In this solo episode of the Business of Executive Coaching Podcast, senior executive coach Ellie Scarf explores the concept of self‑trust and how its absence can stall the growth of a coaching business and impede clients’ commitment to coaching. She distinguishes between trusting a coach’s expertise and trusting one’s own ability to act on that expertise, arguing that many coaches and clients mistake caution or a desire for clear ROI for a deeper lack of self‑trust. Scarf describes how this hidden resistance often manifests as hesitation, fear of visibility, discomfort with sales, or doubts about one’s capacity to implement new skills. To surface and address the gap, she proposes a simple “ta‑da list” exercise—writing down past achievements, challenges overcome, and successes—to remind oneself of proven capability. She also outlines how coaches can nurture client self‑trust by meeting them where they are, tailoring language and content, and introducing stretch gradually, effectively holding the client’s self‑trust while they build confidence. Throughout, she invites listeners to reflect on their own self‑trust barriers, try the exercise, and share their experiences, positioning self‑trust as a transformational priority for both personal business growth and client engagement.
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Hello and welcome to the Business of Executive Coaching Podcast. I'm your host, Ellie Scarf, a senior executive coach with over 17 years experience coaching, which I now bring to my role as mentor and coach to other executive coaches. When it comes to coaching business, I have done it all. I've grown coaching businesses solo and in partnership and with teams of coaches working with me. I've been an in-house coach and I've been an associate coach. And when I talk about selling coaching to corporate clients, you can know that I am speaking from a place of experience and a place of deep empathy. I work with coaches now through my group coaching program, the Corporate to Coach Accelerator, where executive and leadership coaches grow their businesses with more corporate clients. So I love to share things that I'm learning from my own coaching processes with my clients and of course with you here on the podcast. And there was a concept that landed for me with my coach a couple of weeks back. And interestingly, my coach is also called Ellie, and that's pretty wild, right? Anyway, this concept landed because, because I really felt it, like, from my own experience. And I also think it operates on two levels, and it works for your own relationship with growing your business, and it is also at play when you're engaging with your potential clients and they are making a decision whether to make a leap and invest in coaching or working with you. And I think that applies to both organizational or potentially individual clients as well. And so I wanted to share with you today. So the concept is self-trust. And the way I'm thinking about it is that as a coach, you might be able to trust a coach, like a business coach or a mentor like me. You might be able to trust that a coach knows what they're talking about. You might trust that they've got great strategies, great training. They can probably help you get an ROI on your investment. Like, it all looks good on paper. You might trust that, but what is sometimes the harder piece is to trust in yourself, to be able to do the part that is required of you to make it real, right? To go from these things that you're teaching or learning from your coach and to implement them, to achieve the results, to take the action, to do the thing. And sometimes it isn't really obvious that this is the problem, that lack, a lack of self-trust is the problem because it might look like you wanting to be cautious. Cautious or careful, which you should be, right? Or wanting an investment to have a clear ROI to stack up, and you should want that. But what it might look like is that when you find that those things are answered, you can't really hear that, right? The resistance remains, and the resistance is probably not that the pathway for growing your business or achieving your goal doesn't exist. It's that you don't trust yourself to be able to do what is required. And I think this really does bring us to this point that it might mean grappling with some of those demons, right? Grappling with some of those demons about visibility, about sales, about the stories you have about success and failure. It will mean trusting yourself to learn new skills. It'll mean trusting yourself to be okay with discomfort and uncertainty and being able to trust yourself with that. May not be something that comes naturally, immediately, or right now. And so I really invite you to think about what might be holding you back in growing your business. Is it truly that you don't have an avenue to get support, or that you don't know what to do, or that you don't have the answers? Or might it be that actually the resistance, what is holding you back, is a lack of willingness or ability to trust in yourself? So if you think that might be the case, then I think there is a journey to go on, of course, right? And whether that is some self-coaching, whether that is coaching, making the leap before you feel comfortable, all of those things may be appropriate. And here's one little thing that you can do, a really simple task is I want you to pull out a piece of paper and a pen. You can type it or you can write it. And I want you to write a list and I want this list to be something like a ta-da list rather than a to-do list. Which is, you know, if you look back on your life and your career, what have you achieved? What have you overcome? What demons have you grappled with? What tough situations have you navigated? And sit back and look at that list and make it as long as you possibly can. And when you look at it, I want you to think on that basis, How could you think that you can't do this, right? Would someone who has written this list have any reason not to trust themselves to create this new destiny, this new direction, this new option for themselves? And now it won't necessarily be easy. And sometimes with my clients inside the Accelerator, I consider it to be my job to hold their self-trust for them for a little while, while they catch up. But I know that of the people that come to me that I work with, you absolutely can do this. And so putting in place that self-trust is almost the priority, is quite transformational. And just to shine the lens on this from another perspective, let's think about our clients, right, who are coming to us. And so we may have organizations, we may have individual leaders who are really bought into the idea of coaching or facilitation, team development, whatever the service is, but there's a hesitation. And it's likely not because they don't think that you're great at what you do, but it's because they don't know or they don't trust that they will be able to get the most out of that opportunity. So, you know, will they or will their leaders be able to commit time to it? Will they have the skills to be able to do what comes up? Will the organization be sophisticated enough for their teams to absorb the process? So there's this sense of, well, we trust you, but can we really trust ourselves to get the most out of this opportunity? And in this case, it can be helpful to focus on building their trust in their capability by meeting them where they're at. And so that means by making sure that the content of a workshop or coaching is tailored to their needs, that the language makes sense in their environment, that stretch is introduced gradually. And we can do those things for our clients to help them build trust in themselves. And we can also do it for ourselves when we are growing our businesses. And a good coach, a good business coach as well, will walk with you along that journey and hold your hand as you grow that self-trust to be able to say, yeah, I got this. Give me the tools and let me take them. And someone can help you with the early phases of that journey if that's what you need. So I hope that this idea sparks something for you like it did for me. I'm still thinking about it. And so if you think self-trust might be at play for you when it comes to growing your business, just drop me a message and let me know how. I'd love to hear your experience, whether this idea resonates, and any reflections that you might have on this concept. And I hope it sits with you and you think about it and make sure you write that list. It's really, really helpful. Thanks for tuning in, and I'll be back with more next week.
