I come from a country that has some amazing athletes. They may not know how to speak English well, but they sure can run 🙂
As the observers – the audience – we mostly only get to see the ‘end’ of a long journey. During the competition, when the athlete wins Gold or Silver or Bronze and thousands or millions of cash, you might sit there and wish you were the athlete. I often hear people saying, “Aren’t they lucky! They just did a 2-hour run and made millions.”
Wrong.
They didn’t just wake up on the day of the race and run to win the millions.
Nope.
They woke up every day for many months and were training by 4 or 5 am. They observed a good diet. They took rest when needed. They kept themselves healthy. They worked with their coaches and their ‘competitors’. They practiced and practiced and practiced…
Then they went for the race and hoped that all their work would pay off.
So when you watch the marathon and think that it’s easy, think again. The athletes took many steps each day to get to the final day – the day when they competed against others for a prize. It was a long journey to the finish line. But they committed themselves to it.
What does this have to do with your online coaching business?
So you’ve decided you want to run an online health, wellness, or spiritual coaching business. I think you may have taken one of the easiest steps – deciding that you want to run the business. You now need to take a series of steps that will bring your desire – your dream – into reality. A successful coaching business.
But if you go out there and look at different health, wellness, or spiritual coaching business websites, you may get overwhelmed and discouraged. Many of the successful-looking coaching businesses look very well put together.
Beautiful website. Nice blog posts. Fabulous-looking packages. Prices that you envy. Nice Facebook pages…
What you’re looking at is the “finish line” equivalent. It’s like watching the athletes competing and imagining that the athletes just woke up that day, entered the competition, and won their medals.
So that online coaching business you’re looking at is probably at a stage of development that’s different from you who’s just starting your business. Don’t look at the established coaching business and lose hope.
Just remember that starting and running a successful coaching business is a long journey – it’s not a sprint. You need to take one step at a time towards your goal. Don’t fall into the trap of comparing yourself to the more established business.
Compare yourself to yourself.
What does a successful online coaching business look like to you? What steps do you need to take to have a successful online coaching and training business? Have you taken a step forward? Are you moving backwards? You are your own gauge.
Measure your success against the steps you need to take. Just like the athlete will keep track of how long it took him or her to run a 10-mile stretch today compared to yesterday. Step by step – you will get to your destination.
There’s really nothing like an “overnight success”.
It’s more like “an overnight success after many days, months or years of working at it”. We generally tend to see the end result, and rarely get to see the whole journey.
Once in a while, I’ll share with you the lessons ‘I’ learn on my journey to grow my online coaching business. I’ll share the steps I’m taking. The fears and challenges I deal with. The little and bigger successes. The decisions I make, and why. So if you also want to start your own online business, this might give you some ideas that you can use on your own journey.
But remember, this is my journey. My goal, passions, strengths, dislikes, and other things will affect the actual steps I take, and the decisions I make. So I’m not saying that it’s the only way. That would be really crazy. But it’s my way.
If you find anything I share useful to your own journey, great! If you find something you don’t particularly like, skip it or modify it.
The important thing is for you to also take the steps you need to take to get to your destination of a successful health, wellness, or spiritual coaching business. Take one step. Build on each step that you take. Take another step.
Progress is the key word.
And don’t allow perfection to interrupt progress – I know I did for very many years! Do it ‘imperfectly’. Get it done. You can always improve it later.
The more steps you take towards your destination, the more you’re likely to take. Completing a step is more likely to motivate you to take the next one. But if you aim for perfection, you may never complete any step. And that will be the end of your journey.
So…
Don’t look at the perfect-looking online health, wellness, or spiritual coaching businesses and think that you must get where they are RIGHT NOW. You most probably can’t. They didn’t either. They started with something more basic. They probably cringe when they think about where they started. But if they had not started there and taken each successive step, they would not be where they are today.
So stop looking at them long enough to take your own steps.
In the meantime, do keep expressing your brilliance!
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