Welcome to the Mindset Coach Academy podcast. I'm Lindsey Wilson and I am a high-performance Mindset Coach, a mom, a former professional athlete and an entrepreneur. I help coaches and high performers optimize their mindset to improve their coaching, their performance and those of their athletes and their lives. Here you'll learn all about mindset, how to live it, how to teach it and how to sell it. Hi all and welcome to the Mindset Coach Academy podcast.
My name is Lindsey Wilson and today we are going to be talking about how I made my first 100k as a Mindset Coach.
Now this episode is really sort of behind the scenes on what worked for me. Now I started my business, you know, I started it originally 18 years ago. I got more serious when I was finishing playing and that was about 10 years ago, maybe 11. And I think the temptation maybe is to say well things have changed, right?
I mean we didn't have Instagram or TikTok or any of those things. But what I'm going to talk about today, I think you will see that the basic principles of how you effectively build a solid coaching practice, they really don't change. And I think that that's important because the things that do change are often the things that seem like they're going to move your business forward and they're shiny and they're new and they're fun maybe or you see other people doing them. And it's really easy to let all of that distract you from the things that I'm going to talk about today that will actually move your business forward.
And so I want to focus on those and of course I will talk about some things that maybe I wish I'd done differently or things that in retrospect I'm like okay I could have moved a lot faster if I had done it this way, okay? So I'm going to talk about five things in particular and as always the reason that I'm doing this and the reason that I want you to listen to this is because so many of you are sitting on the sideline wondering what steps you should take or maybe you've started your business and it's a lot harder than you thought it was going to be and you're getting frustrated and dejected and discouraged and I hope that an episode like this can really sort of awaken in you that like really anyone can do this and I don't mean anybody can be a mindset coach but I mean anybody can learn the ways to push themselves to be an entrepreneur. And I will say that the first 100k that you make and I know that's like a big number for a lot of people in their mind of like that's a legit business I can live off of that. That first 100k is the hardest money you will ever make. Actually the first two to five is for real the first hardest money you will ever make but the first 100k I know is a big milestone for a lot of people and in particular a lot of people want to do that in the year. So I want to talk about that first 100k and I'm going to break it down and talk about what I did and what I didn't do and what I wish I'd done better. Okay so the first thing number one well before I used to say that if you're interested in being a mindset coach you have to run not walk but run to get our free guide. It is on our website positiveperformancetraining.com forward slash guide and it is how to become a mental performance coach. You guys I break down exactly what you need to think about all the questions all the frameworks all the things that you need to be really thinking about in order to make that decision and how to move forward because I know a lot of you are stuck.
Okay so go get that guide now. Okay the first thing that I did to make my first 100k is I didn't wait until I was quote unquote ready. Things in my business were not perfect by any means. My content was really basic and I knew that I was going to continue to iterate on it but I knew that I had to start and so feeling ready is not really the sign that you are ready to move forward and if you wait for that you're often going to be waiting for a really long time. So what I did is I you know I'd had some mental performance training. I was at that point let's see I was playing professionally at that point and I knew what had worked for me and that's where a lot of people get into mental performance training right is like something worked for you maybe it wasn't as an athlete maybe it was as a coach or something's working with the team that you're using like that's enough to get started. So what I did is I literally sat down and I was like huh okay what do I think you know I did 10 steps or 10 sort of modules but I think that's actually too many. At that time I was like what are the 10 things that you know like I was going to go work with collegiate athletes what are the 10 things that a collegiate athlete needs to know and I really looked around at like my teammates right I just finished college and I was like okay what do I think my teammates what if I could have taught them something what were those 10 things that I thought they really needed to know that's it like I didn't need to know all the things I know now to get started and I sat down and I just mapped it out and it's not what I teach now there's a lot of things that are still the same but it's different it's changed over the years but it's never going to get to the place that you quote unquote want it to be by like sitting on your computer right like you have to get out there and you have to try things and take things away and I'll talk about that in a second but I started with a framework that I knew athletes needed and then I went and taught it I didn't go create a course we weren't really doing courses at that point but I didn't go create a big fancy workbook I didn't have a course I didn't I literally sat down I was like this is what they need to know and what I did I did want them to have something to get a learn from because I'm such a pen to paper type person so I went into PowerPoint and I mocked up a couple literally it was like the table of contents was like 10 sentences with like a number in front of it like a bullet point and then I had some like journal sections that were was literally like a question and some lines that I like put on Microsoft Word this is how basic it was I photocopied it and I took the logo of the team that I was working on I put it on the front which is probably a copyright violation I went to a Home Depot I got the one-inch binders I manually put them in and I went worked with teams that's how it started okay So there was nothing fancy.
I wasn't sitting around twiddling my thumbs waiting to be ready. I just did it. Okay. So that's number one.
Number two is I iterated every single time. I literally have memories of like being in, I don't know, Boston or Denver and like sitting in the hotel bar or the airport bar and like having my one drink after I worked with a team and my notebook. And I would sit down and I would be like, okay, this works, this really works. This didn't work or this didn't land or let's, I don't think that's like super relevant or maybe it's above where they need to be or whatever. Or like, this was the aha moment or like this is what coaches need and this is what really resonates for them. And I would just like capture all of it so that every single time I was doing a session or working with a team, I was getting better. And then I was doing a lot of one-on-one. So I would go and work with a team. I would work with their team. I would work with their coaching staff. I would often work with like the seniors or the captains. And then this is like exhausting to just think about. I would work with every single athlete one-on-one.
That was too much. But I'm glad I did it because I got a lot of experience, like a ton of experience working with these athletes. And so anyway, there was a lot of information is my point. There was a lot of feedback in real time. There was a lot of me analyzing what I did and how it landed and all that stuff, right? And it's not so dissimilar to what we teach with the post-competition routine. Like I had a routine for after post-competition or post-presentation of like what went well, right? The three questions that we always ask, what went well? What didn't go well? What can I do but next time?
Period. Capture it every single time. Number three is I got clients one at a time. And I think this is where we really have to set the stage for it's great if you can go out and get a bunch of clients. And after you get your feet wet, you absolutely should find the places where there's opportunities to talk, not just one-on-one, but one-to-many and get many clients. But I think in the beginning, the way that you're gonna get better at working with people is listening to what they need. And I think one-on-one, talking real human interaction, not putting stuff out just on social media, not just doing webinars, not just doing business development workshops, but literally talking to people. Whether that's on the phone or in person, doesn't really matter.
I wanna, you know, in person is great, but just having that interaction so that you're learning really significant things that are gonna help you help people. So I got clients one at a time. I called everyone I knew, anybody I had played against, anybody that I remotely knew that had also known somebody else.
I asked people that I had worked with, what are the five coaches that you think would benefit from this? And can you introduce me? I cold called people. I used to cold call college coaches and many of them did not know who I was. And, you know, I just, I got it out there and I just had that belief that people needed this.
And so if they didn't, if they weren't doing it, they just didn't know about it. So I need to be the one to tell them about it. So I just got out there.
Again, I started with people I knew, I made a list. And this is what we do in our eight day challenge. If you've never done our eight day challenge, I highly recommend it. It's how to build your dream business.
And we take you through eight steps to do that. And one of the things is, is you make a list of all the people that you know, in your network, in your community. And this is a big mistake that a lot of people make when they're starting their business is they get scared to talk to people that they know. You know, people that know, like and trust you are much more likely to purchase from you or work with you.
But it's also scarier. So, you know, you have to call up people, you know, and I got rejected by people, I got rejected by someone I played for. And I was like, really? That was hard. That was a blow to my ego. Cause I was like, okay, this person knows me and they still don't wanna work with me.
That's really hard to swallow. But I just wanna offer that those are the people, like yes, you are still gonna hear no. And that's gonna hurt more, but you are more likely to get the momentum and get those early clients one at a time with people you already know. So, it's hard. I know it's hard, but you gotta do it.
So, that was sort of like my first ring. And I would say that people that go through our eight day challenge are often surprised by the network that they have. Like literally writing down everybody you know, everybody that you know that know somebody else and like really looking at that list. I also spoke a lot at conventions and I had booths at conventions. Like I went to, and so that was the next level, right? So, I said the first level is like talking one-on-one with people, one client at a time. And then you wanna go to places where you can reach one to many.
And for me, that was like coaches conventions. You know, especially if I could speak. And a lot of times that's speaking for free.
And not only speaking for free, I have to pay your way there. So, a lot of my early investment of time and money, and this was great because I was doing this when I was in my 20s. I didn't have a lot of times I was still playing, but anytime or extra money that I had, I was going to where coaches were. I would do booths. Now, I wouldn't, what I would not do is like, do anything passive.
So, what do I mean by that? I mean, go to a coaching convention and pay money to buy a booth and then just sit there. For me, the booth only worked if I was also speaking, okay? Or doing like a breakout, you know, like breakout groups and that kind of thing. So, my booth was literally a place where people that had seen me speak or I had worked within a workshop could come then find me. Sitting there and handing out like Hershey's Kisses passively and like hoping people like see your booth and see your fancy picture and they're all that awesome, gonna wanna work with you.
Like it's not gonna happen. They are on their way to the court or the field or whatever they're walking through, pass all the booths, getting their free swag and like that's it, okay? So, the only way that works is if you're not thinking it's gonna be easy or it's any kind of passive. Like you have to put yourself out there speaking meetings, getting super aggressive about connecting with people ahead of time so you have those meetings set up and then you're talking to coaches in the booths or whether it's coaches or somebody else and other people see you like you cannot just sit there in the booth and hide is my point, okay? So, and then I would ask for referrals, I would get testimonials from my clients. And then once I got in the place, like let's say I went and worked with an athletic department, I would then go try to get other coaches from other sports while I was already there. I would try to have the AD host lunch so he would get like, he or she would get like, you know, potbelly sandwiches and have all the coaches come in and I would do a free workshop for coaches on mental training. So, again, it was like one to one first and then it was one to many and then it was like getting into places and trying to maximize my time there. So another example would like, if you're going and working with a club, like can you do a parent workshop?
Is there another sport in the facility that you can also do it? Like getting creative about if you're going to go speak somewhere or if you're going to put yourself out there, like why not get as many people there as possible? Think about the marketing and the promotion and how to maximize your time.
So if you are spending time, it's really benefiting you. Number four would be, excuse me, I got some water, spending time on like developing your process, developing yourself. And I would say both of those things, they're kind of two separate things, but they're very much intertwined because this is like the deep work. One, spending time on my own mindset and also spending time on developing content. For me, there's a whole bunch of overlap in that. Like what I'm working on in my business and my belief in what I'm doing and my confidence in selling and all that stuff, it bleeds over into my content, which is how it should be when you're a mindset and mental performance coach. And so spending your time on high value activities, developing things for my clients and developing myself versus spending time on the shiny object things.
What are those things? A website, a logo, you know, all the like fancy stuff like figuring out Canva or figuring out how to do it. Instagram real like, okay, if you have time to do that, but not in replacement of doing the deep work. Like for example, I spent a shit time writing, developing my content, thinking like all of that stuff is the work. So yes, it's great to like go get all your business stuff done.
You know, you want to get your LLC set up or whatever. Like that stuff is great. And social media, like it's great if you have the time to do that. But that is not the things that's going to drive your business forward. Here's what drives your business forward results, period, end of story.
Now, how do you get results? You develop yourself as a human as a coach. And that is always the most important thing. And by the way, it takes way more time than you think it's going to be like keeping yourself mentally up in order to get your message out there, being able to communicate it better and more effectively and with more confidence. They go hand in hand. I'm working on myself.
I'm working on my content and coaching and how I actually deliver the content. Both of those things are the most important thing. Always forever, whether there's some new crazy app that comes out that everybody thinks they need to get on. This is all pre-social media and it is still just as important today as it was 18 years ago. So do not fool yourself and think that some like technology thing makes the stuff easier.
It doesn't. You have to still go back to working on yourself and working on your content. If you're not writing or developing content and working on yourself every single day, at least you're not doing it right. You're not doing it right.
Okay. And number five is I got certified or did any kind of training for the right reason. So this is what I see people do. They either want to go back to school or they want to get certified or they want to learn one more tool within mental training or mindset training or mental performance training because they think that it's going to make them feel a certain way. And I went and I learned about subconscious programming and positive psychology. I went and got certified as a hypnotist and that was it because I wanted those tools. I wanted to build up my skill set not because I thought it would magically shift my business because nothing magically shifts your business. I did it because I wanted it and I knew that those skills, those tools that learning was going to help me get better results. And therefore it was going to help my business. It was going to help me feel more confident.
Okay. So it all comes down to better results. I got certified and did any kind of training into this day. That's how I think about training.
I do the trainings for the right reason and it's to build up my skill set not because I think it's a magical thing that's going to make everything easier because that doesn't exist. Okay. So those are my five things. Now I'm going to speak pretty soon on the podcast about 10 things I would do differently in my business like tell them actually 10 mistakes that I made. But I will say a couple quick things is I would have niched down sooner and been, you know, I kind of already had a natural niche because of my connections. I was mostly in women's basketball, but I would, and I don't say niche as far as you have to be niched down as far as a sport. I just mean niche down into like, what are you really, really good at?
Like what is your thing that you are like the best at? Nitching down sooner and quicker I think is really important. Now I say that I think when I was starting there wasn't a huge awareness about mental training.
Now there is. So I think it's really, really important to like sort of find the one space within this world that you can really differentiate yourself. I think it's more important now actually than it was then because there's more people. There's still plenty of room.
Do not use what I just said against yourself. There's still plenty of room for your niche, but I think it's more important now than it was then. I still think that I could have niched down sooner and quicker. And here's the real thing that I wish I had done better differently. I would have gotten coaching way sooner. I didn't actually get a coach like from a business standpoint until I think it was 30, maybe even a little bit older, 33.
Yeah, I think it was 33. And I look back and I'm like, what in the hell was I doing? And to be perfectly honest, which sounds like completely idiotic, I don't even think I knew that there were coaches for something besides sports. Like I really don't. I don't remember thinking like, oh, I could do a coach, but I'm not going to.
I just didn't even like know. So that would have saved me a lot of time though. If I had had a coach in my twenties when I was first building this business, I would have made way fewer mistakes and I would have been very clear about where I was going and just been like step by step. It would have saved me so much time. So those are the things that I wish I would have done differently, but I'm just gonna recap how I made my first 100K, okay?
I didn't wait until I was ready. I started with a very simple framework that I came up with in an afternoon that I knew I would change, I knew it would iterate, and I trusted that that was what athletes needed to know. So I took time thinking about it, but I was like, these are the things I need to know. And then number two was I iterated every single time, both on the content and my delivery.
I would take things out, I would add things. So every single time that I delivered my content or coached, I got better every single time, okay? This third thing is I got clients one at a time. And again, I think this is an expectation thing and a really important mindset shift. Get your clients one at a time, you're going to learn so much about what they need. You're gonna get that confidence and you're gonna get clients quicker because you're gonna talk to people that know, like, and trust you, even though it's scary.
From there, then you're gonna go to one to many. For me, it was conventions, it was business development opportunities just going into an athletic department and talking to everybody, all of those things, but that builds off getting your clients one-on-one, or one at a time. And again, I think the mindset shift that like, if you just set up shop and get your fancy logo and website that people are just gonna be lined up, nope, they're not, they're not. You're gonna have to call people, you're gonna have to talk to them and you're gonna get better every single sales call. You're gonna get better every single sales calls and it's gonna be one at a time.
And it's gonna feel slow and it's gonna feel impossible in the beginning. And the people that can make it through that are the ones that are gonna get to 100K. You're not gonna get to 100K without getting to 2K. I can tell you that much. So where are you gonna get that first 2K?
I can guarantee, almost guarantee 99% of the time, it's from people that are in your life already. If you've never done our eight day challenge, go to positiveperformancetrain.com, find our eight day challenge. I don't know what the link is, but if you get our guide, how to become a mental performance coach, you get offered the eight day challenge. So go do that.
Now, it is so important. You can get those first few clients, then you're gonna build your business from there. Number four is I spent time developing myself and my content. If you are not writing, like every day, all the time developing your content, iterating what you're teaching, getting better at coaching, working on your own mindset, you're doing it wrong. If you have extra time, then you can go do the fun, shiny, sexy things. Spend time not looking on trying to look good, but working on yourself and your content. And they should go hand to hand as a mental performance coach.
Number five, I got certified, I got trainings, I got any kind of learnings done for the right reason, which is developing my skill set, becoming the person that is capable of making 100K, the person that is capable of making a million dollars, whatever it is, helping me get better results, period. There is no magic sauce. There is no magic thing that's going to make you make money, make you feel better, make you magically be able to do whatever you wanna do. You can develop the skill set to do those things, but those come first, the skills come first.
Okay, all right guys, look. If you wanna be a mental performance coach, these are the five things that got me to 100K. There are many other things that I did after. We talk about those in our certification, in our Insider Mastermind, which is our follow-up program, our monthly coaching program. There's a lot of other things that you can do to build your business, but here's the problem.
Most people wanna go to those things first, because frankly, they're like more fun, like doing webinars, making an online course, doing a social media strategy. That stuff is cool, but you don't need any of it until you're trying to scale, maybe after 100K. Your first 100K will be the hardest 100K you will ever make, but if you follow these five steps, these are the things that are gonna get you there. And it's gonna be one client at a time, then it's gonna be a couple. It's going to be a slow burn, but you will have a snowball effect, but it's not right in the beginning. In the beginning, it is a lot of hustle, and you have to be able to manage your own mind through it and come back to what your mission is, why you're here, and don't get discouraged by trying to go too big too fast. That's the real worry that I have with both my certified students that graduate or really any mindset mental performance coach.
They try to go too big too fast instead of just like the solid work of like, you know, it's just like basketball, you gotta get in the gym, you gotta do the reps. You have to do the work when no one else is looking to get even to the level where it's like sexy and fun and whatever, easier. You gotta do the grant work, and this is the grant work. But again, getting back to your mission, the world truly, truly needs more mindset and mental performance coaches. And I hope that you hearing about my journey to my first 100K will help you keep your eye on the ball. This can be done, it's gonna be step by step, you can do this.
For more, go to our website, positiveperformancetraining.com and really go get that guide on how to become a mental performance coach because it's gonna help you really map out your journey and answer a lot of your questions, a lot of your worries. And we spent a lot of time putting it together, so I hope you get that. And as usual, if you love this episode, share it with a friend, do rate and review and let us know how you love the podcast.
I've been reading a bunch of reviews that just came in and I so appreciate you guys. All right guys, we'll see you next week. Bye for now.
Now. Hey guys, the Mindset Coach Academy Certification Program will open again in October of 2023. You guys, if you wanna be a mindset coach, this is the place, this is the community, this is the program, we're gonna take you through four months of training.
And at the end, you are going to be a positive performance certified mindset coach and a performance visualization specialist. But spots are always limited and is by application only. So I encourage you right now to go to positiveperformancetraining.com and get on that wait list. We open up spots and enrollment to the wait list first so you wanna get on that wait list. Go to positiveperformancetraining.com and I so hope to see your application come through this fall. Do it.
