Ep #102: Community Connection

You are listening to episode 102 of The Confident Coaches Podcast, the one where friends and family connections actually elevate your client work. Let’s go talk about it. Let’s go.

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.

Hey, confident coach, how’re you doing out there? This is your fearless leader, Amy Latta, this is your host. I’m so excited to have you back for yet another brilliant week. We are in the midst of a connection series here on the Confident Coaches Podcast. And it all came down to this idea that I had.

I have used the word unstoppable so many times in the past. In fact, it was a word of the year a couple of years ago. I had this great Kate Spade t-shirt that says unstoppable. I love the word, I like the word. And I decided to reinvent the word, redefine the word in a way that worked for me. And I want to help you do the same thing.

And the 100th episode of Confident Coaches Podcast aired on October 5th, just about 100 days from the end of the year. Technically 100 days from October 5th is January 12th. But remember, as confident coaches there are no rules we have to follow. You can 100% make up your own, and so I did.

So, for these last 100-ish days of the year, at least through January 12th, I challenge each and every one of you to make connection a priority. Connection as a way to become unstoppable. We’re redefining unstoppable, not as never stopping and overworking and constantly thinking about your business 24/7and working 12 hours a day. But unstoppable as in I stay in the pursuit of my goal until I achieve it. And that pursuit includes lots of time not actively working in my business.

I know. I know so many brains are like, “But how can I be improving and working on my business if I’m not improving and working on my business?” Well, I’m going to share one of those ways with you today. Because it’s really about connecting with other human beings that helps us create our goals.

That’s what I talked about in Episode 100 that aired on October 5. Last week, Episode 101, I talked about self-connection. Because building connection with others truly does start with building connection with ourselves.

And today we’re talking about connecting with the other human beings. That has nothing to do with your business. Community connection, not business building connection. Now before I dive into the topic of today, I want to share two things with you.

First of all, the announcement kind of flew under the radar so I want to make sure that I’m really, really clear. I have put together a connection prize pack. My team and I are building a connection prize pack to give away. And one of you, one of you right now, one of you listening, it could be you, literally you right now, one of you is going to win it.

And so all you have to do is commit to a connection a day for 100 days. Tag me in your posts showing how you are connecting with yourself, with your friends and family, with your community connection, with your clients and your potential clients. Include @Iamamylatta and #connect100days, so just like the number 100, connect 100 days.

Capture all of your connections, like screenshot or whatever. I will catch some of them when you tag me and when you run that hashtag and I’ll be able to save some of them. But I just am not going to see all of them. So you can screenshot and just drop all those screenshots into a Dropbox or a Google Drive folder.

And then you just email me that folder on January 12th, or that week of January 12th. And then I will draw a winner from there. And you want to be in on this. Who doesn’t love prizes, right? Who doesn’t want to be rewarded for the work they’re going to do anyway? Come on people. This is where I get to have so much fun and love on you.

And I also, secondly, I want to give a shout out to a new podcast listener which we haven’t done in a while. By the way, when you chit chat about me out in the wild, we’re going to be using that phrase a lot today, out in the wild. It’s one of my favorite things to say. When you’re talking about me out in the wild and I catch wind of it, I’m going to so love on you.

So I’m going to love on Amanda Williams of Amanda Williams Coaching right now. So she commented on one of my Instagram posts just two weeks ago. She said, “I recently found your podcast and I love it. I’ve been binge listening every day. And our youngest son, who’s 11, even recognizes your voice now, when he hears a podcast playing.”

So Amanda’s son, who she didn’t give me your name, but Amanda Williams’ son, Mr. 11 year old, hi, it’s Amy, I hope you’re having a fabulous day today. Now, Amanda helps women organize their life and mind, create systems to reach their goals and build their best future, like cut the clutter and live simply.

Amanda, I am here for it. There’s so many people who could use your brilliance and your expertise. And thank you for taking the time to share your review with us.

And actually, what I love about this review from Amanda is that it wasn’t actually a review. It was just a comment on my Instagram. Now, trust me, I love reviews. If you’re on Apple Podcasts, we love your reviews because the more you rate and review, you’ve heard me and all the podcasters say this, it just helps people find our podcast on Apple Podcasts and it helps grow our audience. So that’s why we love formal reviews.

But Amanda’s wasn’t even necessarily a formal review. It was just a comment on Instagram. It was just someone on the internet reaching out to someone else on the internet. Amanda has nothing to sell me. She just wanted to share the impact that my words have on her.

She was simply creating connection. Connection that wasn’t a direct offer, right? This wasn’t a “I’m a life coach and I can help you. Please, do you want to help me?” She was simply establishing community connection. There was no intent on the other side of it other than to be one human to another human.

That is 100% what today’s episode is all about. Because I want to offer to every single one of you that your ability to sell life coaching to your ideal target market, to your ideal clients in your ideal niche, it improves like tenfold. That is a completely unscientific number.

Your ability to sell goes up when you increase connection through your community. Increase community connection, increase your ability to connect with your future clients.

Let’s talk about why. First of all, let’s just acknowledge that we as human beings are social creatures. Even those of us, and yes, I’ve got like who’s got two thumbs? And it’s like this gal. Even those of us who are introverts, even those of you who might have some social anxiety or actually diagnosed social anxiety.

We are inherently wired, humans are inherently wired to connect from one human to another and promote a sense of safety. A sense of wellbeing, a sense of security. It promotes that idea of me too. Like I feel you, I see you.

We all want to be seen, maybe not exposed on a stage. But we all want to be understood. Like I see you as in I understand you. We all want to believe that someone understands us. Even those of us who don’t love being around tons of other people.

So, first, being able to understand ourselves and to see ourselves is so important. But then the next step is to believe that we are seen and understood by our community, whether that community is giant and huge, for all of you extroverts out there who want to know everybody and see everybody. Or whether the community you have is a very small, curated community, which is just the handful of people that you know and love in it.

These connections, we’re talking family, friends, neighbors. It can include strangers at the grocery store, strangers on the internet, which Amanda and I were just a couple of weeks ago. Maybe it’s the person standing next to you for two hours at a concert sharing your love of the same music. Maybe it’s the soccer mom that’s sitting next to you and you’re connecting over the game that’s in front of you.

It can look like any number of relationships that are outside of you. Like there’s no end to the different types of relationships. I could have like, talked 10 straight minutes like, “It could be this, it could be this, it could be this.” But you know what I mean, it’s that bottom line of one human being connecting to another human being for the sake of being understood.

So there is that inherent deep seated benefit in community connection. It’s part of the human experience and part of why we are here. Whether we’re here to sell life coaching, or anything else, it is part of why we are here. So what the heck does it have to do with your ability to make $100,000 in a life coaching business? If that’s like the human experience, what the heck does it have to do with building a business?

So other than promoting a sense of wellbeing and that I am seen by other humans, connection that we all desire, community connection is a huge part in helping you build a life coaching business. Now, let’s first consider that part of our job as a life coach, actually, I think it’s probably our number one job as a life coach is to show people their thinking.

Our job as life coaches is just to simply show them their thinking. Show them how their thinking is creating the result that they have, and then just show them that it’s optional. And then they still get to choose to decide. But inherently, it is to help them understand why they do what they do. And we do that best when we are present and curious with them.

So connecting with other human beings outside of coaching helps you build that skill of being present and curious. That doesn’t mean, now I want to be really clear, this doesn’t mean that I’m telling you to go out and coach people in your community. Don’t go coach people who are not asking for coaching.

This doesn’t mean that you’re coaching friends and family. This doesn’t mean that you’re asking them 20 questions to try to strengthen that skill of being a better coach. Because really, the skill of being a better coach is presence and curiosity. And we can do that with anyone, anywhere, at any time.

I’m talking about experiencing the other humans in the world. And maybe you’re noticing how they think about things and what they say about things. You’re just being curious in your day to day life about the other humans.

Because when you choose to be fully present and curious with other humans, it’s going to help you be fully present and curious with your clients. And I’m just inviting you to practice that skill daily, instead of just waiting until your coaching calls.

One of the things that I teach you in Confident Coaches Mastermind is the skill of emotional strength training. Because what I mean by that is, is you’re strengthening your muscles to feel all the human emotions. And we want to learn how to do that because when we are experiencing very deep emotions that are uncomfortable that we haven’t been trained how to feel, something happens and we think thoughts and it brings on very strong inadequacy or shame.

We want to be able to feel that in the moment, but that’s much harder to do if we aren’t regularly emotional strength training. So I actually teach you how to build emotional strength training into a regular practice. You want your emotional muscles to be strong for when a highly emotional situation comes about you want to know that you are fully prepared to feel that emotion because you practice regular emotional strength training.

So strengthening that fully present and curious muscle that you need for your coaching sessions, you can practice that out in the wild. You can practice that as you live your life. It’s kind of like imagine that you are a person, this would not be me. Imagine that you are a person who runs 5Ks every week. Like every Saturday you are running in a 5K race.

Can you imagine that Sunday through Friday you did absolutely no body movement? You weren’t practicing. You weren’t preparing. You weren’t conditioning your body. You just got up every Saturday morning and just ran a 5K without having prepared in advance. Without practicing in advance, without doing long runs, short runs, maybe just some walks. No, we wouldn’t do that, right? And we could come up with like 27 different analogies.

When we expect to perform our best doing what we love the most, we would practice those skills we need for that, outside of that work. And this is what this episode is about, is offering to you to practice the skills of presence and curiosity, which you need for inside your coaching sessions. Practicing that outside of your coaching sessions by connecting with the human beings that are in your day to day life.

Plus, here’s the super fun thing, the more focused and curious with a variety of humans around you in your day to day life, the more of you are that way, they will start to respond to you. They will in turn appreciate that presence and that curiosity that you have.

Not because you’re asking them a ton of questions and you’re up in their face and you’re like, “Tell me about this, this. I’m being very focused and I’m being very present and I’m very curious with you.” Not because you’re doing a lot of things, but they can feel that presence and that curiosity energy that’s coming inside of you.

Remember that presence and curiosity are feelings. Feelings that are in your body, they are vibrations and sensations and energy that is actually in your body. And you will be emitting that energy, emanating. Emanating? Is that the right word? I’m not even sure if that’s the right word. But you’re like an electrical current transmitting the energy of presence and curiosity out into the world, and other humans are going to pick up on that.

This isn’t about what you’re doing, it’s about feeling present and curious with other humans and they are automatically attracted to that. That creates more connection. That creates more wellbeing between the two of you and there doesn’t even have to be coaching words spoken.

So you’re not only strengthening the skill of being present and curious outside of your coaching sessions for when you are inside your coaching sessions, you’re actually elevating the energy of the space that you are in with the other humans. And people will become more attracted to you. And they won’t even necessarily know why.

We’ve all experienced that, right? Somebody walks into a room and there’s something either repellent about them or magnetic about them. And we often can’t even consciously put our finger on it. We’ve all said that before, right?

“There’s just something about her. There’s just something about her that I really like and I can’t quite put my finger on it.” Or “There’s just something about her that I don’t like and I can’t quite put my finger on it.” I truly believe that that is the energetic energy feeling that that person is putting out into the world.

Kind of like a tuning fork for a guitar. Sorry kids, back in the day before you had electronic tuners on your phone, we had these things called tuning forks that you would ring and it would vibrate at a certain note and a certain pitch, and you would put it on your guitar, and you would tune your guitar to that. And the way that it did that is its vibration would cause the guitar to vibrate. And then you would make those two things connect.

We are human tuning forks. So we’re automatically connecting with other humans with our emotions of feeling present and curious. And the more often that you show up in that energy with just the humans in your community, you’re not only practicing that skill you need for inside your coaching sessions, you’re becoming more attractive. Not physically attractive, but energetically attractive to other people.

More connection, more wellbeing, more safety, more security automatically comes with that. And something else that happens when we are connecting with the other humans and we’re paying attention to their thinking and the stories that they’re telling, we can start to see the similarities of thoughts that people have across the spectrum of different circumstances.

We may not be engaging with people who are in our ideal target market, or our ideal client niche. But we start to see similar lines of thinking and it can actually help us better inform the kind of content that we put out there. That our message might be targeted to a specific group of people, but let me show people how they’re thinking, that what they’re struggling with in this very niche area might also be present in other areas of their life.

It’s like our copy just gets better. We come up with more examples of how their struggles are showing up in their life. We come up with more examples with how they’re thinking. We increase the chances of the person on the other side going, “Does she have a camera following me around or something? How did she know that I act that way in that situation? I thought she was this kind of coach, but it kind of feels like she totally knows how I show up in my life all of the time.”

Yeah, we become better at that because we’re just paying attention to how the humans are showing up in their lives. And again, we’re not spying on people. We’re not little personal researchers out in the wild studying our subjects. We’re not staying present and curious in the hopes of like we’ve got our little notebooks and we’re writing down, “And then the subject did this. And then the subject said that.” No, that’s not what we’re doing. We’re just staying present and curious for the humans in front of us.

And we’re noticing in our brain the connections of how the stories that we’re hearing and the conversations that we’re engaged in relate to the struggles of our clients. It ultimately makes us better content writers and better coaches. Because we’re making these connections between what happens with our clients in a specific niche versus what happens to them when they’re out in the wild.

So as a for instance, let me give you an example of what I’m talking about here. If I have a client who is kind of holding herself back a little bit in making offers because she has this worry about signing too many clients for herself. So I’m going to ask her like, “Why? Why are you so worried about having too many clients? Let’s talk about this.”

Well, she has this thought that she believes the demands of those clients, that they’re going to put a lot of demands on her. That’s going to have a big impact on the amount of time she’s going to feel the need to show up for them outside of the parameters of normal coaching relationship because she doesn’t set up boundaries. I might ask her like, “How does this show up for you in other ways?”

I might hear those similar conversations out in the wild with the humans, but they’re not talking about their clients, but maybe they’re talking about their husband or their children. I’m not a family and relationship coach, but I can illustrate to her how her thinking in her client relationships, which is prohibiting her from making more offers. Which is going to prohibit her from making that $100,000 she’s told me that she’s wanted.

So they receive exponentially more coaching and make more connections and have more, “Oh my gosh, I see it now. I didn’t see it here. But I definitely see it here. And now I can absolutely see that it’s the same thing.” And it’s so much easier for us as a coach to point things out like that when we’re engaged with people. From that place of presence and curiosity, just engaged in non-coaching conversations.

And I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, we’ve been talking about that human connection and that presence and that curiosity, and why it’s so important for your community. But it is also a way for you to build skills and mindset for your business, without actually focusing on your business.

You can just go hang out with your girlfriends at book club. You can just go with a couple of friends to a concert. You can just go out and have dinner with your neighbors. You can have that conversation with the soccer mom next to you. You can be fully engaged in living and there’s no focus whatsoever on your business. And yet you are building skills that will translate to your business when you go to work on it in your specific times.

Being really clear that this is not, “Okay, I’m going to go out to book club with my friends and I’m going to go build some business skills.” This is, “I’m going to go out to book club with my friends and I’m going to be present. And I’m going to be curious with them. And I’m going to trust that my brain will do the work in the background and make the connections for me for when I’m ready to pull them up.”

I’m not in any way saying go out and be social in the world with that notebook in your hand and be constantly thinking about your business, even more than you already do. This is about trusting that you build more human connection in your community, you’re building neural pathways and connections in your brain that will translate to your business.

Remember, you have a really smart stinking brain. The human brain is amazing. It’s the single number one biggest asset in your business. You can choose to say no to social functions. And you can choose to say no to going out with friends, because you think you need to sit down and focus on your business all of the time and that’s what unstoppable means. But it’s the opposite.

You can put your business up on a shelf for the weekend. And trust that I will be back Monday morning at 10am, or whatever time you walk into your office, and you’ll be fully present and curious with the human beings in your social situations so that you can be fully present and curious when you’re ready to actually work on your business. You get to decide how many hours that is.

Your brain is probably telling you it needs to be all of the time in order to be unstoppable. And it’s the opposite. Your incredible brain, your brilliant, beautiful brain will do that work without you even having to consciously think about it. You can be building skills that will absolutely elevate your business without having to think about your business at all.

And when you’re being fully present and curious with the human beings in your community connection, like non-clients, friends, family, neighbors, et cetera, and you hear business start to creep in you can say, “Hi brain, I see you. We’re not thinking about business right now. We’re being fully present and focused with these human beings right now. It will benefit us all. It will elevate everybody.”

Whatever thinking you want to remind your Helga brain have in that moment. Whatever language connects best with you in that moment, find that thought. Because your business brain will try to show up and you can be like, “Listen, I’ve put you on the shelf. I’m coming back. I’m not forgetting you. Right now I’m being a human with the humans.”

And of course, there actually is a direct business connection that does exist. And it’s actually my last point here. There is one last thing that is a benefit that is a direct business connection. And that is when you are being a human with other humans and you are being curious and present with them, sometimes your business might actually come up.

Your business might actually come up in the conversation, not just in your brain trying to infiltrate your brain and trying to get in there. But actually it might be part of the conversation. And you might have an opportunity to say, “Yeah, I actually am a life coach and this is what I do.”

And it doesn’t have to feel forced. It doesn’t have to feel like you asking, “Now how am I going to ram what I do for a living into this personal conversation?” No, you’re just being a human being hanging out with other humans and maybe your business comes up. Maybe there is a logical thing like, “Oh, I just had this conversation with a client. This is a totally what I do.” Maybe it doesn’t, but this is what they call networking.

Now, I say the word networking and like half of you just shut down. I want you to come back, come back. Some of you are like, “I want none of that. That sounds awful. I do not want to do any networking.” But know that an unintended result, like a strategic byproduct, a happy happenstance of just hanging out with your friends and being curious and fascinated and present with them might possibly be a “Hey, Amy, what you just said right there, that was really helpful.

I have a friend who could use your help. I might know somebody who could use your services. Is this what you do? Is this how you help people? Is this the kind of thing that you do for a living? I have a friend I think you should really talk to.” That might possibly come up. That can lead to referrals. That can lead to what we would consider traditional networking.

So you can be networking without actually going to a networking event. And notice that I put networking as the last point because the intent of this episode was not necessarily how to be a good networker, how to go to networking events in order to build more connections. No, this was how to build more connections through true curiosity and presence. And you might just unintentionally also build a business network without really even knowing it.

All right, so one last note. For my social anxiety friends listening to this, this entire podcast might have sounded like absolute torture. Now, I mentioned it before, but I want to really reiterate it again. You get to manage the size of your social circles.

I am in no way suggesting that you change the kind of human being that you inherently are. As somebody who has anxiety, I mean, mine is like a generalized anxiety, not necessarily a social anxiety. I just worry about all the shit all of the time, the moment I wake up in the morning.

I invite you to explore what this looks like for you and the type of brain that you have. Your community connection might simply be connecting on a deeper level with those handful of people that are already in your community that you already really trust. So make community connection something that works for you, and with the brain you do have and the person that you are.

So as I mentioned earlier in the connection prize giveaway, what I’m talking about here, show us all the different ways. Business focused, non-business focused, self-connection that you are connecting with the world. I really want to invite you to see what happens when you make connecting with yourself, connecting with your community, connecting with your clients, which we’ll talk about more next week. Know that that’s all part of being unstoppable in the pursuit of your goals.

The funny thing is, is so many of you are already thinking consciously about your business all of the time and expending so much brain power all of the time. And it’s not moving you any further because your brain is just exhausted by the constant thinking about your business. And what I’m suggesting to you is to stop thinking so much about your business all of the time and start connecting with you, with your community.

And then in those hours that you actually do dedicate to business connection, spend that time connecting with your potential clients. And use what you’ve learned in your personal connection, in your community connection to inform that business connection. Because all of that has a positive impact on you, therefore, all of it has a positive impact on the growth of your business.

And it’s way more productive for you and your brain to spend dedicated time not thinking about your business and just practicing being present and curious with the people in the world around you. You actually are giving your brain space to come up with new ideas based on the conversations that you are having in your circles. Maybe you’re going to learn something new, maybe you’re going to hear something in a way you’ve never considered before.

Either way, the world is elevated by your presence in it. So get sharing all of the ways that you are connecting. Connect 100 days, #connect100days on Facebook, on Instagram. Tag me in your Instagram stories, @Iamamylatta.

And actually, as I’m wrapping up, something just popped into my head just now. Something I just thought about, it wasn’t even in my original notes. Because I’m thinking about you’re sharing all these different ways, I do this already. I’m already sharing in my stories all the different things that have nothing to do with my business, that are exciting to me, that are important to me.

Do you want to know something that that does? Me sharing how I’m connecting with myself, me sharing how I’m connecting with my friends and family, and it has nothing to do with business, I’m giving potential clients an insight into kind of person I am. I’m actually building client connection. I should probably write this down for next week’s episode.

So if you follow me on social media, you know I’ve got teen boys who play music and who are in sports. And you know that I love really delicious, fabulous food. You know that I love live music. You have some insight into some of the things that make me tick, that make me click, that get me excited. And that automatically builds connection with you, right? Some of y’all are like, “I just like her. She has a lot of similar interests to me. Oh, and it turns out that she’s a coach in an area that I could use help with.”

So you get to decide how much personal you share on social media. You don’t share your kids, you don’t have to share everything. But just know that when you are connecting with others in the world, you are showing potential clients how you connect with others in the world. And that might build connection with them.

It’s all connected. How many times can I say the word connected in one single episode? Definitely in a four episode arc right here. So go hang out with your friends in the comfort level that you have. Of course, being COVID safe, don’t go licking strangers or spitting in their faces, okay. Go get your vaccinations and let’s go elevate the human experience through our presence and through our curiosity.

I love you guys so much. Until next week, let’s go fuck up some shit my friends.

Coaches, I have created a brand new freebie offer just for you podcast listeners. I created a brand new training called Stop Over-Complicating Confidence. Because I see my coaches do it all the time, make this confidence thing way harder than it has to be.

In this free training you’re going to learn exactly how you over-complicate confidence, what’s creating that, and how to stop it. Here’s the best part, all of it less than an hour. Less than an hour of your time. You will feel more confident in less than an hour. Yeah, friends, this is the best training I’ve ever done. So visit amylatta.com/podcastgift to get yours. Again, that’s amylatta.com/podcastgift. Go now and feel more confident in just an hour.

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