Ep #142: The Coaching Industry Has a Coaching Problem

Hey, woman entrepreneur, if you've ever wondered why some coaches command premium fees while others struggle to raise their prices, I think the industry has been asking an entirely wrong question. The real issue isn't pricing. It's coaching mastery. The coaching industry has become remarkably sophisticated at marketing coaching while becoming surprisingly casual about the quality of the coaching itself. So we're talking about content and visibility and branding and launches and AI and audience growth, all the things. But meanwhile, the actual coaching is often treated as an afterthought, and that is a problem.

I'm Kendall, and in this episode, we're having a candid conversation about the coaching standard, or I should say the standard for coaching, why supportive coaching just doesn't cut it, the key questions every masterful coach should be asking after every session, and why premium fees are often the byproduct of coaching mastery. 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.

Hey, woman entrepreneur, welcome back to The Money Coach School Podcast Today's episode is on a topic I have very strong feelings about because it is truly the backbone of the coaching industry. But before we get into it, I have to ask you, have you joined me on my new Substack, Feminine Money Mastery? Substack is where I'm spilling secrets on women entrepreneurs, money, and what women are capable of creating financially. Because women were never taught how to create safety, stability, and wealth, and Feminine Money Mastery is where that changes. So I really want you to join me over there. It's free. You can go to this link. It’s Kendall-SummerHawk.com to subscribe and be part of the conversation. And I'll also put a link to it in the show notes. And again, that is Kendall-, that's a little sideways dash thing, not a slanty thing, but a little like a hyphen. So Kendall-SummerHawk.com.

All right, so let me tee up our topic here today. The coaching industry has become remarkably sophisticated at marketing coaching. At the same time, becoming incredibly casual about the quality of the coaching itself that's happening inside this industry. And this is one of the biggest problems in our industry right now. Women are investing thousands and tens of thousands of dollars in coaching. That means that the coaching should be masterful. It should be exceptional. And yet many of the conversations happening in the industry have very little to do with the actual craft of coaching, very little to do with coaching mastery.

The talk in the industry is all about content and visibility. It's about personal brands and launches and AI. It's about positioning and audience growth. And I get it. Those things matter. That's all great. But meanwhile, the actual coaching is treated as an afterthought, and I really believe that at some point this becomes an integrity issue. Women deserve coaches who are deeply committed to mastering their craft, not just marketing it. Women are trusting coaches with decisions that impact their businesses, their marriages, money, careers, leadership, and the direction of their entire lives. We have to return to the quality of the coaching itself. And that's the conversation that we're having here today in this episode.

All right, so before we dive in, go ahead and click follow, wherever the follow or subscribe button is, around this episode. I am your money coach. I am your coach's coach, and every episode here is designed to help you increase your income, grow your profit, and feel in control of your money. So let's get into it. I have four points I want to make here today.

Number one, the coaching industry has a coaching problem. So one of the things that I find fascinating about the coaching industry, and believe me, I adore the coaching industry. I love it as much today as I did when I first heard about coaching, which was about 25 years ago. I've been in business 24 years, I think. I lose track, but I heard about coaching like 25 years ago. So I love it as much, if not more today than even back then. I just think it's like the most coolest thing on the planet to do. So anyway, what I find fascinating about the coaching industry is how much energy gets directed towards helping coaches get clients and how little energy gets directed towards helping coaches become extraordinary at coaching.

And again, I get it. I understand why. Marketing is visible. Results from marketing, they can be measurable. You can see followers growing, you can see launches performing, you can see leads coming in. Marketing rewards attention. Coaching mastery demands something entirely different. It requires a coach to become deeply curious about what actually creates results for a client. Because your marketing isn't creating the results for a client, trust me. You have to become deeply curious about why one question creates a breakthrough while another one falls flat. Why one session changes the direction of a woman's life, while another simply feels like a good conversation. Why some coaches consistently create powerful outcomes and others just hope that they do.

So marketing asks, how do I get more people into the room? And by room, I mean virtual room. Coaching mastery asks what happens once they're there? How do you create a result inside a coaching conversation? How do you help a woman see something she couldn't see before? How do you facilitate a breakthrough without forcing one? How do you create clarity and decisions and meaningful change consistently rather than just occasionally or ju st by luck? These are the questions that masterful coaches ask. You know, coaching mastery is the very thing that clients are actually investing in. So today, nobody's going to hire a coach because she hopes the coach has a beautiful sales page. They don't care. She hires a coach because she wants help creating a result. She wants guidance, she wants insight and perspective and leadership. She wants someone who can help her get somewhere she has not been able to get on her own.

So at some point, that marketing content, it ends. The launch ends, the sales conversation is done, and the client is sitting in that virtual chair. She's sitting on the other end of a phone or Zoom, however it is that you deliver your coaching. And now the coaching itself has to create value. And here's what I really want you to take to heart. No amount of visibility can compensate for coaching that isn't producing meaningful results. Women are trusting coaches with some of the most important decisions that they will ever make about their businesses, their relationships, certainly about money, leadership, careers, health, the direction of their lives. So I don't think coaching mastery should be optional.

All right. Point number two, supportive coaching isn't enough. Yes, support matters. Of course, it does. For a client to feel seen, it matters. Encouragement matters, validation matters. These are all good things. But there are moments where those things are exactly what a woman needs and that's awesome. But support alone is not why women invest premium dollars. They just don't. Women invest because they want results. They want clarity around a decision that they've been avoiding. They want a blind spot exposed. They want a pattern interrupted. They want progress in an area where they have felt stuck for months or even years. They want to leave the coaching session different than when they arrived.

One of the biggest misconceptions I see in coaching or in the coaching industry is the belief that a great session is a supportive session. I absolutely do not agree. The consequences of mediocre coaching are rarely being discussed. The industry talks about the impact of great coaching all the time, talk about breakthroughs, transformations, success stories, and that's great. But what doesn't get talked about is what happens when coaching lacks depth, when it lacks precision, when it doesn't have leadership. And what happens is your client, that woman stays stuck longer. Her decisions get delayed. Her blind spots remain invisible. Her business grows more slowly if you're doing business coaching. Her dream stays unrealized.

So my standard is that a great coaching session is one that creates a meaningful result. Maybe the client finally sees what's been holding her back. Maybe she makes the decision she's been postponing. Maybe she stops arguing for a limitation. Maybe she recognizes a possibility that she couldn't see before. Something changes. That's the standard. The standard isn't whether the client feels supported. The standard is whether the coaching creates a meaningful result because results change lives. And results are what women are ultimately investing in.

All right, let me go on to point number three. I want you to stop asking, well, did she like it? This is one of the biggest distinctions between average coaches and masterful coaches. After a coaching session, the average coach asks themselves questions like, well, did she like it? Did she think it was valuable? Did I say the right thing? Did I do enough? Did I help? And I understand when I was new as a coach, my go-to questions were, did I do enough and did I think that she thought it was valuable? Like that's where I would go. Really not useful, not useful to you, certainly not useful to your client. Those questions seem really innocent, but they're focused on the coach, and coaching, my dear heart, it's not about the coach.

Masterful coaches ask a very different set of questions. They ask questions like, what changed? What became visible? What decision got made? What pattern got interrupted? What became possible that wasn't possible before? What result was created? Questions like these immediately raise the standard of coaching because now the focus shifts away from whether the coach performed well. And none of us want to be performing coaching. That sucks. That's too stressful. It's not what clients want anyway. But it shifts towards whether the client experienced meaningful progress.

The goal of coaching is not to impress a client. The goal is to help create a result, to facilitate a result. And when coaches start evaluating their sessions through that lens, the standard for that coach and for the entire industry uplevels. The quality of the coaching improves, the confidence of the coach improves, and clients begin experiencing a very different level of value, an up-leveled level of value.

All right. Point number four. Premium fees are the byproduct. The coaching industry spends a lot of time teaching coaches how to justify premium fees, and I think that's entirely backwards. The goal is not to justify premium fees. The goal is to become so skilled that premium fees feel obvious. Premium fees are rarely a pricing problem. More often, they're a coaching mastery problem.

When your coaching consistently creates results, pricing becomes a very different conversation. And clients stay longer, they refer more often, clients talk about their experience with you, their trust deepens and your reputation grows because your coaching has become masterful. Premium fees are not the reward for just being confident in marketing. They're not the reward for having the perfect offer or for repeating affirmations in the mirror. They are the byproduct of coaching mastery, the byproduct of becoming extraordinarily good at helping women create meaningful results. And that's why I believe coaching mastery is one of the smartest investments a coach can make. Not simply because it impacts income, which, of course, it does, but because it impacts lives, and that's the work that we signed up to do as coaches.

So to wrap up here, the coaching standard absolutely needs to rise. Women deserve coaching that produces meaningful results. They deserve coaching that helps them make decisions that they've been avoiding, coaching that helps them see possibilities they couldn't see before, that changes the direction of their lives. And you, the coach deserve the kind of confidence that comes from mastery, not hope or guesswork or just, you know, wishing a session goes well. I'm talking about the confidence that comes from knowing that you can create value inside a coaching session, no matter what. That confidence is priceless. Because when coaching mastery becomes the goal, premium fees stop feeling like something you have to justify. They become a natural reflection of the results that your coaching creates.

And this is why I care so deeply about Courageous Coaching® certification. What this industry needs is for every coach to be committed to mastery, for every coach to be committed to creating meaningful results for the women that they serve. And that's why I created Courageous Coaching® certification. It's how to become masterful at coaching, how to create meaningful results in every session. How to coach with the kind of precision and depth and leadership that changes lives.

So if you're ready to raise your coaching standard, to deepen your coaching mastery or to start your coaching journey from a masterful standpoint from the very beginning, and if you're ready to become the kind of coach women remember and refer and happily pay premium fees to work with, I invite you to check out Courageous Coaching® certification. You can find it at KendallSummerHawk.com/cc. It stands for Courageous Coaching®. Again, that link is KendallSummerHawk.com/cc. And I will also of course link to it in the show notes.

I want you to have this final takeaway. Your coaching has the power to change lives. It's so freaking exciting, isn't it? So I want you to treat it that way. Treat it with all the respect that it deserves because you have that power within you to change lives. All right, my beautiful soul. Thank you so much and I will see you in our next episode.

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.