I am convinced that coaches do not make it as a coach because of one of two things: they don’t think they have what it takes, or they don’t have a community to remind them that they do have what it takes.
Unless you are an internal coach on the payroll with a company providing coaching services, then you are a solopreneur. However, being a solopreneur does not mean you have to do this alone. That word solo means one, it means single, but it doesn’t have to mean you go this alone.
Recognize your need for a community
I’m an introvert, but I still need that community. I need to be connected to other people. Needing a community doesn’t mean that you are weak or there is something wrong with you. That’s not the case. Community is good and it is important.
Recognizing what you offer to a community
In a community, everyone is giving to one another. What is it that you offer? Having a sense of who you are and what type of life you bring is super important to this community aspect. Showing up in a community ensures that we don’t start to feel like a taker. It’s amazing how we can talk ourselves into just about anything, even the things that we need most.
Understand the role of the community for you
There’s two parts to this: understanding what a community cannot do for you and understanding what a community can do for you. What can a community not do for us? Communities are not about carrying our load and doing our work for us. They are about sharing our burdens with us when they get to be very heavy. Each one of us has our own load to carry. It is unreasonable to expect community to do these things for you. This results in disappointment. Then, we try to create this exit strategy when we haven’t even given it a chance to do the deeper work, which is the power of being known and knowing other people.
The second part is knowing what a community can do for you. Sometimes a community is not about what you can get out of it, but what you can put into it. The community can listen to you. The community can provide you with new angles to consider. The community, as they get to know you, can remind you who you are. They can encourage you to not give up. They can give you a place where people can celebrate your victories and walk with you through those tough times. Those are some powerful aspects of a true community.
Coach’s Edge
This is why we created Coach’s Edge. Coach’s Edge is a live, virtual community of solopreneur coaches who are encouraging one another even as we grow and learn from one another. At Coach’s Edge, we affectionately call ourselves “off-roaders” because we as off-roaders are trying to stop focusing on the rules of the road. We have to stop being students of coaching and have to learn how to be coaches. We want to really explore this idea of being a coach in the outside world and also understanding who we are as coaches. We sharpen our skills to bring value to the clients. We grow our business, which helps to create sustainability for the business so we can keep working with our clients. Finally, we have a credential renewal with ICF. We have 34 live hours every year, and all that content gets put on our on demand library. 100% of the respondents in our community have said that they are more confident as a coach as a result of being in this community. Just like a real community, we are all together in this. We want to help you to be able to fly solo as a coach successfully, but you don’t feel like you are alone doing this.
Need some real life examples of how this plays out? Watch the video below to dive deeper!
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