Ep #145: Making Room for Play

The Confident Coaches Podcast | Making Room for Play

What would it look like to have more play in your business? What would be fun? What would be even a little silly?

Learning to foster fun, playfulness, and enjoyment in your business is what will help your ideal people find you. This is how you’re going to build a coaching business that represents you and no one else.

So, tune in to find out how to start dabbling with making room for play so you can sign clients and become a paid coach.

 

The doors to Free to Paid Coach are officially open! If you’re ready to learn the foundational concepts of confidence that get you from being a free coach to a paid coach who makes six figures and beyond, join us right now! 

 

What You’ll Learn:
  • How I’ve built play and fun in your business into the Path to $100K process.
  • The difference between the Path to $100K process versus my coaching tools.
  • What an intuition log is, and how to use it to prove to yourself that ideas are within you.
  • Why asking your intuition and creativity to come out and play is so powerful.
  • What you have to be willing to do to make room for play.
Listen to the Full Episode:

 

Featured on the Show:

 

Full Episode Transcript:

You are listening to episode 145 of The Confident Coaches Podcast. The one where, listen, we’re just going to decide where play fits into signing clients and getting paid as a coach. 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.

Coaches, I’m so excited to have you here. 145, I don’t know what it is about that number. It’s not 150, it’s not 100, but something about it just feels really amazing. Like have we really been doing this for this long, for this many weeks? It is mid-August, how are y’all doing out there? I’m doing amazing.

So I have just come off of the live event for the brand new round of Path To 100K. The episode that dropped last week came out after the event, but I recorded it before the event. So I was like, “It was amazing!” And, of course, it was. It was fantastic and amazing.

It’s amazing how many things didn’t necessarily go as planned. Here’s what I really want to share with you, I’m sure I will do a download of this. I still haven’t done my own evaluation and what I would do differently, what’s working, what’s not working, what I would do differently. I do that every single time, I still haven’t done that yet.

But one thing that I noticed is because of that transformation through the goo. That entire podcast that I kind of feel like who Amy was before the goo and who Amy is after the goo, this live event was more ease filled. I did not stick to this rigid plan. I let it flow. It came easy. It was open.

The people who were there, oh my goodness, here’s when you know you’re really marketing to your ideal perfect people, that I now have two programs that you can join. So that means that there’s parameters as to who can be in Path To 100K. You know, there are people who’ve been in Confident Coaches Mastermind in previous rounds who wouldn’t qualify for Path To 100K at this point. And so just the vibe of the people in the room and the vibe of me. It was nothing short of magical, I have to really be honest.

And I’m sure a lot more will be coming about how to create that for yourself so that you are selling to the best people for the program that you offer. So that you know who to say no to because showing up in your business should be that ease filled.

And I want to offer to you how you might have to say yes to some people who aren’t perfect so that you can then know, right? This is the part where you kind of have to fail, you kind of have to make decisions that you wouldn’t make again so that you know that those are the decisions you wouldn’t make again, right?

And this Path To 100K, it is a brand new mastermind. You know, I completely burned down Confident Coaches Mastermind, which is what I’ve been running for a couple of years. The Confident Coaches Program that was one on one that I moved into a mastermind program, and I have continuously fine-tuned it.

But I completely burned everything down. And I get a lot of questions about what’s changed and what’s new. And the best way that I can explain it is Confident Coaches Mastermind had five steps. They’re the five steps that I’ve talked about all through this podcast’s inception, right? Believing, feeling, future you, have your own back, keep going.

And I retooled each of those five steps for that brand new coach. For that coach who’s been around for a while and hasn’t really created much momentum or really knows how to sign clients or still doesn’t believe how to go from free to paid.

So much of what was on the member site for Confident Coaches is the same member site for Free To Paid Coach. Now, everything’s been like retooled and re-tweaked, and what’s different is the container itself. A mastermind versus an ongoing group coaching program. It ain’t the same thing, right?

A mastermind is a small group. It has a start and stop period. I know if you were on the call. If you aren’t on the call we’re checking in every single week on the Facebook group. I know who’s in the group. I know who’s active in the group. Your peers know who’s active in the group. Free To Paid Coach is an entirely different container.

It’s an open ongoing group coaching program if you don’t show up to the weekly live coaching, I’m not logging that. I’m not tracking who’s there and who’s not there. I mean, I can see who’s on the live coaching calls, right? You don’t have to attend the live coaching calls, you could just listen to the replays. I wouldn’t, you know, I don’t necessarily even know that.

I know if people are logging in or not logging in, but that’s not something I’m necessarily tracking. I know what faces are posting every single week in the Facebook group. I know who’s celebrating wins on Friday. I know, I see names that show up consistently in the webinar log. I can see who’s in there. I know who’s raising their hand.

But if you don’t show up, I’m not saying, “Hey, where are you?” You know, plenty of people have bought the program and I don’t even know if they’re using it. And there’s plenty of people who’ve bought the program, and I do know who’s using it because they’re posting in the group, et cetera. So the container is very different, right?

So Path To 100K takes that mastermind container, but the process is entirely different. That’s completely brand new. I burned Confident Coaches Mastermind down and I thought, “Okay, from a mastermind point of view, if you come into my world, you find this podcast, and you’re like, how do I work with Amy?” It’s pretty simple.

Are you a free to paid coach, coach? Are you brand new? Do you struggle with belief that you can become a paid coach? Or have you had a couple of clients here and there, but no consistency? Free To Paid Coach is for you. It’s the foundational work every coach needs in order to be confident. That’s what we worked on in the mastermind.

And I had coaches who had never signed clients, I had coaches who were multi six-figure coaches all working together at the same time working on these fundamentals. Now that’s what we do in Free To Paid Coach.

And if you come to me and you know how to sign clients, you know how to be paid, you have the belief that you can get to 100K, you’re just not entirely sure how you’re going to get there, that’s the mastermind. And the format is the same. Weekly live coaching, small group. I’ve had as many as 15 people this current round, or the brand new round.

I keep saying the current round, it really is the first cohort, the August 2022 cohort of Path To 100K is technically the first Path To 100K cohort. There are nine coaches in there. Nine coaches who are already making either high four figures or five figures in the past six months. They believe that 100K, like we’re not working on their belief that they can do this. We’re not working on their belief that they’re a good coach, that’s established. We’re just solving for how they’re going to scale to 100K.

And that leads to the Path To 100K process. That leads to where we’re going here, which is about play. Play and enjoyment and fun in your business, and how I have built this into the brand new Path To 100K process.

Now, it’s really funny, during the live event, first of all, there’s three steps to the Path To 100K process. But that third step has been probably like six different things. In fact, I even modified it and changed it in the middle of the live event. Because as I was teaching it, I realized that I would actually explain it a little bit different and I would even call it something a little bit different.

The actual thing itself was the same. It was my explanation and my calling of it, like my name of it that changed. But since January, January is when in the last in-person meeting that I had with my previous coach was last January and we outlined the process of Free To Paid Coach versus Path To 100K.

And back then the process is very similar to what it is now, but I have changed it since then because I’m not the same person as I was back in January. I’m a different human being. And the process my previous coach and I came up with, I realized wasn’t 100% me. And it’s not how I would coach someone who was in that place that I was back then.

This version of the Path To 100K process is exactly what I needed years ago when I was scaling to 100K. So this podcast episode is like what’s changed, why it’s changed. And I really want to honor to you, you can be willing to change what you are coaching about. How you would explain things. How it’s okay that you used to coach this thing over here and now you’re like, listen, I know better and I do better now. I’m not the same human being and I wouldn’t coach this the exact same way.

One of the reasons that we’re afraid to tell people what we do and how we do it, is because we think it’s etched in stone and we can never change it in the future. Listen, every single mentor I’ve ever had has changed what they do at some point. They’ve changed their process. They’ve changed their name. They’ve entirely changed niches.

Every single one of them has changed how they do. And yet so many of you are afraid to put yourselves out there because you’re like, “It might not be the final version.” It’s 100% not going to be the final version. That’s a terrible reason not to go tell your people why you’re amazing and why you’re awesome right now, right out of the gate.

If you get anything out of this episode, get that right there. Every successful coach I know has completely changed what they coach, how they coach, maybe even their niche. You can too.

So right out of the gate, the Path To 100K process that I came up with in January was, what’s working in your business? Replicate that. What’s not working? Let’s eliminate that. And then let’s keep reevaluating and getting back on track every time you find yourself not moving forward. Clean and simple.

And then I went through my transformation and I realized it was a little bit different than that because what’s working and what’s not working was going to be very much still guided by me. It was still going to be following some rules of business that I was still adhering to. But you don’t go through my spring like I went through my spring, where you dismantle every single thing that you know and you question every single thing that you know, because you don’t question your own process.

How do I know what’s best for you? How do I know the best what’s working for you? I don’t. Now, I can coach you and I can guide you. And this is where I came up with this version. What’s working that you love? What’s working that does sign you clients, but also that you love? What’s working that you love but maybe doesn’t directly sign new clients? Do you have to eliminate it? Maybe you don’t. Maybe it just doesn’t take as high of a priority.

But if there’s stuff that you really love about your business, do you have to completely eliminate it? Can you still do it? As long as you can learn the discernment between these activities I do directly result in clients, these activities I do light my soul on fire, and maybe they don’t directly lead to clients but I’m making the conscious choice to keep it in because I love it.

And then what’s not working. Now, in the January version of this, what’s not working was solely what’s not working in terms of not producing clients. But is that the only thing that’s not working? Listen, what’s not working in that, I realized that kind of fell into three categories. And this is what I coached for the very first time at the Path To 100K Live Event.

What’s not working falls into one of three things. What do you hate to do, but you got to do? I call these toilet cleaning activities. You know what I mean, right? Everybody’s got to clean their toilet, but you hate doing it. At some point we hope to outsource it and pay somebody else to do it. You may or may not be ready to do that. But you know it’s got to be done.

What are those things that you know have to be done, you hate doing it? And if you can’t outsource it yet, how can you at least think more neutrally about it? And then you have what’s not working that does create clients, you want to do it, you’re just not that great at it yet. Or it’s not producing clients for you right now. How can we evaluate it?

This is where a lot of the coaching in the mastermind is going to be, is figuring out what these things are. How can you get better at it? What kind of different things could we try to make it a little bit better? How can we test and try? It’s both a mindset and an action.

And then there’s what’s not working because it literally sucks the life out of you and you’re only doing it because so and so told you you had to? That’s not working for you either. So getting coaching on, do I really have to do this thing? What if you don’t? What if there’s another way to do that? If you aren’t going to do this thing that you absolutely hate, what else could you do?

Which leads us to step three. Now, step three has been five or six different things. And depending, here’s the funny thing, anybody that’s gone to the sales page for Path To 100K, each of you have likely seen a variety of step three’s. Because at first it was evaluate and get back on track. And then there was something in there about thinking like the person who already has 100K, like believe you already are the person that has 100K.

At one point it said something about like, all while dismantling the rules of the patriarchy and or it might have said and also nurturing your nervous system. And going into the live event it was try 100 things. And then while at the live event, I realized it really was play with 100 new things.

So here’s the idea, what’s working in your business that you really, really love? Let’s go replicate that. What’s not working, either that you hate or that’s not working for you, or that you’re not yet ready to outsource yet? And then let’s play. Let’s go play with 100 new ideas. Let’s go explore.

I actually provided my mastermind, here’s the list of, and I quote, “business-y things that coaches do” from emotional intelligence point of view, from a marketing activity point of view, to just general business operations. So like emotional intelligence, we’re talking about like creating amazing experiences, feeling aligned, challenging myself, being very logical and very systematic.

Maybe it’s marketing actions, networking events, live workshops, trending reels, original reels, Instagram, no, I’m going to be more LinkedIn. Business operations. Or we’re talking about delegating, calendaring, maybe you’re more of a doing things last minute, starting projects, finishing projects, managing contractors and paid employees.

So your work here is to figure out what do you love that also gives your ideal clients googly eyes for you? What do you love that doesn’t really draw their attention? What do you hate that gives your ideal clients a chance to meet you? What do you hate to do that won’t help them to get to know you anyway?

And the idea behind playing with 100 new ideas, you are actually going to implement 100 new ideas. But that just gives your brain, oh, we want to really expand and that’s where playfulness, and creativity, and getting tuned into our intuition comes into play. And that’s kind of a pun, kind of not a pun. What else might we do?

And you can see here, this is really the difference between the Path To 100K process, what’s working? Do more of that. What’s not working? Do less of that. Go play with 100 new ideas to add to those two lists. Versus my coaching tools. You know, I’m going to teach you how to tap into your intuition using both coaching questions and getting there through that intellectual doorway, as well as somatic bodywork.

We’re going to stimulate your intuition with a combination of deep coaching, deep coaching questions. As well as the body work that’s going to get you there faster and further than just one without the other.

And then when we’re finding all of these fun and new exciting ideas that you might try that we’re going to get you there through the coaching questions and the body work, 100% these new ideas you come up with, or these ideas that you probably are already aware of but you’ve shut down because they buck up against rules. I can’t do that. That’s too out there. No one I know is doing that. Sure, that’s okay for her, but no one I know would think that’s okay.

So not only might they buck up against rules and systems of what’s okay, they’re also going to make you very nervous. So what are the rules that are at play? What patriarchal, hierarchical, institutionalized rules you buck up with? And then you still need to know how to handle your nervous system, because I can coach you out of the patriarchal rules all day long. But when your nervous system gets triggered and it goes bonkers, you need to know how to handle that too. You’re going to be very much stimulating your nervous system.

And I’ve created what I call a nervous system woobies, things that you can do at home to calm your nervous system down. Tools and tactics that you can use in your office, you don’t have to go book an appointment with a practitioner if you don’t already have one. But you can calm your nervous system down. And then how to identify when you might need to book a session with a practitioner. What kind of practitioner might you go reach out to to help calm your nervous system down.

This is where I kept trying to make these by step three, when really this was just the essence of my coaching. This is what you’re going to find in Amy Latta’s rooms. This is what you’re going to find in Amy Latta’s containers, deep coaching questions that dive into what you already know. Even though intellectually you might understand that you’re safe, but your body is like, “No we’re not.” And I know you know what I’m talking about because we’ve all been there.

And then I also provide the tools that you need to decide, okay, so we’ve stimulated your intuition. We’ve used the deep coaching questions to tap into what you already know. We’ve bucked up against the rules,, we’ve identified them. We’ve seen that we’re safe. We’ve shown our body that we’re safe. Then you still need to decide what you’re going to do next.

Like let’s pick the one thing you’re going to try this week and let’s stick with it long enough so that we can evaluate it. And I do teach you an evaluation tool in Free To Paid Coach, and we go a little bit deeper with it in Path To 100K so that you can decide.

All right, let’s decide that you’re going to do a free training about this one idea that we establish in Path To 100K. We establish something called a framework that gives you an unlimited number of ideas that you can write copy on, or that you can turn into a free training, a reel, or a Facebook Live.

And you’re going to pick one of those things. And you’re going to go, let’s say you’re going to do a Facebook Live series, or an Instagram Live. Let’s play with Instagram Live, because I feel like people want to do more Instagram. You’re going to turn it into an Instagram series. You’re going to turn it into free trainings that people can sign up for.

So what happens if no one attends? What happens if people attend but they don’t take you up on your offer? Learning how to evaluate that so you don’t make whatever happens mean that it sucks and you should throw that idea out. But your willingness to stick with it long enough, the free training that you do so that people do understand that the next best step is to sign up for a consult call with you, or whatever your next best step is.

Can you run that over and over again, continuously getting better at the marketing of it, the execution of it until you decide, yeah, I really love this idea? Or you want to know what? This isn’t working for me and I’m going to try something a little bit different. Because here’s the thing, there’s no right or wrong answer in any of that. It’s really about your belief that you have a powerful brain, that you have a powerful gut who knows things, and to learn to build a trust and a relationship with that.

Step three of the Path To 100K process is really about playing and enjoying the process of that play. To play with 100 new ideas, to play with the picking of just one of them, and to play with the implementation and the execution of just one of them. That no one thing is super heavy and plodding.

At the live event I brought out, I had a whole table full of oracle cards and inspirational cards where you could just like think about a certain thing and draw from the deck. We had puzzles, like physical puzzles that you could put your hands on. Like the block puzzles of like how do you get these blocks to form a square? And how do you get these metal things to unhook? You know, puzzles that I would have my kids play with.

I had a whole table of adult coloring books and adult markers. So that when you are asking your intuition to come out and play, and your creativity to come out and play, that you’re willing to ask your brain, your head brain, your heart brain, and your gut brain, what do we know?

And you’re going to use the somatic body work to stimulate your intuition. whether it be massaging your ear lobes, or stimulating your third eye, or massaging right off your gut to stimulate your gut brain. And you’re going to ask these parts of you, what do you know? And then you’re going to be willing to give it space to come to you.

Also, this is another reason why I love the mastermind container and the mastermind room, because it’s very collaborative. We can bounce ideas off of one another. Right at the live event for one of my masterminders, she’s a returning member, and we reevaluated what she was already doing and we changed some things up. And she’s going to go implement those changes and see how they go.

And when we’re thinking about playing with 100 new ideas, we’re also implementing just our willingness to trust ourselves that the answers are in there, and that the answers don’t have to come the moment that we’re asking for them, that we’re going to go play.

Whether it be coloring or some other form of creativity, we’re going to go take walks out in nature where you aren’t listening to other people’s information. Where you’re giving your brain space for ideas to come to you. Mine, by the way, almost always come when I’m naked in the shower. You tell me what that’s about. Or often while I’m out walking amongst the trees.

Now, for people who are listening to this going, “I’m just not that intuitive” or “I’m just not that playful.” I introduced something to my masterminders, create an intuition log. So an intuition log is just a way to start documenting that you actually have very deep intuition.

Like I’m thinking about somebody and then they send a message to me reaching out to me and I haven’t heard from them forever. Or I have a dream about somebody and the very next day they’re the first person that I see in my Instagram feed. Or that I had this gut intuition not to take the route I normally do, only to find out later that there was an accident or there was construction or there was a delay that way.

We have all these, we consider them coincidences. But a lot of times there’s an inner knowing where we know, do this, don’t do that. And we may not even have a reason for it. So an intuition log is a great thing for people who aren’t very well versed in play and creativity and intuition to just show that you do have some of this already.

Because, listen, some of you, this comes really easily. You’re already naturally playful. You already have a lot of brilliant ideas. And it’s possible that all you’re facing is just that fear of patriarchal norms or not knowing how to regulate your nervous system has stopped you from implementing these great ideas.

So all these creative ideas and this playfulness, it’s already part of who you are. And your work is just how to handle breaking rules and nervous system regulation, in which I got you. That’s what we do here. I can actually see this, I’m getting ready to describe like three different types of people, and I see all of these personalities in me and the nine women that are in this room.

Some of you are already tapped very much into this and it’s really just about like inadequacy and deserving, and it’s really the mindset work that this is okay to do. Some of you are like, “I don’t have a creative bone in my body. I don’t want to do any of this.” That intuition log is really helpful, and just even your willingness to dabble in just a little bit of play. Like you might be looking at your peer going, “That’s not me at all.” But where is your comfort level with it right now? Let’s start there. We can start with where you are.

And then a lot of people are probably like me, which is somewhere in between. I have a very playful side, I have a very creative side. Maybe not quite as playful and creative as some of my peers that I’ve seen. But I know that I have a lot of that going for me already and I really just need to strengthen that relationship that I have with my intuition that’s already established. I just want to make it a stronger relationship. And then also pay attention to the I can’t do that, that’s too much. What will people think?

I see this mixture between all three of the people in my mastermind right now. And so I’m sure you probably fit somewhere in there too. And there’s space for all of us. Implementing more play, becoming this person who can be more creative, who has more of a relationship with their intuition is available to all of us. And it can look very unique to you. It doesn’t have to look a certain way.

So this is where I want to leave you today, what will it look like to have more play in your business? What would be fun? What would be even a little silly? Learning to foster that no matter where you are in your business right now will simply help your perfect people find you.

Your version of silly and fun might be very different than my version of silly and fun, but it’s perfect for your people. You know, what’s working? What’s not working? And what does it look like for you to play with 100 new ideas, all while strengthening that relationship with your intuition, being aware of that institutionalized thinking, that hierarchical thinking that’s previously shut you down, and implementing whatever nervous system woobies you need when your physical body says we can’t do that.

This is how you’re going to build your coaching business that looks like you, and no one else. That delights you, that delights your audience, and it might be very different than what delights me and my audience, her and her audience, or him and his audience. But it’s perfect for you. And that’s the most important thing.

So what does it look like for you to go play with 100 new ideas? Start there. Start with that feeling of fun and play and just see what your brain invites you to. See what it shows up. That may not be for everyone, but it is for you and it is for your people. All right, my friends? And until next week, let’s go get paid, coach.

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.

 
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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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