8 Coaches Share Their Failures in Business + How They Overcame

Failure is a part of running a coaching business. You’ll make mistakes, you’ll wonder if you’ll get through the month, and you’ll question if you have what it takes to be successful. But the coaches that make it? They’ve learned to not only embrace failure but learn from it. 

In this blog post, we’ll talk to real coaches and learn about the failures they had in business and what they did to overcome them. 

Let’s hear their stories!

How To Overcome Failure When Running Coaching Business

1. Always charge what you are worth.

“My big mistake at the start was not understanding or charging my worth. I was doing packages for £97 that were around 10 hours of work! It hugely burned me out and I didn’t attract my ‘ideal’ client, because ideal clients are people who understand the value of the service and want to invest in it. In my experience, the lower you value yourself, the lower the client will value you. 

 I sought help from a coach for coaches, who helped me unblock my money mindset and subconscious limiting beliefs. The more aligned you are with your pricing, the more energy you will give to your work.”

– Samantha Harman, Style Coach

2. Fight against imposter syndrome and show up like a boss.

“When I first started, I was working on my first big proposal for a corporate client. I was so excited, but when it came to setting my fee, I was stuck. In my corporate days, pricing was an intellectual exercise, but pricing my services was an emotional roller coaster

I had imposter syndrome and thought that my first potential corporate client would judge me for my rates. I was sure that they would say no because I didn’t deserve to charge that much. 

Eventually, I got so tired of my yo-yo mind; I nervously sent the proposal. The next day they accepted the proposal without negotiation. I went from excitement to regret that I didn’t charge them more. 

The lesson – be bold with your pricing, charge your value. If it’s too high, you can negotiate and never leave your value on the table. ”

– Michael OBrien, Executive Coach

3. Be brave enough to ask for feedback and implement it.

“When I created my first digital course as a business coach, I thought it was going to fly off the shelves. Turns out that after many sleepless nights and substantial financial investment, I did not sell a single course. I felt defeated but refused to give up. 

I developed a series of questions and surveyed my potential clients to realize that my mistake was trying to pack all my knowledge rather than focusing just on one problem that my target market wanted to get solved. 

I took this lesson and changed the name of the course to pinpoint the main problem (lack of clients) my audience (entrepreneurs) had and narrowed down the lessons to a simpler, targeted path for my potential client to resolve the problem fast (30days) cutting everything else out. 

It worked and the Client Maximizer Course grew to become the evergreen product it is today.”

– Karla Merrell, Business Coach

4. Be confident and believe in yourself as an entrepreneur and a coach.

“One of the biggest failures I overcame was feeling like I wasn’t good enough to start my business. I felt like I didn’t know if I had enough experience or why anyone should even work with me. 

I soon figured out it was a mindset shift that I had to overcome. And that results weren’t going to happen overnight but I knew that if I didn’t at least try nothing would ever happen. So I decided to just go for it. Despite being afraid and despite feeling like I wasn’t good enough. And what I realized was that as soon as I was visible and attracting the right clients, I had the confidence that I could help them. 

It all starts with believing in yourself. Then doing the little things consistently and that’s how you build confidence and a successful business.”

– Amanda Melissa, Social Media & Personal Brand Strategist

5. Develop your sales skills and make sales a priority.

“One of the things I struggled with as a new coach was realizing I was first a salesperson before I was a coach. This was a struggle because I was not interested in being a salesperson. I just wanted to help people. I did not consider the fact that I needed to be able to sell my coaching services before I even began to coach someone. 

I overcame this struggle by changing my beliefs and mindset about selling. I could be the greatest coach ever, but if I am not able to sell my coaching services, I would never have the chance to coach someone. I began to view selling in a more positive way. This made all the difference in my coaching practice.”

– Anthony Treas, MPH, Men’s Personal Performance Coach

6. Develop your own signature style of coaching.

“When I studied to become a professionally accredited coach, we had specific scripts that we had to use in order to coach our clients. When I eventually started coaching, I sounded very robotic with my clients because I was trying to follow the script to the tee. I found myself losing clients along the way and the conversations feeling awkward and not flowing naturally. 

When I decided to develop my own coaching model and conducted my coaching sessions as simply a conversation, things really started to change and I saw a major shift in the impact I was making in my clients’ lives. I started to see results. So I say, don’t worry about the rule-book; keep the coaching foundation in mind and develop a coaching model that works for you. Get creative!”

– Yumna Aysen, Professional Success Coach

7. Just show up, even if you hit rock bottom.

“Around this time last year, I was featured in Forbes Women for my unique brand of coaching that combines mindset practices based on magic and practical business strategies. And once the feature ran, I basically sabotaged my whole business out of fear.

They called me “The Millennial Money Witch,” which I didn’t feel ready to embrace on some level. 

So, I started overthinking my business strategies and stopped showing up. I launched a very practically minded program with almost no magic or woo-woo elements to it at all and it flopped. It flopped so bad, I totally ran out of money.

I was devastated and seriously considered giving up. I even tried backing out of my coaching contract, but my coach said, “Give it just one more month. Then you can throw in the towel.”

In the month following, I focused on what felt fun and authentic in my business. I rebranded to incorporate the magical title Forbes gave me, re-wrote my launch copy, took better care of my mental health, and I launched a NEW program to the tune of $26,000 in sales and $14,000 in cash. The next month I made $11,110 in cash! 

Now, 7 months later (and a year after that Forbes feature), I have two 1099 employees, a Facebook group of 2000+ entrepreneurs, I’m writing a book, and I went viral on TikTok, which has led to an upcoming feature in Buzzfeed and the opportunity to write for a trade publication.”

– Jessie DaSilva, Esq., Intuitive Mindset Coach

8. Don’t be afraid to fail.

“My biggest failure in the early months of my coaching experience was that I was doing everything I possibly could to NOT fail. Codependency and people-pleasing are a big part of my story, and during what I call that “fourth trimester” of my own entrepreneurship I was more committed to being right and showing up perfectly than getting it right over time. 

Not being able to fail, also meant not being able to learn, grow or improve and it stifled my personal development and my business growth. 

As a life coach who supports other women in the early stages of their own entrepreneurship journey, it was humiliating and extremely frustrating. When I started to wake up to the fact that my business wasn’t growing, because I was too scared to fail (and consequently grow), it took summoning up all my courage to show up more authentically, make mistakes publicly and pivot as I moved along.”

– Lauren da Silva, Business Coach

Final Thoughts

Now that you’ve heard from real coaches, you can choose any of the mindset hacks above and try them yourself. You have everything you need to overcome failure in your coaching business! 

As you saw in the post, failure is an integral part of surviving and thriving as a coach. Without failure, you’d never learn and never grow. The trick is not letting failure paralyze you, instead let it empower you to keep going.

But, before you get started, please make sure you leave a quick comment and let us know which tip was your favorite and how you plan on overcoming failure coaching business.