What To Expect As A New Financial Coach

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” - Benjamin Franklin

So, You're A Financial Coach (Or Thinking About Becoming One)

I’ve recently had A TON of brand new financial coaches reach out to me (hey friends!) wanting my insights and advice about building a successful financial coaching business. 

So in today’s post/video, I want to outline 4 specific pieces of insight for you as a new financial coach, whether it’s a local practice, an online business or more of a “hybrid” like my own business, www.zerodebtcoach.com is.

Here are the 4 insights rapid fire and we’ll dig into more detail in a second:

1. Be Patient With Yourself
2. Don’t Quit Your Day Job (Just Yet)
3. A Word About FCMT
4. How To Deal With Imposter Syndrome

And make sure you stick around until the end of the video for a FREE financial coaching resource that will help you organize and conduct your initial coaching sessions with ease, structure and confidence.

Let’s get into it...

Hey friend, it’s Brad Long here with ZeroDebtCoach where we help 5 and 6 figure corporate burnouts escape their nightmare by teaching them how to effectively: 1) organize and optimize their financial lives, 2) obliterate debt and 3) accelerate toward financial independence by starting and growing an online business.

Welcome To Financial Coaching?

So, maybe you’ve just completed Dave Ramsey’s FCMT and are entering into the Preferred Coaching Program OR you’ve just decided to strike out and start helping people on your own. Either way, I’m excited for you and want to help you get your financial coaching business off the ground successfully with as little friction as possible.

What To Expect As A New Financial Coach

Download this free guide and start your initial coaching calls off with a solid plan and confidence.

Starting a financial coaching practice is exciting! You’ve more than likely accomplished a big hairy audacious financial goal (BHAFG), and now want to share your how you did it with the world, so they can do it too. 

OR, you might be in the process of accomplishing your big hairy audacious financial goal (BHAFG) and are excited about sharing your process. 

Either way, with 78% of the population living paycheck to paycheck, there are TONS of people that need 1) your help, 2) your insight and 3) the particular way you deliver your message. 

But, as you’re getting started, there are some certain and somewhat harsh realities I want for you to be aware of, so that you can develop some 1) a proactive mindset and 2) realistic expectations for how you respond and navigate through them.

The point of all of this is to help you build a long-term, sustainable financial coaching business that will serve both your students and you well for decades to come!

All that said, here are 4 things to keep in mind as you get started:

1. Be Patient With Yourself

It’s probably going to take some time to get things going. Rome wasn’t built in a day. It’s normal. Just keep learning, keep growing, keep helping people and don’t give up.

Figuring out your “avatar” or the target of your particular brand of coaching is probably going to take some time. We all start out wanting to “serve everyone”, but you’ll begin to see pretty quickly that that strategy will only last for so long before you burn yourself out. 

You’re going to “kiss a lot of frogs” in this process. Unfortunately, many of the people that “need” you the most, will not be willing to pay you what you’re worth OR be willing to take the process as seriously as they should.. It’s okay, there ARE people that will, you just have to be patient and simultaneously become more adept at finding those particular people..

2. Don’t Quit Your Day Job (Yet)

I’m not sure what kind of expectations they’re setting in the training you’ve gone through, but I want to set the expectation for you that “making a full-time living” as a coach can be extremely challenging, especially if you’re trading time for money in terms of exclusively coaching 1:1.

You have to really sit down and do the math. How many students do I need to take on? How much do you need to charge? What will your coaching cadence look like? What kinds of resources do you need to have in place?

There are many more questions like these that you’ll need to ask yourself as you move forward. Again it’s okay that you don’t have all the answers. Be patient and look at every interaction as a learning experience.

In full disclosure, I’m actually not sure how realistic it is to JUST have a local/1:1 coaching practice that is profitable. 

I was part of the Preferred Coaching Program right out of FCMT and I learned pretty quickly how hard it is to monetize JUST as a “kneecap to kneecap” coach.

As such, I learned early on that I needed to have a mix of revenue sources. So, my business has developed a “mix” of revenue from: 1:1 students, digital products and affiliate commissions for products I recommend to my audience.

So keep all of that in mind and be flexible about how you monetize your business moving forward.

If you’re into this kind of content, a free way you can support us is by giving us a “thumbs up” or “double smashing” that thumbs down button and leaving a comment letting us know what you had for breakfast. AND hit the subscribe button if you’re liking what you see...

3. About Financial Coach Master Training (FCMT) and the Preferred Coaching Program (PCP)

Dave Ramsey's Financial Coach Master Training (FCMT) and the Preferred Coaching Program (PCP) are great for learning the actual coaching process and sort of "getting your feet wet with coaching people that reach out to the Ramsey ecosystem for help. BUT in my experience, FCMT and the PCP are light on how to be a small business owner and almost null in the area of how to be an online entrepreneur. Keep educating yourself and keep pushing forward.

One of the harsh truths I had to learn is that people don’t actually care about our “certifications” or any other external “coaching qualifications” or any kind of training we’ve been through or have paid tons of money for.

No. What they care about is the results you can deliver for them, so you MUST start positioning yourself out of the gate as a results-oriented coach and outline VERY SPECIFICALLY what you can do for them.

For example, after coaching hundreds over the past decade, I can confidently promise a potential new student that some very common results they can expect are as follows::

1. They will find/save/earn at least $1000-$2000 in their first 30 days.
2. They will pay off/save/invest an additional $5000-$6000 in their first 90 days AND
3. Possess a solid continuation plan with encouragement, accountability and community as a result of our interaction.

I will be producing much content about my journey as both a coach as well as as an online entrepreneur, so make sure you subscribe and stay tuned to learn more about how you can do that for yourself.

4. Imposter Syndrome

Imposter syndrome is best characterized by the feeling of inadequacy about your abilities as a coach and is most accurately manifested in the following question: “well, who am I to be doing/teaching/saying this and why would anyone listen to me?”  

Trust me on this, no matter where you are in the process or how long you’ve been coaching, you’re going to deal with imposter syndrome likely fueled by your own (natural) self-doubt AND by the endless trolls on social media that often seem to have access to these natural scripts we all have running in our heads. 

Ignore it (imposter syndrome) and them (trolls) and just focus on helping your people. Do SOMETHING in the direction of your goals every day and you’ll automatically defeat imposter syndrome.

So, those are the 4 things. Real quick, let me know in the comments below which one of these is or will be the one you struggle with the most.

Like I said earlier, the point of all of this is to help you build a long-term, sustainable financial coaching business that will serve both your students and you well for decades to come!

Free “Coaching Call Presentation” Guide

Download this free guide and start your initial coaching calls off with a solid plan and confidence.

As promised, I wanted to offer you a gift for sticking around. Whether you’re just starting out as a financial coach, OR you’re looking to “next level” your coaching process, you can download my FREE “Coaching Call Presentation” guide.

 This is the EXACT presentation I use for my initial coaching calls and will give you everything you need to outline your own process, so that you can set proper expectations with your students and conduct yourself with both agility and confidence. And it’s my free gift to you as a “thanks for watching”.

ALL The Guides

Now, if you’re just starting out and not sure how you’re going to develop your own voice and communicate with your financial coaching “avatar” (i.e. ideal student), I encourage you to head over to www.zerodebtcoach.com and click on the “Free Guides” button. This will take you to my library of free guides and printables that will help you gather some ideas of your own. 

Plus, when you download one of the guides, you’ll be added to my email list and you can use that as an opportunity to see how I communicate with my list and start developing some ideas of your own.

Conclusion

As you'll come to know, I'm all about getting you to take action, so I would strongly recommend that you download my free presentation guide so you have a solid plan for your initial coaching calls. Ultimately, the more prepared and confident you are, the more students you'll close for 1:1 coaching.

So I’m interested in hearing your thoughts about this. Leave a comment below telling me… If you're a seasoned coach, do you agree? Am I missing anything? Where am I wrong? Also, let me know what you had for breakfast... :)

 Struggling Or Feeling Alone?

1. Join Our Private FB Group: Zero Debt Tribe

   

   Now, if money, debt, financial chaos is something you struggle with and you constantly feel isolated about, I’ve got some great news for you and it’s free.

   Our private Facebook group, ZeroDebtTribe. It’s a group of like minded people that are all somewhere along this P2P/debt-elimination/on their way to FI continuum. So click the image above and apply to join us. :)

     

   How can ZeroDebtCoach help you? 4 ways...

    

   1. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and click the notifications bell to make sure you get our new videos every week. 

   

    

   2. Download one of our free personal finance guides. You’ll learn some of the exact strategies I teach my private coaching students on how to organize and optimize their finances, obliterate debt and move on to financial independence by starting and growing online businesses.

   

    

   3. If you’re looking for a community of motivated and like-minded people, go ahead and get on the waitlist to join our private financial coaching community. We only open it for new students a couple of times a year, so make sure to get on the waitlist.

    

    

   4. If you need some help right now because you’ve got a burning issue, you need a problem solved, you want to talk through a complex situation, click on the button below.

    

    

   All that said, let's keep on building your financial acumen and make this your best year yet!

   Thanks so much for reading and we’ll see you in the next video post!

    

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