“If you’re not making the money you want, it’s your money blocks.”
“If you’re overwhelmed with your content, you haven’t niched down.”
“If you want to lose ten pounds by summer, you need to clear your subconscious blocks to being in shape.”

Name the pain, locate the cause, sell the solution.

And in sales, that works. It’s clean, it’s confident, and in plenty of industries it’s even true — the problem really sometimes is the same for everyone who’s got the symptom.

But this is not how human transformation works.

A client is a whole, complicated, contradictory human being. And the idea that one symptom comes from the same root cause in every single person is just... not true. It’s not even close.

Two clients can come to you with the exact same problem and need completely different work.

Let’s just say they both keep putting off the one thing that would actually grow their business. One of them is a perfectionist — if it’s not flawless, it’s not going out. The other one? Perfectionism has nada to do with it. Putting that work out into the world would finally make her visible in a way that feels deeply unsafe, so she finds a million other things to do instead.

On the surface it looks like the same behaviour. Completely different function underneath, though. Which means what works for one will absolutely not work for the other.

And this is true for everything. “I can’t sell.” “I can’t stay consistent.” “I freeze every time I go to post.” The surface problem can look identical across your entire client list... but the reason sitting underneath is different pretty much every single time.

For a long time, something about mainstream marketing — and “sales psychology” especially — really bugged me, and I couldn’t put my finger on why.

Then it clicked. So much of it is taught with almost no respect for the client, or what comes after the ‘yes.’ The sale is treated as something to get. And the person on the other end is someone to nudge, pressure, manipulate towards a solution they may not even need, or at worst, towards a solution that is not actually a solution.

Now, am I against understanding buying behaviour to help people make decisions that will serve them? Not even slightly — as long as it’s a decision truly in their favour. Selling from this place means the right clients are in the right places.

But... when a coach uses sales psychology to win the client, with no real idea how to safely transform that same client once the sale is made... is that ethical?

Getting someone to say yes takes one lens of understanding psychology. Actually coaching them to change their life takes another — and the second one is so much harder, and so much more important.

It’s the part I’m a little obsessed with. You don’t get two psychology degrees and a decade and a half of client work without that level of obsession.

So… In the interest of spreading a little more science to the coaching community, these are five lessons for coaches who are keen for a little ‘nerd out’ on psychology.

I spent my day going to Pilates. A delicious 2 hour facial. Went to the market for some fruit and veges so I can meal prep and not eat girl dinner while my husband is away. Chatted with clients and people in my DMs. Watched some Grey’s Anatomy.

Four days out from a launch, that’s what my ‘work’ day looks like. I’m not strapped to my laptop writing crazy amounts of posts, following up with lots of people, sending tonnes of emails or even prepping the launch content for next week. But this time last year, that was exactly how I was running my business.

Doing ‘next to nothing’ in the week before launch would very much be a ‘no-no’ in most business coaches’ books. That’s the entire point of sharing this — because I think we need more examples of humans running businesses that don’t just produce time freedom as a byproduct, but are built from simplicity and freedom to begin with.

When I sat down with my coffee this morning, I realised I couldn’t just share a ‘day in the life’ with no context, because it misses the exact point I’m out here on this hill trying to make.

From the outside it could just look like I’m using my lifestyle to sell the lifestyle. Or maybe that I got lucky, or I was self-sabotaging, or just throwing caution to the wind. I understand why it reads that way. The part that makes a day like this possible isn’t immediately obvious on camera, or in the brief 7 seconds we’re asked to cram our depth into on Instagram. It’s easy to write these examples off.

And because I am constantly asked, ‘but didn’t you have to work hard to get to this place?’ — let me tell you the exact story of why I’m about to be louder than ever about how business can actually be the most financially successful when you prioritise fun and simplicity. And about how making it complicated actually gets you further away from the life you want.

It’s also time for me to tell you what’s really been happening inside my mind and business over the last couple of years. Because I’ve lived, first hand, what happens when you add too much logic and over-complication to a business that was already thriving.

I’ve spoken for years about how simple business should be. I’ve talked about building it while placing your life first. I’ve promoted business coaching that helps you make fulfillment led decisions. In my most profitable years, my business strategy has been basically non-existent. I’ve never had a business plan, KPIs, and I can’t stick to a project management software if I try. I love being intuitive and creative with my offers. Random courses or masterclasses just because I wanted to speak on something, but that might only be sold once. Weird coaching offers that I created to celebrate anniversaries. Making multiple six figures worth of sales in a couple of weeks just through my instagram stories.

I did this for years, and it worked beautifully for years.

Until… the judgment came.

The judgment from strangers in my audience who either accidentally or deliberately misunderstood me when I said ‘working hard doesn’t automatically equal success.’

The projection from (in hindsight) bad fit clients who wanted the ease I had while refusing to do any of the intentional work to create it, and wanted to make me the enemy when I called them into the real work.

The call outs we collectively witnessed directed at coaches and mentors who also sold freedom, but actually never delivered the tools to create it.

And the self questioning that came from all of this… Was I wrong for thinking business could be done without all the fanfare and complication? Was I incorrect when I said that we could be successful with a small audience, with low lift marketing and sales, and working a handful of hours every other day? Was I also part of the problem?

I was tired of it. I was just tired of being projected onto. So in order to keep myself safe, I looked for ways to make me feel more ‘legitimate’ as a business owner.

Subconsciously. I shamed myself into giving up my laissez-faire-follow my intuition-believe that miracles are possible-sell from my delight for my life-philosophy to business.

I pulled way back from sharing publicly what I really believed about business. I bought a million content marketing programs, convinced I was doing something wrong, or that I had to master some system myself so I could teach it. I added complication everywhere — forcing myself into content plans, more complex launches, even throwing money at ads to grow.

Now, to be clear — these are not incorrect strategies. They are absolutely correct for some businesses, and some entrepreneurs truly thrive operating this way.

But my business didn’t feel like mine anymore.

Which… as a side bar, is strange, because I was still coaching clients to do business their way. I look at the clients I coached during this time and I see some brilliant humans doing some very cool stuff, carving out their own way of doing business. I’m glad my clients didn’t suffer, but I feel sad for myself.

It was like I just stopped believing it was safe for me. Because it hadn’t been safe for me. I’d added more ‘stuff’ to make myself feel like it was okay to be successful — because hey, if I’d worked hard for it, then it was allowed, right?

And last year, around this time, was exactly when I got the wake-up call I needed.

In August/September 2025, I launched The Midas Coach, with an incredibly heavy, seriously complex launch. 10 weeks of warm up. Two free events. New sales page, branding and messaging. Hundreds of sign ups to free events. Probably hundreds of hours poured into that launch. Optimised to all fuckery.

But the launch absolutely tanked. In 8 years of my business I have not seen a launch tank that bad.

Looking back, I know exactly why it did. Because I absolutely hated it. I was trying to optimize and sell in ways I really couldn’t care for. I wasn’t trusting the message I really wanted to share. I’d listened to other people and fucked up the positioning. And I’m sure my audience felt it. It wasn’t a reflection on the product itself. It was a reflection of me, and what needed to change.

That catalyzed a complete deconstruction of my business. I took apart every inch of my business — every offer, the ideal client, the positioning, the messaging, my marketing channels, how I was showing up on all of them. I quit Instagram for 6 months because I was just SO over feeling creatively stifled.

As I stepped way back, and cut out most of my business, I saw how much of the ‘this is how you’re supposed to do business’ had crept in.

I saw where I had created offers that made sense but didn’t feel alive for me. I noticed where offers were still amazing but the messaging felt like it wasn’t mine. I could see where my Instagram, which was once self expression and celebration and wisdom all rolled into one, had become some stale attempt to ‘get’ people to pay attention. I overthought my content so much that half the time I didn’t even bother posting it. And I was barely selling anymore, because every time I tried to, it felt like someone else’s overly salesy voice.

Which I hadn’t realised until I fully stepped back and witnessed what I was trying to create.

In December 2025, I deconstructed my entire business, and in the 8 months since, I’ve put my business back together again. Some has stayed, some has gone. But I’ve learned the most important lesson.

My original approach was never the problem. I was right all along. The problem was that I’d absorbed projection after projection and let it fizzle my spark for business.

“Surely if you make that much money you can’t also care about your clients”

“If you’re going to be a business coach you need to teach instagram marketing and review all of my content/sales pages/copy etc etc etc”

“You don’t have a business if you can’t remove yourself and still make money”

“Selling your lifestyle is so shady”.

I understand why I hid myself.

We usually talk about conditioning as ancient history — something we learned in childhood that still informs how we operate today. But conditioning is just learning, and we are constantly learning in every interaction we have with the world. When we’re facing big, heavy, generations-deep societal conditioning — like unwrapping the effort-money relationship — we have to be super strong in our belief, because there are going to be plenty of people who arrive with pitchforks, simply because you represent a possibility that their belief is wrong.

In hindsight… I think I needed this exact challenge to learn how much it matters to stand firm in what I believe. I’ve now experienced, twice, what it’s like to shake off the conditioning that ‘hard work equals success.’ And I’ve seen, twice, the inexplicable success that happens when I do.

So after spending the last two years trying to fit myself into a mould that was not made for me, I know this much for sure:

Business, when I’m over-engineering it, or over-thinking it, or spending way too much time IN it, doesn’t work well for me at all. Business, when I do it the most simple, fulfilling way, works very well for me.

This year has proved this to be true, in probably the most odd, heartbreaking way.

Three months into reconstructing my business, I woke up one morning to my husband shaking me and saying “there’s something wrong with Georgie.” Our ten year old Labrador, the love of my life, my first baby, had taken herself outside in the dark, laid in the grass and wasn’t moving. I can’t bring myself to tell the full story again, but the short version is that we rushed her for emergency surgery because she was bleeding internally. She was hours away from dying, if that. A biopsy of her spleen led to a diagnosis of the most aggressive canine cancer, and she was given 1-3 months to live. 4-6 if we could go ahead with chemo.

I was already about to open enrollment for The Midas Coach again. I half heartedly opened enrollment, completely distracted by grief and appointments with Georgie’s oncologist (not a sentence on my bingo card for this year).

I didn’t have the capacity to pour into a launch. So I did the lightest lift I could. A few bits of content. A few emails. And it was a multiple five-figure launch.

If effort and strategy and action were responsible for success, this result really doesn’t make sense. But what if they’re only one way to create a result?

In the months since, life has been both shaded and illuminated as we face Georgie’s prognosis. If I only have months left with my beautiful girl, how do I make them count? Days spent down at the lake. Walking her every time she asks. Taking the dogs to Dad’s on Friday and having pastries in the winter sunshine. Visiting her favourite spots — the breweries where she gets treats and pats, off leash walks through the pine trees where she still wants to chase pine cones. I’ll soak all of it up, because these are all bonus weeks that were almost taken from us that cold March morning.

Little by little, I reclaimed my presence in my life. I put my life first again. I focused on the clients I adore. I saw where I was wasting time trying to fit in and instead started asking myself ‘what if they’re wrong?’ I started creating content again the way I desire to. I started playing with bigger goals again without trying to figure out how. Just delighting in how it would feel to give myself permission to go for it, without attaching to it. I remembered what was most important to me — a life well lived.

And it all started clicking again.

Then I realised I really was onto something. What if all this optimization and reverse engineering and being so IN the launch that it was messing with it? What if I went back to my ‘old ways’ of business where I just lean back, set an intention BUT totally detach from the outcome, focus on relationships not numbers, create the content I actually want to create and go out and live my life and spend far less time thinking about what to say? What if I actually finally gave myself permission to LET it be simple and easy and fun?

Worth a shot, right?

So that’s what I’ve done.

Don’t misunderstand me — I haven’t done nothing (this piece has taken a few hours to write), but I for sure haven’t strapped myself to my laptop for every moment of every day, running challenges and building email sequences or filming ads. I haven’t reverse engineered the number of ‘leads’ I would need. And even halfway through, I created a brand new coaching offer that has actually added momentum to the launch. It’s all been intuitive and creativity led.

This is the question I’ve been pondering. If I wasn’t fluking it before, and I’m not fluking it now, what can I attribute my success to? If business isn’t actually all that complicated, what is actually required?

My philosophy has always been simple:

Be really good at my craft, build great relationships with people, know how to sell offers that people actually want and give them chances to buy from me often, and deliver an excellent service. At the core of all of it — have fun, and show up from that place. So here’s what that actually looks like, and why I think my business has worked, so you can experiment with it too:

1. My coaching craft. I’m really good at what I do, and I have been from the start — I had solid training in therapy and applied psychology before I ever called myself a coach. My clients have great experiences and create real shifts, which feeds my confidence and my reputation, which is why my business has always been largely referral based. In an industry that is filled with coaches bragging about their lack of training, positioning yourself as the one who actually knows what they’re doing is what will make you stand out as THE choice for your people.

2. Creating offers people actually want, and positioning them well. If there’s one piece of actual strategy that makes the biggest difference, it’s this one. So much of the struggle I see in business comes down to something simple — people are trying to sell something the market doesn’t really want, or something needed that’s been positioned so badly that the ideal clients don’t even know what it is. So I spend real care here: making sure what I’m offering is commercially valuable, and that it’s framed so the right person immediately understands what it will do for them. Get this part right and selling gets dramatically easier.

3. A focus on relationships (both reciprocal, and parasocial). I don’t see people as money, I see them as people. My content — especially my instagram stories, where I’ve always sold the best — is mostly storytelling, permission giving, and honesty about where I’m at. That builds trust really fast. And when someone is brave enough to start engaging with me, I never rush to sell to them. I always always always wait for the invitation. Yes, I’m a projector. But also, I believe people should be treated with the agency they deserve.

4. Sharing my own and my clients’ results as the best examples of my work. I don’t mean Stripe screenshots. I mean the nitty gritty emotional shifts, the changes to the tiny moments of our lives. I sell coaching, and that’s what exceptional coaching is all about. My job is just to be the best student of my own work, and to let my people see that it’s how they could be experiencing life too.

5. Learning how to help people make buying decisions without manipulating them into something they don’t really need. What I mean when I say “I’m really good at selling” comes from my understanding of psychology. Not the highly repeated sales psychology. I mean understanding HUMANS — understanding a person well enough to help them make a decision that’s right for them, especially when the right decision is no. I don’t want your money if what I’m offering isn’t what you need. I don’t want your time if this isn’t the right room for you. Most of the sales advice floating around gives no thought to what happens after someone says yes — whether it was a good call for them, whether you can actually deliver what you sold them. That’s the part I care about most.

6. I do think success gets easier as your reputation and your reps compound. Every time I’ve hit a crazy result, it’s been through a string of events I hadn’t planned for. A previous client making a bunch of referrals. Someone shouting me out on social media. An old client wanting to come back and do more work with me. Who knows. I couldn’t have controlled any of it — but it isn’t luck either. It’s the momentum and reputation I’ve built over years, still paying off now even when I can’t plan for it. You can’t recreate this with a ‘quantum leap.’ This is about putting in the years of work to actually become an expert — and not the ‘self professed expert’ status either.

7. Because I know how my brain works, I know that I actually have to actively override some of its normal processes. I actively create the expectations that I want my brain to perceive in the world. I actively look for evidence that I’m succeeding. I put myself in relationship to people who have the type of success I want, created in a similar way, because I don’t want to be accidentally reconditioned back into hard work.

That’s how business just works for me.

And while I prepare to open enrollment to The Midas Coach again — I don’t know how it will turn out, but the signs right now are good. The waitlist is the biggest it’s ever been, which tells me I’m not the only coach who really cares about doing great work. New people are joining it and I don’t know who they are or how they found me. My DMs are the busiest they’ve been in a long time, and I’ve written content I actually enjoyed writing, which is going into a body of work I’m proud of. New enquiries are flowing through for my private coaching and mastermind.

Regardless of the sales numbers that come through next week, I have run this ‘launch’ in alignment with my values. I’ve let life in. I’ve prioritised my wellbeing because I needed it after an emotional year. I’ve focused on quality of relationships, not number of ‘leads.’

That is really what will matter to me, when I look back at the end of the year.

Because I’ve finally found my way back to the business approach that works for me. And I don’t think what I’m describing is only about me.

Effort and hard work are no longer the ingredients that guarantee financial success. We’re in a new plane of existence now.

The single, handed-down definition of success we all grew up with is coming apart. What’s taking its place has room for agency, for individuality, for values, for the particular shape of one person’s life. We’re defining success not just as the outcome, but as the process, too.

More of us are questioning growth for the sake of growth. More of us are asking a question that barely got any airtime when we started our careers:

what’s our personal definition of success?

What I know, after all of it, is this:

I know what I’m doing. I know who I am, and what I’m here to stand for. I know what matters and what doesn’t. And I know what I want to be an example of — simple, fun, fulfilling, wildly profitable business. That you can make life changing money doing work that truly changes lives, without it costing you your own.

If this is the wrong way to do business, I’m happy to be wrong.

But what if, maybe, I’m right?

Thank you for being here, and reading all the way to the end! I’d love to know your thoughts in the comments, or if there’s a piece that really resonated, I’d so appreciate the re-stack. Share this with someone who is also done with out dated definition or strategies for ‘success.’ Let’s change this conversation and be more evidence of another way.

This is the fifth in a series called “Lessons from Psychology that Made Me a Better Coach.” I’m also the creator of The Midas Coach — a professional development programme and industry shake-up for coaches who want to be fluent in psychology, and exceptional coaches as a result. TMC opens twice a year; the next invitations go to the waitlist from August 24–28th. Details, client love and the waitlist are all here.

Have you ever coached a client who was “technically” doing the thing — executing the launch, in their gym programme, turning up to the sessions — but you could feel that some part of them just wasn’t fully invested?

Have you watched a client build out a launch and, at the same time, believe it wasn’t going to “work” the way they wanted? It starts showing up in their copy — they’re speaking to the people who can’t afford it, they’re getting frustrated at the tyre kickers, and they’ve given up hope right before it all starts paying off. And then when it doesn’t work, just like they expected, they use it as evidence: they’re not capable, it doesn’t work for them, they’re the exception to the rule, maybe they should just give up.

Have you ever had a client who starts the gym programme but is already talking about the week it’s going to fall apart? Who says they want the body, the grounded relationship with food, but who has already decided that they’re just “not the type of person who can stick to it”?

The longer these clients keep creating new evidence that “it’s not working,” the more disengaged they become from the process. And before you know it, it’s the end of their contract and they walk away — frustrated at best, or blaming you at worst.

I’ve seen this. I’ve seen clients who hired new team members and, on the same day, told me how they already “knew” the new hire wouldn’t be good enough. I’ve seen clients who give up mid-launch and go through the motions because they’ve already assumed it wasn’t working. I’ve watched myself let myself off the hook with running training, because I didn’t see myself as someone who would ever “be successful as a runner.”

This pattern is universal, because it’s human nature. Creating something extraordinary — whether it’s a new body, a bigger business, a harmonious family — asks us to overcome it.

The pattern I’m talking about is how we allow our old expectations to determine our future results. Because, as research tells us, the expectation we hold about how something will turn out has a strong tendency to come true. Not because we’re reading the future, or because our thoughts directly influence reality. Instead, we’re causing the future through our often unconscious expectation of how it will turn out. And as coaches, we don’t just have to be aware of shifting our client’s expectations — we have to be aware of how our own unconscious expectations of the client are influencing how we coach them, and the standards we invite them into.

I’m writing this piece as a “how to” for all coaches — first exploring the research on how unconscious expectation influences client results, and second, how we identify and shift those expectations of our clients, but also of ourselves as part of the client’s environment.

When we can do this, we’re able to coach clients who are aiming for results we have never ourselves reached for. I know this is a contentious issue, so I don’t say it lightly. This is not about selling outcomes you have no idea how to create, or promising clients deliverables you don’t know how to deliver. It is about examining and excavating where your expectations, based on your experience, are limiting both yourself and your client.

Shifting these expectations is a powerful agent in helping your clients defy odds, overcome limited perceptions of their potential, and achieve outcomes that simply do not make sense.

Kinda the entire point of coaching, right?

How do our expectations influence our reality?

I believe this is one of the most powerful tools we have at our disposal. When our clients make their unconscious expectations conscious, and we take responsibility for ours too, now we have a formidable relationship. Both parties hold the shared expectation for what success looks like, and both parties fully expect that it is possible.

If you’re reading to this point and thinking “is this another one of those ‘believe it to receive it’ mystical manifestation strategies?”

It absolutely is not.

As partial as I am to what most would call “manifestation” — those who know me know that I approach this from an entirely scientific perspective. But not the “quantum physics” approach you might find the manifestation girlies trying to explain.

From an entirely psychological standpoint, our conscious and unconscious expectations are shaping the way we engage with the world. And as coaches, our expectations of our clients’ results are also shaping their results.

I’ll be precise, because this part gets misread. I’m not saying success is simply up to those who “decide” — though decision is an important piece of the equation. I’m also not saying that “belief” is required before we take action, or create an outcome.

I am saying that there are mountains of psychological research demonstrating the role of expectation on outcome. If you’re a coach — or even if you’re simply a personal development aficionado who loves to optimise and exercise mindset tools to your advantage — you’re going to love this piece.

I’m about to share with you:

• what expectation actually is, and how it gets built

• the four ways your expectations shape real results

• the research on how a coach’s expectations move a client’s outcomes, and the four ways this happens

• how to catch the moment your own expectations — of your client, and of yourself — are capping what’s possible

• how to shift them without tipping into empty positive thinking or “manifestation”

• the standard I hold to keep my clients’ ceilings open

This is the fifth of eight essays in the series — four are already published, and three more follow this one. It’s part of our lead into enrolment for The Midas Coach. Invitations go out only to the waitlist, from August 24–28th. We have both self-led and live mentorship options for this enrolment period. Details are here.

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As many of you know, because you’ve been here since I started this Substack back in January (thank you SO much for being here), I have been deconstructing and rebuilding my business this year.

In December, I stripped everything back, cut out lots of my offers, and this year, it has been about deciding what gets to stay, what gets elevated, what needs tweaking in terms of marketing/sales strategy around that offer, and what actually gets cut.

While I’d love to tell you this process is done, it’s very much not — which I’m not mad about. This year has kinda been like ‘dating’ my work again. Seeing what still lights me up and what I want to keep flirting with. It’s been an experimentation — and every experiment in business is very public. As a recovering perfectionist I’ve had to make friends with the process of trial and erroring. This year, maybe more than ever.

So, this is what I’ll share with you in the July Report!

• My Substack strategy and how it’s been going (and whether it’s been worth it!)

• My Instagram strategy and the shift that finally made me excited to return (with some pretty amazing results so far…)

• The strategy & details of The Midas Coach Launch (including lessons about messaging, marketing and selling a product that has made over $500k in 4 years).

• Where my focus will be for the rest of the year, the imposter syndrome this is bringing up, and how I’m moving through it.

As usual, my paid subs will get to see the full sha-bang. So if you want full access, make sure you upgrade your subscription. As a paid subscriber you’ll also get the last 7 months of these Monthly Business Reports, plus the Private Podcast, and the latest series “Lessons from Psychology that make me a better coach.”

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Have you ever had a client who found every excuse to not do the ONE thing that would actually move them towards the goal they said they wanted? Have you ever had a client who committed to a plan in session, then somehow turned up next week without having done it? And what about you personally — have you ever found it hard to make a change, even though you knew it would help you create an outcome you desired?

And then, have you ever felt bad about it? Like there was something you were doing wrong, a piece you were missing? Like maybe you or your client just needed to be more disciplined, to want it more, to bring more accountability or tough love?

If you’ve ever felt confused about why a client didn’t immediately rush into action just because you talked about it — who struggled to be ‘disciplined,’ who said they desired one thing but whose behaviour demonstrated another — it’s time you put down that expectation, of them and of yourself. It isn’t fair, and it isn’t helping either of you.

If you coach, mentor or lead other humans, helping them compassionately change their behaviour is one of the most important skills you have. Coaching is not just a title — it’s a skillset we can lean on to produce behavioural change. It’s not just coaches who use these skills. Leaders, mentors, course creators, parents, teachers — can all use these relational skills to help their clients, students and kids. And to do that well, there are multiple factors we can bring into our coaching to make it easier and more compassionate to help a client change patterns that have often been with them for most of their lives.

Developing this skill is the difference between clients who circle the same question for months and clients who take messy action. A coach who understands the complex forces acting on their client’s behaviour is the coach who can empower that client to change. This is the coach who sets herself apart from a potential client with a ChatGPT subscription. This is the coach who constantly hears ‘no one has ever been able to get to the root of this like you did.’ This is the coach who can tread the line between coaching and therapy — often changing decades-old patterns without needing to dredge up old painful memories.

This is the coach who is worth their weight in gold.

This piece is the fourth in the series “Lessons from Psychology that make me a better coach”, and this one is written to hand you some new perspectives and tools for helping your clients break old behavioural patterns and build new ones.

We’re going to explore:

• why we say we want something, then struggle to create it

• why verbal commitment is not enough to create behavioural change

• the unseen forces acting on your client’s behaviour — how to identify what they are, and work with these forces instead of against them

• what we can learn from Ted Lasso about human nature and behaviour change (I’ve been asked to share these thoughts for years now)

• the soft skill that is the precursor to your client actually enjoying the change process, instead of leaning on discipline and willpower

• the two factors that need to be in play for a client to take action

• how to use The IMPACT Method and behavioural science in coaching sessions to guide change through simple questions

This is a series I’m writing in the lead up to our next enrolment period of The Midas Coach (one of the only entirely psychology backed coach training programs in the world). In August, we will be opening enrolment to our waitlist, so if you desire to feel confident in using tools, philosophies and approaches from psychology in your practice as a coach, so that you can guide the most complex clients and charge high ticket, add your name to the waitlist. And if that’s not you, this series alone will be an incredible resource.

Here’s what’s inside a Fortune, Fulfilled paid subscription:

• The weekly Ask Carly private podcast — your real questions on coaching, business, psychology, fulfillment and wealth answered in depth

• A monthly business report — what I’m seeing, testing and thinking about behind the scenes of a business that makes $500k, run in 15 hours a week

• Regular Business Upgrades intensives — practical article series to strengthen one part of your business at a time (this is one of them!)

• The full essay and podcast archive, plus the link to submit your own questions

To join us, you can claim a free 7-day trial — or, until the end of July, we’re offering 50% off the yearly subscription, making it just $7.50/month.

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Why we say we want something, then struggle to create it

One of our finest qualities as humans is to dream about what we desire, and then struggle to create it.

If you’re a coach, your job is to help your clients decide what matters to them, and then close that gap — simplistically speaking. And when it comes to closing that gap, we first have to identify why the gap exists. Why is this client at point A when they want to be at point B? What is missing and required to help them get there? What do they already possess within them that could be useful in creating that outcome?

I think of this as building a ‘case conceptualisation’ for the client — a personalised blueprint that helps each client move forward with as little friction and as much fulfilment as possible. Like I shared in the first part of this series, exceptional coaching is not just about getting to point B; it’s about transforming the client so that point B is impossible to avoid, and sustainable to hold.

If we assume that our outcomes in life are created by a complex interplay between factors we have little control over — other people’s behaviours and biases, environment, systemic injustice, our history — and personal factors we have more control over — how we think, behave, perceive ourselves and the world, feel, create emotional states, and identify — then our job as coaches is to help transform the latter. To help our clients focus on what they can take personal responsibility for, while also understanding the external forces that influence their experience.

When I mentor and teach coaches in psychology-based coaching, we work with five areas of change: Perception, Cognition, Behaviour, Emotion and Identity.

Despite what Dilts and NLP instructors would have you think, one is not more important than the other; these are not hierarchical ‘levels’ of change. All can influence one another, but change to one area does not necessarily create change in another. A shift in a belief system does not automatically equate to a behaviour change; a shift in self-concept does not necessarily result in a shift in beliefs or behaviours. Instead, each of these is a ‘tool’ in our toolkit — helping the client identify what change is needed, and then selecting appropriate, evidence-based tools to create it.

Behaviour is the only one of these areas we can actually measure and observe. We cannot directly observe thought, emotion, identity or perception; we can only observe client self-report. Because of this, it’s very difficult to reliably measure their impact on changes in the client’s world. But can we influence behaviour, then measure the impact of that behaviour on their results? Absolutely.

Behaviour is where the rubber hits the road. It’s where skills are actually learned, through practise. It’s where new beliefs find evidence in the real world. It’s where clients integrate the changes to their self-concept that they speak about in session. Behaviour change is incredibly important. And more to the point — coaching in a way that equips clients to self-monitor and self-lead their own behaviour change is what creates an independent client who benefits from your work for years to come.

How we coach a client to change their behaviour matters. What we model — the language, the questions, the tools we hand them — this all matters.

This is where momentum compounds. The client needs you less for the day-to-day struggles that used to trip them up, and they move on to solving higher-quality problems, with your help. Now you’ve become a coach equipped to work with highly competent, capable clients. If you want to be the coach who can charge and deliver on high-ticket packages, this is where you want to be operating.

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Why knowing what to do is not enough for behaviour change

Verbal commitment to change is very different from producing actual behavioural change. But just because this is human nature doesn’t mean we simply accept it. Exceptional coaching and leadership is about understanding the nature of human behaviour, so that we can work with it rather than against it.

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Despite this, I’d had a niggling feeling that I just couldn’t shake. If I’m honest, the question had formed in my mind at the start, when we were taught models like GROW and DARE to guide our sessions, but without any idea of what we were actually transforming in that session. Many of my first coaching sessions were just surface-level conversations about what the client could do differently. At this point in my training, I was still working my full-time role as a behaviour consultant and therapist — developing in-depth behaviour plans that incorporated environmental changes, consequence manipulation, skill development and client motivation as the precursors to behaviour change. Weird then, that at night, I would coach a client and expect them to change simply through a few questions. Maybe I was wrong, maybe our coach trainers knew something I didn’t. I wasn’t an expert, after all — they were. So I trusted. I let myself get swept up in the ‘magic’ of these coaching processes which really seemed to ‘work.’

But that week, in that training room, was the moment that I stopped gaslighting myself. The exact moment was the moment they taught ‘busting beliefs’ — a process that supposedly eliminates a belief by changing the way the client represents it visually in the mind. Questions started flying through my mind:

What is the neuroscientific basis for this? Does the belief really disappear? How are they measuring that? Is it purely self-report? What is the long-term effect of this strategy? If this is so effective, why have I not come across this in my psychology training? Do they know that current psychology research shows us that we actually don’t need to change beliefs to change behaviour?

I sought out the trainer in the break, curiously asking these questions.

“Oh, this is based on psychology. It was developed from observing some of the best therapists in the world.”

Still unsure of myself, but also not satisfied with that answer, I followed up:

“Okay… but observation from decades ago isn’t the same as current peer-reviewed research. Where can I read about that?”

Blank face. “You’ll need to go look at our online resources, we don’t go into that here.”

Got it. So that’s exactly what I did. And the answer I found online was the reason I stopped blindly trusting everything I was taught for the rest of the week.

What I found? The processes we’d been taught either had no evidence at all, or ‘evidence’ based upon single case studies. Worse, current research from areas of neuroscience, third-wave behavioural therapies, cognitive behavioural psychology — all contradicted these approaches. The gold standard of research means using experimental procedures like randomised controlled trials (participants are randomly assigned to receive treatment or placebo), component analyses (testing each component alone to determine if it is needed and useful), and meta-analyses to observe efficacy across large numbers of research studies.

All of this led me to ask — what is the actual benefit of utilising these models? If we don’t know how, or why these strategies work, can we effectively determine when to use them, or how to adapt when the client in front of us needs an altered approach? Can I really justify charging thousands for processes that are no more effective than the coach-client alliance itself?

Personally, no. I couldn’t bring myself to utilise strategies in my coaching that were non-evidence-based and potentially counterproductive, especially when I was already trained in strategies that worked.

The current state of coach development

If your training was anything like mine, you were handed the what and the how — but never the why.

Many coaches learn to coach through basic models. Others come to it through mentoring — they created their own results and now guide others to do the same. Some wake up one day and decide their life experience is enough. We start in unconscious incompetence — we don’t know what we don’t know — moving into conscious incompetence as soon as we start practising.

As we build our hours and practice, we become experienced in that approach. If the quality of our training or previous experience allows, we will move into conscious competence. This process, combined with good intentions, can create a good enough coach. There are plenty of good enough coaches doing good work, serving clients well.

But when the foundations of knowledge and practice are non-evidence-based (or worse, pseudoscience, like I was taught), what feels like conscious competence can in fact be bias. This is where things get dangerous — with coaches feeling prepared for situations that they are not prepared for.

You stumble across a client pattern you haven’t seen before. Or you’ve seen the pattern, but the normal tools don’t work. The client who presents differently, who has more complexity, who has progressed further down the self-development track than anyone you’ve ever coached before — they need a different approach.

In these situations, it’s normal to initially want to trial and error. The client has paid, is engaged in the process, and possibly there’s pressure to make it seem like you know what you’re doing. Maybe you follow what makes sense based on previous clients. Maybe you follow your intuition — that gut feeling. But despite this, the client is still not shifting in the way you both desire — because there’s a deeper layer they need to go to. And eventually the client, or you, or both, get frustrated, because coaching just isn’t hitting the way it normally does.

In mentoring other coaches and therapists, I’ve noticed that practitioners will respond to this in one of two ways — they either blame themselves, or they blame the client. Chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re probably not the type to be blaming the client. So all that’s left is to question yourself. “Did I do enough? What should I have done differently? Was I wrong?” Because you don’t realise those questions have answers that are outside the training you were given, over time, those clients weigh on you. They stick in your mind — the one that got away. The one you couldn’t figure out. The one who wrote about you on that Reddit thread.

The tendency with many great coaches is to take too much responsibility for the ones that didn’t get results, and not enough for when clients exceeded expectations. At the core of this is the underlying niggle: ‘I don’t really know why my work works.’

And of course you question yourself. When a pseudoscientific tool is handed to you without the understanding of why/how it works, and the tool inevitably fails, you have nothing underneath it to check. But you shouldn’t be questioning yourself. You should be questioning your training, and the efficacy of the models that are bandied about as ‘the standard.’

When you take pride in what you do, and truly care about your clients creating results, that question mark bleeds into your marketing and sales. A tiny moment of doubt before you pitch your offer (can they really trust me to deliver on this?). Or the next time you go to raise your prices, that voice in your head pipes up “Are you sure you can really justify that?” Or you put your most successful clients down to flukes, and hide their testimonials in case future clients wonder why they weren’t as successful. Over time, that question mark erodes your confidence, your sales and your business.

Two truths coexist: a larger sample size of clients will always have a distribution of results — even true for the best practitioners in the world — they cannot expect a 100% success rate. And, the second truth: You can improve your client averages when you close the skill and knowledge gap that most coach trainings (unethically) leave in their wake.

The gaps in knowledge you’re experiencing — they’re not your fault. But if you want to eliminate that question mark, and have full trust in your ability to coach even the most complex, high-ticket clients, your best opportunity is to close that gap.

The moment I stepped away from coach training

The moment in that training room, when my question was dismissed, was a turning point for me. I realised I had years of training and education I could trust more deeply than what the school was offering. So I stopped using their methods, and turned back to psychology, where I’d already spent a decade of my career being educated, trained and supervised.

For several years, I found my own way, bringing tools I could trust into my work, and my clients started noticing that I coached with a different flavour than other coaches they’d had. They started asking me to teach them — I of course declined, because at that point, over a decade into my career, I didn’t know how to explain the nuances of why I coached the way I did.

And then slowly it dawned on me that this was part of the problem. I had reached ‘unconscious competence’ — the fourth stage of that learning model, where your skill has been so refined and practised that it happens automatically. This is where coaching often feels intuitive.

Both ends of this model are traps. Relying purely on personal experience and non-evidence-based coaching models keeps you in unconscious incompetence — you don’t know how much more there is to know about human transformation. And over time, enough practice delivers you into unconscious competence — where you’ve had enough wins with the tools you have that you stop asking. The trouble is, because very few coaches know what truly exceptional coaching looks like, no one realises they’re barely scratching the surface of what’s possible.

Unconscious competence has long been regarded as the final stage of the model — the goal. I disagree. This is where your brain runs on bias and heuristics — fast decision-making that often carries errors — and where its natural predictive processing becomes a problem: with the 200th client, you’re at risk of seeing what your brain has predicted, instead of the unique person in the room. And then, when you add pressure — group settings, fast pace, high stakes — you lean on that fast but often incorrect processing even more. Errors are a normal part of being human.

This is the expert blind spot. Autopilot is where errors occur in high-stakes fields: you stop self-reflecting, miss anomalies, and reach for your most automatic skills instead of assessing what the client in front of you actually needs.

To build The Midas Coach, I had to take myself out of unconscious competence and critically assess every decision, every question, every client relationship. I spent over 18 months in the research, updating my own knowledge and skills, pressure-testing everything against the gold standard of therapy and coaching. In live mentoring calls, I would demonstrate coaching, then have to explain every micro-moment to a class of already-excellent coaches. To this day, I remain in this process, trying never to rest on my laurels. Truthfully, this is what keeps me engaged and fulfilled in my work.

In my research for this article, I discovered there’s a term for what I’d been doing — a fifth stage of the model. Researchers are calling it ‘reflective competence,’ defined as ‘the ability to critically analyse your own thoughts, decisions, actions and experiences.’ Not limited purely to ‘learning from experiences,’ the process also asks you to analyse your biases and assumptions, to challenge what felt ‘intuitive.’ If you’ve engaged in professional supervision before, you’ll know that a core goal of that practice is to bring reflective practice to counter ‘unconscious competence,’ thereby further refining and honing our abilities and client results.

In most professional industries, this reflection is built in. Doctors, lawyers, psychologists, behaviour analysts, nurses, teachers — they’re all required to complete continuing education, every single year.

In coaching, fully evidence based certifications are few and far between. Reflective competence might be a recommended the practice — but effective reflection requires something solid to reflect against. You need reference points that you can trust.

So the question becomes: what do you check your coaching against, when there’s no governing body that advocates for evidence based practise, no external requirement for ongoing education, no regulation coming any time soon?

Until then, we must build the standard ourselves.

In the rest of this article, I’ll share:

• The ‘Three Wisdoms’ framework I use to develop exceptional coaches

• How to diagnose which wisdom is your strength, and which is your stretch

• How to build each one into a strength that benefits your clients, your confidence, and of course, your business

• How to move from unconscious competence to reflective competence

• The process for moving from ‘gut feel coaching’ to an intervention you can explain and adapt as needed — including a question from a subscriber who went against best practice on a gut feeling, and made her client £25k

This is the third in a series called “Lessons from Psychology that Make Me a Better Coach” — my intention is that you can treat each of these as a mini professional development course to reflect on your own practice as a coach, see your own opportunities for expansion, and play with some strategies each week to develop new skills. My intention is that at the end of these 8 weeks, you’ll walk away a more confident coach, with a toolkit of new strategies grounded in psychology that you can play with.

This is a series I’m writing in the lead up to our next enrolment period of The Midas Coach (one of the only entirely psychology backed coach training programs in the world). In August, we will be opening enrolment to our waitlist, so if you desire to feel confident in using tools, philosophies and approaches from psychology in your practice as a coach, so that you can guide the most complex clients and charge high ticket, add your name to the waitlist. And if that’s not you, this series alone will be an incredible resource.

Until the end of July, you can join on an annual subscription for $90 (this saves you $126).

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If you’re new here, one of the features that my paid subscribers receive is a private podcast series called “Ask Carly.” It’s exactly what it sounds like — my subscribers write in their questions, and I sit down at the microphone and record you a deep dive response.

This week’s question is:

“If you had a relatively new coaching business in 2026, what are the top 3 things you would do to create success short-term & long-term?”

I posted to my Instagram stories that I was about to sit down and record, and had a great response, so it looks like this is a question you’re curious about as well…

Now, a preface — I like to be able to give in depth responses that are valuable for more than just the question-asker, so I’ve tailored my answer to be relevant if you are either…

a) about to start your coaching business
b) new to your coaching business
c) in your first couple years of running your business
d) working towards $60k - $100k a year

And, if you’re nosy, I’m telling you — if I personally were starting all over again, this is what I would do differently this time, in 2026.

Ready to go?

Make sure you’re a subscriber (you can take advantage of our special July offer) here and you’ll get immediate access to the episode!

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Links I mentioned in the episode:

» Submit your questions for future episodes here

» Your Coaching Skills

1. The Midas Coach waitlist (opens for enrolment in August - make sure you’re on the list!)

2. The IMPACT Method Masterclass (the best place to start if you’re new to my coaching methods)

3. Transformational Questions Skills Lab (a 2hour masterclass diving into the science behind why, when and how to use the perfect questions in your coaching sessions).

4. The Exceptional Coach Initiation (currently $144 off for all our Substack subscribers - use the code SUBSTACK144)

» You Are The Magic

This is my self paced course built to teach you the psychology behind the mindset tools I’ve relied upon for years to build my business. I seriously would not be where I am without this toolkit. I’m obviously biased, but I would hand on my heart say that every human on this planet would benefit from this work. Don’t sleep on it. Get it here.

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I can see the image in my mind now, even more than 15 years later.

The window belonged to a room in a childcare centre. The room was just like any other kindergarten room, with books lining shelves, toys everywhere, and colours, numbers and letters on every possible surface. But this room was different. This room had 8 children ranging in age from 2 to 5, and at least 8 adults at any one time. This was a room that housed an early intervention centre, for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, and each of these children received over 5 hours a day of therapy disguised as engaging, fun learning.

This was my first job out of university. I’d just moved from my small home town in New Zealand to Melbourne, Australia, and I was out of my mind excited to begin a job and finally start exercising my psychology degree. I’d swung the job as one of five successful applicants at a group interview of over 20.

We were behaviour therapists, responsible for hiding 2.5 hour long therapy sessions in what looked like play. Each child had their own specialised curriculum, teaching language, age appropriate social-emotional, learning to learn and daily living skills. Our job was not to fix deficits — we never observed our clients through this lens. Our job was to teach the skills that would open up more opportunities for these kids, so that ultimately, they could live full lives, independent of support.

We learned very fast to see each moment as a learning opportunity, leveraging their natural motivation to encourage the target skill. For these young children, many of whom were non-verbal or slow to develop speech, or simply less motivated to engage with others, structured play and daily living experiences were the perfect grounds to develop the motivation to learn to communicate. Snack times became opportunities for requests like “open”. Games became grounds to learn requests like “my turn!” Tricky situations like a closed door meant a chance to ask for help. In behavioural psychology, these requests are called ‘mands’ (like a demand) and they’re the perfect breeding ground for learning the skill — because the motivation is naturally high.

There are countless stories I could tell, of parents who had been told by doctors and psychologists “your child will never speak, never live independently, never make friends, never never never never….” We had the immensely fulfilling pleasure of proving them so wrong. I can’t count the number of children who eventually went on to mainstream schools unaided, built friendships, learned independently. It was the most gratifying work that often brought us and the parents to tears.

With the high highs also came the low lows, and I eventually burned out and left that work — ironically, burnout became my Masters thesis — and after several years in my own business as an organisational wellbeing consultant, I’ve spent the last 6 years coaching business owners to build businesses that balance financial reward, personal fulfillment and time freedom — really, the business model and personal resilience that creates a ‘burnout proof business,’ if you will.

I am so incredibly grateful for the depth of expertise I developed in that first decade of my career, and the philosophies that still inform how I coach to this day. Since 2022, I’ve also been training coaches through The Midas Coach, which I’m proud to say is one of the only entirely psychology backed coach training programs in the world. This series is built on these lessons I’ve learned over the years that I think, make me a better coach. Specifically, this first essay is about the dominance of ‘transactional coaching’ in our industry, and how we can evolve into a ‘transformational coaching’ approach.

If you’re a coach, or aspiring coach who wants to be truly exceptional, with high integrity and the ability to facilitate complex transformations with your clients, this series is for you.

The State of The Industry: Transactional Coaching

Throughout the years, I’ve been known to remark “A coach is not a magic genie — you don’t just hire one and then expect your wishes to be fulfilled.”

But everywhere you look online, there are coaches marketing and selling to ‘get’ more stuff. Money, sales, more clients, a better waistline, the relationship of your dreams, the perfect parenting style. This has always seemed interesting to me, because when you get inside a great coaching relationship, it really is less about the external gains, and more about the internal changes we experience through the coaching process.

I’m not here to debate how marketing and sales is largely taught, or late-stage capitalism (that might be a discussion for another time), but my concern is when this mentality bleeds into our coaching, where we forget that our job is actually to transform the human so they they feel whole and complete on their pathway to experiencing the external outcome.

We don’t ignore the external desires, rather, our job is to find where motivation is naturally high for our clients, and use this as the opportunity to build the skills necessary to experience that outcome, just like I once harnessed natural motivation to teach children important life skills. We utilise their desire for achievement as motivation to develop the human so they live with less struggle, meet their own potential, and realise how capable they are. It’s about rewriting old learned limitations and stories so they can look in the mirror and appreciate the human staring back.

Put more simply, the desire is the doorway to the life changing transformation.

The transformation is the entire point. The desired outcome is the bonus.

I call this Transactional Coaching vs. Transformational Coaching. Most coaches start as Transactional Coaches — this is typically about planning, clarifying steps and accountability to create the outcome. This is often likened to mentoring.

But often, this isn’t enough to create long term change, and some coaches will naturally start desiring an evolution into Transformational Coaching.

Let’s clarify what each of these terms mean…

Transactional Coaching

Similar to the concept referred to in leadership circles, transactional coaching is really just about getting the client to the outcome. That is how success is defined. I can see several issues with this approach.

Issue #1:

When the coaching space becomes singularly focused on getting to the outcome, with little regard for the client’s own desires, values or strengths.

I’m sure you’ve felt it. Business masterminds that are all about counting your sales so the coach can share it in their stories. Weight loss coaching so that the coach can share your before and afters on their website. Pressure to be overly focused on the outcome, which often leads to the client forcing themselves through natural energy patterns, forgoing personal values systems, or failing to leverage natural strengths.

It’s very transactional both in the sense that it’s about helping you get what you want, so they can get more of what they want. This is not necessarily problematic (of course you should have what you desire), except when it asks the client to fit themselves into a tiny box to create ‘success’ — which of course, eventually feels like failure.

If creating the external has asked us to override who we truly are and outsource our power to someone else who ‘has the answers’ — have we stepped further away from some of the most foundational philosophies of coaching — that is, that the client has the answers, and that we are all whole and complete as we are?

Issue #2:

Transactional coaching fails to acknowledge that the destination is the surface level desire that the client assumes will elicit a desired emotional response.

More money is assumed to produce less money anxiety. More clients are assumed to produce a feeling of success, or being ‘wanted’ in business. A tighter, toned body is assumed to produce comfort in one’s own skin.

We don’t want what we say we want, we want how we think it will make us feel.

And simply having the external does not create the internal feeling.

If coaching our clients to create the external without also helping them find the internal experience they desire, have we done our job? Let me use an example. If as a coach, you’re hired to help a client to make more money, do we simply focus on creating that outcome? Or, do we get curious about how they think that money will allow them to feel, help them create that internally, and then from that place, create the financial win?

The second will result in a change to the texture, flavour, quality of their life.

Issue #3:

And to take it a layer deeper, if we have only taught them to create the external without also learning the skills to hold it sustainably, this becomes a problem.

The pursuit of that which we say we want is the perfect breeding ground to build the skills that mean we, as the coach, become obsolete. Yes, that’s right, our job is to work ourselves OUT of a job.

Skills like:

• Self-efficacy — the belief in themselves to take action towards their goals independently

• Self-awareness — observing their own behavioural, cognitive and emotional patterns in the moment

• Self-leadership — engaging in psychological skills to make different decisions to create new, more adaptive patterns

• Self-motivation — generating their own motivation to take action, even if it feels safer to stay still

If we skip over the development of these skills, we risk not actually developing the human at all. We risk perpetuating the idea that coaching is all about getting ‘things’ and that is the only definition of success. We risk clients being successful in our presence but flailing as soon as they stop paying us. Creating or perpetuating codependence might be good for the bank account in the short term, but long term, it will cost you your fulfillment and reputation.

Transformational Coaching:

Transformational coaching, by contrast, is about using the desire, the outcome, the tangible external as the motivation for change, acknowledging the true motivation underneath, and having a dual focus on the development of the human skills.

Success is defined as — a human being changed for the better. The byproduct, is that they either get what they thought they wanted, OR they realise they are just as complete without it, OR, they stop pursuing it for the wrong reasons (from a place of not-enoughness) and create the experience through their values instead.

For example, a client who hires a weight loss coach, comes into the relationship desiring to lose 10kgs. The underlying desire is actually to stop feeling like they let themselves down, and to start feeling like they trust themselves around food again. The transformation could include — learning emotional processing skills, learning to eat based on true desire instead of impulse, connecting to their true motivation for weight loss (to wake up feeling fit and healthy), and focusing on experiencing their values of health each time they go to the gym, instead of being overly focused on the number on the scale.

Contrast this with transactional coaching, which would usually rely on strict rules around eating, calorie counting, discipline and force to go to the gym, and defines success only by the number on the scale.

The former develops the human as a whole, building skills for life; the latter leaves them dependent upon rules, structure and force.

The ripple effect of Transformational Coaching extends far past just creating the outcome this client hired us to help them with.

A client who builds self-leadership doesn’t just hit the revenue goal. She stops checking every decision with her partner before she decides what she really wants. A parent who starts investing in her health doesn’t just go to the gym; she’s no longer modelling self-abandonment to her kids. She speaks in rooms she used to shrink in. The skills we build for the outcome don’t stay in the session — they follow her home, into her marriage, her friendships, her relationship with herself. In behaviour analysis, we call this generalisation — and it’s kinda like the gold standard of behavioural change work — has the client learned the skill and is using it across different environments, people and situations?

If we want to leave our clients truly changed for the better, with skills that outlast our direct presence in their lives, we must be actively building these skills at the same time.

Transformational coaching is how you do this.

This isn’t just about being noble or ethical. It’s also what is commercially sound.

• When you are truly transformational coaching, you equip the client to be independent longer term. Your clients get much better results because they’re building the component skills between sessions, needing you less.

• You stop answering so many surface level questions that could go to Google, because your clients are solving the correct problem instead of the surface level problem. Your capacity opens up, so you’re spending less time putting out fires and more time leading conversations that elevate you and the client.

• Your clients don’t keep rehiring you because they ‘need’ you (codependency). They keep rehiring you because they want you (interdependency) — and more on this in a later essay too!

• People buy on emotion and back it up with logic. We don’t desire the thing, we desire how we think we will feel when we have the thing. If you can show the emotional transformation — through your own transformation, and the transformation of your clients — sales becomes so much easier.

• These are the clients who walk away changed as a human. They don’t just get results while they’re with you, they get results forever because of who they became. They refer their friends to you, their parents probably know of you, and you’re the first person they speak of when someone asks ‘who would you recommend?’

Okay, we’re just getting started, ready to dive into the good stuff? Here’s where we’re going next:

• the common hidden desires of your clients inside ten different niches

• how to help your client become aware of their hidden desires of their intentions

• how to help them fulfill these hidden desires WHILE on the pathway to creating their external intentions

• how to proactively guide the development of the skills they need to achieve and sustain the outcome they want

• how to reactively use ‘the art of opportunistic transformation’ to guide the development of skills in the session

• discounted access to an additional masterclass bundle (The Exceptional Coach Initiation) which takes you deeper into each of these coaching skills (normally priced at $188, inside you’ll access it for $44 until the end of July).

This is the second in a series called “Lessons from Psychology that Make Me a Better Coach” — my intention is that you can treat each of these as a mini professional development course to reflect on your own practice as a coach, see your own opportunities for expansion, and play with some strategies each week to develop new skills. My intention is that at the end of these 8 weeks, you’ll walk away a more confident coach, with a toolkit of new strategies grounded in psychology that you can play with.

This is a series I’m writing in the lead up to our next enrolment period of The Midas Coach (one of the only entirely psychology backed coach training programs in the world). In August, we will be opening enrolment to our waitlist, so if you desire to feel confident in using tools, philosophies and approaches from psychology in your practice as a coach, so that you can guide the most complex clients and charge high ticket, add your name to the waitlist. And if that’s not you, this series alone will be an incredible resource.

Until the end of July, you can join on an annual subscription for $90 (this saves you $126).

Get 50% off for 1 year

(You can also join on a monthly subscription with that button
— whatever feels most expansive to you)

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I adore coaching. First as a client, and then as a coach, the sacred space between coach and client has drastically changed my life in every way possible. I know we’re not supposed to say this — but coaching did for me what therapy never did. Therapy got me to baseline. Coaching helped me to thrive.

Where I arrived in therapy to treat Generalised Anxiety Disorder, coaching later helped me pinpoint and change the behaviours that were perpetuating that anxiety — the over-preparing, the triple-checking, the hypervigilance. Where I spent months unpacking my childhood in therapy (needed at the time), coaching later helped me shed the identity of perfectionist and people pleaser that I’d learned as a child. In therapy, I got to voice it all; but in coaching, I finally had forward momentum and the motivation to start changing.

And because I love the craft, and the ripple effects that we can have as coaches, I believe so deeply in advocating for the raising of standards in our industry. Put politely, the standard is in the dirt. Meaning: what’s accepted and tolerated in exchange for very large sums of money is truly obscene. Yes, there is an enormous range from complete scam artist, to well-meaning but untrained, to exceptional transformational coach. But the fact that one side of the spectrum can be indistinguishable from the other with a dose of clever marketing, and no one is saying ‘hey, this isn’t ok’ — doesn’t that seem wildly problematic?

A few years ago, sick of seeing this crazy range, and on the back of my clients persistently asking ‘please can you teach me how to coach?’ I finally built a program that is slowly but surely raising the standards through education, empowering coaches with the skills to be truly exceptional at their craft. The Midas Coach has proudly trained dozens of coaches over the years, and it’s gaining momentum and popularity each year.

I do, however, know that the existence of one course is not going to singlehandedly change the direction of the industry. We need the conversation to be louder. We need advocacy to come from within the building. And so, I’m experimenting with a new series:

“Lessons from psychology that make me a better coach”

Over the next 8 weeks, I’m going to be releasing a new essay here, each week. I’ll be taking lessons, philosophies, approaches etc that I learned in my training and work in psychology, and translating these to the coaching context.

What I aspire to do with this series is spark new conversation and create a space for coaches who want to be exceptional, and are willing to challenge themselves with new approaches — to congregate, and chat. I want to have conversations with you in the comments section. I want you to challenge my thinking.

This goal is part of a bigger mission I’m on, over a longer period of time, to raise the standards in the coaching world, and to make ‘coach’ a title that we’re collectively so proud to adorn ourselves with. We cannot wait for regulation to create this change, because to be frank, true regulation is years if not decades away, and regulation does not guarantee ethical behaviour. The current governing bodies are a (sometimes questionable) start, however, while the barrier to entry is an Instagram account and an internet connection, I believe that the onus falls on us, the coaches, to create change from the bottom up, so to speak. Creating an industry and a title that we love, asks us to take responsibility for our side of the street. We could sit here all day and complain about the shadiness of other people and try to convince our audience that we are ‘one of the good ones’ or, we could lead by example, demonstrating our own commitment to excellence, through active investment in our professional development and constructive conversations. The long-term upshot, I hope, is that the good eventually crowds out the bad. By sharing our commitment to learning, we inspire potential clients to ask harder questions when they hire a coach. By sharing our standards of practice, we inspire other coaches to raise theirs too. The speed at which we create a more positive reputation for the industry and ourselves individually, depends upon the volume and leadership of the conversation.

To have the conversation is not enough. To actually change our behaviour is the only way to lead.

How are we going to do this?

This is where I would love your input, so please feel truly invited to put your two cents into the comment section — I always invite your healthy, respectful debate.

From where I’m sitting, this is how I think we can contribute to this change:

This conversation, this mission, could ask us to…

• Stop feeling like we need to be the ‘expert’, and continue to commit ourselves to lifelong learning and enquiry. Experts tend not to identify as experts because they are so aware of how much there is still to learn. It’s not until we can accept our stretches that we can start to make them strengths. I hold myself accountable to this as well — even as a mentor and trainer of coaches, I do not see myself as the expert — rather — a guide who can inspire new ways of thinking and coaching, and someone who is continuously committed to her own development (I set myself professional goals for my coaching development every month, still now, even thousands of hours into my practice).

• Begin seeking out more effective models of change, instead of the pseudoscience that this industry is riddled with. Now, I say this carefully — there are many modes of change that are currently not evidence-based, which, of course, science may one day catch up to. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There are modes of change taught to coaches, masquerading as evidence-based, that in fact have bodies of research demonstrating the opposite. Neuro-linguistic programming, for example, is one.

• To do this, I want to encourage more coaches to look to and be educated in models of change that exist in related fields. The research base of coaching is growing, but thin in comparison to the related discipline of psychology. Coaches, of course, need to skirt the line of therapy carefully, but I do believe that when dealing with the intricate and intimate internal worlds of our clients, we should be well versed in the research and evidence-based therapeutic models that the psychology world has to offer. Since 2022, I have been training coaches in these exact models, through The Midas Coach, and the results have been astounding. I’m so proud of the work that we Midas Coaches have done together to raise the standards in our own direct coaching communities. We have trained 50+ coaches in the last few years, with more joining us every year. I hope that this small but mighty number continues to compound. If you’re interested in learning more, you can do that through that little hyperlink above.

• Belong to communities where these conversations are being had. Conversations around quality of client experience, boundaries of practice, self-reflective practice etc… these are valuable conversations to be engaged in for our own development. I hope that the comments section of this series over the next two months will be a community that you desire to be part of.

• And lastly, I want to see us all be more empowered to ask better questions before giving our trust, money and hearts to coaches. For quite some time, it became ‘cool’ to say things like ‘I don’t have sales calls; my clients are self-led and make quick decisions.’ I heard stories where people were discouraged from asking questions. So of course bad decisions were made, from a place of scarcity, urgency and probably, not wanting to be seen as a ‘bother’ to the cool girls club. Puh-lease. We are all sovereign, self-led humans who should absolutely be given the opportunity to ask as many questions as we really need to, before making a purchasing decision. Anyone who discourages your questions before you buy is unlikely to welcome them once you’re inside their coaching space. Take back your power, and put your money and trust in people who deeply care about you.

And of course, I’m hoping that this series will contribute to this conversation and inspire. The essays I have coming up are part self-reflective practice, part teaching, part how-to. Some of each essay will be public, and the ‘how to’ and comments section will be for paid subscribers.

While I was getting a facial yesterday, an idea struck me — I thought it would be fun to do a little promo for this series. I’m offering you 50% off the yearly subscription — making it just $90, or just $7.50 a month. You’ll get full access to each of these essays, plus my Monthly Business Report and my Weekly “Ask Carly” Private Podcast episodes. I might be biased but I think my Substack is one of the best value-for-money ones getting around.

Get 50% off for 1 year

And if reading this makes you want to lean into your professional development as a coach, there are two next steps whenever you're ready for them. The IMPACT Method Masterclass takes you through my psychology based coaching framework. And The Midas Coach is where I teach the psychology and the evidence-based models in full — it opens a couple of times a year and only to the waitlist, so if you think you might be keen, add your name here.

So, over the next couple of months, I’ll be releasing a new essay each week, in this series.

What this is not: me telling you how to do things or pretending to be an expert.

What this is: I’m simply going to share different lessons from psychology that have made me a better coach over the years. I’ll share research, philosophies and strategies from psychology for you to play with, mull over and trial in your own coaching. And what I’d love for it to be, but that will be up to you — is an alive comment section, responding to conversation starters that I’ll give you in each piece.

A sneak peek of some of the conversations coming up:

• How your expectations of a client shape what they actually achieve

• The approach to behaviour change that's actually humane

• How your ‘need to be needed’ can keep you attracting codependent clients who rarely change

• How I try to strike the balance between intuition and evidence based change processes in my coaching

• The skillset that is entirely overlooked by so many coaches (but is shown to be the one creates the most change)

• How typical marketing is at odds with the philosophies of exceptional coaching (& what I think we can do differently & better!)

Make sure you’re subscribed so you get every essay delivered to your inbox over the next couple of months…

Get 50% off for 1 year

Thank you SO much for being here, and if you’re sharing this with your audience, thank you in advance.

Will be back next week with the first drop!

Carly x

If you’re new here, I write a report each month unpacking exactly what went on in my business the previous month. I talk about strategic pieces and reasoning behind particular decisions (in a way that is applicable for you!) but also the personal transformations I’m going through as I grow.

Personally, that’s the stuff I love to perve on and I also think it’s the bits most useful. We’re all crunchy humans who experience similar fears and doubts etc, but we often assume we’re the only one going through it. As confronting as it is to sit down each month and bare my soul to you, I do it because I hope you don’t feel so alone in your own experience. Creating really big beautiful lives asks so much of us, and if you’ve given yourself permission to go after what you truly desire, know that I’m in your corner cheering you on.

This is now the 7th in this series, as I’ve been writing them all year! I’m intending to keep going with these, for you, but also for me to be able to look back and see what I was going through, what I committed to, where my mind was at etc.

You’re about to read…

What happened in June… (I’ll share more about each of these!)

• doubled the revenue from Q1 to Q2 without working harder (let’s talk about creating results that don’t make sense + journal prompts for helping you receive more through doing less)

• put myself on a ban from creating new offers (let’s talk about the reasons why, and what this is doing for me already!)

• processed the shift in my motivation for money and created a bigger goal to help me process the resistance I do have to growing (sharing this with you for accountability, plus sharing my process for deciding on financial goals)

• got some massive clarity on my superpower as a coach, and what I’m fully owning as my direction

• decided the book that I’m starting with & wrote the outline (I’m revealing the name & premise too!)

What’s coming up in July:

I have a fair bit coming up this month for my Substackers — I’ve got a whole series in the works about the psychology of exceptional coaching, so get excited for this. Each article will have a portion behind the paywall, so heads up, this would be a really good time to upgrade your subscription if you’ve been thinking about it. I’ll be diving into some really specific tangible ways to weave psychology into your coaching — not just the science behind the strategies, but a lot of the philosophy behind them. These are conversations I’ve been dying to have in long form and the time has come to have them.

So, let’s dive in!

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It’s been a very odd experience, to continue to be present online, running my business, while also feeling untethered to where I might be going next.

I write this today, nestled in front of the fire, sandwiched between my two pups, because I know many of you are feeling your own flavour of this, too.

Like me, you’ve probably been in this era of your career for a while, and as grateful as you are, you feel another evolution calling your name. The nagging question playing on your mind — “Is there something more here for me to become?” And the strange experience of continuing to present yourself online when you’re in the cusp between identities, between worlds. For those of us who have built this version of our career publicly, online, with a personal brand, becoming ‘known’ for something, this can feel so crunchy to navigate.

So I write this for you, as much as I write this for me. My mentor once shared with me, that as a 6/2 profile in Human Design, I am designed to process aloud, and let my learnings be lessons and inspirations for my listeners. It’s the method I used when I started my podcast in 2022, and when I remind myself that this is how I’m designed to create, everything becomes so much easier. It never feels ‘clean’ to show up and write from the void… but it’s the act of doing so that moves me through it.

So, after breaking down my business, and rebuilding anew, I have constantly been asking myself ‘what’s next?’. I have known that a gear shift was needed for some time now.

I’ve been through this kind of evolution before. 9 years ago, exactly, to the month. Which, if you follow Numerology, is curious. Nine years ago, like this year, I was also in my 1 year. The 1 year is all about new beginnings, which often translates to career changes, new businesses, and starting new projects. It’s a year that is all about stepping into your leadership, having the courage to speak up, and stop waiting for permission from other people. Nine years ago, this month, I came home from work one day and told my husband that I was starting my own business, and becoming a coach. That day was the culmination of over a year of discomfort in my role as a therapist. I’d just finished my Masters in Psychology, and I knew I couldn’t continue down the pathway of my original plan to be a psychologist. A year out from being registered as both a psychologist and a board certified behaviour analyst, I quit. I became a coach instead. That move took so much bravery. I stepped completely into the unknown. No one really knew what coaching was, back then, and many people around me couldn’t understand my decision.

This 1 year is hitting different. I’m not leaving behind the title of coach. For nine years, Coach has been my title. It’s been my identity. I’ve done very very well with it. I’ve far surpassed the financial growth I ever expected, and I’ve been able to make the impact I wanted, completely on my own terms. I beat back burnout — something that plagued me for so many years that it was the research project for my thesis.

But, coach no longer feels like my only identity. It feels like part of what I do. I feel myself itching towards a new string to my identity bow. I thought that it was going to be ‘Researcher.’ I thought this year would be the year I’d start my PhD. I think I’m getting there, but I have other projects that are calling me first.

My business has kept running throughout all of this… and to my surprise, has actually grown quite drastically even in this questioning. That in itself feels strange to admit. Behind the scenes, as I’ve been placing the pieces back together, I have been asking ‘what am I? Am I still a business coach? Am I a coach who happens to coach business owners? Am I a course creator? A trainer of coaches? Where am I going next?’

And then the flow on effect of these questions:

“What do I call myself online? How do I introduce myself in person? What do I put on my website? What do I write about? What do I not write about in case it confuses someone? What DO I actually want to share from my own life? (I’ve found myself wanting to be increasingly private about some things). What conversations do I want to spark? Does that fit into a content pillar? Does anyone actually want to read or hear about that?”

Will people even want to work with me when I am not even clear myself on where I am going?

How do I show up for my business and clients and audience, when I’m not sure where I am going?

This is the question I want to answer for you today — how do we keep going, when we’re in the void? When we aren’t totally sure on our direction, or the bigger picture?

In my work training coaches, the first thing I teach them is to be clear on the client’s intention.

For the session yes, but of course, in the bigger picture, too. If you don’t know where you are going, how can you get there?

And sometimes — the client does not know where they are going. They do not know what they desire. I’ve genuinely never related to this until now.

In these moments, finding out, becomes the entire point. But it also, simultaneously, needs to be the thing we let go of.

To stop sitting back ‘trying’ to figure it out logically.

Instead, the only way we find out, is by experimenting, and BEing in the action. Clarity comes through movement. But this movement is a different type of movement to the ‘take action in the direction of your dreams’ movement. It’s a movement whereby the movement itself is the entire point.

The movement is data.

It’s simply moving from what feels real right now, and observing how it feels to follow that.

We’ve seen this most recently with Jessi Jean, who, after running her business for over a decade, started a new Instagram account at the end of 2025, and started making content about being ‘career confused.’ She’d become a mother. Her priorities had changed. She was ready for something new. So she started speaking to her phone about it. 6 months later, she’s built an audience of 400k+, just made over a million on a launch of a $297 challenge teaching people to speak to camera, and still doesn’t know where she’s going. She’s just following the breadcrumbs.

I think this is not talked about enough, and I think it’s also partly the reason Jessi blew up so fast. She’s talking about an experience that is so relatable. How do we keep moving and making money for our lives when we really don’t know where we are going?

The great millennial career pivot. Or as my friend Amy said today, The Rebellion.

So… how?!

It’s tempting to think you need to escape to a solitary tropical island to get space to figure it all out. And once upon a time, I would have done just that. But given a current personal situation, I actually don’t want to leave. And so I’m faced with actually facing the harder questions.

Instead, I just keep moving. I keep following the breadcrumbs.

Albeit, I’m not career confused in the way Jessi is. But I just don’t know what ‘label’ attaches to me right now. And that’s only a problem, if I listen to all the marketers who have told us to ‘niche down.’ Have a tidy title on your instagram that is SEO optimized. Make sure people know what you do when they land on your instagram.

Which of course is great advice if you know what you do and you fit into a label.

I do not. And I suspect if you’re still reading this, maybe you also feel like you do not either.

Let me just say what I’ve been holding back from saying — I’ve been in business for 8 years. I’m tired of ‘positioning myself.’ I’m tired of even thinking that I have to position myself. Do you know how many times I’ve changed my instagram bio over the last months? An embarrassing amount.

When my clients ask me about how to position themselves, the answer is always simple.

Be yourself. THAT is your greatest positioning. People aren’t just buying what you do, they are buying your personality, your shared values, your lifestyle choices. They either want to have what you have, or they have it already and they want to be held/coached/mentored by someone that they relate, or aspire to.

Write about what you want to write about. Speak about what you want to speak about. Share your perspective, your insights, your values, the unique lens that you have on the world — share it in a way that you know it will help someone who stumbles across it today.

I don’t know the strategy for ‘building a personal brand’ the way branding experts would care to teach it, and I don’t care to try to learn.

What I do know, is humans. Having the bravery to be yourself, even if that is messy, confusing, with multiple potentially conflicting parts, is HUMAN. When we finally realise that we are allowed to be all of ourselves, we show up in a different energy, from that place. Do you know how many people feel like they can’t bring all of themselves? That they feel they need to hide, censor, and quiet parts of them away, in order to be accepted, attended to, or paid?

Being fully and completely yourself is simultaneously one of the hardest and best things you will ever do. It will magnetise those who wish they could accept and express themselves the way you do.

So please, embrace your multifaceted nature. Share what you love. Share what you think. Share it with the intention to support someone. Share it knowing that some people won’t get it. But share it thinking about YOUR people and what it gives them to see you owning and sharing what you love to share.

Stop trying to fit it into a tiny box that make sense. Stop with the fucking content pillars. YOU, your values, your interests — YOU are the content pillars.

Just do what you like. Untether yourself.

This is my season of untethering myself from just writing about business or coaching, which is what I’ve done for years.

And I’m going to do it, working towards a goal I’ve had since I was a little girl.

Over the weekend, I realised that I do in fact know where I am going next. I realised the title I want to own, fully, and believe, fully.

Writer. Author.

It was the first thing I wanted to do as a child. I spent my weekends devouring books in the faded chair in our sunroom. A stack of unread novels on the left, which became a stack of read novels on the right. As an avid reader I became an avid writer. When I was 8, I entered a writing competition in my home town and I won. My story is buried in a time capsule in the centre of town, to be dug up in the year 2147, 150 years after it was buried.

I’ve always said I would publish books. Eventually. But I’ve never invested much time into learning how to write as an adult. Sure, I learned to write for business, and that is a worthy skill. I learned to write to connect and nurture and sell.

But what about my dream of being an author? When does that get to happen?

As I often share with clients…There’s a difference between having a desire, and making a decision.

I realised that I have been waiting for ‘the right time.’ For my ducks to be in a row. Telling myself “I don’t know enough.” All of the stories in my mind are just lies, limitations, exactly in the same vein that I have had to overcome to build my business to where I am today.

There is no ready. There is no right time. There is no magic ‘enough’ to know about.

There is only a decision to make. A moment to move from tolerating the desire, to making the decision to cut away any other option.

So, this is where I am going next. I am, and have been, a paid writer since the start of the year, with my small but growing paid subscribers here on Substack. This is where I am pouring my energy into.

I’m also working on a couple of books that have been simmering away in my mind for years. Books that I will self publish. Books that I might do ‘early reader’ clubs for. Books that you can expect to read within the next couple of years.

I want to write about travel. The summer I spent in Italy, at language school. I want to write about human design, astrology and numerology without being an expert and also without questioning ‘the science.’ To write about burnout. My fierce beliefs about training coaches to a higher standard. The decision and indecision to have children. Whether or not to completely give up alcohol. The strange parallels between business and running. About my favourite books. I want to write about determinism and free will. Science and spirituality.

I want to write where my mind takes me each day, without needing to ask ‘does this fit into my personal brand?’

I am the brand. There is no ‘fitting into a box.’

I’m just going to keep on documenting me living my life, running my business, fulfillment first. Following my desires, and seeing where they take me.

And I think, that my past self, who chose to call this publication “Fortune, Fulfilled” was bang on. It’s never just been about business. It’s always been about fulfilling our fortune. Living out the best version of ourselves and our lives that we can.

Fortune, Fulfilled.

welcome back for another private podcast ep! this is another question from a subscriber (if you have a question you want me to answer, ask it here!)

here’s this week’s question:

“i closed 3 new clients these past weeks and somehow i still find myself getting anxious and being like, okay, what’s next? do you have any suggestions on how to really celebrate wins and feel and reinforce that feeling in my body?”

There are two ways to listen to this one.

1. if you read it and felt seen — the success and then the immediate reach for the next thing — you can listen to this one for yourself, and make a note of the questions I ask, and use them as journal prompts.

2. and if you transform humans for a living (coaching, mentoring, consulting), you can also listen for how you’d handle a client who brings you a similar pattern, and hear how I approach it.

I recorded this one as though i’m coaching the person through it using the IMPACT method — the framework i’ve been using for nearly a decade and teach inside The Midas Coach. The surface question asked here is “how do i celebrate.” If I answered only that, i’d be missing the thing driving it, and in the long run, this doesn’t resolve anything for the client. so the trick is - if you want to create a transformation that changes their life for good — make sure you go after the pattern underneath instead!

here’s what i get into:

• the surface question this client is asking, and the pattern that I think is running underneath it

• why celebration rituals on their own tend to backfire

• the behavioural-psychology principle i use in every single session with every single client

• how i’d coach this question through using the impact method — intention, motivation, probing, creating change — with the questions i’d ask at each step (use these as journal prompts, or steal for your client sessions!)

• the difference between layering a new strategy on top of a pattern and resolving it at the root, so the celebrating can actually feel like celebrating.

The resources i mention in the episode:

→ the impact method masterclass (free)

→ the art & science of transformational questions masterclass

→ the midas coach waitlist — opens in august, and we only open to the waitlist from here on out. make sure your name is on it, if you want access.

the full episode, plus the archives, is for paid subscribers. join us and you’ll also get:

• weekly: ask carly private podcast

• monthly: business report (I’m taking you behind the scenes of rebuilding my business to $500k, one month at a time).

• regular business upgrades intensives: (next week we begin a new series on exceptional coaching!)

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Decide the desire. Upgrade your thinking. ‘Become a vibrational match.’ Be the version of you who already has it. Receive.

And the way that it is marketed is drawing in people for all of the wrong reasons. They arrive hungry, enticed by the promise of G wagons and first class flights, overflowing bank accounts and a perfect wardrobe. Hoping (as promised) that the materialisation of these intentions will change their life forever.

So, people come into these practises simply en route to claiming what has been promised. The work of manifestation becomes performative, a means to an end.

But this process, or philosophy, or approach to manifestation is missing the entire point.

Which is exactly what I sat down to write about today. My intention is to look at why we’ve learned the wrong approaches to manifestation, how I think we should approach it instead, and my own personal experience of this lesson. My hope is that you’ll walk away from this with an entirely new belief system, perspective and approach to ‘manifesting’ the life you desire.

What is ‘manifestation’?

First things first, can we just get on the same page? I’m using the word manifestation because I think we all have an experience with it, and it’s a tidy, one word solution. Whatever your past experience with the word is, when I use it, I simply mean: to take an intention, and through changing your mind and behaviour, you create it into your physical reality.

Whether you believe this to be magic, or spiritual, or quantum physics, or psychology, it doesn’t actually matter for the purposes of this piece. But whatever background you’re coming from, can we agree that ‘to manifest’ simply means to take an idea and bring it into your life?

Personally, coming from a psychology background, I’ve often struggled to find teachers that I resonate with, because their teachings often ask students to engage in practises that create more psychological friction.

Which is why, when I found the concept of manifestation, I felt drawn in, I experimented with some of the practises, but it didn’t take me long to start adapting, and applying a psychology lens to everything. This is the approach that grounds all of my coaching work.

But this isn’t the method itself — that’s the work I teach elsewhere. What I’m doing here is looking at the shortfalls in how so many people approach manifestation, the ones that, I think, lead to friction, frustration and thinking ‘maybe this just doesn’t work for me.’

It’s about seeing manifestation through a new lens, a lens which will, I think, make the entire process more effective.

Why so many people struggle with manifestation

The reason most people are missing the point of manifestation practises, is because of the way they are marketed, sold and taught.

The practises themselves are taught as a way to ‘get more stuff.’ Which, I think, late stage capitalism has a lot to answer for.

We live in a world that constantly pushes advertisements onto us, with the clever backing of sales psychology, of course our little human brains end up thinking that we ‘need’ to have it, to keep up, to tick those boxes, whatever they are.

When you take a step back and consider how we’ve been conditioned to live (grow up, achieve, collect things and then die), it does all seem a tiny bit insane.

I do not believe that we are here on this earth to become collectors of more stuff or accolades. We’re not here to hoard more money than we could ever use or fly luxury or have the biggest house just to gain status or prove ourselves to other people, make it to Forbes 30 under 30 or climb the corporate mountain to stand victoriously at the top and look down at anyone who didn’t have the education, opportunities, work ethic or skin colour as you.

I just don’t believe that it’s a good reason to live. It’s certainly not a fulfilling way to live.

So, when we’re presented with an aspirational figure who seems to have everything that we want, and she’s promising you that you can have it too, with barely any work at all on your part, why would you not take it?

But this is where the problem begins.

Getting what you want, is not the point

The practise of manifestation is centered around the outcome being the entire point. It’s not. The practise of manifestation is actually about the process.

Because it’s the process that guides us to operate without the illusion of ‘I am not enough.’

It’s about becoming someone who believes they can have the outcome they desire, and simultaneously knows they do not need it, because, in the realisation that they can have it, they no longer need it.

The shift in resistance creates the non attachment to having it. The non attachment creates the ability to live as though one already has it, which is the exact state that creates the reality.

So when the manifestation teachers say ‘be the version of you who already has it’ — they’re not entirely wrong.

But there’s faking it, and there’s actually embodying the energy of non attachment.

The first requires willpower, force and overriding your brain’s natural mental processes. Often, this looks like cognitive, emotional and behavioural avoidance.

The latter asks you to dissolve the resistance and attachment created by your mind, which stand in the way of you and the life you desire. It asks you to lean into, and be curious about the cognitions, emotions and behaviours that are ‘out of alignment’ with what you say you want.

The belief that you’re not ready. The fear that it won’t be safe. The sabotage that comes up as a functional way to stay safe.

Let’s understand why this matters:

The truth is — and this is where, for those of us coaching, mentoring, guiding, inspiring other humans to create bigger better brighter richer lives, we have to keep this idea parked in the front of our minds:

We do not really want that thing that we say we want. We want how we think we will feel when we have that thing. We all have unique desires. Those desires are desires because part of us feels like it is out of reach, impossible, or like it would give us something that we feel is missing. Power. Status. Fame. Attention. Love. Worthiness. Enoughness.

It’s this very need that creates both the resistance AND the attachment all at once. The resistance being ‘I couldn’t let myself have this because I don’t believe it to be safe/okay/allowed for me to have this,’ and the attachment being ‘I need this so badly because I think it will fill the gap that is making me feel unsafe/inadequate/not enough.’

It’s this resistance and attachment that we feel when we desire it, yet find ourselves struggling to believe it’s possible, engaging in sabotage/procrastination etc. Discovering and moving through the resistance and attachment — these are the real opportunity for our growth.

That which we feel we are missing, and think we need to survive, is what we want.

And if that desire is rooted in ‘I am not enough’… even if that desire materialises, you have not grown as a human. You’ve missed the entire point of manifestation.

It’s not to ‘get more stuff.’

It’s to become the one who truly does not need to prove herself through more stuff.

The desire is simply our motivation that shows us where we have room to grow closer to our true innate qualities of enoughness, wholeness, pure love.

Within that resistance or attachment are our own specific lessons, the ones we must face before we can truly allow ourselves to experience the joy of receiving it.

You can push and force the creation of it without being truly ready to receive it. But it is the overcoming of the lessons themselves that is the entire point.

My personal example:

For most of my life, I didn’t let myself have the nice version of things. I chose the bare minimum. I barely shopped, or if I did, I allowed myself to buy the cheaper version, the thing on sale, but almost never the thing I really wanted. And if I did buy the thing I wanted, I felt deeply guilty, wrong or naughty for spending money that could have been saved.

Don’t misunderstand me, I had a nice life, a good life. But it was just average. Embedded with the underlying rule of ‘you can’t have exactly what you want, you have to negotiate with yourself, or if you finally let yourself have it, you can’t let yourself enjoy it.’

I never really had more than I needed. My savings account barely grew. I often sabotaged with money — receiving it and then quickly spending it on things that were meaningless. The irony was that I could have had a much nicer life if I had spent less on the meaningless things and more on the meaningful ones.

When I came into my business, I started noticing this pattern, because as my income grew quickly, my feeling around it didn’t change. I still felt like there wasn’t enough. It fell through my fingers as quickly as I received it. I still didn’t have enough to spend on the nicer things that were proudly pasted on the vision board I shared with my husband, the one that hung on our kitchen wall. Business class flights. A Mercedes. A beautiful house. Weekly trips to the spa. Investment accounts growing.

When I started making enough to actually pay for these things, it took me months, if not years, before I allowed myself to pay for them.

In particular… business class. Living in New Zealand, we are so far from the rest of the world. Most flights are longer than 7 hours. It takes up to 48 hours to get to Europe. Flying business class always felt like the obvious choice to manage the long haul. But actually paying for it, and letting myself sit in a luxury seat when I could save thousands and sit in economy? Forget about it.

So when our borders started opening after the pandemic — I, an avid traveller who hadn’t been anywhere in years and felt like she was suffocating inside the (admittedly, very safe) confines of our country — I knew I had to take the chance and get out for a bit.

The Cook Islands were the only place we could go. And so I booked the accommodation. But I just couldn’t bring myself to book the flight. Why? Because I knew I wanted to fly business class. And I could definitely afford it. But every time I went to pay… I chickened out.

Two weeks, it took me to book. And the moment I finally did, I broke down crying. Because it wasn’t really the business class luxury that was the point. I was both resisting it (not feeling like it was allowed for me, feeling like it was a waste), and attached to it (thinking it would legitimise me if I could afford to fly in this way).

The point was, I’d finally started overcoming the old restrictive pattern of ‘just take what you can get, be grateful for the trip, don’t go overboard, don’t waste money when you could get a cheaper option.’

That moment is big for me, because it’s the exact moment I became someone who let herself have more than was ‘allowed.’ (Allowed by whom, I’m not sure. I don’t even know where I learned that old belief, and it doesn’t really matter.)

When I stepped on board that flight, greeted by name, welcomed to turn left instead of right, offered a glass of champagne as I sat down, I cried again. I allowed myself to have it. That was why it meant everything to me. It was the moment I overcame the resistance.

I didn’t know it yet, but the attachment still remained.

Over the last few years, I’ve continued to fly business and first class, but often on points, because my values have shifted and it doesn’t feel as expansive to pay thousands that could be going into longer term wealth building. I haven’t been earning as much as I was back in 2022, and there have been some moments where flying business class would have been financially irresponsible. These exact moments were the moments that invited me into my next evolution.

I remember the first flight where I got to see the attachment I had to being ‘someone who flies business class.’ I was flying back from Bali. I’d booked economy, because at the time I couldn’t justify the funds going to business class, and I’d asked for the upgrade on points, but at check in, hadn’t gotten it. The price to upgrade was $3k and that didn’t feel worth it for a few hours. Getting on board and turning right, when I really didn’t want to, sucked. First world problems yes, but it sucked.

It was also the moment where I saw my attachment to being seen to fly in a particular way.

And as I saw this attachment, I was able to see myself more clearly. My value as a human had not changed dependent upon how much money I had or how I was able to fly. I was still just as valuable regardless of my financial or flight status.

This realisation, that my ego no longer needed it, was one of the more freeing moments of my life. To realise that I could choose to fly business class or not, and that what really mattered is that I no longer needed someone else’s approval.

Now, when I board and turn left, or walk up the stairs on a plane, it feels great, sure, because I know I’m about to get great service, and a good sleep. But when I turn right, I don’t feel the shame or fear of ‘what will people think of me?’ I actually often fly premium economy now - still comfy, and I get to live my value of wealth building too. Either way, my decision is for me, in alignment with whatever I value most at the time, and I’m peaceful, knowing I’m only doing it for myself. Sometimes I’ll share it online, sometimes I won’t. It doesn’t matter either way.

And this is the piece that most ‘manifestation’ teachers miss. They teach manifestation as a tool to get more of what you want. I disagree. The desire is just the motivation. The real gift of manifesting it is what you got to overcome — the resistance, and the attachment. It’s that you came back closer to your true nature — worthy, whole, enough. It’s that you realise the things you thought you needed were not actually needed. They’re nice to have. But they’re not there to fill a self esteem gap.

Mastering this nuance of manifestation is where true peace lies. Because the more we pick away the illusions and rules around what we’re ‘allowed’ to have, how we think we need to prove ourselves, the more we come back to the simple truth.

I am enough. You are enough. From that place we craft lives that feel like heaven. And they truly feel like heaven when we know, believe and feel at our core that we are worthy of having them, and that they mean absolutely zero about us.

The internal peace that comes when we stop arguing our worth — that’s the real gift. Manifestation is just the byproduct.

It’s for this reason that I encourage my clients to fully touch and taste their actual dreams. Anyone who has been coached by me will know I constantly ask — what do you really want? What are we aiming at here? Why do you want that? When you can be honest about what you want, that’s where the real lessons will belong. There are no lessons to learn if the receiving doesn’t ask you to challenge the confronting illusions in your mind.

Dream bigger. Face the resistance. Process the attachment. Give yourself permission. Create. Allow. Receive. Remember your truth.

And when you practise this, over and over — receiving and tasting the delights that you once held on an impossible pedestal — you start to realise exactly what I mean when I say: who you become is the entire point. Detached from proving anything to anyone. Fully connected to your own enoughness. A distinct lack of needing to fight for status.

The joy then becomes living each moment as the best version of yourself. Observing desires and the illusions that block them, and quicker and quicker, being able to transcend those illusions. We have more access to material gifts, yet we are the least materialistic we’ve ever been. It just becomes a fun game to play.

Enjoy the game.

All my love,

Carly x

P.S. This approach to manifestation is the baseline for how I work with clients. If you want to master the process — how to find the resistance and attachment sitting between you and what you want, and move through them — that’s what I teach in You Are The Magic. It’s self-paced, grounded in psychology, and open whenever you’re ready. Join us here » www.carlyanna.co/magic

Some of you might remember that burnout coaching/organisational wellbeing consulting was actually where I started my business, so I definitely have a lot to speak to here.

If you are business owner who has two distinct but related ideal clients to speak to, this will be an episode worth carving out time for.

In it, I talk about:

• the same path i walked myself when i started out — coaching individuals through burnout on one side, consulting to organisations on the other

• how to make the the two offers make each other stronger rather than competing for attention

• the assumption buried in her question that’s worth dropping entirely

• where the split actually happens (later than most people think)

• the ceiling personal resilience work hits inside certain organisations — and how to spot those orgs that you actually want to work with before you say yes

• the pricing reminder i gave her that she didn’t ask for, but most people actually need!

• the belief i hold about selling that changes how all of this works

Okay team, all of this is inside our private podcast for the week! Each week I take a subscriber question, and answer it in detail as if this person was a client sitting right in front of me. It’s like having a business coach AND getting to hear my responses to everyone else.

At the moment, you can opt into a 7 day free trial, check out this episode, plus the archives, and decide if you want to stay on with us.

Jump into a 7 day free trial below!

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I’ve been writing these monthly business reports for my paid subscribers every month this year. Some are really strategic, some are more personal reflection; all are geared to give you the lessons that I’m learning.

If you’re not yet a paid member, for the next week only, I’m offering 7 day free trials, so you can read this, catch up on the other business reports from 2026, dive into the private podcast, and even ask me your own questions for me to record for the private pod.

A reminder, that paid members of Fortune, Fulfilled get access to:

• Weekly “Ask Carly” private podcast - submit your questions here!

• Monthly business report: A deep dive on what’s happening in my business

• Regular Business Upgrades intensives: I choose an area of business and help you to upgrade your thinking or strategy around it.

  You can get your 7 day free trial here:

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Before I dive into it — I have to tell you — tomorrow, we are closing The Seven Transformations and The Collective for good. Yep, after tomorrow, it will closed forever! I am replacing it with something even better, which you get for free, if you join before we close. The Collective is NOT being replaced, and is the last way to work directly with me as your mentor, for just $2k for the rest of the year. Enrol here.

Okay here’s the question: “I feel like maybe I should be doing more — more offers, more revenue streams…. But something in me wants to just go deeper on what I already have. Am I thinking about this wrong? How do you know when following something new is smart strategy versus just distraction?”

I’m so excited to answer this one, because this decision making process is my bread and butter for business owners who have been in the game for a while, who are trying to balance their excitement for new offers etc, vs creating stability with what they already have. I’ve broken my own rules on this more than once, so believe me when I say, I’m personally qualified to know the difference!

In this episode I cover:

• The belief that’s costing established entrepreneurs more than almost anything else when it comes to pushing into multiple six figures a year

• A framework for deciding where your time actually belongs (most people have the ratios completely backwards and it creates stagnation instead of scale)

• What ‘leaving money on the table’ actually means, and when is it the right call?

• How to tell the difference between something that feels like smart strategy but might actually just be a distraction from your real focus

• What has to change at the cusp point to double your revenue without working harder at all

It's for paid subscribers. Join us and get:

Weekly Ask Carly Private Podcast: Submit your questions and I’ll answer like you’re a private client
Monthly business report: I take you behind the scenes of exactly what I’m doing in business
Regular Business Upgrades intensives: I choose an area of business and give you the goods on how to assess and upgrade your mindset and strategy.

And... When you’re ready to work with me to build a simpler, more profitable business that truly fulfils you — here’s where to start:

The Audacity — my free 7-day private podcast. The best place to begin if you’re new here.

The IMPACT Method - my psychology backed coaching session framework. Join 2000+ other coaches also using this method.

The Midas Coach - one of the only entirely psychology backed coaching certifications in the world. Open twice a year, to the waitlist only. Join the waitlist here.

The Seven Transformations + The Collective — the ‘fulfillment first’ philosophy and method that helps you build a business around your best clients, your greatest skills, and the life you actually want to be living. If you’re done overcomplicating business, this is where that changes. Enrol here. (this is closing for good, TOMORROW! enrolments today will be gifted our brand new offer which is launching later in the year!)

The Uncapped Intensive — two sessions with me to find the money that’s already in front of you, simplify your plan to scale, and clear whatever’s sitting between you and your next level. Check availability & book.

The Mastermind — for established founders who want to do legacy-leaving work, get paid really well for it, and actually have a life at the same time. This is a hybrid 1-1 and intimate mastermind space. Apply here.

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She’s working full time, coaching clients after hours, her calendar is starting to fill up, and she’s beginning to feel the burn. She wants to know: when do you go from one-to-one to one-to-many, and when is it safe to quit the job?

Whether you’ve been full time in business for years, or you’re about to take the leap, I’ve recorded this episode with you both in mind.

I love this question because there is so much underneath it. How do we make decisions about leveraged offers? When is that right to do? How do we create successful group spaces and launches? How do we know when we are safe to quit a job?

I get into all of this, in this week’s episode of the private podcast.

The full episode, plus our archives, and the link to submit your own questions, is for paid subscribers.

Join us inside the membership and get access to:

• Weekly: “Ask Carly” Private Podcast - submit your questions & I show you how I’d coach you through it

• Monthly: My business report - actual behind the scenes of my launches, business growth and mindset

• Regular: Business ‘Upgrades’ - I choose an area of business and give you an intensive to upgrade it for yourself (e.g. sales, money, thought leadership, freedom, wealth)

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I knew it was the last time because I had decided that it was the last time. That was a decision I consciously made as I left work on that day — I remember walking out the doors, thinking to myself, ‘I am free. No one is ever going to control my income or my time, ever again.’

I look back on that promise, and I know that it’s the foundation of why my business is still here, growing and evolving and thriving, eight years later. It was a decision. In Latin, ‘to decide’ is ‘decidere’ which translates to ‘to cut away.’ This is one of my favourite reminders to myself — to decide, is to cut away all other options. In that moment, I cut away any option other than — my business will be a success.

But that doesn’t mean that I stepped out of those doors and succeeded immediately. No. Far from it. I hadn’t replaced my income, I had barely any savings, I didn’t really know what my strategy was, but it was a leap of faith, a leap I had convinced myself I had to make so that I had the time to make my business work.

So on this day, 8 years later, I’m sitting down with my coffee this morning, to write an open letter to me, on that day 8 years ago.

Carly,

You’re about to do the most exciting and scariest thing you’ve ever done. More exciting and scary than backpacking in Europe alone at 22, and definitely more than when you moved to Melbourne the year later at 23.

By most people’s standards, this is a dumb idea. You haven’t replaced enough of your income. You have a wedding in less than a year so you can’t touch your savings. You don’t have another option.

But because you’re you, that’s the exact same reason why you should. Your back is against the wall. You can’t stay in this job, it is taking everything from you. Which is why you’re being this brave. You already know this about yourself so my job right now is to remind you — you’re not wrong. You will only ever create something new when you finally decide that there is no other choice.

I’m you, from 8 years into the future. No, I’m not telling you exactly what happens, because if you know, you’ll coast. I will tell you though, that it will work out better than you have imagined, but I’ll also say — you will be challenged beyond measure to get there. So don’t think you’ve got it easy.

You’re going to find the next few months really hard. You’re going to put in a LOT of work, for not much payoff. You’re going to learn that the complication that most people say is ‘necessary’ to run a business is actually not required at all. But later this year, momentum will kick off, and you’ll be SO proud and happy for what you made happen.Stick with it.

Babe, I think you already know this, but this business thing, will require you to change. This people pleasing, perfectionist streak can’t remain if you want to succeed. You’re going to figure that out really fast, and a coach you hire this year will be huge in helping you do that. But let me tell you honey, that this will also be the end of the burnout cycles you’ve been in for years. You and your patterns were more responsible for that burnout that you’d like to admit.

I will tell you this, because I know you’ve already guessed it — you’re going to get to travel a lot. Like, a lot. I know you’ve felt resentful that you missed out on travel in the last few years, but trust me, the next few will make up for it. And not only that… but you’re going to make some incredible friends from all over the world and you’ll get to visit them. Those people will really ‘get’ what it’s like to run a business. To expect more from life. To be ambitious… That’s one of the things we’re most proud of, most grateful for. The friends who you would have never met unless you’d done this thing.

You’re going to get a massive surprise when you see what niche you end up in. It’s not what you think it is, and if I told you now, you wouldn’t believe me. You’ll feel imposter syndrome for a while and then realise that… these last 7 years you’ve spent as a behaviour therapist are not wasted, and in fact they will become your edge… your differentiation. Just wait.

Before I go, I just want you to know this. You’re a visionary, that’s just how you see the world. You will see things that need to change before anyone else does. You’ll get frustrated at times that other people can’t see how systems need to be changed or how standards need to be raised. But you can’t let that frustration take over. You just have to keep showing up for the people who want the vision that you can see. Trust me. That frustration gets you nowhere, so hold the vision for others, okay?

Okay, I’ve got to run! Today we’re celebrating with a facial!

Love you,

C xx

P.S. To those of you reading, every year on this day, I love to celebrate with a few fun coaching offers, all themed to the year that I’m celebrating. So this year, our theme is obviously ‘8!’ These offers are live in my Instagram stories right now — once they expire, or once they’re taken, the offers are gone. If you’re curious about getting some air time with me as your business coach, head to my stories now.

If you’re new here, I’m taking you behind the scenes (like fully, bts) of my business, with my goal of doing $500k this year in about 15 hours a week or less. In December last year, I deconstructed my entire business and decided which offers, strategies, platforms etc I would be focused on for the next season of my business. Each month, I’m giving you a close up of how that’s going, the decisions I’m making, what I’m personally navigating in business etc etc.

Why $500k in 15 hours a week? Because this gal is about to embark on her PhD and I need my business to be really super simple to run. And $500k is a fun number that represents me having everything I want in my life, plus hitting investment goals. It’s my “Sweet Spot” number.

This month’s report is a good one. We are really moving now, after a few months of solidifying the foundations, results are really starting to move again.

I’m doing two things in this report:

Firstly, it’s going to have some good juicy data and strategic insight into my business, and how I’m using this to refine my business plan as I go this year. This month saw a 286% increase of cash received on the previous month, and also created significant recurring revenue through until 2027. I feel very grateful for this, but most importantly I feel so grateful to myself, because this was created through slowing down, taking my time, stripping back, simplifying, and focusing on people and relationships.

Secondly… it’s going to be an insight into MY patterns that are popping up in business. Most of my work with clients is based in this — where your specific patterns are playing out in your business and holding you back. Let me show you what I’m going through, so you can see for yourself!

Here’s what you’re about to read about:

• A full unpack of The Midas Coach launch, plus a comparison to the previous launch last year and why I think they performed so differently (read: this year was markedly better).

• What I’m planning to experiment with in the next launch of TMC.

• Progress towards my goal of $500k in 15 hours a week or less — where I’m at, what’s working, what I’m focused on next.

• The patterns I’m noticing in myself, how they’ve been limiting my business and what I’m doing to shift these

• The Instagram comeback — why, when, what and how I’m making my return to Instagram after nearly 5 months away!

• What I’m focused on in May.

This is a members only post, but you’re welcome to come and join us! It’s not just ‘different content behind the paywall’ — its actually structured like a membership.

You get…

• Monthly behind the scenes reports of my business, so you can see what it’s like to grow a business ‘Fulfillment First.’

• The private podcast: where I respond in depth to YOUR questions (the closest thing to having a business coach!)

• Deep dive unpacks on psychology based coaching strategies, and how I would approach specific coaching scenarios (yes, you can submit questions for these!)

• And coming this month — ‘7 day immersions’ that are dedicated to different areas of your business: money, freedom, wealth, sales, etc etc.

It’s currently $12/month, however this will be going up to $18/month, and then eventually arriving at $33/month. Whatever rate you join on, you get grandfathered in at that rate.

So like, if you’ve been putting off joining, now would probably be a really good time. I’m going to put the price up to $18/month on May 8th (that’s this Friday!)

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Here it is:

“I find myself stuck in comparison whenever I try to create workshops or offers. I’m always wondering if I’m giving enough, as I don’t want people to ever feel like they didn’t get anything new. And then it leads to ‘okay well maybe I don’t know enough’ — then I don’t take action.”

I’m going to talk you through this as if I was coaching this person in front of me — and I coach using the IMPACT Method. If you don’t know the IMPACT Method, I have a free masterclass for that which I’ll link here. If you want to understand how I coach and why I’m approaching the session this way, that masterclass is worth a watch.

So. There is a lot of great information in this question already, which gives me a lot of different areas I’m instantly curious about.

This is a paid episode. Below I coach through this question in full — including:

• The specific payoff I think is underneath this particular flavour of inaction

• Why solving the strategy problem first would be a waste of both our time, and what I’d ask first instead

• The belief about offer creation that I’d challenge directly, and the reframe that changes how you think about what people are actually buying from you

• What thought leadership actually is — and the examples I use from my own business

• How to know whether your “I don’t know enough” is a thought worth listening to, or a voice in your head worth ignoring, and how to approach each of these

• What I’d want you walking away from the session with, if you were my client

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