The Do's and Don'ts of Free Coaching

Show Notes

You should be very generous with what you give to people in terms of advice and coaching. But there should also be limits to what you give away for free to protect your potential clients, your sales process, and the integrity of your value.

In this episode, I walk through the different scenarios in which it’s appropriate to coach clients for free and when it’s not appropriate.

Other resources

• The RELEASE Method - 7 steps to releasing your biggest sales blocks + attracting your next client 
• The Black Girl Business Bar Facebook community
• Book a sales call with Khalida

More on Khalida

Khalida DuBose is a business coach specializing in sales strategy and mindset. As a previous crowdfunding coach, she supported more than a thousand crowdfunding campaigns and project creators in their quest to bring their dreams, passions, and ideas to the world. Now, she focuses on helping women of color online business owners nail the foundations of running a successful business and cultivate a rock-solid mindset as they navigate the entrepreneurial journey. For more information on Khalida, visit khalidadubose.com. Follow Khalida on Instagram @khalida.dubose. You can email her at [e-mail].

The Black Girl Business Bar is produced by Zuri Berry (@ZMCPodcasts). Music by Vincent Tone and Die Hard Productions.

Creators & Guests

Host

Khalida DuBose

Business + Mindset Coach

Producer

Zuri Berry

Principal Producer at ZMC Podcasts

What is The Black Girl Business Bar?

The Black Girl Business Bar Podcast is for Black entrepreneurial women who crave practical information to implement in their businesses and careers. They want tips and tactics that work and they want on-the-go mentorship that will make a difference in their businesses, projects, and lives.

Hosted by business coach and crowdfunding expert Khalida DuBose, the Black Girl Business Bar is all about letting Black women know what's possible for them in their entrepreneurial journey.

All right. So this episode will most likely resonate with my coaches a little bit more, but I think there is still a lot of great information for my done for you providers in this community.

So there's a lot of noise out there about value and making sure you own your value and not doing things. You guys have probably heard it as much as I have.

The truth is we do a lot of things for free in our business, like creating this very podcast that you're listening to. So I wanted to share my thoughts on the do's and the don'ts of free coaching. And for you who provide services, the do's and don'ts of providing free services in your business.

Welcome to the Black Girl Business Bar podcast. I'm your host Khalida DuBose. And this podcast is my love letter to all of you, especially you, black women and women of color. I'm on a mission to help you thrive in your business and your life by bringing you practical advice, tips, and mentorship that will empower you to make bold moves.

I want to see you increase your sales, overcome your mindset blocks and step into your best self as the leader of your business and your life.

All right, coach. So when should we be offering things for free in our business? Right. That's the question on the top of everybody's mind, especially when you're first getting started, you might be thinking, well, somebody told me not to offer for free and then other people say free is okay. Okay, the answer to that question is we're always offering something for free in our business.

We are all creating content that allows our communities to sample our work. So it doesn't matter what you do. If you're in this online space, you're probably creating some free content, whether it's a podcast or a post, and you're sharing some of your knowledge with your people so that they can get a kind of a taste of what it's like to work with you.

My opinion is is that you should be very generous with what you give to people, right? Give them a really good idea of what it's like to work with you. And the average person will not be able to implement everything you say. You're probably creating content at a pretty quick rate, even if that's just one or two posts a week, but they're also following other people, right?

We're giving free content away so that people can kind of sample and see if we're the personality that they want to work with. If we have the knowledge that they're looking for.

Most people will just resonate and they won't actually implement. And if they do implement, they'll implement a little bit and see that, this is the person I want to work with. And then they'll reach out to you so that they can get that true transformation.

So what you're really wondering about is when do I coach for free? When do I give my service away for free? Right. So here are my thoughts on that. Okay. I'm going to make this really short and simple for all of you. We coach for free when we do market research, we can coach for free when we have beta clients and in Q and A sessions. Okay. So let's break those down.

When I'm doing market research, I'm typically asking people about what's going on in their business. What are the hard things that are happening? What do they want their business to look like? Where is it at today? And what ends up happening is things get unearthed, right? So some limiting beliefs might pop out. They might start talking about something that they haven't been able to overcome, that they can't figure out. And so how I usually structure those calls is we take 30 minutes to talk about all the problems so that I can get a really good sense of information from them that's going to inform my marketing, et cetera. And then I take the other 30 minutes, if this is an hour long call, and I coach them.

My whole point here for coaching them is I want to give them something in return for their time. This offers them usually a small transformation in the form of like a deeper insight or new insights into the existing problems that they have.

Why I like this form of like, when you do market research and why I like to give free coaching is, you know, for the reasons I said there were usually unearthing things and I don't really like to leave it, like, okay, just unearth your stuff bye.

But also it just, it offers them a chance to see how you coach or see what you have to offer. And usually down the line, those people could reach out potentially and try to work with you again. So totally fine to offer coaching in situations like that. Keep in mind that you're going to offer the coaching right there on the spot, and this isn't going to become like a, they can reach out to you anytime and be coached without a paid relationship. Okay.

The next time would be when you have beta clients. So beta clients at the start of your business, or if you're switching your niche, some people like to take a couple of beta clients on when they're switching their niche. So you might want to take a few and that's really up to you. Whatever feels good to you. I say, you know, between one and three clients. You can offer free coaching or, big or here, discounted coaching services. So you might be switching a niche and you already know how to coach, right? You might be going from life coaching to business coaching, and you don't feel like it's appropriate or you need to offer, you know, free coaching. You might just lower the service if that's what you want to do, and they can still be considered a beta client.

And this allows you to, especially if you're new, fill out that new space, you know, just kind of get a feel for it, get feedback from your client potentially, and even yourself. What do you think you're doing good. Where are your areas that you want to brush up on? And then it helps you just to develop your skills. So if we're talking about coaching and you're switching from doing something else and going into coaching, it can help you develop coaching skills.

So I know a lot of people think beta clients because I want testimonials and those are possible too. But I think that the focus when you're taking beta clients and your coaching for free, or offering your service for free, should really be around adding value. Right. I can't stress this enough because in last week's episode, I told you, you know, that you don't need to validate your offer, i.e. get testimonials in order to believe in your offer. And I still stand by that. But what I'm saying here is, is that yes, testimonials are possible and that's where most people's minds go when they think beta clients, let me just offer something for free so they can give me a review.

But you want it to be a little bit cleaner than that. You want it to be, let me offer them true value. And let me try to get good information out of this. That's going to help me rather than just only attract other people. If you focus on the service, they'll have a great time. They'll get transformation and the testimonial will be a breeze for them. So if your client wants to give you an honest testimonial, that's amazing too.

And then finally you can give free Q&A sessions. So many times this will happen in live broadcasts. People will typically submit questions in your DMS or any other way that you told them to submit questions to you. And then you can answer those questions for them. This usually happens in public, which is very beneficial to people because of if one person has the question, then it's likely that dozens of other people have the same question. And then you're answering that question and everybody gets to hear it.

This isn't really like, you know, hardcore coaching. But it is a service of sorts, right? They are getting to hear your knowledge and pick your brain. And I definitely follow some marketers who are really good at this. They will have like full-blown sessions where they're just answering questions and they're going above and beyond. Okay.

This gives you an idea of how like a Q&A is not going to be like coaching the way market research would be, but it's still a form of coaching it's still a form of adding value. Okay. So that's, that's kind of the name of the game.

When do I coach for free? When I'm adding value. When it's very clear what both people were getting out of this, whether that's a beta client, market research, or you're just sitting in a Q&A and you're adding value to your audience.

When don't we coach for free? We don't coach when we're coaching in our DMs or on sales calls. So this is more like, when is coaching not appropriate? Right. We don't coach for inner validation and we don't coach people who haven't asked for it. Right? So these are all forms of free coaching that don't really have a great energy with them and they don't have a clear purpose that is going to help you and the client. Okay. So let's talk about it a little bit.

If you've been following me on Instagram, then you've heard my thoughts on the subject about coaching in your DMs, potentially even coaching in sales calls. But just in case you're not following me over there, I'll share it again. And so potential clients can't get transformation in your DMs. Okay. I really strongly believe this. And they really can't get it during sales calls either. Those are not the appropriate times to be trying to, you know, transform people or trying to show them like how great of a coach you are. Okay. And I'm talking to the coaches, but I'm also talking to service providers because I had a guy who got on a sales call with me about my website. This was a couple of years back and he coached me so hard that like, I just, my brain was mush at the end of that call. There was, there was no, yes, because I didn't even remember what, how the start of the call was.

So you want to just be very careful of this. So they can't get transformation. What happens is people resonate with you when they see your content, whether they're listening to you or they're watching you on a social platform, they start to resonate with you. And some people will bring their problems to you.

They'll bring them, they'll go into the DMs and then they'll drop like a heavy emotional load and be like, this is what's going on with me. And a lot of coaches because you're coaching probably because you care about people, will start to feel like, oh my God, how do I, should I solve this problem? The truth is, is that the best service to that client is to thank them for sharing with you and then offer them, you know, maybe a point of, of help if you can. And if you can't, you know, tell them that you would love to talk to them about this further, you know, and in a place that's just a little bit more appropriate. I personally don't feel comfortable talking about very heavily emotional things until I have a lot of background information.

And of course everybody's, you know, not everybody's coaching on super heavy topics. But still having more information is always helpful. So inviting them to a sales call is probably the best. Whatever you call your sales calls, inviting them to that call is probably the best so that you can make sure you're listening to them and you're getting the actual information that you need so that they can make a decision whether or not they want to work with you. If you're the right person, then you can make a decision of whether or not you're the right person to help them.

All right. So coaching in your DMs and on sales calls leads to burn out because there's improper energy exchange going on. I remember my first business coach telling me this because I was that person who would coach a little bit too heavily on sales calls as well. And I know now where that energy was coming from, but I would coach a little bit too much on the sales call and it would just kind of throw things off its axis. And then all of a sudden, the potential client was overwhelmed and I was lost being like, okay, what should I, where should I go from here?

It's just an improper energy exchange. The person's not there for transformation. They're there to see if you're the right person for them. They want to know that you are confident and that you can help them with whatever their problem is. So we keep it to that. So keep, keep your coaching away from your DMS and out of your sales calls.

Validation. No free coaching when we're just looking for validation. Right? So you might be like, I am so confused. You said I could take beta clients, which helps me validate my offer. It does. But this is a little bit of note and this is a nuance. We can take beta clients that we can understand what we're doing in a new space, like a new niche, or start to form a program. It's a whole different thing when you are taking clients and you're coaching them so that you get inner validation.

What do I mean by that? You just need to check your why. Check your intention as to why you're offering the free coaching. It's very important because when you're coming from a place of I need you to believe in this so I can believe in myself, then again, there's this imbalance in the energy exchange, right? The client needs you. You're not supposed to need them more than they need you, if that makes sense.

So making it all about you will leave the client feeling kind of, you know, alienated. Sometimes you'll find that clients will start to disengage. They're not getting their needs met, so they start to disengage and they don't, they don't really know what's going on cause it's, sometimes it is just an energy exchange and it can be really hard to figure that out from the client standpoint. And then this will typically lead to frustration on your part because you also might be trying to figure out what's going on here. So I've seen this and experienced where it increases anxiety around your offer. So all of a sudden it's like, whoa, wait a minute, am I offering the right thing?

So this is more in the, in the realm of like mindset, you know, checking your intention, making sure when you're coaching, it's not from a validation standpoint, you might want to do beta, but not from inner validation.

All right. And so finally you don't want to coach for free when people didn't ask for it. No coaching, your biz, bestie, your friends, your family, the guy at Starbucks, right? You can't just coach people if they didn't ask for it, even if they have a business or even if they're going through a life problem and you're a life coach. It can feel very inappropriate to them if they didn't explicitly ask you to help them. They might think that, you know, it comes off judgmental.

Again, this goes back to a lot of times, our desire to feel worthy versus them needing our help because they asked for it. Right. So you see the difference. It's like if they ask for help, that means that they want help. And then a lot of times that helps going to look a certain way. If they didn't ask and I'm just offering it, I might be offering it for my own self motivation.

So I hope that makes things clear for you. I hope that helps a lot. So these are the do's and don'ts of free coaching. So if you're somebody out there and you're new and you're like, when do I offer free coaching? And when do I not? Make sure you take a few notes on this subject. And then just always check those intentions when you're feeling like you want to do something and you're feeling like you need other people to buy in on what you're doing. Check your intentions, make sure you're coming from the right energy and you'll be good to go.

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