If you have ever worked with me, there is a good chance I have done at least one thing that made you want to throw your laptop across the room. That is not an accident. Every single thing on this list is intentional, and every single one is designed to build something in you that no shortcut can create.
Here is what I do, why it drives my clients a little crazy, and why I would not change a single thing about it.
Why Does My Business Coach Never Just Give Me the Answer?
Because the answer I give you is mine. The answer you find is yours.
When a client comes to me with a problem, my first move is almost never to solve it for her. It is to ask her what she thinks. Not because I do not have an opinion, I always have an opinion, but because sixteen years in this industry has shown me that the practitioner who arrives at her own conclusion will act on it. The one who was handed an answer waits for the next answer.
Building a business requires you to trust your own thinking. Every time I give you the answer instead of drawing it out of you, I am quietly telling you that you need me to think for you. That is not a coaching relationship. That is a dependency. And dependency does not build empires.
Why Does My Coach Keep Asking What I Think I Should Charge?
Because your pricing problem is almost never a pricing problem. It is a belief problem wearing a pricing problem's clothes.
When I ask what you think you should charge for your offer, I am not being evasive. I am diagnosing. Your answer tells me everything I need to know about where your ceiling actually lives. If you say a number and then immediately qualify it, apologize for it, or follow it with "but I don't know if that's too much," I now know exactly where we are doing the work.
The number you think you deserve is the number you will charge until something shifts inside you. My job is to find out where that number lives and why, before I can help you move it.
Why Does My Business Coach Ask About My Feelings So Much?
Because your feelings are data, and data runs your business whether you are paying attention to it or not.
The Holistic Nutritionist who feels sick before every sales call is not going to close sales no matter how good her offer is. The one who feels resentful every time she delivers a session is not going to retain clients no matter how strong her protocol is. Emotion is not separate from strategy. It is embedded in every decision you make, every price you set, every boundary you hold or do not hold.
When I ask how something feels, I am not doing therapy. I am looking for the place where your behaviour and your intention have separated. That gap is always where the real work lives.
Why Doesn't My Coach Check In on Me?
Because the check-in is not how this works.
There is a difference between a coach who checks in to make sure you did the thing and a coach who creates a room worth showing up to. I am not your babysitter. The way you get value from working with me is not by filling every available moment of access. It is by doing the work between our sessions and bringing the real version of what happened into the room when we meet.
The clients who grow fastest are not the ones who need the most contact. They are the ones who stay present in the work between calls and show up with something real to move forward. That is the energy the right coaching relationship runs on.
Why Doesn't My Business Coach Send Reminders for Our Calls?
Because my clients do not need them.
They know the dates. They show up. Not because I reminded them but because they are genuinely invested in what we are building together. When you are working with your dream client, you do not need to chase her to the door. She is already there.
The reminder dynamic is worth naming because it reveals something. If a client needs to be reminded to show up for an investment she made in her own business, that is information. The right client shows up for you with the same energy you show up for her. That standard is not rigid, it is protective. It protects the quality of the work, the quality of the relationship, and the results that come from both.
Why Does My Coach Point Out Behaviour Patterns I Cannot See?
Because you cannot read the label from inside the bottle.
This is the one that gets the most pushback and the one I am most committed to. The pattern you keep repeating is invisible to you precisely because it is a pattern. It is so familiar it feels like just the way things are. It is not. It is a behavioural loop that is producing a predictable result, and until someone names it out loud, it will keep producing that result.
I am not here to make you feel good about where you are. I am here to show you what is actually happening so you can decide what to do about it. That is my job. Without it, we're just having a pleasant conversation.
The Coaching Method That Builds Businesses That Last
Every single thing on this list has the same intention underneath it: to build a version of you that does not need me.
The goal of working with me is not to become dependent on my thinking, my validation, or my weekly check-in to function. The goal is to develop the instincts, the confidence, and the self-awareness to make high-quality decisions on your own. Coaching that creates dependency is not coaching. It is expensive hand-holding with a business strategy veneer.
The most rewarding moment in any client relationship is the one where she stops asking me what to do and starts telling me what she decided. That is the moment I know it is working.
If you are ready for the kind of coaching that makes you genuinely better at running your business, not just better at following instructions, applications for 1:1 private mentorship are open here.
AUTHOR BIO
Leigh McSwan is a Certified Holistic Nutritionist with sixteen years of industry experience and the founder of Leigh McSwan Inc., a business coaching practice for established Holistic Nutritionists. She hosts the She's The BOSS podcast and works with practitioners ready to build scalable, sellable businesses beyond their 1:1 practice. Applications for 1:1 private mentorship are open by clicking here.