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Did you know that 72% of all small business owners struggle with feeling overwhelmed? It is common to feel overwhelmed at times with our lives with the constant pressure to meet the daily demands of being business owner are trying to balance client fulfillment and income generation while even potentially raising a family. 

In today’s business world, many people are expected to give overwhelmingly more than they’ve ever had before. Many factors contribute to this over-flexibility in your time and energy, but the most prominent one is the expectation that you must be “on” all the time.

It’s easy for anyone to fall into a state of overwhelm but it doesn’t have to be that way. Are you ready to transition from burn out to a more balanced, supported, and profitable coaches and consultants? Do you want to get off the struggle bus and become an empowered CEO of your high ticket business and your life? Let’s address these issues right away. 

What Causes Overwhelm for Coaches and Consultants?

For coaches and consultants, overwhelm comes from stress and anxiety. It is typically caused by looking at the laundry list of the tasks with seemingly no end in sight. There is just not enough time in a day to do everything that we want to do. So how do others do it? Remember, we all have the same 24 hours every day so let’s identify the causes of overwhelm.

#1 Cause of Overwhelm is a Lack of Focus and Prioritization.

Overwhelm causes us to worry about the future. When your mind spirals into a black hole of stress, it can paralyze you as the CEO. However, Rome wasn’t built in a day and we simply can not do it all alone, all at once. There is no point in hurting your well being and the recovery will cost much more time and resources. You need to be more mindful/aware of your thoughts and be intentional with your time and focus. Stop focusing on ‘Get it all done” because no sooner than you check items off, more will begin to fill up the list. Your mindset is really important in how you view what you have to do.

I love working with entrepreneurs in the coaching and consulting world. They are some of the most passionate and innovative people in our world. They want to make improvements, whether to make things easier, better, faster, etc and I love the positive energy they have.

On the other hand, that innovative streak can also be overwhelmingly distracting, especially when it comes to new strategies and technologies. They are so open minded that they quickly abandon ship from one to another.

Although the new tactics are often overwhelmingly full with promises of being “the next best thing for you to get what you want’, they are just new and distracting. 

I can tell you countless stories of then overwhelmed coaches and consultants who derailed their trajectory for success by jumping ship to implement something new. One advice I can share with you as a coach or advisor for my clients is to teach them my system for consistent scalable success and also to help them to ignore anything that will pull them away from their ultimate vision. 

“With focus and simplicity you can move mountains.” – Steve Jobs. This is the quote I use as a guide whenever I am considering any strategy for my business and for my clients. Ask yourself, is the tactic you are considering adding simple, is it focused or is it just a distraction that will lead to overwhelm?

#2 Cause of Overwhelm is Too Much Complexity

The overwhelming complexity added to our business means the more parts we have to manage. To battle that, we have to create a stronger system and process, more on that later.

There was a time when I had dozens of funnels, tons of courses, and multiple offers. This complexity caused an overwhelming amount of stress. One of the best things I ever did is to delete all my funnels, pull my courses from the shelves and start from a blank slate with the goal of scaling up. I had built my business too fast with too much complexity. I followed all the internet marketing gurus and put out dozens of products with the thought of making more money but it wasn’t a scalable nor sustainable strategy. 

I flipped my coaching business model on its head and took a top down approach to my marketing. I started with a high ticket offer and later back built the lower offers. I focused on one next level strategy to get my clients massive results instead of the small wins and started selling huge transformations. The result? Just 6 weeks after launching the “one focused offer and strategy”, I generated a quarter million dollars. 

We can manage and reduce overwhelm by utilizing simplicity. Many coaches and consultants hire me in a state of overwhelm. Similar to me, they had too many offers with too much complexity. This stalls their growth because they becomet the bottleneck. They can no longer do more to make more. My client Michele, a business coach and strategist for the interior design industry had 7 different offers. She tried nearly every marketing tactic and was still stagnant at $300k for 3 years.

My program, Expert Accelerator for coaches and consultants transformed her business model into one simple, focused, and ultra high ticket coaching package. The result?

She 4x’d her income and scaling to 7 figures in one year during COVID when everything came to a halt. Instead of being overwhelmed her business exploded. She then repeated these results just 9 months later. Read more about the exact steps we took to scale her coaching business quickly to 7 figures, 7 figures, download her 20 page case study here.

#3 Cause of Overwhelm is The Lack of System

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems,” was written by James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits.

So many coaches and consultants came to me being overwhelmed and stuck with little to no systems in place. Many have made multiple six figures from the combo of great referrals or opportunities by chance, but this is not sustainable nor repeatable. There is no predictability, consistency or scalability in their business. They cannot further grow their business without the right systems in place. 

I teach 5 essential systems to scale an ultra high ticket coaching or consulting service based business. The order of these systems is essential to coaches and consultants’ success as each one builds upon one another. I cover these systems and more in my video on Brand Positioning Strategy: Become #1 In Your Niche 

The 4th system in my method to battle overwhelm is to focus on getting the right systems and team in place. This is everything from marketing to support systems which creates visibility for coaches and consultants. This generate excitement and demand for their services. It also covers the sales systems by creating expert positioning, selling five and six figure deals seamlessly and building delivery systems to ensure all your clients will have a high touch experience so that you can easily get your clients successful results.

All of the above are necessary to not only generate leads but close deals and fulfill your commitments. Many coaches and consultants only focus on lead gen systems or acquisition of new clients and that’s why many of them implode when they hit the 7 figures. 

The entire infrastructure of the business needs to be rebuilt to support scalability, avoid overwhelm, and set you up for sustainable success.

#4 Cause of Overwhelm is Constantly Launching

The strategy of constantly launching new products/programs is another common cause of overwhelm for coaches and consultants. The new programs often come from the same materials just recreated or re-marketed in a different way. This constant push to generate revenue is exhausting because of the constant selling and it will also burn your audience out. Even if the launch strategy is dialed in like I did, it still is overwhelmingly exhausting. Once I defined my next level offer/strategy, I didn’t launch for years but I made more than I ever have.

I believe launching is important especially after clients come to me to transform their positioning and move into an expert category. This is also applicable when they are going after a new market with a new program. In these cases, launching is necessary and my program teaches people how to do this effectively. 

Based on my experience, once you have a focused, simplified ultra high ticket package and you have built expert authority, you don’t need to constantly launch. It’s something that can be done sparingly.

#5 Cause of Overwhelm is Lack of Support and team

Another key cause of overwhelm is not having the right supporting team in place. One of the biggest mistakes that coaches and consultants make is to focus on business support without adding what I call “life support.” Word of caution though, you shouldn’t try to add everything all at once. It is important to fill in the gaps where it will be the most supportive for you.

Having someone to support the marketing/lead gen is usually one of the first hires for your business. 

This hire should help pay for themselves. Next comes a client success person to support delivery and an operations person to manage projects and streamline systems and processes. Of course this comes after generating the needed cash flow then adding team members strategically to scale. 

Many of my clients are parents. I personally built my business as a single mom raising my daughter on my own. There are overwhelming challenges that come with being a parent and building a business. It is essential for coaches and consultants to have dedicated time to work on your business.

If there is a partner who can support you and keep the overwhelm at bay is wonderful but you can also invest in childcare to help as well. This could be someone to babysit so you can have a night out. It could even be someone who supports you as transportation for your kids to and from school and maybe to watch them for a few hours. 

Home duties can also eat up an overwhelm amount of your free time. This is where you need to choose between working on your coaching and consulting business or relaxing and enjoying life by spending quality time with your family. There are things you can outsource so you have more time. Tasks such as cleaning your house, doing laundry, light tidying, meal prep or even cooking full meals, running errands and more.

Your first step to battle that overwhelm is to look at your to-do list. Then ask yourself, what are the things you don’t really enjoy that you would love to delegate. It’s surprisingly inexpensive to hire and delegate especially when you weigh what that person will give you back in terms of time and quality of life.

#6 Cause of Overwhelm is Over Scheduling and Over-commitment

Another common cause of overwhelm for coaches and consultants is the inability to prioritize your schedule. Many of us are high achievers and we are accustomed to fill every free moment with work activities. Coaches and consultants overschedule and create stress. This will eclipse the time to be present, to dream and to envision success. These are essential to drive the coaching and consulting business forward. 

You cannot pour from an empty cup and if you don’t block off time in your calendar, work will quickly fill it up. It’s important to balance your time with space to be creative, time to exercise and workout, to do a quick meditation and to have an actual meal away from your desk. 

Time blocking to battle overwhelm is essential because as we have already discussed, there will always be more work to do.

Once you learn to address the problems in your business and life, the rest will fall into place. Developing strategies to overcome overwhelm as a coach and consultant can be difficult, but if you know how to do it, then you’ll end up feeling better about yourself and have a more balanced and happier life.

How to Deal With Being Easily Overwhelmed as Coaches and Consultants

Here are a couple of tips for dealing with overwhelm as coaches and consultants

Pay attention to how you’re thinking about things when you’re feeling overwhelmed. When we feel stuck in a situation where our problems are being compounded, we have to take a step back and analyze our thinking patterns. Your unconscious mind is what controls your feelings at times, so we have to keep an eye on how we’re thinking and feeling when things get out of hand.

Get more organized using systems and processes. If you find yourself easily overwhelmed while you’re working, it might be because you have not found a routine that works for you. Everyone’s day and work are different, so it’s important that you figure out a routine that works for you.

Build your trusted team. It’s important to know who you can trust in the business world and in your personal life to help you get through tough situations. When you’re overwhelmed, don’t be afraid to reach out and ask for help from those who have experience in this type of situation or a professional with a proven track record.

Prevent overwhelm by reviewing your calendar every week and make adjustments whenever you are already overextended. Do this to avoid being exhausted by the weekend. Block out time for important activities that are going to refuel you. Take control of scheduling client related activities. 

I have dedicated days where I do client calls, take every Friday off and have no scheduled calls in the last week of the month, with very few exceptions. I also dedicated time to take vacations or do a lot of my creative work during that time. 

Remember that you don’t have to be a victim to your schedule, you can create your schedule to reduce overwhelm. 

What steps have you taken to reduce or avoid overwhelm? Book a call with me to discuss how I can help you do that and be sustainably successful.