Podcast

Episode 575: The Value of Coaching Even When You’re ‘Not Working On Your Business’

In this episode I’m sharing a lesson that I had to learn the hard way. If you’ve got a big life change coming up – whether it’s having a child (or two), moving across the country, starting a new job or something else – you want to have coaching at the same time. Even if you’re ‘not working on your business’. If you’re a perfectionist and you’re building a business, you want to listen to this episode today.

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Introduction
Hi and welcome to another episode of The Perfectionism Project. A podcast full of perfectionism advice for entrepreneurs. My name is Sam Laura Brown, I help entrepreneurs release their perfectionism handbrake, so they can get out of their own way and build a fulfilling and profitable business. I’m the founder of the Perfectionists Getting Shit Done group coaching program, which is otherwise known as PGSD. And for even more perfectionism advice to help you with your business, you can follow me on Instagram @perfectionismproject.

Custom Intro
Okay, so today I am sharing with you an episode that was originally part of a series called the self trust selling series that I shared with our PGSDers, and I just want to leave that episode intact as and as it is. So I’m just doing this little intro to let you know that in the episode, I talk about my one on one coaching, and I’m now fully booked, so that isn’t currently available. If you want to work with me, you want to be inside perfectionist getting shit done. We are doing our next open enrollment. So exciting. Our next open enrollment is happening on the 30th of January, 2026 for one week only. So you want to get yourself on the pgsd waitlist and get yourself inside so we can support you to get out of your own way in your business and release your perfectionism handbrake and show up the way you want to be showing up in your business, so you can get it off the ground and do that without burning out. So just doing this little preamble to let you know that this episode will be talking within it about my one on one coaching and that, yeah, instead you want to be inside pgsd, because that’s what’s on offer for how to work with me in 2026. So with that said, I hope you find this episode incredibly, incredibly helpful.

Sam Laura Brown
Okay, so I was just talking to one of my one on ones about this. I want to share with you about the value of having support while you are traveling, while you are resting, and on holiday, while you are and this has been such an experience for me, like the value of having business support while you are pregnant and postpartum. I have now been through having four kids, including twins, been through three pregnancies, three postpartums. They’ve all been wildly different, and having support in place is always more helpful than not having support in place. And I just want to talk about this because it’s easy in business. I’ve just seen this with my clients and my past self as well. It’s easy to be in this mentality that if I’m not like actively working on my business, then I don’t need to have business support. And I want to talk about an experience that I had with this because I did it differently, this post-partum to how I did it previously, and it made a world of difference.

So the first time, let me think where to start this the first time I was pregnant, I had my daughter, Lydia, and I didn’t have any coaching. Was I in a program or anything during that? Not when I gave birth. I wasn’t I had been previously, but then, pretty much maybe, like two months after, I signed up to work with a coach who was supporting me with showing up on social media and different things like that, specifically Instagram, because I just felt called to just like, show up and share on Instagram. So I worked with her. Super helpful to have support. And then I signed up for a mastermind, which was Stacey Boehman’s 200k mastermind when Lydia was four months old, four months old. Yeah. So then with that I did, I basically did a deep dive into all the things. There had so many breakthroughs. And then I had the biggest launch of pgsd, when Lydia was six months old. We had 51 people sign up for pgsd and made multiple six figures in that launch. And I had, I had covid, I had a six month old, all of that.

And just from having support. Instead of being like, Well, I’m not really working right now, which I wasn’t. I was kind of just chilling, hanging out with friends, taking it easy. I still was working on my business a little bit, but like, I was really in this, like taking it easy mode. And I just felt still like I still want to be growing the business, I love having a container a process to follow, so this is why, as well, with the one on one coaching that I do, there’s also a curriculum like a the self trust selling process that you have access to, so that you don’t just have to wait for calls to learn things that you have. You can binge it right away, if you want as many clients. Do you have the full self trust selling process so that you can work on that at your own pace as well. You’re not having to wait for me to kind of like, unlock, like, here’s what to work on. You can do that.

And so I love offering that, because that’s how I personally love to learn. I love to have ongoing support, and I love to have like, here’s the lay of the land, here’s the high level view, here’s the process to follow, so that, in the case of self trust selling, so that you can make sales in an aligned way that’s within your ideal work hours that has you really shining and growing, not from a place of trying to force yourself to be better, but growing in the sense that you are finally allowing yourself to letting yourself be, to let yourself shine, to let yourself do things the way you do things, and not have to do things the way everyone else does things. And so I have a whole process for that that you get access to, and part of that is when I signed up for that mastermind, I didn’t even have to wait for any of the calls. I just, like, watch like, different bits. I was just like, I’m gonna get exactly what I need to get when I need to get it.

And I did, and I had key breakthroughs that allowed me to trust myself and just like, make up my own plan for a launch. I didn’t learn, like, here’s the what to do. What I learned was, there’s some basic first principles, and then just do it however you want. I was like, Okay, well, I’m just gonna do it the way that is easiest for me. Had great success with that. And then, so that was like, that experience that I had, and then I had in 2022 I continued to be in that mastermind I had. I made $600,000 that year. Became pregnant with the twins in the middle of the year, and then when it came to being about to give birth, Lydia was 19 months old when the twins were born, so I was going to have three kids under the age of two, and my brain I was like, I have no idea what that’s going to be like.

My desire to work didn’t go away when I had Lydia. I loved even though I was like, I should have a mat leave and I shouldn’t do things and whatever, which I’ve now, I know in those thoughts anymore about postpartum and all of that, but at the time, I was but then Steve and I were like, let’s start this other business. And like, my brain, just like, wants to be working on something. So when it came to actually allowing myself to work and to do things like I had when it was that first postpartum, I still wanted to do stuff, but when it came to the twins postpartum, I just felt like I have, there was just so much uncertainty, like I have no idea what it’s going to be like to have twins and a toddler at the same time, because Liddy was 19 months old, she couldn’t really speak yet, besides saying, like, Mama Dada, those kind of things. So I have three kids who, like Lydia only just started walking, and no one can talk and like all of that, and just like heavily dependent, and I have no idea, therefore, how much I’m going to want to work during that period.

And I want to set things up so that I don’t have any pressure to work. And so what I did as part of that, what I did was I the support I had that was working really well for me, which was that mastermind. I didn’t sign up for it again, and part of that is because no one had yet told me about the value of continuing to have business coaching, so long as you have a business, and I still had a business, and even though I wasn’t knowing how much I was going to be working, I just hired a full time marketing manager. So I had my first full time employee. I had pgsd, which had hundreds of clients in it, and people getting coached every week. And like my business was still very much alive, and I wasn’t putting it on pause, even if I was personally having time away. I’d set things up in my business so that it could keep growing. But I was like, I don’t, I don’t want to have pressure to keep, like, working and like going after big things when I’m in this season.

So therefore, it’s not a good time for me to actually have coaching and that kind of support because of the season I’m in. And I am so grateful that I was able to shift into a different belief. So when I had Liam, who is now six months old, I got myself so much support. Because when I didn’t have support, not only was I then postpartum in the most like biggest life, shift, transition, identity crisis, feeling like the world had turned upside down. But it also looks exactly the same, because I’m in, like, the same house, the same clothes, like doing pretty much the same things, but I feel like, like the foundation has been rocked from under my feet, if that’s the same. But I then, how was navigating that, plus also the business stuff and not having when I needed, like, had a decision to make, or was making certain decisions, and just trying to, like, do things bigger and better.

And in that time I was like, I need to be a better CEO. I need to be a better leader. I need to be, like, to have, like, bigger like, everything was just like thinking I need to do everything bigger and better and do it less like how I was doing it before, because I really just had not recognized that I I knew what I was doing and that I was on to something. So having not having that support meant that it I made decisions that have taken me about three years to recover from, and I will share more about this in a different little episode, but it has taken me a long time, and I feel like I needed to learn the lessons and things like that, but, but, but, but just not having that support. I needed all the support I could get. But my brain, my perfectionist brain, goes into this over functioning like, No, I just need to do it all by myself. And also, I don’t want to be pressured by anyone.

And if I have a business coach that might put pressure on me to, like, do big things when I’m not feeling like it, instead of actually, and this is what I do with my clients who are navigating all different stages, including clients who are pregnant, who are postpartum, who I just love supporting them so much as well that actually that’s when I need the most support, when I navigate in a life transition, when I am traveling a lot, when I have things going on. Like, I need even more support when I’m not in my day to day life. Not I need less support, but I need even more support to help me navigate the ups and downs that inevitably come, the decisions, the shifts, the like, all of that like, just not even from this place of like, and I’m fucked if I don’t have it, but from this place of like, I want to take care of me, I want to support me like, the same way I want to support my kids, the same way I want to support my husband, like I deserve support, and I deserve a certain kind of support as well, and not having to have all the support for my business.

And I talked about this in a different episode, I don’t want to have all the support in my business, come from Steve or come from a friend, like, I want to actually have dedicated support that I can go to and share whatever’s on my mind and any struggles that I have and any shame that I’m feeling, and know that they’re not going to be in the pool with me, and they’re not going to be saying, well, yeah, maybe you’re right. Like they’re going to actually be able to help me process the feelings, help me navigate what’s going on, and not from this place of like, trying to fix me or make things better, but like, actually having somewhere to go that is grounded in the values that I also share, and that I can have that support where things are tough, like I need more support, and so part of what I did for this postpartum with Liam was that I got myself so much support.

So in the lead up to when I was pregnant with Liam, I signed up for business coaching. I also signed up for life coaching because I knew I had, like, life stuff. I needed to process a lot of what I do with my clients as well. We do some, like, life coaching within the business coaching as well. But I knew there was, like, support needed in both of those, and there were so many other things I did to support myself as well. Like, I really needed an iron infusion, but I didn’t meet the criteria that the public hospital I was going to for them to do an iron infusion. They were like, Oh, you’re fine, even though it definitely was not even close to optimal. They’re like, Oh, well, you’re not, like, absolutely anemic, so you’re okay. Instead of, like, all the other health professionals I talked to were like, Yeah, you’re not anemic, but you definitely could use a lot of support with your iron.

So like advocating for getting an iron infusion, like just little things like that, like, I really started to shift into seeing the value of support, especially when I’m going through a life transition, especially when I have more on my plate. It’s not, oh, I have more on my plate, so I need less support. It’s actually I need support to help me navigate having more on my plate and continuing to have a business. And also, even if that means having a time where you’re working less, navigating that it’s not just okay, I’m just going to work less and like, see what happens. But like, how do I powerfully want to navigate pregnancy and postpartum. How do I powerfully want to navigate while having a business? How do I powerfully want to navigate traveling? How do I powerfully want to navigate looking after a parent while running a business? How do I powerfully want to navigate finding a partner or like going through a breakup, or anything like that, while building the business.

So I just want to say because I wish someone had said it in a way that I could really hear it when I was in that that when you are going through big things in your life, so long as you still have a business, having that support is such an act of self care and allowing yourself to safely create momentum. I was just talking about this with my one on one client, that there’s like a couple things that I do with my clients. One of those things is we create momentum. And have you going from sporadic sales to consistent sales. Then when you’re in consistent sales, which is where my client’s at, then we have to do the work of having you feel safe in that momentum, having you feel safe in that consistency around the sales. If we have been in the struggle, in the scramble, in the feeling behind for so long. Once you stop feeling like, once you stop being in that circumstance, your brain will want to pull you back into incapability just to be consistent with who you’ve been in the past.

And I was telling this to my client like she’s on track for 100k this year, her first year ever being able to do that. And I was, like, in the next six weeks, your brain, like, it’s going to be working like crazy to take you off track for this 100k goal when her brain wants to be in like, Okay, now I’m like, on track. So I. I can just like, go and do it myself instead of seeing this is so valuable, especially if you are a coach, and you coach clients, to be able to see like when you’re on track, it is so valuable to have support to keep you on track, to create that being on track as normal, to have that become what is familiar to you and your nervous system. And I was using the analogy as well, of like, once you have that momentum and you have consistent sales, especially if you’ve been in a situation with your business where, like having consistent sales, or like making 100k or a full time income on part time hours, like when NAT has felt like miles away to finally be in that reality is it’s going to take work and shifts to be able to have that feel safe.

So the analogy I was saying is like, if you are riding a bicycle, and if you think about if you’re a parent, if you have kids, when they’re riding a bicycle, like, in the beginning, they don’t really need a helmet because they go so slow, like they’re not really needing any kind of safety from that perspective, like they just actually can’t go fast enough to need the safety mechanism of a helmet. And then, if you’re riding on a bike really fast down a hill, you want to have a helmet. You also want to have skill as well to help you navigate that momentum. And what we can do if we don’t have and if our nervous system can sense that if we don’t have the safety in place to have that momentum, we slow down and go back to the pace where it’s okay not to have a helmet, which is going for most people, to mean being in a place where you’re not making a full time income in your business, and you’re still in that hobby mode. That’s going to be the equivalent of kind of like a toddler on a bicycle, and they’re just kind of figuring it out, not to diminish that stage, but like, it’s still that safety.

There’s a certain level of safety required, and it isn’t that you need to have the helmet in the full year as you’re building up to like 100k and beyond that, and you’re having more momentum, and you’re having more clients or more customers, and more people that can be angry at you or want to refund or you have more visibility, and all of that we want to do that have that support and have that structure and that process that I teach my clients around it as well. They’re very specific things we do to have you be safe in the momentum, so that you don’t sabotage it, so that you don’t get in your own way and take yourself off track as a means to stay safe. So once you’re in that momentum, we then do the work of having you feel safe in that momentum, so you can maintain it and then create even more momentum.

Having support and like for me, having when I gave birth to Liam, I had at the same time business coaching and life coaching available to me, and it made such a difference even when I, like, wasn’t using it and I didn’t know when I’d be able to do calls for things or anything like that, like just knowing I had support there that I could use, made such a difference to how safe I felt to be in momentum and how safe I felt to make decisions and create a business that was big, and I made some really bold decisions in that time. And I was able to do that because I had put support and safety mechanisms in place rather than thinking, okay, I’ve got big life stuff going on. And because of that, I need less support, instead of, like, what if I had support that helps me navigate this in a way that’s in alignment with my values, which include spending time with my family, getting lots of rest, being able to do what I want when I want, like, all of that, I’m not going to sign up for something that’s going to be like, Okay, you have to be doing this, this and this that you don’t want to be doing. I want to have that support that gives me.

And this is what we do in the one on one coaching, and this is how I love so if you’re in pgsd, you’d already be familiar with this. The way I love working myself and with clients is a blend of masculine and feminine. So we have masculine structure, which is the growth goal, momentum, projects, power planning, tools like that, so that you can be in your flow and feminine within them. Because if we don’t have that structure, and it’s just like, do whatever you want, whenever you want, like, it ends up being, especially with perfectionism, it ends up just being, it feels like we feel untethered when we don’t have direction, when we don’t have a certain level of clarity. So we want to have things like the Growth Goal, momentum projects, and there’s other things I teach my clients as well. In the self trust selling process. We want to have structures like the launch experiment structure, the sales experiment structure we have. There’s things that we want to have in place so that you have structure that creates direction and clarity and groundedness. You feel tethered. You feel clear. You have a path, but you can be flexible within that.

You can follow your intuition within that you can find your flow within that. So I just want to really advocate in general for getting support, and especially having higher levels of support when you are navigating transitions and when you are on track our perfectionist brain, one is often in this mentality of like, if I can do it by myself, I should, instead of like, what would it look like to be fully supported with this? What support would I love to have? And for me, like a dream come true in terms of support is I always have someone I know I can go to them with anything and like for me, for example, and then I’ll wrap up in 2019 I was like, Hey, this is the year that I want to go to 100k and I want to be able to leave my job, my part time job, and go full time In my business. Like, big year, big transition, big goal that I had, and I signed up for coaching, and it was a big investment.

I signed up for coaching because I was like, I just need to have someone in my corner at all times, and I need to have someone in my corner who can guide me without forcing me to do things, without trying to have me do things that don’t work for me, but that can really help me be in tune with myself and support me with that at any time that I’m spinning. So for example, I’ve talked about this story before. I did a podcast interview with quite a big like podcaster, YouTuber, and I thought went really well. And then after that interview, she said to me, I Is it okay if I give you some feedback? I was like, sure, just like, you didn’t really let me ask the questions that I had, like you just talked and talked and like, and just gave me, like, a minute or so of feedback. And the shame I felt in that moment after having felt like I aced it and like my person, 100% if they listen to this, will be like, Oh my god, that is so helpful. To get that feedback of like you didn’t do it properly, and especially from someone who had more experience, more followers, like all of that, I felt so ashamed.

And so what I did, and this is what my clients get to do, is I WhatsApp, voice messaged my coach, and I shared with her how I was feeling and what I thought my plan was, which was I need to go and get, like, do some training. I need to go and, like, sign up for Toastmasters, or, like, learn how to be more articulate or whatever, and just being able, in that moment to get the exact coaching I needed saved me what would have been weeks, if not months, of spiraling just from being able to have like that alone was worth the whole value of it. And I also, at that time, did my first ever in person, paid speaking, and I had no idea what to even charge for that, and just to be able to have someone that I could go, Okay, can you help me figure out what to charge? Because they said, tell us what your what your fee is, what your rate is like. I don’t have a rate, so having someone in my corner at all times, and being able to navigate, not just like setting a goal, but like being able to stay engaged with it, update the goal, like all of that kind of thing that we had as we went on.

So much of it evolved as I was evolving, and to be able to keep having that support consistently along the way was such a big reason, was such a big reason that I was able to make that transition and take that leap and go full time in my business, having someone in my corner at all times with a process to follow that allowed me to be in self trust, not a here’s how to do it, right, but let’s have you be supported, and support your intuition and support your flow, and have structure in place and parameters, but like in a really supportive way, so that you feel like you could actually achieve the goal just by being yourself. That’s what I have my clients do. They’re not trying to be we don’t get them to try and be better or different. We get them. We have them achieving their goals by being themselves and letting themselves be and letting themselves shine, instead of stopping themselves from shining, so that is the work that we do. Having support in place is the best thing you can do. Hope you’re having a beautiful day. I’ll talk to you in the next episode.

Outro
If you enjoy this podcast, I recommend signing up for the waitlist for my program called perfectionist getting shit done, aka pgsd. This is a program designed to help you get out of your own way in your business, you’re going to learn how to release your perfectionism handbrake by setting a growth goal for your business. Planning properly as a perfectionist with power planning and getting regular, guilt free, clean rest, you’ll learn the skills required to get out of your own way and be supported every step of the way to do it. To find out more about the program and join the waitlist today, go to samlaurabrown.coms/pgsd.

Author: Sam Brown