How to Use the "Who Says?" Theory to Launch Your Health Coaching Career
These two simple words will help you move beyond the limiting beliefs holding you back from taking action.
Happy New Year, All! My first post of 2025 is about getting out of your own way and taking action around your business and career goals. It’s easy to become paralyzed by the many “truisms” we hear about the best ways to launch a health coaching practice. Challenging these beliefs with the “Who Says?” theory will enable you to take intentional, authentic steps forward and craft the career of your dreams.
Mel Robbins’ new book, The Let Them Theory: A Life Changing Tool That Millions of People Can’t Stop Talking About, is taking 2025 by storm. It’s about using two simple words, “Let them.” to create a more empowering approach to your life and choices by letting go of worrying about the lives and choices of others.
People reading and reviewing her book share it is a game-changing mindset shift that leads to an immediate sense of freedom and ease. Recently, I heard the actress and filmmaker, Jodi Foster, share how turning 60 had a similar effect—suddenly, you just don’t care as much about what other people think or do.
I’m a big fan of Mel Robbins and her simple theories of self empowerment.
As tough as Mel’s love feels sometimes, my favorite Melisms, “No one’s coming for you. It’s up to you.” and “If you want to make your dreams come true, get ready for the long game.” have been the kick-in-the pants type of radical self-love I’ve needed to embrace the highs, lows, and uncontrollables of a long and satisfying career in the health and wellness industry.
I Have a Helpful Theory of My Own
Pema Chodron has been another powerful teacher in my life. She is an American Buddhist nun who teaches on my favorite topic—uncertainty. My life, at times, has been a study in uncertainty, and stumbling upon her books and tapes when my boys were toddlers has allowed me to build the kind of resilience needed when the ground under my feet feels more like quicksand than the tiles on my kitchen floor.
Her teachings have taught me to examine and question the limiting beliefs that keep me stuck and paralyzed from taking steps forward and embracing the uniqueness of my own path over others’. Somewhere along the line, I translated her wisdom into a helpful slogan of my own: “Who says?”
Who says I need a mailing list a mile long to be a successful health coach? (It seems to me I need one just long enough to keep my coaching queue healthy.)
Who says offering my services at no charge devalues them? (My strategic pro bono work—meaning “for the public good”—has led to elevated opportunities, helped me further define my niche and skills, and built a high quality network willing to support me when I need it most.)
Who says I can’t go back to earn my master’s degree and launch a new iteration of my career at 59? (My mom earned her second master’s from an Ivy League school at 60!)
Questioning and moving against the grain of the unsubstantiated warnings we receive every day on various platforms, new outlets, or from self-proclaimed experts is a powerful way to get out of our own way and get moving in the direction of coaching and career success.
Testing the “Who Says” Theory
Let’s put three common coaching “truisms” to the “Who Says” test and see how they hold up. These axioms we’re all familiar with often lodge fear-based ideas in our heads that keep us stuck in the limbo of ambivalence for weeks, months, and even years.
Recently, a coach shared she has been trying to do what she accomplished in three weeks for the past ten years, having felt stuck around the many early decisions that would have given loft to her vision of launching a solo practice.
Breaking down these mindsets, challenging them to the “Who Says?” test, and then checking in with yourself on what feels true for YOU may be just what you need to lean in to your coaching career more confidently.
I Need a Website or No One Will Be Able to Find Me
Fear-Based Rationale: Without a website, no one will be able to find you and learn about your services. You will lack the credibility that comes with a splashy website along with the ability to find and land new clients.
Who Says? Websites can be an excellent strategy for creating visibility, accessibility, and credibility for you and your coaching services.
On the flip side, the whole website thing is no longer a necessity (and may not even be your best strategy) with the comprehensive coaching platforms that are now available. These platforms not only showcase you and your credentials, but offer features like visibility, scheduling, HIPAA protected consult logging, and billing, to name a few. Keep in mind, a website is a hefty investment and carries an administrative load to maintain relevance, security, and functionality.
I had fun and felt a huge sense of accomplishment when I built and launched my website years ago. I’m not sure the initial and ongoing investment was worth it without really understanding and dedicating time to analyzing the back end, SEO, and all the rest. Now, working from Substack, which is a free platform, I literally taught myself how to get it up and running over a weekend and the analytics have been both easy to understand and informative from day one. Paired with a coaching platform, this will be a winning combination for me.
Self-Check In: Where is your energy and what are your available resources around building and maintaining a website? Are you a “creative” and would having a website be fun and challenging as well as supportive of your business strategy? How will you use it strategically after launch to monetize your business and capture ROI on the build out? If your primary earning potential is aligned with coaching sessions, is there a platform out there that allows you to get coaching faster and on a budget? What else comes to mind?
I Need to Identify My Niche Before I Move Forward
Fear-Based Rationale: If you serve everyone, you will serve no one. Having a clear niche and client avatar before you get started is necessary to identify where to find potential clients and reach them with a message that resonates.
Who Says? Yes! Finding and honing in on your niche can be an exciting moment that connects you with your true purpose. It can also help focus and refine your marketing efforts.
On the flip side, it can be argued that gaining clarity, confidence, and insight into a potential niche can’t be done from a conversation with ChatGPT or picking the brains of other coaches in social media chats. It has to be experienced. Why not boldly step into your identity as a health and wellness coach (maybe that’s the part holding you back . . . hmmm . . . ), and strike up intentional conversations with people around their wellness desires and struggles? This strategy will result in what author and podcaster, Cal Newport, calls “high quality feedback.” Instead of flimsy social media hearts, likes, and fist bumps, which offer little to no helpful insight into what your population really thinks and needs, you’ll begin to understand the markets on a deeper level, sharpen your coaching skills along the way, and ultimately, tune into feelings of flow or disconnect when coaching certain populations.
In my previous role as a training and development manager, I remember onboarding and training a coach to work in a busy manufacturing setting. After a couple of weeks on-site, she came back to me expressing frustration: “No one sticks to their program! I want to work with people who are READY to change.” We may chuckle at her gripe and say, “Well, that’s not meeting people where they are.” However, maybe that’s her niche—working with people who seek her out for a specific reason or goal. I have a seasoned NBC-HWC colleague who feels right at home with clients in that messy stage between denial and ambivalence, skillfully guiding them through what the authors of Changing to Thrive, Prochaska and Prochaska, call the 3 D’s: Don’t Know How, Demoralized, and Defensive. If I ever decide to address my coffee habit (which I’m NOT!) she’ll be my go-to coach.
Self-Check In: Is my niche defined “just enough” to get out there and begin engaging with people around my coaching offerings to capture useful feedback that helps me better understand and define my population? Who can I talk with (aside from fellow coaches who “get” coaching) to test, evaluate, and iterate on my message and niche. What else comes to mind?
It’s Too Late, I’m Too Old, the Market is Too Saturated with Unqualified Influencers
Fear-Based Rationale: Queue up all your post-coach training and certification insecurities and you have a valid bucket full of paralyzing doubts about why you thought becoming a health and wellbeing coach was a good idea. Standing out in this crowded, unregulated space and securing adequate compensation for your skills could take years—if it can happen at all.
Who Says? Recognizing internal and external struggles, opportunity and compensation gaps, and the amount of strategic work that still needs to be done to solidify health and wellbeing coaching as a legitimate, sustainable career path is important.
On the flip side, there is no better time to launch, pivot, or stake your claim—regardless of age, timeliness, and lack of an Instagram following—as a standout, qualified, board-certified, health and wellbeing coach! Coach training programs abound to align with your passion and purpose. All in one coaching platforms exist for you to set up and run your practice just like a digital health company. People and populations need skilled coaching more than ever. Most of all, you have a credential (if you are a NBC-HWC or working toward certification) that sets you apart from less skilled wellness influencers.
For the last several months, I’ve enjoyed talking with coaches in the very early stages of launching a solo practice. Without fail, they identify their biggest obstacle to getting started—as “getting started.” Once the brilliant ideas, swimming in their heads causing sleepless nights and anxious days, aerate in the supportive setting of an open conversation, they begin to see with more clarity and confidence the initial steps they can take to launch. Some have described it as “quieting the static of too many ideas,” “getting out of their own way,” or “moving from angst to joy.”
Self Check-In: What are your top three doubts and insecurities about embracing your identity and purpose as a health coach? What would it take to speak them out loud to a trusted colleague and play a game of “Who Says?” to call them out and expose their inaccuracies? If you were to “get out of your own way,” or “quiet the static of too many ideas,” what would that look like to simply start? What else comes to mind?
A Bias for Action
Using the “Who Says?” theory as you launch and grow your health coaching practice can help you adopt a bias for action—or the ability to make clear, decisive decisions without overthinking, overanalyzing, or overplanning.
Many digital health coaching companies operate on the premise move fast and break things knowing that snoozing means losing and most decisions are what I heard executive coach, author, and host of the podcast, From Start Up to Grown Up, Alisa Cohn, refer to as “two way doors.” Very few choices we make cannot be walked back, reversed, or simply thrown out in the evening trash with a healthy dose of self-compassion: “Well, that didn’t go as well as I planned. Note to self.”
Just because you don’t embrace social media as your first go to marketing strategy, doesn’t mean you can’t wake up one day and launch a Facebook page when, and if, it feels right for you.
Just because you don’t have a website up and running before engaging and marketing to people around your services, doesn’t mean you can’t launch one six months in after experimenting with other strategies or getting more clear on your niche and product.
Just because you start offering your services at one price point, doesn’t mean you can’t reevaluate and change your pricing after experimenting and receiving feedback on what the market will bear.
2025 Challenge: Bet On Yourself
As the health coaching field continues to find its footing and we individually and collectively soldier on with the hard work of helping people and organizations understand and value the skilled work we do, our biggest opportunity in this moment is to boldly bet on ourselves to be the solution.
It may be, as our friend Mel says, a long game to achieve the dream of building a thriving coaching practice—but I’m here to say it isn’t a long shot.
Playing an empowering game of “Who Says?” with the limiting beliefs holding you back from the starting line is the surest way I know to lean in to your coaching success.
This Week’s “Lean In” Prompt
Take out a piece of paper or your coaching journal and work through one or more of these “truisms.” Maybe you have a few of your own to explore?
What are the fear-based ideas that keep you stuck?
Challenge them on paper or in a conversation with a friend with the question, “Who Says?”
Check-in with yourself to identify what feels true and authentic for you?
Consider how you can adopt a “bias for action” to simply get started. Ask, “Is this a two way door?” Recognize the many ways you can iterate or change your mind based on what you learn as you go.
Let’s Discuss! It would be fun to collect a list of all the “truisms” and self-limiting beliefs that hold us back from launching our coaching careers. Comment below if you have one I have not thought of, then let’s have fun challenging them to the “Who Says?” test!
February 2025 Offerings: How Can I Help?
I continue to enjoy offering support for NBC-HWCs (or those seeking to earn their certification) through my “Coaches Corner.” These are 30-minute sessions, PRO BONO, where we can collaborate around any topic. Here are just a few ideas on how I can help:
Be your sounding board for the “Who Says?” exercise.
Receive support for your coaching practice, including how to get started.
Clarifying your vision, process, or productivity muscle.
Gaining confidence and clarity around how you introduce yourself and share your coaching offerings with your population.
Coaching skill conundrums or other questions around your coaching sessions.
Anything else! It helps to not feel like you are going it alone.
What coaches tell about how their session helped:
It helped me get rid of the static and focus on what I need to do to “launch.”
I feel more confident around my pricing and the value I am bringing.
This was a real confidence boost!
I was feeling frozen all week and now I feel like I have clear, doable steps in mind.
Various 30-minute time slots available on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays in February. Just click the link and book. It’s that easy.
https://calendly.com/megcoaching/february-coaches-corner
The “Never Apologize for Promoting Your Coaching Work” Section
I hope your 2025 is off to a running start. As always, thank you for visiting and reading this week. My aim is to share ideas, stories, and information that provides value in a way that nudges your coaching and the field of health coaching forward.
If this has been helpful, please spread the word! Use the buttons below to subscribe (if you are new) and share Lean In To Coaching with your colleagues so we can work together to strengthen our professional field, evidence-supported skillset, and career opportunities!
Onward!
Meg
Meg, your perspective is incredibly timely and relevant for me right now. Promoting a business is a difficult endeavor, and I am so appreciative of your constructive ideas and "Who Says?" theory! Love it. Thanks for sharing so openly in support of your fellow coaches.
Love this post, Meg! Thank you for the thought provoking and encouraging read!!