Ep #59: Emotional Currency

You are listening to episode 59 of The Confident Coaches Podcast, the one where you face what it’s costing you to not fix the problem. 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.

Hello my confident coaches. How’s everybody doing out there? Oh my goodness gracious, this is only the second to last podcast of the year. So exciting. We are on episode 59, it’s December 22nd, the day that this is dropping. I’m actually recording it the week before.

And I just have to tell you, it has been just an honor to be here with you this year. I have learned so much. I love getting to know each and every one of you who’s listening. Those of you who’ve signed up for my freebie offer at the end of the podcast, and now I’m communicating with you via email. Just a complete delight and joy. Seriously.

And I just want to give a little shout-out to everybody who’s left reviews this year. I thank you so much. And just to take a quick note, if you are loving this, if you tune in every week or if you catch every couple of episodes, if you would please leave a review in Apple iTunes. And if you happen to also listen to someplace else, just copy and paste that same review into what you already listen to. So appreciative.

And I also want to give a quick shout-out to one of my current mastermind members. Guys, guys, coaches, when you hear this, like this kind of blew my mind. I knew Rebecca was doing well in the program, but I really didn’t have a clue, like just – we put it all together, I was like, holy what? This is amazing.

So Rebecca is from my September class. So we’ve only been working together for just over three months, and this is what she shared with me. She wrote to me, “From 2017 until September 2020, I had worked with six clients and made $12,000 total. Now since starting Confident Coaches Mastermind in September, I’ve signed six new clients, I’ve made $18,000. I made more in three months since starting CCM than in the previous three years.”

What? Amazing. Amazing, Rebecca. Alright, and so she goes on to say, “At the start of CCM, my confidence was at about a two. It was pretty low. In fact, I was pretty close to throwing in the towel. I was thinking I’ve invested in so many things,” we’re going to be talking about that one right there in this episode right here, “I’ve been at this for three years, I’ve had some success, but I just don’t know if I’m someone who can build a successful multiple six-figure coaching practice. Maybe that’s just not who I am, maybe I’m an artist, maybe I’m meant to work for someone else.”

But she knew, she goes on to say, “I knew I wanted my own highly successful coaching practice. Now, just a little over three months later, my confidence is at a nine. Yeah, crazy, right? Like some kind of voodoo magic concoction Amy put together in this program was the exact potion I needed to shift my belief in myself. I trust myself now that I’m going to do whatever it takes to make my dreams come true. I didn’t trust myself with my own dreams before, I didn’t trust myself that I would take the risks necessary or that I would sit through the discomfort or I would push through it when it got hard. I feel really equipped to do that now and that makes me feel pretty unstoppable. I know without a doubt I’m not quitting on myself and my dream ever again.”

I mean, what a way to celebrate the holidays this week, am I right? That is phenomenal. That is some of the fabulousness that is possible for you, and why waiting is simply not an option, my friends. I’m going to be talking more about that in this episode right now.

And it leads me to a conversation that I want to have with you all about emotional currency. So Rebecca, shout-out to you. You’re doing amazing things. Everybody else, grab your cup of coffee, grab your notebook and a pen, and let’s have a serious conversation.

So emotional currency is a concept that came up for me when talking about the next round of Confident Coaches Mastermind. We start a new round January 4th. This episode’s coming out on December 22nd. We start the next round January 4th of the Confident Coaches Mastermind.

And what it’s costing you when you are choosing emotional currency as opposed to actual dollars and cents currency. Wait, what? Now there’s a backstory here. So if you all haven’t heard, Confident Coaches Mastermind is my one paid offer that you can work directly with me.

And it’s recently gotten a really big emotional and features upgrade. 2021’s Confident Coaches Mastermind is like, confidence reimagined. Every single mastermind class that I bring in, I get just a little bit clearer on the struggles of the coaches who are lacking in confidence, what is causing that for them, and what’s the solution to their problem. And that’s what keeps getting better and better.

Like, how can I coach this faster and simpler every single time? Now, that first class I ever did, which was a year ago, so a year ago right now, I was signing members into my very first round, January 2020 class. I didn’t have a formal program. I just had the concepts of confidence that I had used for myself in the previous two to three years.

Now at the same time that I launched that January class, I was in master coach training at the time. So as I was coaching that first mastermind, I was also creating the actual formal program, the Confident Coaches program. All of the concepts and modules and a couple of worksheets to go along with that, the member site that everybody gets when you sign up that you get for lifetime access, all of that was part of my master coach certification.

And I was teaching it and using it along the way with the masterminders in that very first mastermind group. So when I did my next round, I waited until May. And that was my next class. So they were the first class that got that member site, that member portal from the very beginning. And then I launched another group every other month for the rest of the year.

So that July started, and so by the time May and July was going, I could start to really get a grasp of what was working and what was not working. I was getting clearer on the problems, and I was getting clearer on the solutions.

What I’m talking about right here, you learn this in Confident Coaches Mastermind. This is that step five of how to keep going, how to keep evaluating, how to keep improving what you are doing so that it has a faster and a better impact on your clients, which you can’t do if you think that what you’re doing isn’t good enough. You can only do that from a place of what I’m doing is amazing, how can I make it even better?

So by the time September rolled around, that was the first class that I introduced the kickstart week, which is an opener week inside of our private Facebook group. I really started studying the habits and the mindset of my most successful coaches in those first three rounds.

So from the January, May, and July class, who were the ones that were having the fastest shifts, the greater shifts, and what was it about them, what was it that they brought to the table or that they had that I could teach other people to focus on first.

And so that is where I created a series of five videos and coaching questions to go along with them, to get into the mindset of a confident coach who gets what you come for. If you have this mindset from the start, even more clients will reach their goals and even faster.

So then by the time the November group came along, and I see those shifts that have happened for September, this is the first class that got the printed Confident Coaches workbook, where I took the handful of worksheets I had created initially, I fleshed them out even more, they are companion to the modules, and they even added some new coaching tools that aren’t in the modules there.

And it’s all laid out in workbook form, from start to finish, everything that you need. It’s a way to practically implement the work of the program, in addition to our weekly coaching sessions. But we don’t stop there, do we? No. Confident coaches keep studying their clients to find their struggles and go to work on the solutions for them.

Successful clients are fun, right? We love successful clients. I love being able to read Rebecca’s testimonial for you and be like, yes. So what if I decided that I wanted 100% of my clients to get those results? That’s what I put in my C line.

I put that as a circumstance where in 2021, 100% of my clients get the results they want. So listen here, life coaches, I am working with 100 coaches in 2021 and my personal goal, Amy Latta’s personal goal is for every single one of them to create the result that they want in 2021.

Now, how the hell am I going to do that because I can’t actually control anybody else’s R line, can I? Now side note, if you have no idea what I’m talking about, C line, R line, that’s the coaching tool that I use. So I use a tool called the model, CTFAR.

C is circumstances. These are the facts of your life. And they create your thoughts, and we all get a little confused as to what’s fact and what’s thought. Literally most of the work that we’re going to do together is right there. I’m going to be calling you out on all of these T’s or these thoughts that you are sure are C’s or circumstances.

And I’m literally going to be like, no, stop that, don’t do that anymore. I’m going to help you unbelieve them and help you believe what you need to believe because your T’s, your thoughts create your feelings. Your F line. And your F line drives your actions, your A line. Your A line is what you’re doing or not doing. And what you do and don’t do creates your results, your R line.

So it does not matter what your C’s are. It’s your thoughts that create your results. Your T’s create your R’s, not your C’s create your R’s. Got it? So I can’t actually create your results. Only you can. Because I can’t control what you think.

Coaches, we can’t control what our clients think, right? But what I can do is I can show you your thinking, and I can coach your ass hard on why you’re choosing to think what you’re thinking when it doesn’t serve you. And that’s how I am indirectly responsible for your results. And I want 100 coaches in 2021 to create the success they want however they choose to define success. And Confident Coaches Mastermind is the way that we’re going to do that.

So how can I actually do that? It all sounds good. How are we actually going to make it happen? That’s that next level. That’s the next level of Confident Coaches Mastermind. That’s what I’ve up-leveled. The R that I’m going to create for those 100 coaches I work with in each of those four masterminds that I’m going to run throughout the year.

That up-leveling began with truly understanding that confidence is not optional. Quick success without self-confidence is like building your business on quicksand. It’ll sink under the weight of your success if you haven’t built it on a solid foundation of confidence.

And I saw where clients still struggled and have solved the next problem I’ve found, and that is not fully integrating the tools of confidence that are in the program. You guys are getting them in theory but not necessarily in practice. So that’s why I’m introducing the two-day virtual event for the January class. It’s two full days to eliminate the passive learning and instead, working through the concepts in the workbook in the order that sets you up at the highest level possible.

And something that we’ve never done before as a group, I mean, it’s all been in the program, but it’s all been do it on your own time, is you’re going to leave that two-day event with a 12-month plan and strategy to achieve the goal that you set for yourself.

So by January 12th, kickstart week is January 4th and the two-day virtual event is January 11th and 12th, so by the end of January 12th, you will literally have everything you need to double your confidence and have your strategy in hand to sign the clients that you want.

And then you still get coaching with me for an hour every week for six months in that small group where we will uncover all of those thoughts that are killing your confidence week in and week out so that you can build on a solid foundation, instead of that quicksand foundation.

And the Confident Coaches Mastermind is $10,000. And this is where brains have been freaking the fuck out. So lean in. Of course a $10,000 investment is an investment. It’s not something that you just throw away. And that’s why it’s so damn important because too many coaches see confidence as an aside, a throwaway program on the way to bigger or better things.

Yeah, if you think confidence is an aside, it’s way more palatable to throw money away on it when it’s $5000, as opposed to holy shit, this is essential work. And if I don’t get this part down, I’m either going to study more and more business strategy, hoping it’s the how that fixes it, or I’m going to find a way to create success, I’m going to figure out some piece of that how and then I’m going to create the success that I said that I wanted, but I’m going to feel even worse about myself than I do now because clients and money aren’t fixing the emotional holes that I never patched up.

Like the industry is full of fully-booked six-figure life coaches who are not confident and who think it’s all going to go away and it’s probably all a fluke and they’re not sure what to do next because they thought success was going to create the confidence, but it’s the other way around.

But if you haven’t gotten that level of success yet, we start to think, $10,000, that’s just so much money. I’ve already spent so much money on myself and my business and even if I thought that it was okay that I spent this money, I don’t know if I have enough time to get that kind of money together. All three of these thoughts, we’re about to debunk all of them and I want you to really pay attention because all of your potential clients have these thoughts too.

That’s just so much money, I already spend money on myself, I can’t spend this money on me, I don’t have enough time to put this money together. Your potential clients have these money objections too. So let’s debunk them together.

This is where that emotional currency conversation comes in right here. At its simplest, what is the cost of not fixing this problem? If you put a dollar amount on what you spend in emotional energy, how much are you spending in your emotional state not fixing this lack of confidence in yourself?

When you’re thinking, “Oh, that’s just so much money,” you’re not considering these questions. How much does constant overwhelm cost? How much does feeling worried and anxious and unsure all of the time about your business cost? How much does confusion as to what you’re supposed to do on any given day, how much is that costing you? You’re spending currency already. It’s emotional currency. And it’s taking a huge toll on you.

First of all, it’s costing you actual money. Because the more you don’t fix your confidence and your belief in yourself and that you can build this business that you’ve never built before, the longer you’re putting off signing clients and bringing in that income.

The longer you wait to solve for why you aren’t taking the actions that every business coach you’ve ever hired told you to do, the longer you wait to see that investment come back to you. And then you indulge in I’ve already spent so much already. Like, who the fuck cares how much you’ve spent? Because if you still don’t have your results, then you still haven’t addressed the true problem.

I have to share a real life example of this. A real life non-coaching example of this that I think a lot of you have probably one of these scenarios in your life too. So we have this really huge yard and in big downpours, which happen often here in the spring in the mid-West, it’s like a river runs through it.

It completely washes out the flowerbed on one end, it runs across the entirety of our backyard, kind of like wearing out the grass there. And then it pools up right in front of our Tuff Shed that sits on a concrete pad. And we had hired this guy the year after we moved in to put in more underground drain tile and to build a bed to try to help channel the rain.

It didn’t not work. It did work for most of the rain, but the really big downpours, it still wasn’t quite enough, and it did wash out a lot of his work. And then he bailed. He literally never came back again after he saw that the program was more than what he could offer.

This is like hiring a business strategy only coach who knows nothing about mindset and is like, I don’t know why it’s not working for you, it works for me, I’m out of here. And I wanted to hire someone else to come in. Alright, so that wasn’t the solution that we needed. It’s a little bit better but on the larger downpours, this is still happening, and I wanted to hire someone that would actually fix the problem.

My husband was like, no, we can’t do that, we’ve already spent so much. I’m like, yeah, but it didn’t fix the problem. We still have big downpours that are still washing out this flowerbed and still causing water to pool up and run across our yard.

So I finally convinced my husband to pay another landscape guy to come in and do more work. And he built a better retaining wall. He built it up even higher so the water could slope back down, he put in more drain tile and he sloped it this way and that way.

And the first few rains, even some of the first few big rains, it was no problem. We were like, yeah, high-fiving each other, yay, we did it. And then we got one of those rains, and if you live in the Midwest, you know about flash flooding rains.

This is the thing that happens. It happens a couple of times a year without question. And it didn’t wash everything out, but it swooped through the bed, just so, that it washed out a bunch of the dirt and rock that we had just paid for out the side of the fence and into our neighbor’s yard and back into our yard.

It wasn’t nearly as bad as it used to be, but it is still a problem. I still can’t plant anything in that space because now I see where it’s going to wash out. And still, Trey still wants to wait and see and is not sure. I mean again, all the money we’ve already spent, I’m not really sure how I feel about spending more money.

Again, the problem still isn’t fixed. And in the meantime, we’re fine right now because it’s December, but I’m already anxious now about when those first torrential downpours hit in the spring because I know they’re going to hit in the spring. We’re spending emotional currency instead of actual currency, and emotional currency doesn’t fix the problem. Actual currency though can get us closer and closer to the solution each time.

So rather than focus on how much you’ve already spent, and I can’t spend any more, consider that you are still spending an emotional currency, not making the next investment that you need to make. Now, here’s another fun aside. What did you learn with each investment that you’ve made?

I did this in one of my masterminds a few weeks ago. I listed every single investment that I have made in myself and in my business, including the ones – especially the ones that didn’t get me the right result, and I thought about what did I learn?

It occurs to me that I paid my master mentor coach $25,000 to work with her in a year-long 100K mentorship to ultimately learn to not care what that coach thought about me. I am forever changed because I made that investment, and I create so much more now, and I make so much more money now because I learned that lesson.

What lessons have you learned from each investment that you’ve made? Finally, let’s talk about that I don’t have enough time to put that money together. Friends, you never will, as long as you’re thinking that it’s time that it takes to put money together. Your brain’s telling you that it’s time that creates money. No, it’s your brain that creates it.

And I’m going to tell you exactly how right now. “I don’t have the money right now, I need more time,” creates restriction. I immediately feel my shoulders and everything tighten up and everything go in. And I want you to imagine that you’ve got these things on the side of your head, blinders. You’ve got belief blinders and they tighten and you can only see the obvious answers that are right in front of you.

I have all the money in the world doesn’t necessarily work either because your brain’s like, no you don’t. Here’s what I want to offer you. Do you believe that you’ve always had what you needed? How is it true that you’ve always had what you needed?

Think back to examples in your life of how that’s true, how what you needed was always there, even when you weren’t sure how. If you have everything you need to listen to this podcast right now, you have always had what you’ve needed in your life.

Now, with that mindset and mind, how do you solve for investing $10,000 in yourself and your business so you can stop paying in confusion and overwhelm and all those other emotions that you’re currently spending instead?

When you believe that you’ve always had what you needed when you needed it, those belief blinders open up. You see solutions you’ve never considered before. Doors open that you didn’t even realize were there, and suddenly, come to mind and you think, oh, I could sell that thing that I no longer use.

I’ve literally had a coach pay me $10,000 for coaching by selling a $14,000 viola that she forgot that she had sitting in a closet. What? I mean, that’s not a solution I have. But what’s in your closet, right? What’s in your closet? I have no idea, and you probably don’t either because you’re only focused on the dollars and cents that’s in your checking account right now.

When you believe that you’ve always had what you needed when you needed it, you remember that you have that account in that one bank that you could use. Sure, you were going to use it to visit Hawaii next year, maybe, let’s hope, or you could use it now to stop spending so much in the anxiety and confusion and overwhelm and being stuck, right? You could choose to spend it on that instead.

You could choose to apply for that credit card offer that your bank keeps sending you. There are so many more options even beyond that that you can’t see if you’re thinking that it takes time and you don’t have it and you don’t know what to do, as opposed to there are solutions out there, let’s go solve the problem, let’s go figure it out.

And what I want to offer you more than anything is that any time that you’re indulging in any of these kinds of thoughts, you are still spending money. Oh, that’s so much money, yeah, that’s so much emotional currency that you’re spending instead. I’ve already spent so much money on myself, yeah, but if it hasn’t fixed the problem, you’re still spending emotional currency in that gap. And you’re negating what you did learn from the investments you have made.

And I don’t have enough time to put it together, I just don’t have it right now, that’s creating restriction and you’re still spending the emotional currency. But if you truly do see how you’ve always had what you needed and you go and you look for evidence to how that is true, then you can go to solve the problem because you decide right now that emotional currency is this thing and it’s causing you so much added pain and suffering and you don’t need that.

And it’s coming from you. It’s coming from inside the house. It’s costing you not to solve what’s not working for you right now. And listen, when you see this so clearly for you, you will see it in your prospective clients also. It will so help you with those conversations with your prospective clients when you consider how emotional currency is affecting you and how is it affecting them.

You might already even see it in them easier than you see it in you, so let this episode be a primer. Let this episode be a primer in spotting it in you and truly acknowledging where you’re spending emotional currency, what it’s truly costing you by not investing to fix the problem.

Alright my friends, listen, you’re going to create amazing things in 2021. Because all of these problems that you have are just thoughts and there is no thought that you cannot conquer. And I cannot wait to see what you create this next year. Let’s do it together, alright, confident coaches? Remember, until next week, let’s go do some epic stuff and have an amazing week and happy holiday and I love each of you.

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