Take Your Coaching Business from Unprofitable to Thriving with One Simple Shift

Are you feeling stuck in your coaching business, spinning your wheels on tasks that seem productive but don’t actually bring in clients? In this episode of Coach Smarter, Stephen Box and business coach Kay Phillips dive into the common traps that keep coaches working hard without results. From procrastination disguised as productivity to the fear of success that stops many in their tracks, this conversation will help you identify and focus on the actions that truly move the needle.

By the end of this episode, you’ll discover:

• The difference between busy work and meaningful, client-generating actions.
• Why fear of failure—or success—might be holding you back.
• A simple, actionable strategy to pivot and start seeing results today.

About Our Guest
Kay Phillips is a biz coachsultant for badass solopreneurs & independent agents who want to build their vision board-worthy business TODAY, not someday so that they can live their dream life!

📆 Click here to schedule a free call with Kay

Transcript

Stephen Box: 0:00

If you're working really hard in your coaching business, but it feels more like you've just built a time consuming hobby, you're not alone. The truth is, many coaches spend a lot of time on tasks that feel productive, but it's not turning them into clients. And that's the hard truth that we're going to tackle today. Welcome to Coach Smarter, brought to you by Unshakable Habits. I am your host, Stephen Box, and this is the podcast for health and wellness professionals, where we help you to stand out in a crowded market, sharpen your coaching skills, and build systems that make your business sustainable and your life more fulfilling. Today, I'm joined by Kay Phillips, a biz coach sultan, who's here to help us stop spinning our wheels and start building businesses we're proud of. Kay specializes in cutting through the noise to identify the needle movers in your business. That's those actions that truly make a difference and equipping you with the tools to conquer your goals with grit and grace. In today's episode we're gonna unpack why so many of us avoid the tasks that lead to success and how to distinguish between busy work in meaningful work and when it's time to pivot your strategy. Kay's got real world examples, actionable advice, and a nois nonsense approach to getting you unstuck. So without further ado, let's jump in. Kay, welcome to Coach Smarter. Thanks so much for being here today.

Kay Phillips: 1:28

Oh, thank you for having me.

Stephen Box: 1:31

So I talked a little bit in the intro about today we're talking to that coach who is really busy. They're working a lot. They're putting in a lot of effort. But they don't have any clients. So really what they have is a very time consuming hobby, not an actual business. And I would love to start by having you shared with us what you have to offer to that person today.

Kay Phillips: 1:59

Yeah, that's a great point. I hear that from a lot of people, coaches, especially they're doing all the things except getting a whole bunch of clients, which is kind of a goal of doing a whole bunch of things. Usually. so that's a really common problem a lot of, especially new, but even sometimes seasoned coaches can have. And it, a lot of times, will come down to are you doing actual tasks that move the needle, or are you doing what I call pre crastination tasks, which is where you're doing something that feels productive, but doesn't actually move the needle forward in your business, like getting new clients.

Stephen Box: 2:41

So can you give me some examples here? Like what would be maybe a few things that you see a lot of coaches do that fall under that pre crastination label? And what are the things that you would consider to be needle movers?

Kay Phillips: 2:55

Well, for me, a needle mover is anything that moves you closer to where you want to be in your business. So that's usually a higher gross revenue while also working fewer hours. For most people, that's the win win that they're looking for. And when you are in that point or at that. kind of area in your business where you are working lots of hours really hustling trying to get the new clients and not having a whole lot of success yet or you're not kind of at your minimum or your quarterly goal. That's when You're not doing the needle movers. That's not getting clients in. And what I see a lot of people do, especially when they need clients more immediately, more short term, to kind of get their business off the ground and just meet even their monthly bills, is they fall into that kind of procrastination trap where they are going out and trying to figure out how to write a newsletter. Or scaling up social media, which can work and bring in clients, but it's going to take longer and it's not going to make an immediate impact on moving up the needle closer to, you know, like a gas tank from empty to full. It's not going to move that needle any closer to full on the client load side anytime soon. And when coaches need. More clients, they usually need that a little sooner rather than later. So going to like networking events or reaching out directly to people and getting in conversations. Those are more of the immediate needle moving tasks.

Stephen Box: 4:30

Why do you think that it is that we tend to avoid a lot of those needle movers? Why, like, for example, people won't go to a networking event or they won't reach out to people for those one on one conversations. Is it just a matter of it just feels easier to just make a social media post or is there maybe something else going on there?

Kay Phillips: 4:50

Sometimes it can feel easier, even if I have a lot of clients who are like dead set. They don't want to do social media and they want to do like networking or referral marketing. And they always end up when their brain is kind of exhausted, they go back to what everybody says they should be doing, which generally is social media or like newsletters and things like that. A really good example, I have actually a real estate agent. As a client and very similar to coaches, you know, he's got to kind of coach people into buying and selling the different homes and we've worked together several different times and for him calling the leads that he gets sent, like he has it even easier than most people, he gets sent leads, but he struggles to actually call them and so he'll usually reach out to me, say, Hey, I'm panicking, I might have to get a job, like, heaven forbid, we do not want J. O. B. s around here, And so I challenge him, go call people for like two hours straight, or go call until you get 20 people, you know, just, that tell you, stick it where the sun don't shine, go get those 20 no's, then come back and tell me you're having a hard time finding clients. And with my coaching clients, I do the same thing. I challenge them to go to networking events, go online, into Facebook groups, reach out to 20 people. And until you get 20 people to tell you, no, you don't stop. And that might be a daily metric for some people. And that is what gets them kind of out of that fear response of, you know, a, maybe I'm not good enough to actually be a coach because clients aren't just like flocking to me from all corners of the world. So sometimes it's that fear of failure and imposter syndrome, but I've seen a lot of people as well, like with my Realtor client, where it's actually more of a fear of success because the story they've told themselves for so long is, oh, I'm not a good coach or I'm a new Realtor, even if they've been doing it for years. I hear that from really seasoned professionals and they almost have this fear of calling themselves Successful at what it is they do and that can hold them back from doing those needle movers because then the success is really obvious and you have to let go of that old narrative, which as humans, we really like our comfort zones, even if they're.

Stephen Box: 7:14

Yeah, especially when success might be doing the thing that you really don't want to do, right? Then now it's like you have to almost self acknowledge that the way you want to do things or the way you think you should be doing things is actually wrong. And you have to accept that there's a better way. And that can be pretty shocking for people to do.

Kay Phillips: 7:39

Oh, most definitely. Accepting that you're wrong or being able to pivot and not feel like a failure is A bit of a skill and just a bit of a practice as well. You get better at it, but it's never, you just get it and you're done. You never have to think about it again.

Stephen Box: 7:58

So one thing you're, you've kind of touched on a little bit here, but I wanted to maybe dive a little deeper into this. I'm a big believer, and I know from our pre interview call you agree with this, that You need to have awareness, right? So there does need to be a prep period. You need to know about yourself. You need to understand your market. The problems that you're solving. You need that stuff. If you don't have that stuff, you're not going to have a business because you don't know what you're trying to sell or who you're trying to sell it to. But where does the line kind of come in between you've gotten things good enough to start and then adapt it as needed versus When you get into that procrastination stuff where you're just doing the things because you don't feel ready yet.

Kay Phillips: 8:46

That is definitely a complicated topic. And it's a little specific or unique for everybody depending on what fears or issues they're working with. it's one of those things where I call it kind of the grit and grace principle, which is. The grit to keep doing those needle movers, maybe you don't want to do, you know, maybe it's winter time, it's dark. You just want to stay in bed and be cozy. You don't want to get up and go to that networking event, even if it's a virtual and then having the grace to say, you know what? I have my own business and it's going well enough. I think I'm going to take today off. I don't need to go do that networking event. And kind of finding that balance is a day to day example. But then also. Using those needle movers, like we talked about earlier, being very tangible, you know, maybe that's tracking them, filling out like a form or an Excel spreadsheet, something every week, so you know you're hitting your needle movers, and then you can evaluate, this is working, this is not working. Like, this maybe got me to 10 clients, but somehow it's not getting me to the next 20 clients. or it's got me low ticket clients, but it's not working to get me high ticket clients. So, having that data, you can actually Schedule it into your calendar and look back and evaluate is this working still? Does it need to adapt? Or did I try it and it didn't work at all? And we need to just toss it in the trash and start over.

Stephen Box: 10:16

So let me give you a scenario and tell me if this sounds accurate to you. What I'm hearing is, is it might play out this way. You come up with the initial idea of who you want to help, the problem that you want to solve, and you figure out your messaging for that problem. You go out, you put it on social media, you go to networking events, you talk to people, you get in front of enough people that you have a sample size, right? And by the way, people, posting one time on Facebook is not a sample size, okay? Just putting that out, right? Even if you have a thousand followers and a thousand people didn't see it, okay? And So you go out and you do these things if you get clients You're on the right track You continue doing that until you hit a wall and then you figure out what you need to adjust If you don't get clients Then you go back to the drawing board and you figure out where you went wrong And you make changes and then you go out and test it again And you basically are just repeating that process at every stage. Am I am I understanding that correctly?

Kay Phillips: 11:21

Exactly. It's why I use the 12 a year a lot of times. Like, we all have our big, you know, 10 year, 5 year, and working our way down goals. But I also like to encourage people, whatever your yearly goal is, look at just the quarter. Because then you can pivot a little faster. You give things enough try that like, no, that really didn't work. Even with the momentum that I built, even learning what I did in those three months. And you can say, yes, it did, or no, it didn't work, and be able to pivot a little quicker, rather than, say, like, sticking to one method the whole year, and saying, like, I am a relationship coach, but you're going to networking events filled with business owners who aren't there thinking about their relationships. You need to figure out quicker if that's the right messaging, and that's where your audience lives or not. And it doesn't hurt you to change your specialty either. A lot of people get really stuck on this idea of I'm X, Y, Z kind of coach. End of story. And they feel like they can't change it. But a lot of times the Words that you use to describe yourself will change a little bit over time and you'll still get people coming to you for All kinds of other things.

Stephen Box: 12:36

I just have to throw this in real quickly I don't normally throw in cheat plugs in the middle of an interview, but since you brought up the 12 week year That is actually going to be the book that we are going through for our book club in January so if someone wants to go through that book the Show notes have a link, which you can join the book club. It's completely free. So come join us in January and be a part of that book club. I just had to throw that in because you brought up the book.

Kay Phillips: 13:05

Yeah, no, I love it. I encourage every business owner or even agents, you know, people who are like highly commissioned. I encourage them all to read that book because it really does change the way you plan your, not just days, but your whole life and even your business. It's an awesome book to read. I'm so excited you guys are doing that in January.

Stephen Box: 13:25

Thank you. Yeah, I love the fact of what you're talking about here, too, of you don't have to say, Oh, I'm going to start off and I'm going to serve, you know, like, let's say you're a health coach, you know, like I'm going to, you know, serve moms over 35 and, you know, that's my niche. Well, that doesn't mean that you're stuck only 35 for the rest of your life. You can change that anytime you want. Maybe at some point you go, you know what, I only work. want to work with moms over 40 or not want to work with moms under 30 or you know, you know what, I don't want to work with moms at all. I want to help dads, right? So you can completely change it and do whatever you want. That's, it's your business. You get to run it whatever way you see fit and no one's going to come knock on your door and go, Hey, Why'd you change your niche?

Kay Phillips: 14:16

Exactly. I have so many clients that each call me a different type of coach. like when I go to a networking event, like early on, I was talking more like, you know, I'm a communication coach and specifically focusing more on like corporations and like talking to your team and your employees. That was kind of my thing. And within two meetings of giving that kind of pitch and commercial, I had a, About 70 year old gentleman come to me and like, Hey. I want better communication because, like, I don't have a relationship with my son, I'm getting older, and I'd, I'd like to Communicate better, like never in my wildest dreams do I think I'd be helping a father reconnect with his adult son that is not what I went there for, but he's been one of my best and most loyal clients, even though that's not the niche I was in or the kind of commercial or pitch that I gave. So you can niche yourself without necessarily excluding people that do still want to work with you.

Stephen Box: 15:18

Yeah, I have one of my mentors that gave this really great. Picture that I always share, which is imagine that you are inside of a room and there's all these doors that are the different services that you offer, the different problems that you can solve, all the different skills that you have, you've got to get people in the room, right? Which door are they coming through? That's all you, that's all you're trying to do, right? That doesn't mean you can't take them to different rooms in the house and show them different stuff, but you got to pick a door to get them in because if you're trying to promote seven different doors. You're not going to get anybody in a room.

Kay Phillips: 15:57

Yeah, you only got two hands. You can't do that many at one time. That's a great metaphor to explain it. Because there are plenty of clients behind any door that you choose. There are plenty of people.

Stephen Box: 16:10

Yeah, just pick which one you want to bring people in the door through. And if at some point, if you're like, hey, like we said earlier, if you get into it and you're like, you know what? This is doing okay, but it's not really getting me where I want to be. Ultimately, you can go pick a different door.

Kay Phillips: 16:26

You can always pivot. That's the hardest lesson to learn and be okay with. I think as a business owner and as a coach, it's pivoting is okay. And it does not make you an imposter or a fraud or a flake. You're typically, if you're in business, multi passionate and kind of good at a lot of things. And when you find somebody saying like, Hey, can you help me do this? And you help them do it, even if that wasn't something you necessarily done or envisioned for yourself. It doesn't mean you're not good at everything else. It just means you have one more tool to add to your belt.

Stephen Box: 17:01

Just to give people a little bit of insight on you here as well. I know from our pre interview, you are running multiple businesses. You make time to be on podcasts like this. You work on a farm and you told me somewhat hilariously that we sometimes have to just like run off in the middle of a call to go, you know, save a chicken from a hawk or something like that. And. You, so you're obviously a very busy person. You have a lot of potential interruptions that kind of occur through the day. What are some of your personal secrets for staying productive and focused?

Kay Phillips: 17:36

Probably the simplest, and I'm sure everybody's heard of it, but it is the kind of big three. So like, what are the three things that you need to do today? out of your entire to do list, I always pick the three things if I only get these three things done, you know, like heaven forbid, you know, my husband gets in a car accident and I'm going to a hospital in 10 minutes. What are those things I can get done that are going to move my business forward? Those are kind of how I look at all of my tasks to do on a given day, but that's also after I filter them through, you might've heard of it, the Eisenhower matrix, which is, you know, what are you doing? Now what's urgent, what's important, and what maybe gets put to the back burner or deleted all together because it's a busy task and not actually a needle mover. So filtering everything through those lenses of what's an actual priority right now today and what are the things I need to get done today. Is how I keep myself focused, even on those days where I don't want to, I just do those three and kind of create some momentum. I usually end up doing a whole lot more, but it's a good way to beat the brain fog.

Stephen Box: 18:49

I actually use a similar formula and I don't know if anybody else that actually teaches this, but on my computer, I have two folders on my bookmark bar. One is called shiny objects, and the other one is called for later. So if it's something that actually needs to be done, but it's not urgent that I do it right now, I put it in for later. So that at the end of the day or the following morning, I can review that list and see is there anything in there that I want to go ahead and move to the big list today. And then the shiny object list is just things that I think I need to look at, but I know really probably aren't that important. And so by putting those on there. And putting them in that folder, I just forget about them, right? Because I feel like I did something with them. So they're just there, but it's kind of funny just sometimes I'll just open it and look through it and I'm like, this is just nonsense. I'm just going to delete this now.

Kay Phillips: 19:45

Oh, I love that. That's a great way to do it. I have a similar system, especially for the shiny objects, because I do also have ADHD. I've been managing it for years. It's one of the few people who was actually diagnosed as a child. or one of the few women, I should say. And the shiny objects are so real and so distracting. And that's where I use my priority matrix. They have kind of the delete column. And for me, I don't delete, I just delay. So those shiny objects, I don't put them on a list. But I like that idea. I usually put them in my calendar for like, Two weeks, four weeks, whenever I have kind of a gap in my schedule. And the deal I make with myself is if I can't stop thinking about them, I make myself pretty much wait until that calendar event. And I know that's something I want to do if I can't stop thinking about it. If the calendar event pops up a couple weeks, months later, And I have no idea what my notes mean, and then it's deleted, and it was just a shiny object.

Stephen Box: 20:43

Yeah, it's like, at some point you have to kind of teach yourself that, you know, if things don't get touched within a certain amount of time, they're clearly not that important, right?

Kay Phillips: 20:52

Yep, exactly. Because there's always so many shiny objects, especially now like with AI. I think that's everybody's latest shiny object.

Stephen Box: 21:02

So real quickly, if you could just share with us who would be the ideal person that you would actually be able to help and what's the best way for them to contact you?

Kay Phillips: 21:13

Yeah. so similar to kind of my other businesses, I really enjoy helping people do what I've done, in similar ways, just because I have that firsthand experience. So for me, people who are looking to grow and scale their business, especially through, networking or having a lot of like one to one conversations. You know, a lot of people say that's not the most efficient way and they're right, but it does tend to lead to higher quality and actually a higher conversion rate. So people who want to get better at those conversations may be better at selling, better at networking. like me, I'm an introvert, but I can. Turn it on when I need to, when I'm in front of a group, because I've learned. So helping people really put themselves out there in a clear and concise way, but also have conversations that go somewhere, not just, oh, that person was nice. Oh, you know, you're never going to talk to them again. And then, you know, of course, that's all part of kind of the focus and the efficiency of actual meetings. when it comes to managing time and calendars, helping people figure out what works best for them in each season of their life is another kind of passion project of mine as well.

Stephen Box: 22:26

And if they want to contact you, what's the best way to do that?

Kay Phillips: 22:29

the best way is generally just to grab a spot on my calendar. I'm pretty open with that. I do 30 minute calls with everybody because I like to talk and network. So it never hurts to meet other people who are potential collaborators or even potential prospects.

Stephen Box: 22:46

Okay. And I'll assume that you will give me a link that I can share in the show notes for people to be able to find that as well.

Kay Phillips: 22:52

Yep. I certainly will.

Stephen Box: 22:54

All right. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here today and kind of sharing some of your insights. Really appreciate it.

Kay Phillips: 23:01

Yeah. Thank you for having me on.

Stephen Box: 23:02

That's it for today's episode of Coach Smarter. I want to quickly recap some of the key takeaways from our conversation today with Kay Phillips. We talked about the dangers of procrastination and how tasks like perfecting your social media or email campaigns can feel productive, but they don't lead to clients. Kay also explained how focusing on needle moving actions Like having one on one conversations and attending networking events can help you to generate results faster. And finally, we explored how to overcome the fear of failure or even the fear of success that holds many coaches back from doing the work that matters most. If this episode resonated with you, take a moment to connect with Kay Phillips directly. She is offering those 30 minute calls to help you clarify your next steps and there will be a link down in the show notes for you. Also, if you found a value in this episode, please consider sharing it with another coach who might be struggling to turn their passion into action. into a thriving business. And before we wrap up, here's a quick sneak peek at what's coming up next on our next episode of Coach Smarter. We're diving into how to turn discovery calls into sales. So if you've ever felt nervous or unsure about how to approach these conversations, you won't want to miss it. Thanks for tuning in, and as always, this is Stephen Box reminding you That coaching smarter creates a lasting impact for you and those you serve.