Therapist to Coach How Peggy DeLong Hit $7K in Month One While Keeping Her Practice [Ep 59]

Hello friends. Welcome back to the thriving Therapeneur podcast. I have a special guest with us today. Her name is Peggy. She is a student of the Therapist to Coach accelerator program and she is absolutely killing the game in the coaching space. She has a lot to share with you all today because her journey is a bit unique. She's not new to the game, but she's done a lot of revamping lately. She just launched again last month and she also had a lot going on in her personal life. She's a woman who's in her midlife stages, so we're going to talk about all of these things. But Peggy, I want you to introduce yourself. Tell us who do you help, what type of coach you are and what got you started in the coaching industry in the first place?

Sure. Well, I help women in midlife to improve mental health and develop a positive mindset. And I started getting into coaching because I felt that there was so much more that I wanted to do that didn't quite fit under my psychology license and all these creative ideas. And once I developed a separate LLC that I felt much more comfortable doing these things while maintaining and protecting my license that I worked so hard for. So I do both. I still maintain my private practice and do psychotherapy, but I love this creative outlet where I can do so many different things and not and legally, ethically and not worry about my license and all of these creative things that didn't fit before. Healing circles retreats, the group coaching program. And I'm just having so much fun with it.

Yeah, I can tell you're having so much fun. It really is an extension of us and our personality and our story. I mean, we're limited by the stories that we can tell, the self disclosure that we can have in our therapy practice. Right. And not to mention the lives that we can impact. So now you really moving into the one to many model retreats, your group coaching, these healing circles, you're able to impact and transform so many more lives at the same exact time instead of just doing that one to one work and trading dollars for hours as well. So you're really able to make a larger impact and have a larger bank account as well, right?

Yes, yes. And I really love working with people of all ages, but I listened to the feedback of what I was getting and it seems to be that right now I'm working best with women in midlife. So of course I'll work with anybody who would like my help as long as I feel that it's a good fit. But These were the women that were seeking me out and I had previously been. Been working with a different age group. So I listened to that feedback and that also really just helped me hone in on my messaging. So it's landing well with the right people.

Yeah. So when you were making the initial transition into coaching, did you have any fears around making this leap or were you just totally excited? Game in. Were you afraid of any of like the tech side of things or protecting your license like you mentioned? I mean, we don't know what we don't know. Walk us through that process of what initially adding coaching was like for you.

Yeah, I was afraid of so many different things. Most of all the, the ethical and legal part. I wanted to make sure that I could protect my license and because I knew I wanted to keep that. But I had been in many coaching programs before group coaching and one on one business coaching and lots of people were talking about being a coach but they were not specific for the licensed mental health professional. So what I loved about your program and what initially got me involved was when you had the attorney come on and really talk about the, you know, the nitty gritty things that we need to do to protect our license. And that's exactly what I did to make me feel better that I was doing everything that I could, writing to my board, letting them know, calling my malpractice insurance, making sure that I was covered under that. So all of these things made me feel so comfortable. My previous career I was a forensic psychologist. So I was trained as if a cross examining attorney is on my shoulder, that was the way. So this was all really important to me. And then fortunately that's what held me back for so long, the legality and just making sure that I was doing things the right way because I didn't know I was involved in all of these different programs. But no one could tell me the specific guidelines for the mental health professional. So that really helped me. And also your guidance with the tech part. I'm not tech savvy and I love that. The guidance with setting up the Facebook group and really the video, step by step, everything that you need to do to get your group up and running and, and then to have people attending your live videos. So in the beginning I didn't have anybody attending, but the last one that I did last week, I believe five people were watching live and then a lot of comments underneath. So having five people who are, who now know that on Wednesdays at 12:30 I do a live video related to mental health, it Means so much to me that they are watching. And it just makes me feel so good to be pouring so much value into my Facebook group and developing new connections and women, you know, sharing resources, all within the. The midlife stage.

Yeah, I love that these were the people seeking you out. That just goes to show that this was an area of expertise, you know, of yours. 90% of us are our own ideal client. Right. And the license piece, let's talk about this for a second because this holds so many people back. Please tell everybody listening that it's not that hard when you have the checklist in front of you. It is so daunting to people. They make it out to be this bigger thing in their head than it actually has to be. But I give you the template for emailing your board. I tell you exactly what you need to say to your malpractice insurance. I give you the attorney approved contract with yellow highlighted fields that you need to change. Right. Like when you have your step by step checklist, it's just. Yeah, it's tedious. Right. But you, you know, literally transform lives for a living. You got this. You follow the tedious checklist, wipe your hands clean, it's done. And then you can put it past you and get into the work that you love doing, like serving your midlife community. Right?

Yes. And that was so helpful. And I did it all in an afternoon. And it was tedious. It was tedious. But that it really showed me exactly what I needed to do. And so I did it in an afternoon. And I really was so happy that once. It was the hardest part for me was choosing the business name because you really want to. You know, it can always change and you can always work under something else. But that was a. That's what held me up for a while. Just picking what the name was going to be. And then once. And then once I had that, I ran with it.

Yeah, we get tripped up on that a lot. I feel like when we're naming our private practice, we spend so much time on it. So then when we come to name our coaching business, I mean, a lot of people just use their personal name for their coaching business. Right.

And.

And you can change it anytime. It does not surprise me that you got it done in an afternoon because you are a sprinter. And I am so proud of the work that you have done in such a short period of time inside the Therapist to Coach accelerator. You're doing healing circles, you're doing retreats. You've had a ton going on. Personally, I don't know if you want to speak to that at all, but, I mean, everyone's busy in their life. And you launched about a month ago and you've made $7,000 in revenue. I just asked you before we hit record, like, what's going on? What is your actual success? I'm just thrilled for what you're creating. You are just a toe in the water into getting started. You know, you just started, and this is the success that you have hit already. Can you speak to what this has been like for you?

Yes. The I am a list person, and I'm at a stage in my life where I really need the guidance of being told what to do. I know how to do things once I'm told what to do, but I just needed that guidance. And that is exactly what your program provides. That works really well for me. So I don't have to Google anything or spend hours searching. It's all there for me. And I really just followed it step by step. And I had never utilized. I have a Facebook group, but I had never utilized it before. And once I learned how and this consistency of the live trainings that I provide and getting more engagement and having available free resources. So now I have probably about 10 and depending on what women are looking for, I will send them a free resource related to that issue. So my group is really focusing on building joy, connection, and purpose in midlife. And I have. I asked the women which one they're more focused on, and then I send them a related resource. But just having that guidance, it really helped me take off. All of these ideas have been brewing for years, and it just kind of poured out of me once I knew how and being shown the how and. And having people in the group and seeing their success because it's so helpful to see that other people have done it and then you can do it too. That it's not just luck. It is. It is hard work. It's consistency. But I'm not special that this is for everybody who wants to do it.

The momentum breeds momentum. I swear I was just telling somebody this today. The second somebody gets a client inside, therapist, coach, accelerator, I feel like everybody starts getting clients and it's just like this ripple effect. Right. And you're a leader in the space right now. We were just celebrating you inside the Facebook group. Like, congratulations, Peggy. Like you just hit your first 5k. I mean, obviously it's more than that and you keep enrolling clients, but what were some of these mindset shifts, if any, that you had to make to get Here, because you are a sprinter, you do your work, you have your checklist. You're making it seem like it is rainbows and butterflies, which we all know it's not. But to a certain extent, it's. As long as you have your checklist, it's work. Right? But it's so much more feasible. What were some of the challenges that you had or mindset shifts that you've had to get over during this process?

A big one for me was seeing myself as a coach and using that title. I had resisted for years. I've been doing public speaking and I've written three books, and a lot of what I do is coaching, but within it was under my psychology license, psychotherapy, but more. What I view as more coaching. But I was so resistant to calling myself a coach. Now my title, I am a midlife awakening coach. That is the title that I have embraced. And just that mindset shift of calling myself a coach really helped me take ownership of this new title, put my all into this new business, this separate LLC that gave it life. I couldn't have done it without that mindset shift. And I was resistant because anybody can call themselves a coach, but I love that you highlight that as mental health people professionals, licensed mental health professionals, we already have the training and the expertise. You know, I've been a licensed psychologist for 23 years, running a very successful private practice. I know what to do. I've written a dissertation. I have speaking engagements from corporate and universities. So I've done the work. But it was that one simple thing that was holding me back and that was calling myself a coach. And once again, that simple thing opened up doors for me and. And now people understand what I do when I say the terms midlife awakening coach. And in fact, one person who's in my group told me that the word awakening is what helped her to join my group because she envisioned herself in midlife, in this transition of coming alive, of awakening. And that's exactly what I wanted. So it just feels so good to have this new identity as a coach.

It's exactly. I was going to say identity. We have to change at the identity level first. I mean, we know this as therapists too, right? It's be, do have. We have to be the person who then does the actions to have the business that we want. I always encourage therapists who are making this transition. Just try it. Just call yourself a coach. Go tell somebody that you're a coach. Just try on the identity like you're trying on a hat and just, just see how it feels for you? Because there is a lot of stigma around calling ourselves a coach especially. We work so hard for our license. We have all of these certifications, you know, doctorate level. Anybody can be a coach. Right. We feel like it's this quote unquote downgrade sometimes, but I like to shift that into a bonus identity that we get to have as therapists. Us therapists can be both therapists and coaches. Coaches can't be therapists. Right. So it's this bonus identity that you're adding. It's not a downgrade in any way. And then once you can embrace that, doors open. And you did put all of that energy into your business. I'm curious, did you have like a holy shit moment? This is actually working because you've, you've done coaching in the past, you've taken a lot of coaching programs before. You've taken business coaching programs. You haven't really taken off in the way that you, you want it to, per se, or felt as lit up about the work that you're doing as you do now. What was that holy shit moment for you?

Was when I met my goal of five women in my group coaching program. I've launched courses before, and while I love them, they're eight week courses. I would get one person, sometimes two. This was the first time that I met my goal of five and I, even though a couple more people expressed interest, I really wanted to keep it at 5 to maintain the, you know, just what I set out for. And I told the women that I was going to cap it at 5, so I didn't want to go past that. So it, that really meeting that goal was amazing. And it happened at the last minute. So people tend to wait until the last minute. So I was just, you know, I knew I was going to run it with two or with three, but it was just so exciting that within the last 24 hours to have two people who were kind of on the fence and at the last minute, before it started, join wholeheartedly, wholeheartedly.

And how cool is that that you get to lead these women through this process and you have proof of concept now. I mean, you're out of your founding members round after this, boom, it's, it's time to scale. Like, we can take this, we can take this home. And I'm curious for you, being in midlife, a lot of people fear, all right, I'm too old for this. The tech is going to hold me back. I feel like you actually have an unfair advantage in life experience that can actually help you as a coach in this space? I mean, tech can be learned, right? Do you have anything to say around your age or your life experience being in this space?

Now, I think that with age comes wisdom and one of the. And freedom. So at my age I care less about what. Well, I would say I don't worry. I care. Of course I care what people think and I've. And that means a lot to me, but I don't worry about it. So that's another mindset shift of not worrying because you do need to put yourself out there, whether it's on social media or an email. And I realized I can't please everybody. But if I am true to myself and authentic and vulnerable, that's who I am, then the right people will be attracted to my programs and what I have to offer. But when I don't share anything and I worry about what other people, the complete strangers might be seeing what I put out there, then I, then I don't attract anything. So that was also a huge mind shift that I really feel came with the wisdom of age. I don't think I would have been able to say that five years ago, but that has that really to me translates to freedom, that not worrying about the perception of other people.

Yeah, light bulb moment just went off for me because I'm thinking of all of my clients now. And come to think of it, I feel like my midlife clients who are adding coaching like oftentimes they're more successful, faster and maybe it is because of exactly what you're saying. You know, they don't have. Everybody has visibility wounds to a certain extent. Right. But they're not as forward facing because they don't worry as much. I love how you frame that between the difference of caring and worrying. Right. You're sending the email, you're showing up live, you have nothing to lose. You know, your message is more important than the image that you're showing up as. Right. Your hair doesn't have to be perfectly curated. Like you don't have all of the mind drama that maybe someone else does who is a bit younger. I absolutely love that. I think that there is a lot of power to that.

Yes, absolutely. And then the other shift for me was speaking about myself personally. And before I started the coaching, I wrote a memoir that came out in 2019 and the memoir is extremely personal. So that was also just a shift for me going from my training of psychologists don't talk about themselves and self disclosure to then here I'm putting this memoir out into the world for anybody to read. And then I would do speaking engagements related to my memoir. And initially, I wasn't sharing much about myself and it was just more academic and strategies. But I found as soon as I started talking about why I speak about happiness and gratitude, it resonated with people so much more when they heard my story. And so that was also something that just shifting to coaching, I feel much more comfortable when it's appropriate, sharing my story. And then it means so much more to people, including the speaking engagements that I do, that it just lands better to hear about it and how I've used these simple techniques with gratitude and happiness to live a happier life. Including now, when I recently lost my mother, who was a huge, probably my biggest church cheerleader, and just four days before I started the program. So I'm sorry, after I started the program, I started March 31st. My mother passed away that Friday. But she was my biggest cheerleader. And I feel that this is something that she would want me to do and to persist and to continue to be successful. So even though she's not here. Yeah. And I, I do miss her face, her sharing of everything, anything I posted on Facebook, she would share everything. So if you look at her Facebook page, it's not anything about her, it's all everything that she has shared about my, my business. So she was a huge supporter. And, you know, my parents just had a such a huge part in who I am as a person and professionally. And my father being in the mental health field, he was a psychiatrist, and we had always dreamed of owning a practice together with him doing the medication monitoring and me as the therapist. So I just feel like I am continuing with what my parents would love for me to do, and they are so proud. And the other thing that my father and I always talked about that I couldn't fit into my psychology practice was we always wanted to combine skiing and therapy somehow. So I'm not doing therapy, but I can be hired as a coach while out in nature. I love teaching about people, people about the power of nature. It was tremendously healing for me when I lost my fiance and my father in 1994. And now under my coaching business, I am able to combine coaching with hiking and skiing, to be hired for a half a day to help people heal while we're out in nature.

It's incredible this, your story sells. I mean, I can feel your energy, too, when you're talking about your story and how much your family supports you in this. And this runs in the family, right? Like what you're doing, you, you come from a family of helpers and healers and agents of change and getting out of just the one to one therapy model and doing things like retreats and healing circles and how freaking cool is that? Where you can be in nature and you can go skiing while simultaneously helping people heal. And you have your recorded course online and you have this whole community for midlife women. There's so many. You have speaking gigs. There's so many things that we can do as therapists. If you could go back in time and give yourself a piece of advice, because you mentioned, like this has been a thought in your head for quite some time. You've wanted to do these things, you've workshopped them with your family about what business ideas could look like if you were just starting off. What would that advice be to your old self?

To worry less about what other people think and to follow your heart and just see where it brings you without so much concern about the perception of other people and trusting that the right people will be attracted to what you have to offer.

Is that what you would also say to somebody who's sitting on the edge of their seat and they're like, should I do this? I don't know if I'm ready? Is the message. Just trust yourself. You have nothing to lose.

Yes. And also that feeling of ready. I don't know how we determine when that time is. How do we know when we're ready? And so much of it is just having faith. And you get to the point where you are more willing to take the risk and see what's out there and the opportunities than staying safe and not doing so. And that's definitely where I was at. I needed, I needed to take that risk because it just wasn't working for me to keep these things under wraps that weren't fitting under my psychology license.

Yeah, very well said. It's worth the risk. It's worth taking. You can always go back to where you are. You can always go back to your comfort zone. Right. If it doesn't work out or it doesn't feel right for you, all right, go back to where you are now. But it's worth the risk to move forward.

Right. And that is where I felt that your program hit the mark for me because you talked about protecting my license in case I needed to go back or if I didn't want to give that up, because I don't, I don't foresee myself stopping doing traditional psychotherapy under healthcare. I still, that's still what I do. And I wasn't ready to give that up. So I love that you provided the guidance to maintain that ethically and legally and not put that at risk while simultaneously exploring these other coaching opportunities under the separate business.

And it worked. And it's working. It's kind of like asking yourself, it's playing the what if game. So I'm willing to take the risk because what if it actually works? What if all of my dreams could come true? What if I could do all of the things that I've been dreaming up for years? What if this is actually possible for me? Let me just take a chance. Let me just bet on myself. You said, I don't know when we ever really feel ready. I think that decision, to a certain extent, it's just that in and of itself, it's deciding, right? It's deciding you're ready. It's not necessarily feeling that you're ready. Like, I don't know that we'll ever feel fully ready. We just have to bet on ourselves. We have to take the risk. We have to take the leap of faith. We. We have to decide those things with the mentality of, oh, my gosh, what if it actually works? And providing yourself evidence that it can work, such as yourself. You are living proof that this is absolutely possible.

Yes. And I love that you offer have in the program mindset sessions. So. Because it doesn't just go away even when we. Because the fear of success, that's a real thing too. So even when we're having that success, that can even be scary. So I love that you have the weekly sessions where we get the mindset coaching. That has also been so helpful for. For me.

Yeah. Yeah. 80% of our business is mindset. And there's two sides of the coin. I love how you mentioned that there is also the fear of success, which I see happens a lot with the therapists. They'll. They'll message or post in the group. Like, Carly, people are actually booking a call now. What do I do? I'm like, this is everything that you prayed for. This is what you signed up for. Okay. Like, let me remind you that it's happening. You wanted this. Right. Because they fear that they won't be able to hold the success. And it's a whole nother layer. I would say most people are afraid of their success because they wouldn't have the desire in the first place for the success if it wasn't meant to happen. I always say our desires are our roadmap. Right. So it's not actually the Failure that you're afraid of. It could be this upper limit, this glass ceiling, this fear of success that you're afraid of.

Yes. And then what that looks like in the unknown, whether it is hiring a VA or learning how to use a different platform. Yes. So many things that you need to deal with once you reach a different level. But it's really exciting. I've always loved learning. That's just part of who I am. And I find it exciting to learn new things. That just energizes me. So I love that you have the help available for the things that are more daunting because I am not tech savvy, but the help is available. Everything figured out? Yeah. The program covers everything. And that was really what, when I did my research to see and the other people that have had success, that's what really helped me just to know that I wasn't going to be on my own if I came across a problem. So especially with ads, when we get to the point of doing the ads, that the help is available.

Yeah, there's so much hand holding it's almost ridiculous. But I can't help myself. I mean, there's nothing in the industry that compares. And you can probably speak to that knowing that you've done multiple coaching programs. But you know, I'm so conscious of the support that we provide because I too have been in so many coaching programs and usually it is the handholding that is lacking. It's. It's almost impossible to fail unless you give up. So, Peggy, where can people find you? If they're in midlife? They're interested in awakening and finding more joy and happiness in this stage of their life. Or if they're just a therapist turned coach and they want to look at your stuff for inspiration and you're just a prime example of how, you know, possible this path really is. Where's the best place for people to find you?

The best place is my new brand new website. It is midlife. Midlifeawakeningsisterhood.com Amazing.

And I will link that in the show notes for everyone. Any last words, Peggy? For anybody who's listening, I would just.

Say if you're feeling pulled, give it a try. It's so worth it.

Amazing. All right, Peggy, thanks for having or thanks for being on the show. It's a pleasure to have you. And until next time listeners, I will see you in the next episode. My love is with you. Take care.