Intro: 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’re in exactly the right place. Get the support you deserve as a female entrepreneur, master your coaching skills, grow your ideal business, and 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.

Molly Claire: Hey, coach, welcome to this episode on grief, where I have brought three experts, all of whom are contributing to the Master Coach training calls and curriculum, and they are going to talk with you about what grief can look like with your clients. We’ve got Krista St. Germain, who is a grief coach for widows and also teaches an advanced certification on grief and growth.

We have Mikki Gardner, who is a co-parenting coach, and she is certified as a conscious parenting coach specifically, and also Sharon Wirant, who works with women on chronic fatigue syndrome. It’s interesting to hear the different ways that grief comes up for their clients, and my hope is that this will really enlighten you as to how you may want to learn more about grief and how to handle some of these scenarios with your own clients as well.

Before we get started, I want to make sure you all know that Master Coach Training 2024 is enrolling right now. Make sure that if you have not yet signed up for a call, you go to www.mollyclaire.com, where you can submit your application and book a call. I am enrolling each applicant personally. So, I would love to speak with you and help to answer any of your questions about this holistic Master Coach training.

You’ll also find that on the website, there is a webinar for you. It’s got a mini training and Q&A all about Master Coach training. Those of you that are already coming and enrolled, I am so excited to work with you and just cannot wait for this to be such a magical space of growth and inner transformation. All right, here we go. Let’s dive on into this week’s episode on grief.

Molly Claire: All right, so I have three powerhouse women again here on the podcast Krista St. Germain, who is a grief coach, Mikki Gardner, who is a conscious parenting coach, specifically co-parenting, and Sharon, the amazing best-selling author of Tired But Wired, chronic fatigue coach.

So, welcome, all of you. I’m going to go ahead and have each of these women just share who you are and what you love to do, and then I just have so many questions for all of. So, Krista, welcome. Tell us a little about what you.

Krista St. Germain: Thank you, Molly, always happy to be in the same Zoom room with you. So I, as you said, am Krista St-Germain, and I specifically love helping widowed moms. I think there’s this place in grief which we can talk about. I call it a grief plateau. But a lot of my clients get stuck there. My husband died in 2016, and that’s almost where I got stuck.

Like, I survived those early days of grief and then kind of got to a place where I couldn’t really imagine that I could ever be truly happy again. And that’s what I love helping women figure out is, how do you really love life again, when the life you thought you wanted is not an option anymore and the person you really wanted to do life with has died. So, that’s what I do.

Molly Claire: Yeah, I love it. And of course, we’ll talk more about…On this episode, we’re talking about grief and the different facets of I thought that’s why I thought this would be such an interesting group, because each of you are working with your clients in different ways that grief shows up, different ways we experience it. And of course, Krista, you offer an advanced grief certification.

Krista St. Germain: And I’m also obsessed with post traumatic growth. So, my advanced certification is grief and post traumatic growth.

Molly Claire: Yeah. Love it. And Krista will be teaching in the Master Coach training, of course, in the coming year. Mikki, tell us about you.

Mikki Gardner: Hello. I’m Mikki Gardner. I am a conscious co-parenting coach, and I really focus on helping moms post-divorce or separation, learn how to co-parent with confidence, clarity, and calm. Really learning how to navigate the process because there’s a lot of complexity to it and how to do it from a peaceful place, even when your ex doesn’t change.

Molly Claire: Yeah. One thing I was thinking about as we were planning to record this is that it’s so funny for me to say this now because it seems so obvious, but I never really understood the grief that comes with divorce and that I very much experienced but didn’t label it as that. And so, of course, as you’re helping them co-parent, that grief will come up and get in the way – can get in the way.

Mikki Gardner: It absolutely does. And I don’t think that it’s one of those times in life where people really sort of identify grief or are necessarily expecting it. But when you have the death of the family that you thought you had, the dreams that you thought you had for your future, when all of that is gone, it really is a grieving process. And to be able to help women go through that and grow through it, is really what I try to help focus on, because it’s not talked about all that often.

Molly Claire: Yeah. I love it. And Mikki, of course, has contributed in my Advanced Certification and will be teaching a class this summer in Master Coach training.

Mikki Gardner: So excited.

Molly Claire: Okay, Sharon, tell us what you do. I feel so connected to all of you at a personal level because of what you do.

Sharon Wirant: I’m Sharon Wirant, and I am a chronic fatigue coach. I love helping women—although I have had a few men work with me as well—reclaim their energy from whether they have CFS/ME, they have chronic fatigue from an autoimmune condition, if they have fatigue from burnout, chronic stress. It all affects our energy level.

And along with helping people reclaim their energy, we do have to work through that grief process because it’s a time when we might be revisiting the death of a loved one, the death or an end of a chapter in their life, whether that’s a marriage, a partnership, a career, we have to work through all of that. So, then that allows the energy to come back as you start to redesign and recreate what it is you want from your life.

Molly Claire: One of the reasons—and of course, Sharon, you’re going to be teaching in the Master Coach Training this summer as well. But I wanted to bring all of you here together, of course, because we’re talking about grief. And I’ve been talking a lot about this holistic view of coaching. Because those of you listening, if you could see these women as they’re talking, and especially I was watching as Sharon was talking, kind of motioning toward the body and how those emotions come up in the body.

And so we’re talking about grief. We’re also talking about how having an understanding of how the brain, the body, emotions, nervous system and all those approaches to coaching really matter, and how when we can see them all, we can coach so much more effectively. And Sharon, as you were talking, I was just thinking, I know when I got hit with chronic fatigue, I was in my early thirties.

I had young kids and I experienced a lot of loss and grief and sadness as to what happened. I was high energy, I was involved with my kids, I was doing all the things, and now I’m on the couch, I’m doing the bare minimum. And it was hard. I would say it felt like a lot of grief and loss. And I don’t think I realized at the time that that’s what I was experiencing.

I’d love to understand…And I’ll just throw this out there and you can all speak up or just if some of you have an answer to this, but I’d be curious to know how grief specifically comes up for your clients. I’ll give you an example. So, for me, as I’m working… well, it comes up in all kinds of ways. But as I’m working specifically with moms in building their business, for example, there is so much grief even in what they believed their life was going to be like, how they believed their kids were going to turn out.

So, in that space, that’s often how it can come up for people. When I’m coaching people in their business and building their business, there’s often a lot of conflict between business and personal life. And lo and behold, what comes up grief, sadness, loss about how their marriage is, versus how they wanted it to be. So, it can come up in all of these different ways. But I’d love to hear from each of you how and where you see it coming up for your clients, or how it manifests even.

Krista St. Germain: I feel like mine is not surprising. But also, in some ways it really is surprising because I think so often when my clients, they’re all widows, they’re all humans identifying as women and therefore as widows, maybe not necessarily married, but having had children and lost their person, that’s the loss they tend to think about. That primary loss is the loss of the person.

But what you find is that nobody really talks about secondary losses unless you’re in the grief world. What they’re often struggling with is so much more sometimes the secondary losses. So, the primary loss being the loss of their person, the secondary loss being all the other knockoff impacts of the loss of that person on their lives, all the other ways they thought life was going to go or life should have gone.

So, it’s sometimes losses they can’t even imagine yet because they haven’t happened and we’re kind of navigating them in real time. And then also sometimes it’s the loss of what they thought their relationship should have been like in the past or the person they thought they should have been in that relationship. And so it does seem like it’s easy to say, well, grief is just sadness or loneliness or something simplistic, but really there’s many layers it doesn’t stop. And so much of what we have to work through just hasn’t even happened.

Molly Claire: Yeah. And I think as you were talking, this is kind of funny because every one of you listening right now is pretty bought into coaching, right? We’re speaking to Coaches here. As Krista was talking and I was just thinking about what a gift it is to your clients that you understand all of that. Because for most people, they lose their partner, they lose their spouse, most people in their life don’t really know or understand that.

So, just another reminder to all of you as coaches, whether it’s grief or whatever you help your clients with just really matters to show up and hold that space for those things they don’t even know they need space held for.

Mikki Gardner: I think too, it shows up… you know, Krista was just saying about the secondary losses, it’s the things that you don’t even realize, where grief shows up. And so many people aren’t able to necessarily identify their emotions or feelings outside of the basic sad, mad and glad.

So, it all just gets put in a sad bucket, and nobody wants to be in the sad bucket. And so I find that that’s often with clients, there’s a resistance and not wanting to… they are sad, they are grieving, but not understanding what’s happening, how to identify it, really and then most importantly, how to move through it, how to experience the grief, because it does come as we all know, in waves. It’s not one and done. It’s a process. And then it happens again. And there’s a frustration with why does it keep coming back.

And learning how to understand what it is and how to move with it in life, I think, is a really valuable tool for a lot of people. And I know for the moms that I work with, there’s the shattered relationships, there’s the dreams that are no longer there or the family that you thought and then oftentimes a lot of my clients have experienced infidelity which there’s a whole new level of grief on top of that and shame. And so all of those things, it becomes a really muddled, hard place to process on your own.

Molly Claire: And as you were talking and one thing I want to have you speak up, Sharon, as well, next, about how you see grief manifesting. But as I’m hearing from both of you so far, Krista and Mikki. The next thing I’d like to really talk about is kind of how you see this holistic approach supporting your clients in this. Because there are ways we can help them with it. I like to think of it as, what is the entry point that a client needs at a given time?

Is it the entry point of cognitive work? Is it the entry point of emotions or the body? What are these different options? And so with emotions and these experiences that tend to be pretty big and complex, I think we almost have to have that broader view to actually be supportive and effective in the way that they need it.

Mikki Gardner: Absolutely.

Molly Claire: Okay, Sharon.

Sharon Wirant: So, with my clients, I see a variety. On one hand, I might see such deep resistance to wanting to go down or to even explore or even talk about their sadness. But for me as a coach, I can clearly see it through their body motions, how they’re holding themselves, what they’re looking at or not looking at, to I have some clients who really want to start exploring, and I try to support them with those areas through questioning.

And then I have some other tools that really helps people to allow the flow of the emotion while they’re able to start peeling away the onion to have an idea of what they are really grieving. Because a lot of the times when they come to me, we don’t know. They’re all focused in on, what’s wrong with my body? Why am I so sick? Why is this happening to me? We really have to look at it from all sorts of different perspectives.

Molly Claire: Yes, absolutely. And I know, Sharon, you do a lot of work with the body. A lot of emotion work. When you were talking about… and I know many of you listening can relate to this personally and probably with your clients that feeling some of those emotions. I mean, it’s easy for us to say, just feel the emotions, they’re only feelings.

But some of these feelings, they feel like so much. And I can just say in my personal journey over the last several years of just really not wanting. I just remember popping out of my mouth when I was with my coach. I’m just afraid that if I open up this sadness, it’s just going to completely shut me down. If I open this door, I’m just going to be so deeply sad and depressed forever.

And so I think that fear is there, which again, is the value in us being able to, I feel like, just kind of hold our clients hand and tiptoe them into being with these emotions in a way that’s tolerable, instead of overwhelming. So, yeah, I’d love to hear from you just kind of going back to this idea of how you personally see having this more whole view of different ways you can help your clients makes a difference, versus just kind of having a one size fits all approach.

Sharon Wirant: I’ll just like to dive in on this because the way I discovered how to have a holistic approach is a big part of my journey and how I discovered that it was more than mindset work, that I needed to reclaim my own energy. I started this way back in 2015, where I was feeling like I had no purpose. The chapter of my own career that I worked really hard in was coming to a close and I think I sensed that and so there was some grief for me. And it literally just felt like these dark clouds coming over.

So, I did some more emotion-based coaching. Then I went to mindset coaching. And with the Mindset coaching, I changed an awful lot of how I viewed things. But I remember having a coach tell me because I was still so tired, I was going through my toxic mold talks. And this coach was basically telling me it was my thinking around being tired all the time and if I just had a different belief and it wasn’t working.

And so a program that you referred me to, Molly, was very eye-opening and life-changing for me because it was one technique that just really helped me to get into my body, feel it. And then it literally – which I described in my book about it – felt like there was this champagne bottle just smack dab in my chest with the cork right here. And as we were doing a tapping session and all of a sudden it was the release.

And it was stuff that I really didn’t as you said, you didn’t want to explore because you were afraid that it was just going to take you down. And it was so gentle. And this was over several sessions with my coach doing this, that was it. And all of a sudden, it just slowly, I started feeling my energy come back.

Molly Claire: Yeah. And I think that as you were talking, thinking, what a good example of how I think sometimes one approach can work for a while or can work for certain things and then it doesn’t anymore.

Sharon Wirant: Correct.

Molly Claire: Or you can be in a moment where the cognitive mindset work is helpful in these ways, not so helpful in those ways. Because I was thinking about what you were saying about your thoughts about being tired. Because I know for me, for example, when I have a chronic fatigue crash or if I get sick and I notice my fears start coming up about, oh, no, am I going to be tired forever now? I can both, for me, use that cognitive space of helping to keep perspective. But then really attuning to what my body needs instead of trying to override the message that my body’s giving me.

Sharon Wirant: I was excellent. I was a professional at overthinking. And what I’ve learned is that you can’t think your way into healing.

Molly Claire: No, you cannot. And a couple of weeks ago, I shared a little about my experience over the last few years, and it was actually, I had hired Krista St-Germain, who’s right here to help me with mindset work because I was like, I need a coach who’s just going to… I thought I needed Krista. And turns out I did, but not for the reasons that I thought.

And we did some work, and that’s when Krista, you know, you are the one that really opened the door to saying, like, you need something different here. Because I think you could tell there was the nervous system activation, there was some trauma happening, and it was what I needed. And at that point in time, I really had to shut down all the cognitive work I was doing, pretty much, because not only was it not helpful, but I was using it against myself and it needed to stop.

Oh, my gosh, this episode could go for such a long time. We talked about that before we started. I got to keep it reined in so we don’t keep you here all day. Okay, Mikki, tell us what about you for having that holistic view and approach?

Mikki Gardner: Yeah, I think piggybacking on what was just said, if we could just mindset our way to everything, it would be so easy.

Molly Claire: Would be great, right? No feelings involved.

Mikki Gardner: There’s no feelings. But if there’s one thing that we are really good at, especially women, is suppressing our feelings. We have been taught from popping out of the womb to suppress, and that our feelings are not valid, that they aren’t safe, that we shouldn’t have them. So, with all of this messaging and couple it with all of the good girl be quiet messaging, basically all it says to us is don’t feel your feelings and do what you can to suppress them.

And then I think we have to look at it, there’s feelings and emotions. As I see it, feelings come from thoughts, which we’ve all learned. Most of us coaches, love the model, but then there’s emotions which are energy and motion. And these are the things that just sort of happen. Grief, you lose something, you feel it everywhere, right? That’s not coming from your thinking. That’s coming from emotion, energy and motion in your body. And so I think we have to look at it in a different perspective of what we know, what we don’t know. And all of this, our full body.

Our mind, is only a tiny percentage of our body. We have to really learn to step into energetically, spiritually, emotionally, physically, all of it, to be able to process some of these really big feelings that people are experiencing, like grief, sadness, anger. So, I think we all need to have a better, more holistic understanding and approach so that we can navigate what’s going on or direct someone where they need to go.

It might not be that you have every answer, because we don’t have all the answers, but I think broadening our perspective in our sort of tool belt to be able to help identify what’s going on and help them navigate that journey.

Molly Claire: Yeah. And I think, as you were talking, Mikki, those of you listening, I did an episode talking about… well, there have been a couple of episodes regarding therapy versus coaching. And I also talked about this a couple of weeks ago when I had interviewed Leah and Lindsay and Melanie, talked about kind of like, where is this line between coaching and therapy? Is it blurry? Is it clear?

And I just want to reiterate that there is space of crossover, for sure. And I think where we can be more effective, better equipped as coaches and more ethical is when we do have a broader perspective so that we can be effective at the things we do as a coach and then know when we do need to refer out and what things really are outside of our scope. And so I think having that more whole view, helps us to more easily do that. All right. Krista, what about you? Thoughts about more of a holistic approach.

Krista St. Germain: Yeah, I just remember kind of coming into this work and not really having what we would call a holistic approach.

Molly Claire: Yes, I hear you.

Krista St. Germain: And just looking back and reflecting on intentions, being in a very good place, of course, and always a desire to help. But just how not having a holistic approach can limit your idea of what help can look like. When you think about spousal loss, for example, and you’re feeling a lot of sadness or a lot of loneliness or lot of what we might classify as, “negative” emotions or grief, it could be really easy to think that what a person wants is to not feel those things anymore.

And I think some of the tools that I initially used. I was kind of using to that end of like let me help you identify why you are feeling the way that you are feeling so that we can change the way that you are feeling.

Molly Claire: Yeah, let’s identify how we can easily turn that off.

Krista St. Germain: Right. At the root. Which I feel like the more holistic approach, as though feelings are problems. Which they aren’t. As though the goal after a loss is to not feel certain emotions and only feel others. Which is not. I know most of the women that I work with would not want to be happy that their person died. So, it’s not so much how do I think differently, so I can feel differently. It’s like how do I think about how I am feeling so I can support myself? Which is, again, a broader stroke.

Molly Claire: Yes. When you said that, those of you listening, I wish you could see the video because all the heads on video started nodding, yes. That’s really what it is. How do I support myself in this? And that’s one of the things that I’m really big on helping my clients with. What’s interesting, is of course, I’m teaching advanced coaching and advanced coaching techniques and master coach training and such.

And a lot of the work I do with my clients is I’m coaching them in their business. So, why in the world would grief come up there? But wow, it sure does. And so that’s what’s been interesting is that being trauma-informed and me having kind of this broader view and a broader approach, it is 100% relevant as I’m working with women building their business, because as their business, they’re realizing they’re coming up against this deep stuff that’s telling them that they can’t make money or they’re not worthy, or they don’t have permission, or they don’t have choices.

And so it’s always just such a reminder to me that as human beings, we are so complex. And when we have so much going on inside and we have so much we’ve inherited from the generations before. So, no matter what type of coach you are, no matter what you’re coaching people on, you just absolutely have to understand that humans are multidimensional and require a multifaceted approach, at least the awareness. Mikki, you are smiling. I feel like I want to know what’s happening in your brain.

Mikki Gardner: I just thought it was such an excellent point. It’s like we’re so complex, yet we want these, just give me the right answer. Just tell me how to fix it. Just tell me how to change it. And that’s our desire. I mean, we all sort of have that desire just to get it done, but to really be able to step in and teach people how to navigate their life going forward, they need a lot of tools to do that. And it’s not just one way or the other. And so it made me smile because it would be great if we could just have one tool that worked for everything.

Molly Claire: It would be great, right?

Mikki Gardner: Yeah.

Molly Claire: And I want to speak to that just a little bit because even going along with the telling people what to do and the strategy, I think that’s the beautiful thing is that when we have a broader view and we know the different approaches, sometimes it is giving a specific tool or strategy or plan. But we can do it in a way where our clients are actually able to do it and able to be successful because we’re looking at the whole person, which is everything.

Mikki Gardner: Yeah. And I think giving clients opportunities to experiment and be playful with different types of tools so that they put themselves in the position of expert on what works for them, given what’s going on for them, knowing that it might be different yesterday than it’s going to be in two weeks. But giving them options and tools and the ability to experiment with those so that they have a felt experience of what would work best for me in this moment. I’m always changing the tools I’m working with for myself.

Molly Claire: Yeah, exactly. And I think also, it’s kind of like I think as we become more skilled and more knowledgeable as coaches, it becomes easier for us to support our clients in understanding what will work for them as well as we help them kind of play with different things. And as we also take different approaches with them, and they experience how those work differently for them.

So, one thing I would love to know, because I know I can say for myself that so I trained in 2014, in 2015, I signed up for a master coach training through the Life Coach School. And I did it because I wanted business help, actually. So, this is a funny story. My sister and I were on our way to our first Mastermind, and she said, “Molly, you cannot let me sign up for Master Coach Training.”

And I said, “Oh, I won’t.” I said, “I’m not signing up for that. My coaching is fine. I need help with business.” This is what I said to her, which is hilarious to me now to think back at how little I knew and how big my confidence was. And so we get there and we hear the spiel about Master Coach Training, and I look over at her and I said, “Oh, I’m doing that.” And she’s like, “Wait a minute. You were supposed to be the one to keep me from doing this.”

But here’s my point in telling this story, is that I wanted help with business. And definitely there is business strategy, there is no question about that. But I kind of fell into expanding that first step, at least in expanding my coaching ability, by accident. But what I noticed for me is that the more skilled I became and the more confident I became. First with master coach training and then training coaches and creating curriculum and advanced like all of these things.

The greater confidence I’ve had, and especially the confidence I’ve had that I really can be the right support for my clients has been a huge confidence booster for me in terms of building my business and making offers and charging. So, I’d be curious to know, to hear from each of you, as your skills and your knowledge has grown and expanded, how has that impacted you in terms of being able to be businesswoman, do the business part of your business?

Krista St. Germain: To me, so much of being successful in business is believing that you can help. And so, truly, if I believe that, and as I have learned more and taken different courses and done different certifications and just continue to learn and grow and educate myself, my confidence grows, my ability to help my clients grows. It just oozes into every part of the business. It can’t not.

I don’t think I’ll ever reach a point where I believe I’m done learning or that there’s not more to learn or that I know better than my clients. I never, ever want to be in that place. But I love the feeling that when somebody is in front of you and you just know with every fiber of your being that you’ve got something for them. It’s such a good feeling. And that really is what leads to making you want to make offers and want to overcome objections and do the things that are required to do to get people in your program and then get them the results. You got to have the confidence.

Molly Claire: Yeah. And I want to hear from you as well, Mikki and Sharon on this. But I wanted to just mention also know one of the things that I think it’s important for coaches to remember is that you can have a very successful, thriving business with a lot of warm-referrals when you lead with great coaching. Now, I know, Krista, when you have a business like yours, you definitely have to know some marketing and sales when you’re wanting a million dollar plus business.

But I think sometimes we don’t realize there are a lot of different ways that you can have a business. And I think people forget sometimes the value in competent and confident coaching, even in the marketing space and sales space, because it makes a difference, for sure.

Sharon Wirant: I know you’ve already interviewed Melanie, and your audience probably now loves her, but she is such a good example of that. She literally does no marketing. Because she’s so good that we’re all shouting it from the rooftops. Her website. I mean, I love you, Melanie, but her website.

Molly Claire: I know. It’s true. I’m like, this is the website, and all she does is she just shows up and creates this healing space. She does magical work, and everyone’s like, “Oh, my gosh, can you help me more? And can you help all these people?”

Sharon Wirant: Yeah, and they are throwing money at her because she’s so good.

Molly Claire: Exactly. Okay, Mikki, how about you? How have you seen your expansion of your skills help you as a business owner?

Mikki Gardner: Yeah. I want to take this from the one-to-one coach, because that’s who I am and really working one-to-one with people, and especially, when you’re a newer coach, it can feel like we have to have all of these… you could just live in the certification, trying to get more and more. And it’s amazing. And I think what I’ve noticed is the more that I expand my knowledge and then learn how to bring that back, actually sort of not just use it in my own life, but then learn to apply it to my clients, it creates so much more confidence.

And that confidence spills over into your business, into how you present everything. But I think it’s so important to have this holistic approach and really being willing to expand. Because just the other day, I had a new client. I know, high level, this is how we’re going to start and this is what’s going to happen. And she came in last week, and right now there’s the Israeli/Palestinian war going on.

And this was Week Two, I had my agenda, I knew where we were headed and she said, “I grew up in Israel and we had to leave because of the war.” And she was in full PTSD. And I think, looking back at it, I was so grateful for the training and the work that I’ve done, that I had the ability to sit with her and process. I bring it up because I think our clients, they’re always expanding and things are always happening.

And really, just knowing that you have the knowledge not to fix anything, but to be able to bear witness to what’s going on for someone, to hold space to help them process, if that’s appropriate. But in that moment, we just needed to walk through the grief of what she was experiencing and feeling and there was no work to do. There was just space to be held. And so it was one of those reminders to me that it’s really our duty and responsibility as people who are in the healing space, to continue to know and to work, to be that presence for them because they need, that’s why we’re doing this.

Molly Claire: Yes. And as you were talking, I was thinking about how true that is, that not only are human beings complex, but on a week-to-week basis, my client today is going to be different than she was last week. She’s in a different frame of mind.

Mikki Gardner: 100%. And for all the one-to-one coaches out there, I know that I’m raising my hand to being in this boat thinking we’re not doing enough. Right. We don’t have the groups and the this and the impact. But you helping your client, I know me helping my moms, that helps their children, that helps their ex, that helps their friends, that helps their family. And when we want to make impact in this world, that’s the ripple effect.

And so really standing firm and grounded in helping, whether it’s groups, whether it’s one-to-one, whatever you’re doing, doing the best that you can and coming at it from that energy and that holistic approach, I think, is just underrated, but we all need it.

Molly Claire: And I want to point out to all the people that never actually pay you but are impacted by the work that you do. The reels, the posts, the emails, the podcasts, whatever it is, it always amazes me how I’ll hear from someone I’ve never actually encountered and something that I wrote way back when made a difference, because I decided to write it to speak up, to show up. Sharon, how about you in terms, know, expanding in knowledge and growth and skill and confidence and how that spills over into you as a business owner?

Sharon Wirant: It really brings a sense of confidence and to take my impostor, kind of put her to the side and remind her, come on, we’ve got this. We know what we’re doing. It has just brought that wave of confidence and really wanting to get the message out that, hey, this work can really help you and help you reclaim your energy, create that life that you’re looking for.

But what I also have to say is that it has also brought to me how I express myself a little bit more publicly. In the past, I would just sit in the background and wait for somebody to call on me, sit in the back of the room. But now I’m speaking up more. And as you just mentioned, how people that I don’t even know that might follow me on social media will say something, “I love what you write.”

And even if I’m not writing about my business, I might be writing about some event I may have done with my dog or something. I always put a little something in there to help people with the expansion, with knowledge that they’re being human. I just remember a friend of mine that I knew through the dog sports that I do, and she says, “My mom loves following you. She loves what you have to say.” I don’t know her.

So, as I’ve expanded, as I’ve built my knowledge and my experience, yeah, that confidence comes with wanting to help more. I love the one-on-ones. I love going real deep with people, but I realized that especially with people with chronic fatigue or have an illness stemming from burnout or an autoimmune, they might not have the energy to actually do one-on-one. So, I am in the middle of creating a group program where they can start to build upon the tools to create a pool of energy so that then they can start getting a little bit deeper.

Molly Claire: I love it. We’re going to wrap it up here in just a second. But I want to share, just from my perspective, as I’m speaking to all of you coaches, that there is definitely a spillover in your confidence and your certainty in how well you’re serving your clients and the boldness with which you offer your services, how easy it is for you to make an offer, to set your pricing, to sell your coaching.

Because if you’re having all of this doubt and insecurity, which, by the way, is normal, it’s not like, oh, you shouldn’t be having that. No, you are. But pay attention to it. Make sure that you are clear for yourself on the skills you have and that you offer and the skills that you don’t and you don’t offer, or the skill gaps that you may want to fill, so that you can expand what you can do.

But I just want to emphasize that while the abilities and skills of coaching are different than the skills of selling and marketing, it would be crazy to think that there is not spillover. Because especially as coaches who want to help people, we are not going to feel an integrity if we don’t feel like we can really help people and we’re asking them to give us money. So, it definitely matters. So, if there’s insecurity there, clean it up, whatever that looks like. Anything you wanted to share before we wrap up? I don’t want to cut you all off. If something came to you and you wanted to share something.

Sharon Wirant: What you were just talking about with maybe feeling that uncertainty go within your body, where do you feel that and get curious about it? Because there may be something underneath that which is preventing you from stepping out as that coach to setting your prices, to building your program and get really curious about it, because as you resolve what that is, you’re going to find that expansion within yourself to then step out into that spotlight.

Molly Claire: Yes, I love it. And one thing that I wanted to mention, just as we wrap up and then of course, I would love to have each of you share where people can find your work specifically as we wrap up as well in a minute here. But just bringing this full circle, my hope is that all of you listening are understanding the value in having a broader view. This doesn’t mean that the coaching style that you have or the main approach that you take shouldn’t be your main thing because absolutely it can.

And I think when you can understand more about the brain and the body and the nervous system and just the complexity of human beings, it allows your style and your coaching approach to be even more effective, for sure. And just on the topic of grief, just being mindful that your clients and you will have grief come up in so many ways. So, it’s so vital to learn about it and to understand so.

Which is why I’m so glad, Krista, of course, is going to be teaching some grief work in the Master Coach Training curriculum. Mikki will be teaching some conscious parenting work and of course, Sharon will be teaching some of her chronic fatigue work and energy and the specialty work that she does. So, it’s going to be amazing. Hopefully, I’m going to see many of you there and I would love for all three of you women to share where people can find you if they want to do more of your work, specifically with you. So, Krista, we’ll go with you and then Mikki and Sharon.

Krista St. Germain: Yeah. So, www.coachingwithkrista.com is where everything can be found. So, basically, if you are a Coach, your opportunity—unless you’re also a widow and a mom—opportunity to work with me is through my advanced certification, which is… I don’t know when this airs, but probably about a week from now as we’re recording it and releasing.

But then also almost everybody knows a widow and all those widows that, you know, feel like no one is seeing them or recognizing them. And so just referring people to listen to the Widowed Mom podcast is so appreciated from me and also from the widows who have yet to discover it. And of course, if you want to learn about grief and you’re not a widow, you can just disregard the word widow and listen.

Molly Claire: Yeah. I love that. Amazing. Mikki, how about you?

Mikki Gardner: My website is just my name, www.mikkigardner.com. The thing I’m most proud of is probably my podcast, which is Co-parenting with Confidence. And like, Krista, just said, there are so many people out there, I mean, divorce is so rampant at this point, especially post-pandemic, and really helping get the word out there that there’s help, because I think so many people go through divorce alone and they think that they have to do it all on their own and they are not understanding that there’s help beyond just the traditional therapy and other things.

And so I would appreciate people referring that, because it’s important that we just learn to link arms and offer support and be there. And so that’s really the podcast and Instagram.

Molly Claire: And what about your book, Mikki? When is your book coming out? What’s happening?

Mikki Gardner: Thank you, Molly.

Molly Claire: I think there’s a book.

Mikki Gardner: I’m so embarrassed. I got to get better at this. I did. I wrote a book. Thank you, Molly. So, The People Pleasers Guide to Co-parenting, is going to be released sometime in November. I will have the date soon, yes. So, that will be coming out and hopefully that helps tons of people.

Molly Claire: And if they go to your website or your Instagram, they can find it and buy it and all that good stuff.

Mikki Gardner: Absolutely. Everything is happening this week, getting all integrated and uploaded and ready for the fun. So, I can’t wait.

Molly Claire: Awesome.

Mikki Gardner: Thank you.

Molly Claire: Sharon, how about you? Where can people find you and the work you do?

Sharon Wirant: They can find me at, www.sharonwirant.com. My last name is spelled W-I-R-A-N-T, and I have just one “R” in my first name. They can also find out about me through my book Tired Yet Wired. I wrote this as one of my projects when I was working with Molly, and I talk about my own journey, as well as just a handful of tools that helped me to reclaim my energy.

And then lastly, I do have a quiz out that you can take that’s all about your fatigue archetype. So, most people first figure out about their fatigue, about maybe some behaviors that they do because that’s much more outward. And what we do through the quiz is we find out which of your fatigue archetype is out of balance. And then with some work with me, we rebalance that. But obviously within that, we go through some deeper levels.

So, for coaches, this work can be great with helping you to maintain that balance as you’re building your business. But if you also have a loved one or a friend who is suffering from chronic fatigue, whether that’s CFS/ME, or they’re just tired all the time, they’re burning out, working with me can really help them to get clear around what’s making them burned out and to help them reclaim their energy so that they can create what it is they want out of their life.

Because people who have chronic illness, they absolutely feel invisible. Friends and family typically don’t understand. And in our medical community, they are super busy. They don’t quite have the time to investigate what’s really happening. So, between coaching, the emotional work, and just some… I help guide my clients with maybe different testing that they might want to consider or what could be causing their fatigue.

Molly Claire: It can be such a black hole of information, and where do I go? And feeling dismissed by doctors or minimized and people not understanding. So, I love all that work that you do.

Sharon Wirant: Yeah. Love to support people through that.

Molly Claire: All right, well, thank you so much to all of you for being here. Coaches, thank you for being here. You can check out where you can find these amazing coaches in the show notes. And of course, you can go to www.mollyclaire.com to find out more about Master Coach Training that’s coming up this year. We already have some phenomenal coaches that have joined, and I cannot wait to see many of you there. I’ll see you all or I’ll talk with you all next week on the podcast.

Outo: 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.