Advertise on podcast: Craft of Coaching Podcast

Evaluating your coaching niche isn't something most coaches build into their business practice — and that's exactly how coaches end up years into work that feels increasingly misaligned, without quite knowing how it got that way. The niche that made sense when you started isn't always the niche that makes sense now. Markets shift. You grow. What you're most equipped to help with changes. And sometimes the work just stops feeling alive. In this episode, we're breaking down how to evaluate whether your niche is still working — for your clients, for your business, and for you. We're covering how to tell the difference between a niche that needs a minor recalibration and one that needs a genuine pivot, how to make adjustments without confusing your audience or dismantling what's actually working, and the internal signals that tell you something needs to change before the external signals do. This is not about chasing trends or rebranding because something shiny caught your attention. It's about building the kind of honest, ongoing relationship with your business that lets you evolve with intention rather than desperation. If you've been coaching for a few years and something feels off — or almost off — this episode is for you. Coaching + Courage + Community = CLCC.  We're a life-changing program, for you to become a life-changing coach. Our Level 1 ICF-Accredited program has worked with graduates from around the world. The first life you change? It'll be your own. We're the Credentialed Life Coach Collective, or CLCC, and we're here to give you a powerful coaching skill-set mixed with profound personal and professional growth. Head to https://TeamCLCC.com to get our catalogue and the free "Become a Coach" video series to learn more about becoming a life coach, choosing a coaching niche, how coaches make money, and more. Social: LinkedIn

Coaching clients who want advice is one of the trickiest dynamics you'll face in your practice — and it happens more than most coaches expect. A client shows up ready for a three-step plan, a guarantee, or a direct answer to "just tell me what to do." They're not being difficult. They're exhausted, overwhelmed, and running a very human script that says: if I'm motivated enough, I should be able to get fast results. But when a coach slips into advice-giving to meet that urgency — even with the best intentions — something quietly breaks down in the coaching container. The client becomes dependent on you for answers, the deeper work gets bypassed, and when those quick fixes don't hold, everyone ends up doubting themselves. In this episode of The Craft of Coaching, we're breaking down why the quick-fix mentality is so culturally baked-in, what actually happens when you cave to it, and the exact language you can use to recenter the coaching relationship without dismissing what your client is feeling. If you've ever felt the pull to prove your value by handing over answers, this one is for you. We're talking about how to hold the depth of your work, honor a client's real desire for change, and know when the coaching just might not be the right fit — and how to say so. Coaching + Courage + Community = CLCC.  We're a life-changing program, for you to become a life-changing coach. Our Level 1 ICF-Accredited program has worked with graduates from around the world. The first life you change? It'll be your own. We're the Credentialed Life Coach Collective, or CLCC, and we're here to give you a powerful coaching skill-set mixed with profound personal and professional growth. Head to https://TeamCLCC.com to get our catalogue and the free "Become a Coach" video series to learn more about becoming a life coach, choosing a coaching niche, how coaches make money, and more. Social: LinkedIn

High-achieving coaching clients often look like they have it all together. They hit the goals. They manage the teams. They check every box. But under the surface? They're lost, burned out, or questioning everything. In this episode of the Craft of Coaching, we're pulling back the curtain on what it means to coach the "successful but stuck" client—the ones who look fine on the outside but are quietly unraveling inside. We'll explore how perfectionism, achievement-based identity, and internalized pressure impact your clients' ability to be vulnerable and actually engage in change. You'll learn what to listen for, what to not assume, and how to challenge these clients in a way that doesn't trigger shame or shutdown. We'll also dive into: Why "they seem fine" is the wrong metricThe hidden grief that often accompanies successHow to help high achievers redefine what enough looks likeTools for creating safety and stretching your clientIf you work with professionals, leaders, or entrepreneurs, this is the episode that will change how you see your "star" clients forever. Tune in now to get actionable strategies to support clients who don't need another goal—they need a different way of being. Coaching + Courage + Community = CLCC.  We're a life-changing program, for you to become a life-changing coach. Our Level 1 ICF-Accredited program has worked with graduates from around the world. The first life you change? It'll be your own. We're the Credentialed Life Coach Collective, or CLCC, and we're here to give you a powerful coaching skill-set mixed with profound personal and professional growth. Head to https://TeamCLCC.com to get our catalogue and the free "Become a Coach" video series to learn more about becoming a life coach, choosing a coaching niche, how coaches make money, and more. Social: LinkedIn

A content creation system for coaches doesn't have to be complicated — but it does have to exist. Because the coaches who show up consistently with content are almost never the ones with the most time or the most inspiration. They're the ones who stopped relying on both. In this episode, we're breaking down why content is the first thing to disappear when motivation dips or life gets busy — and why that pattern, left unaddressed, quietly undermines the long-term health of a coaching business. We're covering what a simple, sustainable content system actually looks like for coaches who have limited time, limited team, and a low tolerance for elaborate workflows that fall apart by week three. This is a practical episode. We're getting into batching, realistic scheduling, the specific tools that reduce friction, and the mindset shift that makes consistency possible even when inspiration is nowhere to be found. We're also covering the inner work piece — because for most coaches, inconsistent content isn't a time management problem. It's a visibility problem. And those require completely different solutions. If you've restarted your content plan more than twice, this episode is for you. Coaching + Courage + Community = CLCC.  We're a life-changing program, for you to become a life-changing coach. Our Level 1 ICF-Accredited program has worked with graduates from around the world. The first life you change? It'll be your own. We're the Credentialed Life Coach Collective, or CLCC, and we're here to give you a powerful coaching skill-set mixed with profound personal and professional growth. Head to https://TeamCLCC.com to get our catalogue and the free "Become a Coach" video series to learn more about becoming a life coach, choosing a coaching niche, how coaches make money, and more. Social: LinkedIn

Most time management advice for coaches assumes your life stays predictable.  --> It doesn't.  In this episode, we're breaking down the time management strategies for busy life coaches that actually hold up when things go sideways — not the productivity hacks that work fine until they don't. Let's go through 4 practical systems that aren't about doing more, but instead builds a coaching business that can flex when your life does—because it will.  If you've ever felt like your business only works when everything else in your life is going right, this episode is for you. Coaching + Courage + Community = CLCC.  We're a life-changing program, for you to become a life-changing coach. Our Level 1 ICF-Accredited program has worked with graduates from around the world. The first life you change? It'll be your own. We're the Credentialed Life Coach Collective, or CLCC, and we're here to give you a powerful coaching skill-set mixed with profound personal and professional growth. Head to https://TeamCLCC.com to get our catalogue and the free "Become a Coach" video series to learn more about becoming a life coach, choosing a coaching niche, how coaches make money, and more. Social: LinkedIn

It's exceedingly common for coaches to finish coach training, go all-in on building a business, and then...something happens. A loss, a partner's unexpected layoff, an illness, or burnout from trying to hard to make the business happen. The coach takes a step back, thinking it's just a pause--and then it's longer. The thought of returning feels awkward. So how do you come back to your coaching business after a break? That's exactly what we're exploring in today's episode, where we talk about not just the actions to take but the mentality to adopt when you're wanting to come back to coaching, especially after you've navigated a difficult life experience. It's okay to have taken a step back--and it's also okay, and very doable, to return to coaching and create the work from a different place. Coaching + Courage + Community = CLCC.  We're a life-changing program, for you to become a life-changing coach. Our Level 1 ICF-Accredited program has worked with graduates from around the world. The first life you change? It'll be your own. We're the Credentialed Life Coach Collective, or CLCC, and we're here to give you a powerful coaching skill-set mixed with profound personal and professional growth. Head to https://TeamCLCC.com to get our catalogue and the free "Become a Coach" video series to learn more about becoming a life coach, choosing a coaching niche, how coaches make money, and more. Social: LinkedIn

At some point, we all face loss--which means that at some point, you'll have coaching clients who are facing grief and loss. Because grief and loss experiences can vary so significantly from person to person, it's important that life coaches understand the terrain that their clients are walking through and best practices to help clients navigate grief and loss while the coach maintains an ethical stance within the scope of coaching. That's exactly what we're getting into in today's episode--with a personal lens, as I (host Kate Swoboda) am navigating the recent loss of my father and experiencing this from both sides. What are the "weird" things about grief that come up? How can life coaches best support clients through grieving without pathologizing it? Let's dig in. Coaching + Courage + Community = CLCC.  We're a life-changing program, for you to become a life-changing coach. Our Level 1 ICF-Accredited program has worked with graduates from around the world. The first life you change? It'll be your own. We're the Credentialed Life Coach Collective, or CLCC, and we're here to give you a powerful coaching skill-set mixed with profound personal and professional growth. Head to https://TeamCLCC.com to get our catalogue and the free "Become a Coach" video series to learn more about becoming a life coach, choosing a coaching niche, how coaches make money, and more. Social: LinkedIn

Coaching clients through career transitions is always complex work — but right now, when the job market is genuinely difficult and economic uncertainty is running high, it requires a particular set of skills that most coach training doesn't fully address. When a client has done everything right and the market still isn't responding, standard coaching moves can land as tone-deaf. And when a client's identity is wrapped up in work they've lost or are losing, the coaching goes deeper than strategy fast. In this episode, we're breaking down what it actually looks like to coach career transition clients in a hard market — staying firmly in the coaching lane without crossing into career counseling, holding space for grief and identity disruption without getting pulled into rescue, and asking the questions that actually help when "just keep applying" isn't landing. We're covering the difference between a career strategy problem and an identity crisis wearing career clothes, why the most important coaching in a job transition often has nothing to do with the resume, and the specific moves that help clients stay connected to their own agency when the external environment feels completely indifferent to what they have to offer. Coaching + Courage + Community = CLCC.  We're a life-changing program, for you to become a life-changing coach. Our Level 1 ICF-Accredited program has worked with graduates from around the world. The first life you change? It'll be your own. We're the Credentialed Life Coach Collective, or CLCC, and we're here to give you a powerful coaching skill-set mixed with profound personal and professional growth. Head to https://TeamCLCC.com to get our catalogue and the free "Become a Coach" video series to learn more about becoming a life coach, choosing a coaching niche, how coaches make money, and more. Social: LinkedIn

Growing a coaching business in a difficult economy tests something most business advice doesn't prepare you for — not your strategy, but your belief. When inquiries slow down, the silence has a way of becoming evidence. Evidence that you're not good enough, that you waited too long, that the market has moved on. None of that is necessarily true. But it feels true, and that feeling drives decisions. In this episode, we're breaking down what's actually happening when a coaching business goes quiet — the difference between a market condition and a personal failing, how to audit what's working without spiraling into an overhaul, and what to do in a slow season that actually builds long-term equity instead of just filling time. We're also looking at how this translates directly to your coaching work, because clients who are navigating "I'm doing everything right and nothing is happening" need exactly the skills we're talking about here. This episode is equal parts honest business coaching and inner work. Because in a hard market, those two things are inseparable. Coaching + Courage + Community = CLCC.  We're a life-changing program, for you to become a life-changing coach. Our Level 1 ICF-Accredited program has worked with graduates from around the world. The first life you change? It'll be your own. We're the Credentialed Life Coach Collective, or CLCC, and we're here to give you a powerful coaching skill-set mixed with profound personal and professional growth. Head to https://TeamCLCC.com to get our catalogue and the free "Become a Coach" video series to learn more about becoming a life coach, choosing a coaching niche, how coaches make money, and more. Social: LinkedIn

Coaching business pricing during economic uncertainty is where a lot of coaches quietly come undone. Not publicly — there's no announcement, no decision point. It happens in small moments. A potential client mentions money is tight and you immediately offer a discount. Someone ghosts after hearing your rate and you spend three days wondering if you should lower it. You start pre-emptively apologizing for your prices before anyone has even asked. In this episode, we're breaking down what's actually happening in those moments — because it's rarely about the economics and almost always about the story underneath them. We're covering how to tell the difference between appropriate flexibility and people-pleasing yourself out of a sustainable business, what the research tells us about how clients actually make purchasing decisions during economic downturns, and the specific internal work that lets you hold your rates with confidence rather than apology. This isn't about being rigid or tone-deaf to genuine financial hardship. It's about getting honest about when you're responding to a client's reality and when you're responding to your own fear. Those are two completely different situations — and they require two completely different responses. Coaching + Courage + Community = CLCC.  We're a life-changing program, for you to become a life-changing coach. Our Level 1 ICF-Accredited program has worked with graduates from around the world. The first life you change? It'll be your own. We're the Credentialed Life Coach Collective, or CLCC, and we're here to give you a powerful coaching skill-set mixed with profound personal and professional growth. Head to https://TeamCLCC.com to get our catalogue and the free "Become a Coach" video series to learn more about becoming a life coach, choosing a coaching niche, how coaches make money, and more. Social: LinkedIn

Most coaches create their offers by copying what they see others doing—but that leads to packages that don’t actually work. In this Craft of Coaching episode, we dive into how to structure coaching packages that support real transformation for your clients and sustainable income and energy for you. You’ll learn how to align your offers with the actual arc of change, why underpriced or overpromised packages undermine both the coach and the client, and how to map your packages around integration, boundaries, and outcomes—not just sessions and price.  We walk through the top mistakes coaches make when designing packages and give you a clear, actionable framework for creating offers that deliver. If you’re ready to stop winging it and start building packages that feel good to deliver—and that clients are excited to commit to—this episode is for you. Coaching + Courage + Community = CLCC.  We're a life-changing program, for you to become a life-changing coach. Our Level 1 ICF-Accredited program has worked with graduates from around the world. The first life you change? It'll be your own. We're the Credentialed Life Coach Collective, or CLCC, and we're here to give you a powerful coaching skill-set mixed with profound personal and professional growth. Head to https://TeamCLCC.com to get our catalogue and the free "Become a Coach" video series to learn more about becoming a life coach, choosing a coaching niche, how coaches make money, and more. Social: LinkedIn

This episode gets into why naming imperfection — genuinely, not as false modesty — is foundational to coaching well, leading well, and building community that's actually real. We talk about assumed role power, the guru model that's quietly everywhere in the coaching industry, and what it costs coaches who are still performing perfection when a client brings them something messy. We also get into the flip side: owning imperfection means owning the cleanup. The repair. The willingness to stay in relationship rather than manage the optics. Adrienne maree brown and Nike Aurea both speak to this in community contexts, and it's just as true in a coaching relationship. How to embrace imperfection isn't a one-time reframe. It's a practice — built over time, in relationship, through the experience of being imperfect with other people and finding that the connection holds anyway. That's the work. And it turns out, it's also what makes a great coach. Coaching + Courage + Community = CLCC.  We're a life-changing program, for you to become a life-changing coach. Our Level 1 ICF-Accredited program has worked with graduates from around the world. The first life you change? It'll be your own. We're the Credentialed Life Coach Collective, or CLCC, and we're here to give you a powerful coaching skill-set mixed with profound personal and professional growth. Head to https://TeamCLCC.com to get our catalogue and the free "Become a Coach" video series to learn more about becoming a life coach, choosing a coaching niche, how coaches make money, and more. Social: LinkedIn

Most coaches finish coach training--and then they're on their own. Most clients are trying to make life changes on their own, and only find success once they start coaching with you. And that's not an accident. You've heard the advice to regulate your nervous system. What you're hearing less often is that it might not be fully possible to do that alone — and the science backs this up. This episode gets into what actually gets in the way of nervous system regulation and relationships working together and what it takes to practice something different so that you can finally see change. Coaching + Courage + Community = CLCC.  We're a life-changing program, for you to become a life-changing coach. Our Level 1 ICF-Accredited program has worked with graduates from around the world. The first life you change? It'll be your own. We're the Credentialed Life Coach Collective, or CLCC, and we're here to give you a powerful coaching skill-set mixed with profound personal and professional growth. Head to https://TeamCLCC.com to get our catalogue and the free "Become a Coach" video series to learn more about becoming a life coach, choosing a coaching niche, how coaches make money, and more. Social: LinkedIn

If you're a coach considering a group program,  you need to know how to build a community. Building real community isn't about luck or personality — it's about understanding what actually creates belonging, and developing the skills to sustain it. Most of us were never taught how to build community in any deliberate way, and the gap that leaves is real: connection that feels hollow, groups that don't stick, and a low-grade hunger for something more solid. We break down the difference between cultivation — showing up consistently, being willing to go first, creating the conditions for belonging — and the specific skills that make community work: trust signaling, behavioral integrity, active listening, somatic awareness, and recognizing the inner critic narratives that quietly keep people isolated. And for coaches, this isn't just personally relevant. It's professionally essential. The coaches who know how to build community from the inside out bring something qualitatively different to their clients — because you can't hold space for what you haven't lived. If you've been thinking about how to build community that actually feels like something — this episode is a place to start. Coaching + Courage + Community = CLCC.  We're a life-changing program, for you to become a life-changing coach. Our Level 1 ICF-Accredited program has worked with graduates from around the world. The first life you change? It'll be your own. We're the Credentialed Life Coach Collective, or CLCC, and we're here to give you a powerful coaching skill-set mixed with profound personal and professional growth. Head to https://TeamCLCC.com to get our catalogue and the free "Become a Coach" video series to learn more about becoming a life coach, choosing a coaching niche, how coaches make money, and more. Social: LinkedIn

We’ve absorbed a quiet rule in the coaching industry: you’re not legitimate until your calendar is packed. If you’re not fully booked, you’re still “trying.” Still “building.” Still “not quite there.” Let’s challenge that. A fully booked client roster is a business metric — not a measure of your identity. When we tie our legitimacy to calendar saturation, we hand our confidence to algorithms, economic cycles, and comparison. And that’s a fragile place to build from. In this episode, we unpack what actually makes someone a coach: commitment to craft, ethical standards, reflective practice, and skill development. We separate coaching skill from marketing outcomes, and we explore why claiming your professional identity early accelerates growth instead of inflating ego. If you’ve been wondering when you can call yourself a coach, or feeling pressure to prove yourself through volume, this conversation will reset your internal barometer. Coaching + Courage + Community = CLCC.  We're a life-changing program, for you to become a life-changing coach. Our Level 1 ICF-Accredited program has worked with graduates from around the world. The first life you change? It'll be your own. We're the Credentialed Life Coach Collective, or CLCC, and we're here to give you a powerful coaching skill-set mixed with profound personal and professional growth. Head to https://TeamCLCC.com to get our catalogue and the free "Become a Coach" video series to learn more about becoming a life coach, choosing a coaching niche, how coaches make money, and more. Social: LinkedIn