WW 234: How I Prepare For My Wealth Coaching Sessions - Solo Show
I’m excited about this week’s episode because I’m going to get into some of the specific step-by-step details of the actual financial coaching. I’m going to share my personal approach to preparing for these sessions and also tell you about how I’ve shifted my preparation strategies since the start of my business. Loving this episode? Take a screenshot and share it on Instagram! Tag me so I can send you some love (@Tess_Wicks)
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A Quick Recap from this episode
I’m excited about this week’s episode because I’m going to get into some of the specific step-by-step details of the actual financial coaching. I’m going to share my personal approach to preparing for these sessions and also tell you about how I’ve shifted my preparation strategies since the start of my business.
Let’s start here: I used to spend hours upon hours preparing for my financial coaching calls. This doesn’t work well because most of the time you’re charging a client / setting your price based on what you’re charging them for a session and you forget all the preparation time that goes into it. Preparation is key, but it’s something you need to pay attention to so it doesn’t get out of hand.
Now we’ve all found ourselves over-preparing for a myriad of reasons:
- imposter syndrome (feeling like you have to know everything and overdeliver)
- overcommitting ourselves (committing to something outside your scope or zone of genius
Those are two big things that have come up for me personally and for my clients that have caused over-preparation. It’s important to keep in mind that you know more than you think you know especially when it comes to serving your clients (we tend to undervalue ourselves when that imposter syndrome steps in) and important to maintain the boundaries that you set in place in the first place of what the scope of work was.
So now I want to dig into what I personally do to prepare for each money coaching session. It gets better over time because that’s the way things work - you get faster, more efficient, and more profitable.
So my first thing is to just do my best not to over-prepare. I’m actually often better off the cuff than if I’ve over-prepared. I realized some things that helped me cut down on my preparation time, and a few of the things that helped me realize that were:
A coach saying I challenge you to only prepare for 15 minutes for your next session - she realized that I was over-preparing and knew that I knew more than I thought.
That most of the things I was preparing for when I was spending hours…we couldn’t even get to half those items, so they weren’t getting delivered. Sometimes the over-preparation we do as coaches can result in information overload for our clients.
The second thing is to start the day before. The day before our session, I set aside one hour to look over the money stuff for my clients and do any research that I need to do for the session. This is hard to speak on just because I spend different amounts of time depending on if it’s the first call or a later call with the client. I may spend closer to 2 hours preparing for the first calls since I’m getting them onboarded.
During this time I’ll look over their homework, any previous questions they had, and any correspondence we had between the calls. I’m getting caught up on what we talked about in the last call (since I don’t talk to them every single week) and reviewing to make sure there’s no stone left unturned on what we needed to get done from last time.
The next thing is that I block out 10-15 minutes before the session to prepare myself. I always make sure that there’s a 30 minute buffer between my sessions, so that if one goes a little bit long I still have my 10-15 minutes to prepare for the next client. During this time, I’m not looking back at past correspondence or anything like that, but I’m updating myself on their accountability and what they’ve accomplished (which they submit to me) and any questions they have for moving forward.
The other thing I do during this time is take a look at my framework because it guides me in my coaching and I’ll look at what the plan of action is based on where my client is in that framework. This makes sure that I know where we’re at and what we’re talking about but also where they’re going next.
This is optional, but I also like to create a calm, quiet, organized space so I can show up at my best for the client. This could be a pre-session ritual that you have, but it’s to make sure that you’re leaving your own things at the door and really showing up at your best for your client. Something that I do is a breathing, grounding exercise with my clients within the first 2-3 minutes of the call. It helps my clients feel like they’re in a safe space and that they’re focused and present.
The last thing I want to share is that you can’t plan what’s going to come in a session. You can’t plan what questions are going to be asked. You can’t plan what your clients might have done that they didn’t mention to you before. You can’t plan when there are fires to put out or a game plan to change, and sometimes you do have to be willing to change gears and change what’s going to be covered in that session if it’s in the best interest of your client.
You don’t need a ton of action steps or plan a whole lesson plan in order to give true value to your clients. Your client is going to come with questions and updates that they need you to listen to and help ease the tension while not overwhelming them with information. You most likely have already done these things for yourself, so now you need to being that guidance and help them navigate it.
I know it’s easier said than done to not over-prepare but challenge yourself to try these things and give yourself a time limit to prepare to see if it helps. It does get better with time and you’re going to feel more and more prepared with each session, but remember to keep checking in with yourself to make sure that you’re not over-preparing.
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