Ep #4: Becoming Your Best Mentor

As we continue discussing my Five Steps to Creating Self-Confidence, I’ve got a game-changer of a tool for you today. Step three is all about becoming your best mentor, and this step is crucial in building your dream coaching business and upping your self-confidence like nothing else.

We often like to look to our teachers and mentors for advice on what to do next, or if you’re anything like me, your email inbox will be full of downloadable guides and programs, thinking that consuming more information is the way forward. But friends, while this is enticing, it’s just not going to work. Today, I’m diving into why doing this actually kills your confidence, and who your best mentor actually is.

Join me this week as I show you who your best mentor is and how to practice this tool to build your self-confidence and business to new levels. This step in my process seriously gives me tingles every time I teach it because it is absolutely life-changing, so I can’t wait for you to try it out!

To celebrate the launch of the show, I’m giving away some serious fabulousness! ONE lucky listener will win a brand-new, series 4 40mm Apple Watch, and FOUR will win a $50 Amazon gift card. To find out more about the giveaway and how to enter, click here!

What You’ll Learn:
  • Why copying the mentors and coaches in your life kills your confidence.
  • What asking others to make decisions for us indicates.
  • Why having more teachers or programs doesn’t guarantee a successful coaching business. 
  • Three questions to ask that will help you determine who your future you is.
  • How to practice the future you tool to help you create your dream coaching business.
  • One of my favorite questions to ask when thinking about my future self.
Listen to the Full Episode:

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Full Episode Transcript:

You are listening to episode four of The Confident Coaches Podcast, the one where I talk about your best mentor. I wonder who it is.

Welcome to The Confident Coaches Podcast, a place for creating the self-confidence you need to do your best work as a life coach. If you want to bring more boldness, more resilience, and more joy to your work, this is the place for you. I’m your host, Amy Latta. Let’s dive in.

Hello my friends, how is everyone out there in podcast land? Things are pretty dang fabulous over here at the Amy Latta coaching studios, which is actually my home office, which is actually our spare bedroom. But I am recording this podcast the day after we launched the podcast as a whole, and I am reading all of the early reviews and getting all the entries into the giveaway, and I’m just feeling all of the feels over here. It’s so much fun.

So I want to give a shout-out to Confident Coaches listener Caitlyn. This is what Caitlyn wrote. “You might wonder if Amy really knows what she’s talking about. Is this just another shiny podcast from someone who has earned a couple thousand dollars? No. Amy is legit. I’ve seen her numbers. She’s walked the walk. She knows exactly what she’s doing, and this is our chance to learn from someone amazing.”

Oh my goodness, this was so good. Because at first I was like, I don’t know, do I know what I’m talking about? That’s right. I am legit. I do walk the walk. Not entirely sure I know exactly what I’m doing, but yes, what I’m sharing here is the work that I have done.

So have you left your review yet? Have you done it? Because Caitlyn emailed her review to me. She’s entered into the giveaway, which is just running in the first few weeks of the show. She might win the Apple watch. She might win one of four $50 Amazon cards. Do you want in? Then subscribe, rate, and review, and then email it to me.

So while I am feeling all the feels over here, I want to note that I am indeed a product of my own work because I am totally using the tools that I shared with you in the last episode, embracing discomfort. There’s a lot of emotions I’m experiencing this week. So allowing the emotions, and I’m not stuffing them down, nor am I trying to positive think my way out of it.

So Caitlyn is 100% spot on. I am walking the walk over here. And in fact, I have shared with many of my clients exactly how I’m using step number two right now as I have so many variety of emotions this week. So I practice what I preach, my friends. And what I’m sharing with you today was a game-changer for me.

Now, I know that word game-changer is very overused, but I cannot express enough the power of today’s topic. So as a recap, these first couple episodes, we’re going through the five steps of creating self-confidence. And those five steps are purposeful belief, embracing discomfort, becoming your best mentor, having your own back, and evaluating and keep going.

I am literally living and breathing them right now as we speak. So today, today is becoming your best mentor, and I want to be 100% clear. I’m a big fan of mentors. I have not been without one in over two years. I believe we should have all of those people. Experts, mentors, coaches that we can learn from, get advice from, but in the end, no one knows more about you, about what you want to create, what you bring to the table, and why it’s important.

No one knows that more than you. So yes, hire people to teach you what you legit do not know how to do. And yes, hire coaches like me to help coach your brain out of the crap it likes to indulge in. But when it comes to making decisions for your business, and knowing what to do, we tend to get it all wrong.

We tend to look to other coaches and the mentors in our life and we think, “Hey, you want to know what? They’re successful, they seem to have it together, so what they did, I’m just going to copy that.” Now, as enticing as that may be, there’s so many things wrong with this.

Understand that if you just copy what others are doing, all you’re doing is creating a copycat business. It’s not your business. How can you bring your fabulousness to the table if you’re only copying someone else? You think if it’ll work for them, it will work for you, and you think that that will bring confidence, but it doesn’t.

That doesn’t actually bring you confidence. Because first of all, copying what someone else is doing, even if they give you the step-by-step formula, here’s the bummer; it may not actually work for you. The marketplace of history is lined with shelves of failed products that tried to copy exactly what someone else was doing.

Like when Cabbage Patch Kid came out and then other companies tried to put out another version of that. My Little Pony came out and then other rival companies tried to put out their version of that. Okay, nobody remembers the other versions, do they? No, they only remember the original.

Lightning did not strike twice for those other people. So why do we assume it’s going to for us? Because then you’ll wonder what’s wrong with you and your brain will be focused on well, it worked for them and not for me, so then what? There must be something wrong with me.

But that’s not the case at all. It’s just that you aren’t them. You are you. And here’s the other thing; even if it does work, even if lightning does strike twice, let’s say someone hands you the exact formula and it works. You are not any more confident because it’s not your creation. Even if it works, this is still a confidence killer because there’s a part of your brain that says, “See, I told you we couldn’t create our own thing. Copying others is all we are capable of.”

So copying others, this is just a straight up no go on two different fronts. You will either not create their success and your brain will tell you that there’s something wrong, or you will create their success and your brain will still tell you that there’s something wrong with you. Your brain’s going to be a real son of a bitch.

So something else that I know that I was guilty of was continuously seeking out new teachers, new mentors. My thought was, the more teachers the better, right? And no, no, not right. Sorry, I hate to break it to you.

So this is one right here, this is one that got me over and over again. My email is full of online courses and downloaded books and downloaded programs and email newsletters that I have either done, that I’ve only half done, or I haven’t even bothered to do. And yet I always thought, “Well, maybe this new person, maybe this new person has the solution.”

So why aren’t more teachers better? It comes down to the fact that there’s so many ways to create a successful coaching business these days. So let me give you an example of this right now. So in my life, I have two main mentors. Brooke Castillo and Stacey Boehman.

One of them is in full belief that the way to build a successful coaching business is through online marketing, websites, Facebook ads, and funnels. While the other one is in full belief that the way to build a successful coaching business is through organic marketing, networking, and referrals.

And then it wasn’t that long ago that I saw a Facebook ad and it said the results are in. The best way to build a coaching business, speaking events. I was like, what? The results, where are these results? Who did this test? So who’s right? Our brains believe there has to be a right person. There is a wrong way and a right way and someone here is a winner and someone here is a loser.

Here’s what I want to offer you though. What if they’re all right and there is no wrong answer? Your work here is to let go of the thought that there’s a correct way and a wrong way and you’re at risk of making the wrong decision and you just need to decide. You don’t need more teachers and mentors. You just need to pick one and go all in.

Now, sometimes even when we go all in and we stopped all that consumption of learning, when it comes to decision making, when it comes time to actually pull some triggers, we start asking people what they think we should do. So the scenario kind of sets up like this.

You’ve read everything, you’ve considered all sides and now it’s time to decide. This or that. And we want someone else to tell us. It goes something like, “Let me just run this by you. What would you do here? What do you think?”

So here’s the thing; these questions, they seem innocent enough, we see them all the time, we hear them all the time, it sounds just like normal conversation, right? But here’s the thing; these questions are really big indicators to us. We ask because we haven’t been working on the steps one and step two, that purposeful belief from episode two and embracing discomfort from episode three.

We don’t believe enough in ourselves. We haven’t done enough purposeful believing. And we are terrified of feeling the discomfort of something not working. We haven’t done enough embracing discomfort. But if you believed and if you were willing to feel those uncomfortable feels of making decisions without 100% knowing if it’s going to work, you wouldn’t be so quick to go ask someone else what you should do.

With purposeful belief and with embracing discomfort, we then can start making decisions for ourself. Here’s the other thing about this. And it kind of sucks when we do this. We kind of suck when we do this to other people, and I am full on guilty here so do not think for a second that I am condemning anyone else.

But let’s say you do take someone’s advice. Let’s say you say, “Hey, what should I do here?” They give you their opinion, you take their advice, and it doesn’t work. Now what? What you’ve done is you’ve set them up to be blamed for your lack of decision making. That’s just not cool.

We see it as I took their advice and it didn’t work out and it was wrong, so that we can put it on them, right? When really, what’s going on is I was too afraid to make a decision and now I’m putting it on them because it’s too terrifying to own this bad decision. It’s just an all-around icky situation right there.

Now, I have to share with you that I recently completed a year-long mentorship. The 100K mentorship with The Life Coach School. And I think this right here was my biggest lesson. It was crazy uncomfortable and I resisted it for a really long time. But I had to learn to stop asking other people what I should do for my own business.

I had to really step into the belief that I am the CEO of my business and I have my own back and I can make my own damn decisions. That right there took my nine months to really fully own. Okay, so one last thing that coaches may do here that’s not quite as common but for those people-pleasers out there like me, hello, hand raised.

You’ll find that when you’re asking other people what to do, you’re really asking for permission. Because you know what you want to do, but it’s kind of playing bigger than you’re really comfortable with and you just want to make sure it’s okay. Like, is it okay for me to do this? I want you to still be okay with me if I do this.

Can I make my own decisions? Are you going to be okay if I make my own decisions? Any of you who are out there, you’re former good little girls like I am, you’ll know what this feels like. It doesn’t feel very good at all because really, what we’re asking is, is it okay for me to play big? Because you just aren’t sure yet that it is.

That’s a great indicator to go back into what do you need to think in order to believe. That’s a lack of belief right there when we’re really worried about playing big.

So most of us have been guilty at least of one of these things and I want to assure you, it’s so entirely normal. You are creating your dream coaching business. It’s brand new to you and there are people in your life who have already done it, so why not copy them? Why not lean on them? Why not ask them, what did you do? What did you do?

But for all of those reasons why, it won’t work, we can’t be guaranteed success by putting our success in someone else’s hands. At the end of the day, there’s only one person who already has all your answers and it’s you. Specifically, it’s future you.

So I want you to envision a future you who is a version of you who exists in the future who already has created her dream coaching business. You get to decide what that dream coaching business is. So really understand, your dream coaching business may be very different than mine. Everybody’s version of success is different.

Maybe it’s making $50,000 a year. Maybe it’s $100,000 or $200,000 or $500,000. Maybe your dream coaching business is millionaire status. It really is so much less important about what it is, that this future you, because she’s created those results that you don’t yet have, she acts differently than you do now and she feels differently because she thinks differently.

One thing’s for damn sure. She doesn’t put up with a lot of bullshit that we currently do. And she doesn’t hem and haw on the decisions that you’re struggling with. She knows things. She’s tried things, and she knows what it took to make it happen. She is your best mentor.

So how do we make that happen? This concept sounds great, but how do we do that? So first off, understand we need to define her. I have a three-part process just for defining future you that I work with my clients on to figure out who their future you is. And that is answering these three questions.

What is she like? What has she achieved? And what is her life like to become this person who’s achieved these things? Now, in order for future you to become your best mentor, she has to be a real person. A fully formed human, living the life of your dream coaching business and what that dream coaching business will create.

I have to be honest, I love doing this work so much. It’s like creating a vision board but with words and full descriptions. The act of defining future you is truly embodying what your future looks like and who you will become to create that.

There’s a next step in this where I have my clients take the answers to those three questions that they’ve written about future them in their life, and write it in a first person present tense point of view, as if all of this has already happened. As if you and I haven’t talked to each other in six months to a year, and you’re going to be telling me all about their life.

This right here is so powerful. When you write it all out, when you read it, when you say it out loud, it can make you cry because our brains don’t realize the difference between a current reality and our dreams. And when you really paint this full picture of what’s possible, it makes it real.

And oftentimes, that’s the first time a coach has really envisioned what they are working towards. It’s so good, my friends. Alright, so once you have defined her and you’ve created her as a real person, then you got to hang out with her. You get to hang out with her. Spend time with your future you.

So just like sitting in belief that we talked about in step one, which was episode two, you have to sit in the energy of future you. You take that written vision board that you’ve created and you spend time there in your mind. Just like you spend time in your mind in belief.

So future you thinks and feels differently than present you does. Take that written description of future you and visualize actually being there and the feelings that that creates. And the thoughts that you have about being there already. And you can become her, you can become future you now.

I get the tingles talking about this, my friends. Realize that when you spend time thinking and feeling like future you, that’s exactly what you need to do in order to become her. You can’t create this future you and continue to think like a pile of dog shit and expect that that future you life is going to come to fruition.

Okay, so the fun part becomes you get to counsel with future you. You get to spend time with her and you get to start asking what you would of any mentor. What would future you do? This is absolutely one of my favorite questions. What would future Amy do? What does million-dollar Amy think and feel?

And by the way, million-dollar Amy is abbreviated as MDA, which totally reminds me of MCA from the Beastie Boys. And surely, channeling some Beastie Boys energy is never a bad thing, right? And sometimes I don’t write MDA, sometimes I write M$A, which just feels even more Beastie Boy-ish.

But I digress. I also like that I’m showing a little bit of my age here. So one of the most powerful questions that you can ask is what would future you do? How did she overcome this obstacle? How would she handle this situation? What decision would she make?

When you have a fully booked schedule, how would you answer this question you’re asking right now? When you have made $100,000 in your coaching business, how would you handle this difficult conversation? It just changes everything. When you have some of these things in question number two, what will you have accomplished, when that’s a reality, how would you handle this situation you’re in right now?

I guarantee you, it’s very different than the struggle you’re having right now. And I do, I encourage my clients to answer their own questions. Now, sometimes I accidentally do this. That happened this past week. I saw a note from one of my clients in our Slack workspace and I didn’t answer it in the moment and then I kind of forgot.

And when I didn’t answer her question, she thought maybe that she should be answering it for herself. So she brought it up to me and I was like, yeah, that’s exactly what I was doing. She thought I was coaching her by being silent and stoic when actually, I just had overlooked answering her.

But it’s true. She was freaking out. What she was really hoping for was that someone had an answer for her. And really, what she needed to do was to go spend time with future her, or with her future you. Because here is the heart of this. It’s incredibly disempowering to think other people have your answers and incredibly empowering to realize you’re truly the only person who does.

So the last note I want to add about future you is understanding how our brain is wired. Your brain is designed to look to your past to decide what is possible for your future. It’s always looking for evidence of what is possible. And really understand the wiring here.

Your brain is wired for safety. So it’s always looking to the past. So when we were cavemen living in a cave, the first time you saw a sabretooth tiger and it ate your friend, you learned the next time I see a sabretooth tiger, run the other way, or go back in the cave.

So understand what it’s doing. It’s looking to your past to decide what you should do next. But this doesn’t work. Not if you’re trying to create your dream coaching business. If you’ve never created this dream coaching business and your brain is looking to the past to decide what to do next, all your brain’s going to be doing is reminding you of how this hasn’t worked in this past. How you haven’t done this before, or how this didn’t work out before, or how you haven’t signed a client for this past month.

This is why you need future you because she’s got you. That brain of yours will kick up all the proof you can’t do this and future you will give you this self-confidence that you can. So the action to take this week on future you is this; go ahead and define her. Those three questions I talked about before.

Who will you become? Now, to answer who you will become, think about what is already awesome about you and what you admire most in other people. See if that helps you get the answer of who you will become. The second question is what will you achieve? What have you accomplished? Be specific. Use numbers.

 And what will your life be like because you become that person who has achieved those things? What’s come into your life? What have you had to let go of? What does your day-to-day life look like now? What do your weekends look like? What do your weekdays look like? What trips have you taken? What trips have you booked?

All the things that you can think of. Because you’re not just a person signing clients to build a coaching business. You’re a fully formed person. So future you has a fully formed life. Now, I did this activity with my coach Stacey two years ago, and everything that I wrote, with the exception of a trip to Hawaii has come to fruition in eight months.

That is how powerful this can be and it’s why I insist on calling it a game-changer. So there’s a quote that so many of us have seen and it goes like this. Do something today that your future self will thank you for. Now, it’s not attributed to anybody specific that I could find, but it really goes to the heart of this.

Future you is waiting for you. She’s waiting for you to show up. She’s excited to meet you. No one knows what is best for you but you. No one knows exactly what the best decisions are for your business, and what you uniquely bring to the world but you. The single best mentor you will ever have is the version of you who has already created what you want.

Get to know her. Hang out with her so that you can become her now. Alright my friends, talk to you next week.

Hey friends, to celebrate the launch of this show, I am giving away some serious fabulousness. Four lucky listeners will win a $50 gift card to Amazon, while one lucky listener will win a free Apple watch. No joke. A series four 40-millimeter gold stainless steel with Milanese loop. Just like the one I wear. I love it.

And those are some seriously awesome goods to five lucky listeners who subscribe, rate, and review the show on Apple Podcasts. Of course, I hope you love the show, but it does not have to be a five-star review. Because I want your honest feedback so I can create an awesome show that provides tons of value.

So go visit www.amylatta.com/podcastlaunch to learn more about the contest and how to enter. I’ll be announcing the winners on the show in an upcoming episode. Thanks friends.

Thanks so much for listening to The Confident Coaches Podcast. I invite you to learn more. Come visit me at www.amylatta.com and until next week, let’s go do epic stuff.

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Hi, I’m Amy.

For years, I took a ton of action to sign clients.

I learned to create self-confidence and powerfully believe in myself first, and then built a multiple six-figure coaching business.

And I can help you do it, too.

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