A Guide to Investing in Your Coaching Business for Introverts, HSPs & Neurodivergents

Top questions to ask yourself BEFORE you buy coaching

As coaches, we receive lots of sales messages saying that in the first year or two, you should expect to spend most of your coaching income on coaching for you! This might include personal coaching, business coaching, masterminds, programs to build a website and a funnel, Facebook ad campaigns, additional coaching certifications, and the list goes on and on.

I’ve been investing heavily in self-development and coaching since 2016 and have spent nearly $100k. I’ve been through funnels, programs, and trainings galore. I’ve invested to “get the result” and seen what happens on the other side - for myself and for my growing network of colleagues.

TLDR; What is sold to you is not necessarily what you’ll get AND your results depend greatly on who you already are.

With this in mind, I’ve put together a Guide to Investing in Business Coaching for introverts, HSPs, empaths & neurodivergents to help you see through the veil of persuasive marketing and make choices that feel good in your body.

Real quick, here’s my background:
I’m an introverted Human Design Projector who struggles with anxiety, depression, and confidence. I have ADD symptoms, work hard to stay focused, and get easily exhausted. I’ve been the primary breadwinner most of the time and have worked for myself my whole adult life. I’m a middle-class, white cisgender American woman, married with no kids. I’m multi-passionate and value authenticity, groundedness, and connection.

Questions to Ask Yourself Before Spending Lots of Money on a Business Coaching Program

I want to preface this by saying that investing in business coaching can definitely be worth it. Learning new skills and expanding how you see yourself are fundamental for growth and success. But the lack of transparency and accountability combined with inflated pricing can make investing in business coaching confusing, costly and frustrating.

So let’s equip you to make empowering decisions that feel good in your body!

Does this program support the needs of people like me?

If you identify as an introvert, HSP, Human Design Projector or Reflector… if you have ADHD, Autism or otherwise identify as neurodivergent… if you live life intuitively... if your nervous system tends to feel overwhelmed or needs to retreat to quiet often... if you're BIPOC, if you're LGBTQ+... if you’re dealing with big life circumstances of loss and uncertainty, if you’re struggling to meet your basic needs, if you’re managing a lot of anxiety or depression…it's essential to bring this into your decision making process.

Will this program speak to you and provide structure and support to ensure that you succeed?

Most programs teach you techniques and provide a space to work on the topics. They don’t provide safety, nervous system regulation, trauma-informed approaches, accessible learning, etc. They don’t actually address mental health or racism unless it’s built into the program.

If you believe such things are vital to your success, then seek out programs that explicitly provide such support (or get it somewhere else). Beware of people simply saying “yes, I support that” without having the experience, structure, or training to back it up. Double-check that the program has supported folx like you before - AND that they’ve been successful in getting the promised outcome.

What is actually enticing me to invest in this program?

Separate out the facts of the program (what you learn & how you’re supported) from the rosy picture they sell you. Persuasive selling works by identifying your deep desires and promising that you can fulfill them if you just buy the thing. Their thing is always THE answer.

Persuasive selling is very, VERY effective but once you see through it, you break the magic spell and can make more empowering, aligned decisions.

If I had done this, I’m sure I wouldn’t have invested so much money, saving myself thousands of dollars, a ton of anguish, and maybe even investing more in healing and therapy which would actually help me even more in my business.

Common tactics of persuasive selling include urgency, scarcity, and playing to your pain points. I’ll talk more about these as we go.

If I take my time to decide, will I still want it?

There is an idea in the coaching sales world that you have to seize the moment and buy now… otherwise, old patterns of fear and doubt take over.

I get this. You don’t want your fears to continue holding you back. HOWEVER, those patterns aren’t all bullshit.

Your hesitance to throw down thousands on a business coaching program can ALSO come from a wise place. There might be good, valid reasons to not move forward. Maybe the financial strain would be too much for your nervous system to manage, and you’d be constantly worried and anxious, setting yourself up for a low success rate. Or maybe you’re moving to a new city and just don’t have the energy to be present and productive so that you get the results you seek.

These are VALID reasons not to buy.

It comes back to knowing and honoring yourself. It’s ok to take your time to decide.

Sleep on it. Trust that if you decide not to move forward now, that you WILL move forward when you’re ready - whether or not it’s with the program you’re considering now.

If I removed the FOMO, would I still want it now?

Watch out for the fear of missing out influencing your decision-making. It’s a persuasive sales tool that creates a false logic in your brain that if you don’t buy this particular product, you won’t get the result you want.

My friend, there are 1,000,001 coaching products, programs, and masterminds out there.
And there are many, many methods to support you on your journey.

The result you seek, whether it’s increasing your confidence or making money in your coaching business, won’t depend on a single coach or technique.

So, take a deep breath, and allow yourself to settle into a sense of knowing that there will always be enough, with or without the program you’re deciding on now.

If I removed the urgency, would I still want it?

Urgency is a persuasive sales tool that creates stress in order to get you to buy. It might be a countdown timer, an early bird discount, a barrage of “last call” emails that pressure you to make a decision right now.

It often depends on scarcity/FOMO - “if you don’t get this now, you’ll miss out”.

The real question is “Is this truly the right time for me to invest in this program and take the actions that it will require of me?”

It’s ok to SLOW down your purchasing.

This isn’t the same as putting off the decision.
It’s deciding it’s a NO right now.

AND that maybe it will be a yes later.

Do I have a deep understanding of this product and what I’m actually buying?

Do your research. This will help ground your decision in facts instead of emotion and dreamy outcomes.

Sales pages will describe the benefits of the coaching program in relation to your problems and pain points. It will always say that it has the solution to them. If you just buy the thing, you'll solve your problem. But does it really? (What actually are your "problems" anyways??)

Look beyond the sales speak and identify the components and experience you're buying.

Try to answer questions like:

• What will I actually learn? (And do I need to learn this topic from this person for this price?)
• How much time will it take each week to be successful?
• What teaching tools are used? (Do I learn well this way?)
• How does it provide structure or accountability? (Is it what I need to succeed?)
• What is the value of the connections I’ll make?

Make a list of questions and get the answers from the program people. Your questions might include:

• How do you support folx with anxiety, ADHD, introvertedness, etc?
• What is the profile of a successful student? Of an unsuccessful student?
• What is the typical result of an average student?
• What if I’m struggling or not getting the results I want at the halfway point? At the end point?
• What is the actual content I will learn?
• What is the role of student feedback in your process? How do you request it? (this will tell you a lot about whether they build their programs from THEIR own experience or from the actual experiences of their students).
• How do you price your program? (I’ve haven’t asked this specifically yet but I know that a lot of folx would answer “by value”....read more below)
• What are your values?

Reach out to past participants and try to get an honest, behind-the-scenes look at the program. Try to get the perspective of someone who identifies similarly as you. Here are some possible questions to ask:

• How did the program live up to what was sold?
• What kind of results did you get? Did others get?
• Did you see anyone like me in there? What do you think their experience was like?
• What do you wish you had known beforehand?

Am I purchasing for the “value” or for the actual content?

The #1 reason that makes a business coaching program expensive is that it’s being priced for the POTENTIAL value the student MIGHT receive EVENTUALLY.

• It’s not priced for the content.
• Not for what you learn.
• Not for the time spent on calls or that the coach spent creating the material.
• Not for the coaching and accountability.

But for some potential future gain… that isn’t guaranteed.

If the program is a perfect fit for your personality, mental health, nervous system resilience, stage of business, and values then your chances are good that you’ll get a out of it.

Do my values align?

If nothing else, ask yourself this question.

Looking back on my past investments, I can clearly see a correlation between values and my “success”. The more I shared similar values with the coach behind the program and the guidance they offered, the more easeful it felt to follow their guidance and teachings, which led to better outcomes.

Values deeply inform the teaching and techniques.

Someone who values assertiveness & planning will feel comfortable with selling methods that someone who values an intuitive approach would feel pressured by.

Someone who values high productivity might advocate to build towards a full schedule of 1-1 clients that would exhaust someone who values spaciousness and time for reflection.

Someone who values a high income and designer clothes will model a way of being in business that might feel inauthentic and exhausting for someone who values groundedness and spirituality.

If what you’re learning isn’t fundamentally aligned with your values, it can be hard to fully get on board. Your mind might go through the motions of setting up your guaranteed funnel strategy, but something in you resists.

Maybe it’s the amount of energy it takes, or the flavor of relationships that it creates. It can be a subtle sense of underlying unease that you have to constantly work to overcome. Long-term, this becomes unsustainable.

Which can lead to you “undoing” what you’ve built, in order to find a more aligned way of being.

Lastly, if you make an investment that you’re not happy with, use it as an opportunity to grow.

Sometimes you learn what DOES work for you by experiencing what DOESN’T work for you. And that’s so valuable.

Use “learning the hard way” to empower yourself (instead of regretting your past decision).

Three great questions to help you do this are:

• What went well?
• What didn’t go well?
• What can I do differently next time?

{BTW, I learned these 3 evaluation questions in a coaching program long ago and they continue to be so helpful for me and my clients.}

Do you have anything to add to this guide? I’d love to hear what questions and techniques you use to guide your decision-making.

Send me a message here >