432-Where to Start When You Don’t Feel Ready to Coach

It’s Beyond The Food Podcast Episode 432

How Do I Start Coaching When I Don’t Feel Ready?

Start by redefining what coaching really is—it’s not about having all the answers, but about helping clients find their own. Build your readiness by taking small, consistent actions, coaching for free, getting trained in a solid framework, and shifting your mindset using tools like thought ladders. Confidence comes from doing, not waiting.

[00:00:00] Welcome to It’s Beyond The Food Podcast. I’m your host, Stephanie Dodier, clinical nutritionist and founder of the Non Diet Coaching Certification, and today’s episode is for anyone who’s been tossing around the idea of becoming a coach or perhaps feeling hesitant. Because they think, quote, I’m not ready yet.

[00:00:22] I want this episode to be for people aspiring changes in their life. And that change is introducing coaching in their business, becoming a coach. Transitioning your business from perhaps a business that’s focused on weight loss to a weight neutral business. I wanna give you a first clear process on how you can build your skillset and your confidence right now without having to wait to be ready.[00:01:00]

[00:01:00] So if this is you or someone that you know, send this episode to, and let’s dig right into this. I’ve formatted this episode to be a resource to be useful for you at any point in your career when you’re looking for changes. So you’re gonna, at the beginning we’re gonna talk about what coaching is, because I believe that’s one of the.

[00:01:28] Main reason why people feel not ready. And also this notion that at some point we’re gonna feel ready when it’s time to like do the thing. And then I’m gonna give you like a six step process of what you can do and some tools and resources that we’re gonna place in the show notes. Let’s get started on understanding this idea that I don’t feel ready.

[00:01:57] I’m not ready yet, and it comes [00:02:00] into various. Thoughts in my experience and my niche and my feel of me mentoring professional, it can sound like, yeah, the classic, I don’t feel ready. I’m not ready. But it’s also will sound like I don’t know if I am good enough. I don’t know if I am qualified enough. I’m not ready yet to take on quote real client.

[00:02:27] I feel unsure. I am not certain that this will be successful. I don’t wanna harm people, so might as well not do anything until I feel sure that I’m not gonna create a harmful situation. Like it can come in many different circumstance and I wanna acknowledge all of it. It is normal when you have these thoughts.

[00:02:56] To feel not ready or [00:03:00] uncertain, to have doubts, to feel like an imposter and to feel hesitant, resistant to take action in your business when you have these thoughts. Now, one of the reason why. I often find people, like when I start coaching with them and we start digging into why they’re having , these thoughts, it often comes because there’s a lack of understanding of what coaching is, lack of clarity, or often a misunderstanding.

[00:03:37] one of the definition of coaching that I. Really value is this one. Let me me read that to you. Word for word coaching is partnering with a client in a thought provoking and creative process so that your client [00:04:00] can be inspired to take action and maximize their potential towards their goal. The big misunderstanding is that people believe that being a coach means knowing the solution means owning the knowledge, owning the solution, and the process of coaching is about. Partaking this knowing with the client, telling them what to do so that they can achieve their goal. But that’s not what it is.

[00:04:35] And in fact, when you think that coaching is you knowing, it puts a lot of pressure and responsibility. In you as the leader of the relationship as a coach, to be perfect because you have this vast amount of secret knowledge that people will pay you for, and all of a sudden, [00:05:00] all their problem when become solved and they will achieve their goal when in fact coaching is about.

[00:05:06] Leading people to find the solution within them. It’s not about having the solution for them at all. It’s about you leading your client to find the solution that will make their goal a reality and helping them access it.

[00:05:24] This is particularly relevant in our field of a weight neutral health because. We have been trained in many, many cases of my student, they’ve been professionally trained. They went to school. They have a degree on how to proficiently, quote, help people lose weight, and now all sudden they don’t wanna do that because they don’t believe in that anymore.

[00:05:46] Because after years of practice they see that it’s not really working and they wanna do something else. But they’re afraid of doing harm because they’re afraid of doing harm because they’re doing it differently. [00:06:00] So not having a method, which is different than a coaching process by the way, and I’ll get into that in just a bit.

[00:06:08] Not having a method to help achieve your client’s goal without providing a meal plan and a weight loss creates a lot of uncertainty and creates a lot of thoughts that will lead you to feel stuck. The other big misunderstanding is about this idea that you will at some point when you’ve accumulated enough knowledge, enough, I don’t know, experience enough wisdom that you will wake up one day and that feeling of readiness.

[00:06:45] If you’re watching me on YouTube, like I’m washing myself over my head, like this feeling of readiness will just. Wash over you. It will come when the infinite wisdom of [00:07:00] the universe will have determined that you know enough that you’re perfect enough, you will wake up and it will have washed all over you.

[00:07:08] And then boom, you will be ready and confident to take on this transition to, , start a new career, to learn coaching, to introduce coaching. Like that confidence somehow magically. Will come. But here’s the thing. When you have this misunderstanding of readiness and how we create readiness, that readiness actually never comes.

[00:07:35] And if you’re, experience and working with people, you’re like, yeah, that’s why clients come to me because like what they’ve been waiting for doesn’t come. It’s the same thing for me, right? When people say, I’m not ready. I don’t feel ready. People come to me because they feel stuck.

[00:07:53] It’s because they’ve been waiting for readiness to just wash over them. But it’s a [00:08:00] misunderstanding, readiness, confidence to become a coach, to transition your business to coaching is created by doing. Hear me out on this and I’m gonna repeat it again. Readiness confidence is created. It doesn’t wash all over us.

[00:08:22] It’s something that we build, that we create by taking action by doing. And it’s something that literally we build from. Like if you, on a scale of zero to 10, you build from zero to 10. Gradually by taking action consistently over and over again, you build your capacity to feel ready and to feel confident.

[00:08:50] And when we have these two misunderstanding, what. Coaching truly is, and how we. Feel ready and confident when we [00:09:00] have these two misunderstanding within us, that leads us to having all kinds of coping behavior, like perfectionism, Taking training over training, or trying and trying to do things perfectly.

[00:09:16] Black and white thinking, where you have to be certifiable excellent at coaching before you start helping others, and these coping behavior is what reinforced the belief in you. That’s the trap, that you are not ready because you keep trying to achieve perfection, which doesn’t exist, You’re trying to achieve feeling ready. By not taking action, by actually just intellectualizing coaching and not actually practicing with humans. So these coping behavior, keep reinforcing the belief. You keep creating the evidence that you’re not ready. [00:10:00] So how do we break through? This cycle, this model of like coping behavior and feeling not ready is what we call in cognitive behavior coaching, the unintentional model, the self perpetuating cycle of thoughts that create the reality. You don’t want to have, you don’t wanna feel not ready, you don’t wanna feel. Uncertain, but for some unknown reason that , you haven’t figured out yet.

[00:10:34] You keep feeling this way, but you don’t want to. And what perpetuate this undesirable reality is your thought pattern. So the solution to break through the cycle. Is to actually change the way you think about coaching, about transitioning your business, about whatever change you wanna make in your life.

[00:10:58] You have to [00:11:00] change your belief and your thoughts about that transition, that change that newness, so that. You can feel differently and start taking action. So I’m gonna walk you through this. Six step process that I just put together for us here. . So step number one on how we break the cycle of not feeling ready, confident, a certain of making a transition.

[00:11:27] Number one, we get clear. On, in our case here, what coaching is, ? We either, and I’m gonna say that in step number two, I think go get some training on actual what coaching is and how do we facilitate coaching or we redefine coaching, Again, coaching is not about knowing everything. It’s about knowing how to hold space for your client so that they can create [00:12:00] change.

[00:12:00] And coaching, by the way, is a skill that we use. Combine with another expertise, like people don’t buy coaching. People buy coaching for achieving a goal. They’ll buy. My nephew right now is trying to go in the field of professional hockey playing. I’m Canadian by the way, so if you’re Canadian, you know, our number one sport is hockey.

[00:12:33] So he’s 17-year-old and he wants to make it to the professional level to earn a living playing hockey. So he hired. Different coaches for different goals that he had. He hired a strength coach, so a coach that built a program for him in the gym that showed him how to do certain exercise that follows his progress.

[00:12:55] That goes through a plan to build a strength. Then [00:13:00] he also has a mental. Coach, but they call that in the field of sport preparation coach, mental preparation coach, to help him build the mindset to create the relentless practice of hockey so he can become a professional. So each one of those coaches has an expertise, one has an expertise in kinesiology, one has an expertise in,, I think it’s called sports psychology.

[00:13:29] And they have an expertise. What is your expertise and coaching will come on top of this expertise to facilitate a faster. More efficient result for your clients? So coaching is not a product in itself that we sell. It’s a process that facilitate better results for our client. And I’m gonna give you more example here, specifically in the current cohort, [00:14:00] core 12 of the non diet coaching certification that I’m currently hosting, recording this in August of 2025.

[00:14:08] . . In the non diet coaching certification, cohort 12, right now we have an herbalist, we have dieticians, we have health coaches, we have a fitness trainer, and we have a psychotherapists, that own and expertise in the skillset.

[00:14:28] And then they’ve come to us to learn three very specific processes. Which are a process to help their client eat peacefully without restriction. That process is called intuitive eating. We have a process that’s called body neutrality that helps very specifically women. Move from body dissatisfaction to body respect.

[00:14:55] ’cause all of, these coaches and dietician that we work with, all specialize with [00:15:00] women. And then we have a process that’s called health promoting behavior that specifically help people build health behavior without. Weight loss. So they’re learning these three process or specializing. Some of them have one of those two process already in their portfolio, but they’re learning how to facilitate it more efficiently.

[00:15:22] And then they’re learning to facilitate intuitive eating, body image, weight, neutral health through cognitive behavior coaching. But they’re not gonna go out there in the world and build a business on cognitive behavior coaching. ? Some of you may be familiar with motivational interview. They’re not gonna build a business on purchase motivational interview coaching.

[00:15:49] Cognitive behavior coaching is a process that helped facilitate other process. So get clear on what coaching is. And [00:16:00] get clear on what your expertise is, your processes that are gonna become your product. Step number two, define your why This is so important because understanding your why is gonna be like adding gasoline to the fire to fuel.

[00:16:23] The next few years of building your business or transitioning your business, or going through this period of learning, why do you want to become a coach and your expertise and your niche? Why do you wanna layer in coaching? So when you do feel uncertain, not ready, you’ll be able to lean back into your powerful why.

[00:16:49] And motivate yourself to keep moving forward. I have provided in the show notes. Some self-discovery question [00:17:00] to help you find this. Why? Normally, this is what I do in coaching, I ask coaching question to help people find their why, and since this is a podcast, and I’m just talking to my mic right now, I don’t have you in front of me, I thought that would be really helpful for you to have access to pre-formulated question that you can start using to discover your why.

[00:17:23] So they’re in the show notes. So either in the app that you’re listening to, this podcast or on our website, you will be able to find these questions. Step number three, get training. Get training and coaching because. Most people think they know how to coach because they believe that coaching is about telling people what to do, which is not.

[00:17:48] It’s about helping people find the solution, the answer within them. So learn a framework. So if you don’t have a framework for coaching right now, it is completely normal that you [00:18:00] feel like you’re winging it and you’re not ready. We teach cognitive behavior coaching, but there’s motivational interview.

[00:18:07] There’s also an lp. There’s different modality you can learn and then get clear. On the problem you solve, that you’re gonna go out there and sell to people and make sure you have the process to solve that problem. So get training in either the process or the coaching framework, and then the next step is take action.

[00:18:31] Start coaching, start solving people’s problem, coach for free. I coach for free for potentially, if my memory serves me right. I coach for free for like a year, six months prior to me enrolling in my nutrition degree and the first six months of doing my nutrition degree, all of that time was spent coaching for free.

[00:18:56] And I don’t think I would be where I am today if I [00:19:00] didn’t do that. So coach for free. When you’re wanting to launch a new part of your business and you and transition your business and you feel uncertain, start coaching for free. Go to former client, offer them to work with you in this new methodology.

[00:19:17] Put a post on Facebook inviting people to work with you for a number of work months of session so that you can actually practice with people. We threw that in the non diet coaching certification. We call that peer coaching. And interestingly enough, we just made the announcement yesterday to our current, cohort that peer coaching will be starting in a month from now. So we spend the first two months of the certification learning the coaching skills, learning one of the process that’s called intuitive eating, and now we’re going to. Peer people together and that are going to have a client, and they’re gonna be the client of a different coach, and then [00:20:00] they’re gonna start practicing within a supervised environment, which is the other piece about starting to take action and coaching.

[00:20:09] As you start building up this new part of your business or this new career, be in a supervised environment where you can. Ask question, put situation that people bring up to you to a more expert level coach. In this case, I’m the supervisor that we can have a conversation from a coach that’s learning to a more experienced coach on how to handle different situation, what kind of coaching question you can ask, how to handle like a client that’s starting to cry.

[00:20:44] We did that yesterday in the office hour, one of the. Dietician had a client , who came into her session from the moment she opened Zoom and it started crying. What do you do with that? Put yourself in a mentorship, supervised environment where you can [00:21:00] ask questions. Practice in what I call a safe environment.

[00:21:05] Step number five. Now , you’re taking action. You understand what coaching is. You know how to practice as you have a process. Stop waiting. Stop waiting for that feeling of being ready to come upon you and go out there and create it. Created it by changing the way you think. So I’m gonna show two tools on this ’cause these are obviously.

[00:21:33] Coaching tools. So I’m gonna share two tools that we teach inside of the non diet coaching certification to help you change the way you think about your situation. And again, it can be any situation, changing career, starting to coach, transitioning your business. I don’t care what it is, can even use that for body image.

[00:21:53] That’s the same process by the way we teach em body neutrality. The first one is called a thought ladder. Yeah, [00:22:00] that tool was actually something that I learned from my coach who taught me coaching. And I’m passing it on to you. A thought matter is a way of escalating a belief by recognizing how your nervous system is reacting to that.

[00:22:18] Higher level of belief. We escalate the level of belief from outside of you to inside of you. So for an example, if you wanna build the belief that you are a great coach, you wanna start by believing that it’s possible for you in the future to become a great coach. Just acknowledging that you’re not ready right now.

[00:22:41] You’re not a great coach. But it is possible for you. So sound like something like it’s possible for me to be a great coach in the far future, and then once that feels neutral, then you can escalate to, I’m learning the skills to a great coach, and [00:23:00] then you bring it even closer. I am practicing becoming a great coach.

[00:23:05] The next level I’m becoming. A great coach. And then the final place on your ladder is I am a great coach. by adding these thought starter. You are laddering the belief and you’re making it safe on your nervous system to go along with this new belief. So at every step of the ladder, as you’re practicing this new belief, you also need to take action.

[00:23:33] Because remember, readiness and confidence is built. So at every step of that ladder, of that belief level, you take small action. You take small action. Like example for me, I was coaching for free. Then the next level up, as I became more confident, I’m learning the skillset I’m becoming, I started to charge clients and so this is [00:24:00] back, I’m gonna give you my pricing.

[00:24:02] So it would’ve been 2025, so probably would’ve been 2014. I was charging $497 for three months of coaching for 12 weekly session. I was charging 4 97. And then as I build this confidence, I’m becoming a great coach. I started to increase my price. Then it went to 6 97, then it went to 9 97. I kept increasing as my belief level expended, but I didn’t wait for the belief level to be.

[00:24:34] I’m a great coach. I started at the very bottom. And I took action that felt a little bit challenging, but not devastatingly scary, just a little bit challenging, and I took action while I felt uncertain and not ready. In the show note, I’m also going to put some, what I call powerful question [00:25:00] that you can use to reflect and build a belief.

[00:25:04] , This is what we call building the belief through powerful question. That’s another tool we have in the non-diet coaching certification. So I’ve formulated some very specific question that you can use again in the show note. And the last step of starting when you feel not ready is to commit to consistent effort.

[00:25:26] Remember when I was talking about the thought ladder and moving up in belief level, that’s gonna take time. It can take six weeks, it could take six months. It could take six years. That’s why you never quit your day job before you actually have a revenue in your business. But that’s a different podcast.

[00:25:46] Commit to consistent effort. Confidence is created by doing so. Learn the skillset. Learn the business skillset. Learn how to sell coaching. Learn how to deliver coaching. Commit to consistently taking effort [00:26:00] without a timeline. Just take effort and keep creating your readiness and your confidence in your building.

[00:26:08] And there will be up and there will be down, and that is totally normal. So if you wanna learn how to coach, you wanna learn how to transition your business to a weight neutral approach. If you wanna learn how to provide weight neutral health coaching in a process and how to facilitate cognitive behavior coaching, that’s what the non diet coaching, certification was created.

[00:26:33] That’s what we teach you to do. We teach you first through a laddering process, how to facilitate that for yourself. Then we gradually go out there, facilitate that in a supervised period environment, and then you go out there and build the business for that. If you’re listening to this episode in a timeline, the next cohort cohort thirteen will be starting in October, 2025.

[00:26:57] And if you’re listening to this [00:27:00] pass. October, 2025. Register anyway for the waitlist, we will send you an email with the next cohort date for whenever you’re listening to this episode. So, a reminder as I’m wrapping up this episode, not feeling ready doesn’t mean that you’re not ready.

[00:27:18] It just means that you’re about to take action and you are about to create the reality that you are ready. Don’t think it’s a sign that you shouldn’t take action to actually a sign that you are in the process of taking action. I love you, my sister, and I’ll see you in the next episode.

[00:27:43] wanna coach behaviors, not bodies. Learn the mindset tool and the method that create real changes.

[00:27:51] Join the wait list for the next cohort of the non diet coaching [email protected] slash waitlist. [00:28:00] That’s where the real training begins, and I’ll see you on the other side, my sisters.