that as you do the self-work that we're gonna talk about in just a minute, and as you do the coaching skill mastery, those things like learning sales and learning marketing and actually do it and making decisions about the structure of your business, and all of those things become easier. They become easier, and you will get better at them.

Now, the benefits. Let's talk about the benefits of these foundations in your business. Less fraud complex when you're not building a business on hollow or shaky ground. It feels much easier. It's easier to stand proud, to stand tall and to claim being a business owner. It also creates certainty for you and fewer questions. We all know what that's like when we're thinking, "Ah, is this enough?" "What do I need legally?" or, "Am I doing a good enough job managing my finances?" All of those questions.

I certainly know what that feels like because I definitely did not build on the strongest foundation from day one. And I actually wanna speak to that for just a minute because I know that some of you listening are the kind of person who will really make sure that every T is crossed and every I is dotted. And that foundation is super strong before you do anything to make money. And there are others of you that start making money and you're just kind of flying by the seat of your pants and building this business. And there might be a lot of holes in the foundation of your business. And certainly many of you fit somewhere in between.

And what I wanna offer to you is that where you are is okay. It's just fine. And maybe you need a coach that's gonna push you to start making money before the whole foundation is laid. And some of you may need that guidance to say, "Let's put a pause. Let's go back and fill some of these gaps and these holes." Neither one is wrong. Neither one is better than the other. And that's why I think it's best to really approach this. And this is how I do this in my program with the foundations, is, where are you? And here's the step by step.

But you don't have to do it step by step. You can do it one at a time and simultaneously all at the same time. So I wanted to just put a little plug in for that idea for you. So going back to some of these benefits when you don't have as much fraud complex, when you have that solid ground, when you have more certainty and fewer questions, you also have a strong starting point and you can go anywhere.

And that starting point is a big deal. Because we all think we should be further along. We should have done this faster. And taking the time to look at those foundations to build those foundations gives you a starting point and it will allow you, I believe, if you can take a minute to pause and build that foundation, it allows you the ability to actually build your business faster as you move forward. Slow down in order to move fast. Rushing to the finish line will not serve you when it comes to a long-term sustainable business.

Coach, I saved the best for last. Let's talk about the foundation of you, yourself, your personal life. I think it can be much easier to justify spending money on coaching skill mastery or advancement, or to spend money on business skills because you can wrap your head around them. And I think it is much harder for us, in general, as human beings to be willing to spend the time, the energy, and the money on the self aspect, especially the things that seem invisible.

"I should just be able to handle these emotions. I should have it figured out. Like there's not really time for that. What I need to do is get to work." And what I wanna offer you is that you can get to work and you can do your business, and you can do your skills, and you can move forward, and you don't have to wait until you've solved everything inside of you to build a business. I can attest to that. I have done some of my deepest and biggest work after hitting the biggest number in my business.

And so I'm not saying you have to wait to do this, but what I am saying is you can't outrun it. It will catch up to you. And if you're struggling in your business, if you're struggling inside, take a pause, pay attention, listen. The foundation of you matters. It matters for your business. It matters for the people in your life, and it matters because you matter. You matter. The way you feel matters. The things you need, the things you want, the things you care about, they matter. So make sure you're giving yourself enough space to say it matters.

All right, coach. Let's talk a little bit more about what I mean. I'm gonna ask you some questions. Just notice for you, do you know yourself? Do you understand your own emotional needs? Have you healed some of those past hurts or traumas? How are you doing with a sense of loyalty to yourself or loyalty to your own authenticity? These are big questions, right? I'm rattling them off one by one. But this work that I'm talking about here, this is the actual foundation of my advanced coaching certification, because this absolutely has to be there for your clients.

When you're working with your clients, to grow in their relationships, to grow as a mom in their business, in their life - whatever it is your client is trying to do or to stop doing - to stop overeating, or to build a business. This foundation has to be there for them. And so how can you offer them a space to grow this foundation of themself if you haven't quite done it for you?

A few more questions for you. Do you know who you are? Separate from everyone around you, separate from your partner, separate from your kids, separate from your parents, your sister, your neighbors, your community, your religion. Do you know who you are? Separate from everyone around you.

How do you do personally with setting boundaries, emotional boundaries, time, boundaries? How do you do with giving yourself permission to be you and to accept you as you are, coach? I genuinely believe and know from personal experience that self, as a foundation, is everything. We can get so far in life. We can get so far in our business, but at a certain point we need to pay attention to it.

All right, coach, this is what I've got for you. I want you to consider a few things today. Where is your foundation weak? How is it impacting you? How will it impact you if you don't strengthen that foundation? And finally, what one step will you take today to start to strengthen that foundation? Alright, coach, I'll be with you next week with an incredible foundation series interview. I'll talk to you then.

Thanks for listening to The Masterful Coach Podcast. Are you ready to build your amazing business with Molly as your coach? Check out www.mollyclaire.com to find out about Masterful Coach Foundations and the 10K Accelerator Method. It's the ultimate support for you as a coach, building your ideal life and business.