Michelle Tascoe, Makes $1.2 Million In Three Years With One-On-One Financial Coaching

Okay michelle thank you so much for joining me uh i feel like this is an interview that's been very much in waiting we've wanted to do this for i don't know maybe a decade or at least five years it feels like i might have asked you five years ago to do this conversation so i am super excited to finally get to uh have this interview uh in particular because you do something that i think is Actually quite rare um you do a lot of private one-on-one coaching and the rare part is how much money you've

made from it as we were just talking about off air uh 1.2 million dollars in the last uh was it two years of coaching three years of coaching and yeah three years of coaching and and you've hit that half a million dollar a year run rate with with the with the one-on-one coaching business which i know if i was to hear that i'd be like oh my god she's Spending like 12 hours a day doing coaching calls because that to get that kind of number so i'm sure we're all curious how you can get to

that point um but before we talk about the coaching business uh i'd love to dive into that story when you reach that point in your your life story um as i always do with this uh podcast i want to go back in time first learn about michelle before michelle became michelle the Coach uh let's go back um where were you born and raised oddly enough because i'm filipino but i was born in a little town called gambu and this is in nigeria which is in africa so probably um not expecting that but that's where my

parents met okay i did not know that and so you how much time did you spend there i was there until i was five years old And they really wanted to send to go to the us because they had family there and to it was so funny because i remember being in in school and doing a book report and my dad said well america at that time we we saw it as the land of green pastures and elvis and the land of opportunity and so they did whatever they could to get here do you have

any memories of Your time in nigeria yes we had pigs and chickens in our front yard we also had uh my mom drove a vw bug my dad had a station wagon you know with the wood paneling on the side and i had a nanny and sesame street was in french so that was something different too good memories okay so then you went to the states next is that what happened after yes absolutely yes Okay so was that i'm guessing uh i mean at five years old is probably not a big uh change to your

your life you probably even realize at the time so um what because you were just about to start school i'm guessing about then yeah uh kindergarten so i was about to start kindergarten um but you know it was wild as we went through new york um first and that was where i first saw snow so imagine you know the kind of weather in africa and then the snow Experience and then from there to orange county los angeles orange county that area that's amazing okay so we'll take us forward so you start growing up in la

and did you spend the rest of your like childhood and teenage years there yeah so uh we i grew up in anaheim which was you know next to the happiest place on earth and that's where i went to school um And i'll say from high school i graduated and i got accepted to usc and so that's where i did my undergrad and um just my first introduction to business school to a bigger city to what could be possible um so it was really exciting at that time thinking about well what could i do in the

world now that i'm in college and who will i end up becoming what did you enter college studying business business okay Was there a plan like did you think i i would join another company start your own no i i was just really open to um working for someone else um i honestly didn't really have any thoughts i knew that i wanted to be successful i knew that from just uh when i was um in high school because i was at straight a student and i was in all the clubs and things like that So

i was really just open to experiencing you know what could be possible in a major city and out of college i ended up being an assistant to the um president of guest clothing for some time a celebrity photographer celebrating tour designer a gentleman who had 14 multi-family complexes across the country as well as two hotels and a storage unit in new york and Um you know he would fly on jets and it just opened my eyes to uh i'll say entrepreneurship because he built his own business from scratch um and just kind of feeling out

what it was that i would be interested in okay i'm curious what was your definition of success at that time because you said you know you knew you wanted to be successful what did you think that was Yeah that's a good question i mean at that time uh i think i was definitely money motivated um and i wanted to be able to you know drive the kind of car that i wanted to drive live in a certain place that i wanted to live and just have freedom of time and money okay and growing up in

l.a um obviously there's a certain type of lifestyle that people project and live in l.a obviously So you you get exposed to a lot of luxury um it's hard i can imagine especially around that age when you're in college and after not to you know want the nice car the nice clothing the nice apartment whatever it might be um and in case in your situation you were exposed even more than that you were exposed to private jets or at least someone who was living a much wealthier lifestyle um Did this lead to any changes in

your decision like what what did you see your future at at that time yeah so um i mean thinking gosh going way back and thinking about how i grew up it was really humble right so i had had me down close um i think i had it drove like a honda um accord at the time and um my parents you know were middle class they were hard working and middle Class and um he's just so very grateful for them um i think for me though i think just that exposure helped me to realize that there

was more and there was more possible and i i think that deep within i just felt within that i was meant for more and i think transparently it's very easy to get swept up in a big city and and to be introduced to the wrong people and so unfortunately Um out of college ended up with four credit cards and collections my car was repossessed and what i had thought in my head i wasn't living out at all and so i share that because that shifted my trajectory entirely and although everything you know looked great on

the resume I was crumbling inside and that's really where i dove into personal development and also found coaching and i can honestly say that coaching really saved my life because it gave me a different perspective it helped me to realize you know that i uh think differently um that people think differently that people Are designed differently in in terms of their personality types um and i think that at in on a ground level we all want to feel special and important in a certain way and by taking the time to look within you really get

to discover yourself through that process and that's what coaching did for me okay well i'd love to talk more about coaching before we do that How did you get into that kind of debt like i i i mean we all know what a credit card is um i've i know some people especially when they're young they first get a credit card and they they kind of don't connect the dots that this is something they have to pay back it's like oh this is free money um what what's your story around that how did how did

you wrap like four credit cards is a lot so How did this happen yeah well um i think that uh it's it's easy to get a credit card first right um and then it's easy to spend money on the credit card um and it's easy to figure out okay i can at least pay the minimum payment but when you do that for some time and then you get these other offers of here's another credit card and then someone tells you oh you can just do a balance transfer so you're not paying interest I think one

multiplies to two to three to four and i think at that time it was 68 000 of credit card debt and if i were to go back in time i think that going from not having much to then having access to more because you could leverage credit i think i fell into that trap not knowing that that was a trap and so it was easy to eat out a lot and that's a huge culprit for most it Was easy to go shopping a lot it was easy to do personal care like hair and nails and

things like that a lot it was easy to treat friends out you know for things um and so i think before you know it um something that was such a tiny snowball really turned into this avalanche of debt right over time and that's what happened to me which is you know true for a lot of people in the u.s so Yeah you're probably describing a scenario a lot of people are still in right now um for you what was the catalyst was it the car being repossessed that finally made you go i need to solve

this problem and take it seriously or was it something else yeah um you know when when all of um that kind of hit a wall uh it really affected me emotionally and so i remember having to move back home and I remember just checking out for some time because of the weight there's actually a lot more to the story i won't go into that at this time unless we want to go deeper but um i'll just say that um that that introspection um and that uh i'll say place of of checking out and just um

decompressing um after a while you realize if No one else is gonna dig me dig myself out of this hole like i have to do this no one else is to do this for me and i think at that time that's when i got introduced to personal development and i went to to a few different seminars and just the idea of um learning about yourself instead of learning about other people in school i Think in school we learned about so many different people in history um but there's not necessarily a class where you're learning about

well how do i function what is success really to me um what makes me happy what do i want to do how do i learn best and so diving into that um that i would say was the catalyst and more so By not keeping it in my head but actually journaling it and i'm actually on journal i just finished journal number 37 just looking at this one that i just finished last night and so i'm on journal number 38 since 2005. i can still remember opening up an empty book and just writing out and brain

dumping all of the emotions all of the things that were tangled in my mind and then literally writing I'm just going to close my eyes i don't know if this is going to work i'm going to count to 100 and i honestly have the spiritual experience where um uh i just had the spiritual experience of from now moving forward i'm going to learn to be the person i meant to be in the world and so that's that's actually what Happened okay so a lot of internal work to get to the point where you could start

making those practical changes around debt um do you remember in terms of personal development courses workshops books whatever you feel you want to mention that had the big impact on you back then yeah absolutely so at the time i was attending um events by um hosted by a lady by the name of danny johnson and she had a seminar Called first steps to success and um i went to several of her of those and then she had a second level called creating a dynasty um from there i lear i read um how to win friends

and influence people i learned read um think and grow rich i watched the secret i watched um what the bleep and i also read um the power of now um The alchemist and um i think you're describing my twins one more right there yeah that i was in my 20s when this all happened yeah so yeah okay a great great list still a great list of resources there um okay so a lot of self work uh maybe a spiritual breakthrough journaling a lot of study how does that then become The actual change that gets you

out of debt yeah uh well i started coaching i read this book and i recommend it to every coach um out there whenever someone asks me how you know i started coaching um and it's leadership coaching the skills discipline and heart of a christian coach and you know the reason why That book made such a difference for me is because it really helped me understand the difference between coaching mentoring and counseling and i caught that if a coach really asked the right questions because if you're asking the right questions you're going to get the right

answers so i could really be a great question ask her and i started off as a life coach to start with i actually did coaching for Free um i i connected with five people that i knew and let them know that what i was up to and i did free sessions and then one of them um my girlfriend from college um funny enough aviva she said you know you're helping me so much can i pay you and she said you know it's 25 enough and i thought that that was a miracle i thought that was

like so amazing because it came out of thin Air i didn't have a product somebody else's product i wasn't trading time for dollars as far as like working for a company and it just gave me that glimmer of hope that i'm on to something i love it i have to ask though and and know everyone listening everyone but some people listening will be like this so you're in debt and you know i don't want to say Everything was terrible but it's it it sounds like you weren't in the situation where you would have the self-confidence

the self-belief to think i can help others you'd be like i need to sort myself out a lot of coaches i think or potential coaches have this is like how can i coach anyone i'm still in debt i haven't got money i haven't got the things you might expect in a life i can't go out there and charge money to Speak to me because i'm not i don't have those things i'm not an expert i don't have the knowledge of the experience yet it sounds like you are you're a 20-something person uh in debt who's

like i'm going to become a life coach and help others like there's almost like the sense of how is you know doesn't make sense did you have any kind of self-doubt there or did or at that point you felt Confident because of all the the personal development you've been through i mean it was years and years of personal development i'd say it was three years until i started coaching and during that that time um i started a direct sales business where i made forty thousand dollars inside of six months and um i was going to

continue with that business but then when i read the book that i shared Um i mean as cliche as it sounds something woke up inside of me and i realized i love people and i love helping people just my personality type and let me see if this is something that could work that's why i didn't charge for it at all because i was already making money in a different company um and and but i didn't address my debt yet at that time when i started coaching Something that yeah something something occurred where you realize okay

i want to have a certain level of self-integrity because if i'm going to lead and guide somebody to get their life on track in whatever category i want to be in line myself and so it gave me uh i'll say the courage um it gave me the Inspiration and the accountability to do that for myself and i actually remember being so scared calling these different creditors because by that time it was creditors calling and i actually settled all of my credit card debt for 24 000 so it was like 38 cents on the dollar and

that was amazing because i was able to pay that off with the other amount of money that I was making with the other business and then i just didn't look back i just kept on going from there okay i could imagine and i'd like to talk a little bit more about recovering from debt but i imagine yes that's great you only pay 30 cents on the dollar but you also must absolutely wreck your credit rating doing that so you're not exactly solving 100 of the problem you've gotten out of debt but you've got this credit

rating issue um and we can talk about That but first so you become a coach and you call it a life coach to begin with so you did some free coaching and it sounds like people in your social circle you would have said hey i'm here to do coaching or help you um you can ask questions like you said before you're comfortable doing that and the quality of the question is the quality of the coach or the you know Getting the help and then someone says they want to pay 25 so okay wow this is

a potentially a business how does that but then become okay i'm gonna and tell me when this happens in your timeline but do you quit your other direct sales business and then say that's it i'm a coach i'm gonna try and get clients or do you sort of juggle them both like how does the transition happen Yeah i juggled them both i juggled them both um because at that time i also got married and i had my first baby so add that to the the mix of juggling several things right and so um i worked

the direct sales business for a certain time Until coaching grew to a point where i knew that in my heart of hearts i didn't have the the interest or desire to build the other business but i i didn't stop one income stream to start at zero with another okay so that would be my advice to you i uh for most people there's a few people who love to burn their bridges and just call in on something new and they can do that but sure i think it's it's often Safer and smarter to uh to have

that back up or at least have that stability in place so take us forward then so how how as a side project or a second business how does the coaching start to take off it was slow it was really slow and um but i i think that for me i needed time to build my confidence back up and it was actually i think around that time those first couple years where i found you And because you you spoke about this laptop lifestyle and i thought even just the idea of it to be able to work

anywhere in the world just as long as you have internet access and a laptop you know and a phone line of some sort i mean that i was mesmerized by that by that idea and um for me it it took some time um i think my i mean i have my numbers somewhere but i think like the first year i made like eight Thousand dollars but that was a lot in in respect of doing something that i just ventured into and the old me would have gone to coaching school and spent a whole lot of

money um but i wanted to try it out first and see you know is this something that i could i could actually do can we talk about that first year because i think that is the hardest part for a lot of people they just don't know how to get their first client their first 10 make their First 8 000 as the case may be what did you do in that first year yeah a couple of things um so i coached for free and that coaching for free um led me to a few referrals one more

time here but even when you say you coach for free i know like as a person who's been coaching others and often i say one of the first things to do is to coach for free For experience um for cementing what topic you want to help people with for getting case studies so many good reasons to do it um but a lot of people get stuck with that because they don't know what i do is do i ask my friends and say listen i'm now a coach do you want my help like what did you

do to find free coaching clients yeah so um i was just honest and real and i said look i read this book and i think i'm supposed to be a coach And i just said um i'd love to help you um would you be open to doing five sessions with me and i wouldn't charge you for anything and um if i can give you some kind of result out of this would you mind writing a testimony for me because i learned early on through personal development facts tell but stories sell and i can say for

the first five years i use Those testimonials for myself just to build my own confidence whenever i felt like hey what am i doing am i even like helping people i would read my testimonials over and over and over again because it was proof it was proof of what i was able to help others with and uh so i highly uh recommend that and um i think that you know when you when you Give something your all and and genuinely come from a hard place it's not transactional it's really about building relationship and i think

that's super important because it's it's such a disarming approach um because not everybody feels like they've got somebody 100 there for them that won't judge them that We'll hear them out we'll be we'll ask them the right questions and we'll stick it out with them and hold them accountable to their highest self and i think that um when you when you realize that that's something that you can do for somebody else then you'll see how valuable that is for the person that you're actually helping leaps and bounds just holding space for Someone so that they

can think is monumental i've had some sessions where i've barely said anything i just held space so that they can sort certain things out and i'll ask a few key questions um so that it'll and inspire them to or ponder certain things and that was the coaching session and you know the reflection on that is that it didn't make coaching about me and how could i'm The best coach and how i i really made coaching about serving and uh i think that's i think a lot of coaches um forget that they're they're really about their

methodology and what i'm going to train you on instead of really listening active listening skills yeah that's good advice did you have a topic uh at the time like were you saying i'm a coach on this or was it just like i'm a coach I'm a coach i want to help you to succeed in whatever it is that you want to succeed in i i casted a wide net because then it was really up to them to set the agenda to figure out what it is that they wanted and after a while there was this

theme though of finances and I could be authentic and real enough to say here's what happened with me and here's how i'm turning it around and then that niche uh i think organically came came about okay uh so back from when i before i interrupted you eight thousand dollars in the first year so we can see now how you got your your free clients and how that was so important for building your self-esteem you're getting your Practice in finding maybe the niche a little bit with finance everything starts to come from that then you start

charging money so how do you get to 8 000 in your first year uh i charged 25 and then i was so bold to charge 50 a session isn't that funny and with that um it was just a consistency you know i never did packages um i just kept going with a client and um delivered as much value as i could That they kept wanting to coach with me so i've had several uh clients where i was helping them in such a way that then i ended up coaching their mom and then i ended up

coaching their dad i had another client where i ended up coaching her sister then i ended up coaching the other sister and because they're your biggest advocates and walking billboards of the experience they can't stop talking about it and so I think that's how that grew organically and then i remember um uh realizing okay i need to be online somehow and i am not i'm i'm very high touch not as high tech um and um i i was talking to someone um about be coming on being online and she guided me to this online directory

and i still believe it is the largest um International directory for coaches and called newme.comi.com and i'm still listed on there to to date and when i went on there it was like wow there's this world of other coaches that i could you know keep getting in touch with and um with some boldness i reached out to a few and then i connected with a marketing coach who wasn't doing well financially and i was doing Well financially you know to a degree at least being able to connect the dots and but i didn't know marketing

so we traded and so she actually set up my linkedin which i don't know what that was at the time she set up a yelp page and she set up my google my business and that was well over 13 years ago and then at that time uh with the concept of facts tell stories sell uh i gathered as many of my clients to And um asked them if they would post their testimonials for me on those platforms nice nice it's funny to think 13 years ago and that's probably around the time you came across my

work because it sounds like that's when you started looking into the online part of this um that's a long time ago i mean that my First version of my first course came out around probably about then maybe 15 years ago so slightly after that a different time obviously but still similar marketing things can work um [Music] well two questions one let's close the loop on because i don't did you take my blog mastermind 1.0 course is that what you First studied oh well i did it was one point out yeah so um was that part

of like i mean i mean i know you and i we've talked i feel like every three or four years i sort of get an update on what's going on with michelle and it's always better but it's always kind of more and more one-on-one coaching um which can be quite laptop lifestyle you can certainly do it anywhere but I mean sounds like a lot of your coaching was face to face to start with in real life not like we're doing now no actually all of it was online all of it was over the phone yeah

from day one before zoom even existed um okay so you did have essentially a laptop lifestyle business a little bit um personal in the sense you have to always show up for something and that's often What people get a little frustrated with but let's not talk about that yet um so going back then you set up all your basic marketing important discovery things your testimonials was the plan maybe to start writing as a way to get clients and that's why you're interested in blogging at the time because i'm trying to think everything you've said so

far by getting clients has pretty much been through Referrals right your current clients bringing new clients but that can only go so far i'm guessing with your friendship circle at some point you might need to find a few new people so what was the kind of roll out of your marketing so it's so funny yes i had the idea okay well i need to start blogging because that's at that time that's what everyone was doing i just um i'll say that i wasn't so great at it i Did my best um and you know what

is wild that actually happened is because i look back and i think about it now and i realize that in order for the right people to find you you do need to be searchable and yes searchable with blogging but then i also realized what are those search engines that are out there where Someone has an urgent need um they're hopping online to find someone to work with they're looking for a person to work with not researching uh an answer and so that's really where i think everything shifted for me because then i started um expanding

yelp And um i started also paying for some advertising on yelp and then i i had some constant lead flow through that and then i did have um some articles on my website and then i found somebody that could do seo for me out of the philippines and then that helped me with location because something that i learned when i Was working with the founder of nume is that when people are looking to work with somebody they're looking for somebody nearby so location geographic location is is super important and that being said i knew that

yelp was a huge search engine in los angeles and i needed to uh appear um As a number one financial coach on that platform so globally or just or just locally just locally on in los angeles later i expanded territory to different major cities in the u.s um but los angeles was the the hub okay so yelp ads yelp organic search just going after that i mean and correct me if i'm wrong was it like get out of debt coach financial coach Financial success yeah financial coach that was sort of mm-hmm okay so you decided

to really go after that in l.a how did it go it went well like right now if you google financial coach los angeles i typically show up four times on the first page so four times yeah okay that's that's uh yeah domination nice yes so did that immediately like and and Maybe to go back to your story here was that part of getting to 8 000 or was that after you were already at 8 000 in that first year that was after yeah that was after eight thousand i was able so to get to 8

000 was yeah so 8 000 really was war market referrals and then i was able to get a few uh new clients through the nume platform because they're also it's a it's a lead source For coaches as well okay how much did you do in year two um actually i have my numbers just because i'm a financial coach [Laughter] so if you want to see yeah if you want us to go over them really quick revenue year later i mean we don't have to go through every year but yeah yeah We can get an overview

because it is a lot it is a lot of years um so just a little over 8000 in 2010 um about 12 in 2011 um a little over 15 and 2012. so this is slow right and and mind you um i had i had my son and then two years later i had another son right so this is me stay-at-home mom then after that i'm a little over 20 And then um closer to 30 um 50 by 2016 i was at 80 and then 17 is when i had my daughter and i hit over six

figures i did 116. and then from there um 2018 it was 184 and then in 2019 284 2020 367 21 was 5 30 And 22 i'm on track to do 550 this year wow thanks for the breakdown that's yes so uh compelling i have so many questions about this um first of all yeah congratulations for consistency because let's let's that is not a like you got rich in a year or two story that is you just kept doing it you kept improving your numbers kept going up and obviously uh you're still hitting new numbers and

big numbers now um the the questions that come to mind are two and Maybe we can cover both um and two sides of this one is the actual delivery of coaching because the numbers go up the clients go up you get busy but then there's other side of it which is how you get to that many clients so let's let me start with the first part of that so um correct me if i'm wrong but throughout those years you're raising prices at the Same time so you're getting more clients but you're also increasing prices um

like what is your day like do you do you do have 10 hour days or is it one client a day where does it fit in all that maybe through the progression like over the years yeah absolutely so um funny enough i remember um having my first uh Uh five clients and i'm thinking how am i ever gonna get to ten right ten clients that i'm working with and then i i can recall like remembering okay how am i going to hit 5000 for the month and then um how can i hit 5000 in a

week and how can i do 45 000 in this year and now how can i do 45 000 in a month um my rates went obviously from zero um i my charge 700 a session now Per per session and um last year i did 1087 sessions and my average was around 550 and um it's i'm tracking the same usually once i've gone into rhythm i i could because i track my numbers so well i'm usually doing what i did the year prior by the third month of september because i'm just i'm pacing at a certain

rate and um uh Because i'm raising rates um i can still handle the same number of clients um so that i'm not i'm not like uh working from sundown to sun up if that makes sense and every time i raise my rates i feel like Oh my god am i really doing this but you just uh i think grow into that number and then that just becomes your number and then you just grow a little bit bigger and then a little bit bigger and um i think for me uh doing it that way helped me

to have ownership in the value that i was bringing and then just that little bit more didn't seem like such a big leap And it also helped me as i was progressing continue to fine-tune coaching so that it just became so much more um streamlined and strategic and and you know the very beginning of coaching you attract a certain kind of client but as you grow an increase in your skill set in your authority in in your posture in your voice right um other i'll say you you um become more magnetic for other kinds of

of clients Because the client that i have now like i just was hired by the number one police psychologist in the country i never would have been able to coach her you know year two year three because i didn't have the the wealth of knowledge or the experience in the areas that she really needed specific coaching in so you know that that um occurred um do you do you mind me asking yeah i have so many questions here but Correct um what what does a police psychologist come to you asking for at a 700 an

hour rate because that's i mean i want to ask you two like like you're just saying now it's such a jump from 50 to 700 but you worked your way up to that sure but obviously the people who used to hire you there's no way they probably can afford you now maybe they can some of them probably gotten wealthy over the years hopefully too and maybe They could but the new clients you attract uh it's a different type of person who can afford 700 like they're not in credit card debt because they don't have 700

to spend on coaching or maybe i'm wrong um maybe they've got a lot of money coming in a lot of money coming out but yeah who what is the client type for so good yes yes because i just i just started this month of starting Seven clients um at that that rate right so um it's it's a handful of things um i currently um attract a lot of uh i'll say successful um high income earning clients um but just because you make a lot of money doesn't necessarily mean that you know where it's all going

and if it's efficiently Um being spent and i'll have clients that make multiple multiple six figures but they have a lot of credit card debt still the same because lifestyle increases and um i think for me i know that i'm called to the up and outers if you know if if i were to class a certain kind of person um because they have a lot of things Going for them but they just don't have the strategy in how to function with their finances so it's operating like a well-oiled machine and um their their pace in

life is one where they're in their own zone of genius in their career but perhaps this other side of the brain where it comes to numbers that's not their strong suit so they do See the value of bringing somebody in to be able to organize their financial life help them to shift from their money costing them money to their money making them money to expand the possibility of real estate i've had many clients who make lots of money but they still don't own their first home because um there's You know when you're when you're on

this runaway train and you're spending so much with kids in private school or um certain vacations or spending um that you just don't know where to even begin to sort things out and it feels really really heavy both emotionally and uh time wise because You know when people get busy then they don't really have a lot of time to sort this out and they don't know how to figure it out so what would be the most common phrase they come to you saying i need help with is it i need to get out of debt

despite the fact that i'm making a lot of money i still find myself in debt or is this something else i want to buy my first home or something like that Yeah um the main thing that people say is that they want to get their finances on track um that they feel out of control that if they're they know that they're on paper they're successful in life but this is the one area they just don't know how to get right because they've never they were never shown how which i agree because just like me it

was never taught around the Dinner table it's never taught in the classroom um i didn't learn it even though i went to you know a prestigious private you know school and learned business um personal finances wasn't really taught wasn't in there okay so without going too too deep into what you actually talk about during one-year session sure what do you talk about during one of your sessions to help these people Yeah yes so good so you know the first thing that i um coach someone with the first session is always goal setting and the reason

being is because there's two sides in goal setting there's the the i call it the financial life coach the financial coaching side which is i need to pay this debt off i want my credit score to be at this i need to buy this house i want to get into real estate investing i want to be able to Make this much money i want to be able to go on these types of vacations so that's like the 2.0 version of life that's the vision board you know picture that they're they're creating and then on the

other side of that from the life coaching side i also work with them on well who do they have to be or who do they get to be really in order to be the person that can achieve that and that is in three categories Being goals mindset goals and energy goals and i say that because um from all of personal development and i love jim rohn he's like the grandfather of personal development and one quote that has always stood out that i share in every coaching call is don't make it a goal to make a

million dollars just because of the money but because of who you'll become who will you become And that 2.0 version of yourself because we're always leveling up when you realize it we've leveled up in our careers we're leveling up you know with our possessions or whatnot and the places that we want to go and the kinds of foods that we want to eat why not just level up as well as as a person that you're becoming because that's a person who will actually be able to to achieve and accomplish the 2.0 life that They're looking

for and when you get that concept um in your down then you realize okay now i can design the 3.0 life who's the 3.0 me now i can design the four point of life who is the 4.0 me and you just continue to level up toward that and i think that is how it happened for me as a coach okay so i'm this 1.0 coach who's a 2.0 coach in me and he was my 2.0 client i get to be the 3.0 coach who's my 3.0 Kind of client because never in a million years would

ever have thought that i would have a senator as a client a client that ran for president celebrities as clients um professors at the college i went to as clients you know so that's how it occurred okay amazing i appreciate the i mean i could ask you more and more questions about what do you Do in a coaching session but i want to cover other things first if we have time we can come back to it but yeah um i i kind of drifted away from the market can i interject you with this i just

want to i um yes yes i always start with goal setting but then then comes the mechanics because really it's three parts most people with financial coaching they lack visibility they lack strategy and they lack leadership in what to do um and so I i break the sessions down in such a way where we're going over numbers actuals for the last 90 days because most people don't even remember what they ate yesterday and then we're looking at a snapshot of all the money that came in in reality and where it went out and then i

fit in all of the yearly um amounts um because those are the things that we don't think about those are the things that get on a credit card right And then we build a budget based off of that and um i mean this is so big picture but then after that then we we do strategy we'll strategize to pay off debt we'll strategize to buy a house we'll strategize to get into you know real estate investing and then the last session is typically implementation so that's just in a nutshell that's nice i appreciate the overview

that's yeah that's much helpful Very helpful um it is amazing that those topics are very similar to what i would expect someone who doesn't have a lot of money yet who isn't earning you know like isn't a senator isn't running for president everyone kind of is thinking that's my problem but then i wouldn't think a person who can spend seven hundred dollars in a coaching session is is also Still asking those questions in my mind if you're earning multiple six figures a year you know what that's probably the minimum to say seven hundred dollars is

okay for a coaching session you think well of course you've got enough money to buy a house because you you're keeping all this money from all the money you make and you should already have your debt paid off because you're making so much money but you realize these are problems no matter at What level income you're at it is a challenge especially if you're not wired like you said to do something as simple as how much money do you spend on food each month and how much money you're spending this is itemizing everything and seeing

where it's going and then moving something from there to pay off something else so um but that's an important distinction to make you can teach exactly what you teach now to a higher caliber clientele Because they have the same problems you just have to believe you can help them and you have to believe you can charge more so i love all that you're you're walking proof of all this you're walking proof of the evolution to go through all that from your starting point at 25 an hour to now 700 an hour uh but what i

wanted to know um this kind of connects to the two parts of this doing 700 Coaching sessions we touched on her before how many hours are you doing per week or per month in coaching yeah so i typically do anywhere between 18 to 23 sessions a week okay so it's still very much a part-time job for you in terms of labor yep yeah because i'm still a mom of three kids yeah that's the other job i still have you know We my husband and i we flip houses as well so yeah okay um and then

continuing at the line of questioning before i said the marketing side of this i feel like marketing at a higher price point might need to change like how do you convince a senator that you're the person to hire for financial advice i can understand maybe case studies and social proof of your Current and past clients helps tremendously you kind of build up from you know you get a normal person whatever normal means to maybe the first ceo of a company which helps you then get the first senator which might help you get the first president

and then you get the first rockstar or whatever it is but that's a lot of leveling up how did you progress uh in your marketing to reach the point where 700 is is justified That's a good question um the best answer that i could give you is that um someone when they get on the phone with you because i do all of the discovery calls myself um they have to think know and believe that they can trust you that you can solve the problem and no one else can and um that they they Need to

do this now in fact yesterday um as far as that the rate i have many clients that pay me that where i keep the card on file or they venmo result or whatnot and then i have other clients and this shifted for me during covet because i really did want to help more people is that i started doing payment plans with clients and so when i opted to offer them a payment plan that fit inside of budget a lot of The wall up or the question well i need the coaching but i don't have the

money to get the coaching to get my finances on track um that wasn't an issue anymore and you know what's just so interesting is that even the clients that were on a payment plan because of the way that i coach we were able to shift things through the Coaching so that um a good number of them um would would address their debt and then say okay i just want to pay off the balance with you now and so i don't know if that answers your question but it is really about for me and in the

marketing because yes there's the Marketing online in what people read but you're you're also marketing yourself when you're talking with them by the first hello by the the tone of your voice by the welcoming welcoming their first experience with you um in the with interaction with setting the first appointment um if you operate from a such a place where you've got so so much certainty um that you have this um Well thought out streamlined process that they fit perfectly into and you take the pressure off of them i think that um that uh leaves somebody

saying okay there's nothing in the way of me saying no now um and it's just a matter of trusting themselves to trust you to take that first step that's that's how i look at it at least In the psychology of the way that i build my business it makes sense you're talking about i guess the sales side of it where you're selling on the call it doesn't sound as it's really just building a relationship right and then dealing with all their rejection points but before that they have to discover you make the choice to book

a discovery call today does that happen from searching still and you know finding yelp or Obviously it is a lot of word of mouth where your current clients are recommending you is there anything new and different you've done recently to to bring in new clients or is that still the same basic structure it's still the same wow yeah it's still the same and it's really quite wild and i think over time because of being able to be searchable and i tell All certain people that have hired me to help them with their coaching business and

i said to them if i wanted to find somebody like you that to solve that particular problem how can i even find you and if they're not able to be found through you know online then then um that is an area that i want them to get strong at um so um I just i get a trickle of leads every day and it's just about um being able to convert those leads so knowing your numbers too because um if if let's just say in a month you know someone gets 10 leads but they're only able

to close one of them then they're they're working way much more harder than somebody that gets the same 10 leads and can close like six of them right That first person would need to have 60 leads to come in just to get the same number of new clients as the person that um had the 10 leads but with the higher conversion so for me i think just by by necessity i also had to get really good with being able to convert the number of people that you know um were coming my way and then not

wasting It really that uh is possibly the most common question or leads me to the most common question i get from people who are about to do their first discovery call so they decided to do some coaching and i'm asking this on behalf of them very much as well as everyone listening in here what is a discovery call for you and how do you use that because i don't maybe Tell us how long a discovery call is because a lot of my students come and say okay i booked my first 15-minute discovery call or something

like that how do i bridge the gap from them booking this free 15 minutes to them paying me with only 15 minutes to actually make that conversion that sale as you're saying which clearly you've gotten better at over time yeah So my my answer to you is uh typically i um i say it's a 20-minute call but i always leave room for 30 and there are some times i'll go all the way up to an hour i'm not coaching that person um but if i could say here's the platform or here's the the uh methodology

uh because i'm an open book here and and um uh i think that this would help a lot of people um the first thing i say when i pick the phone up is you know what can i Do for you because then i'm coming from a place of service and then as a friend because i want things to be conversational um i'll say catch me up you know where things at right now and because people need to warm up in order to start opening up and so then from there once they've unloaded everything on their

mind and i'm asking A few questions at the time then um i will um say this is what i caught for me so far because most people want to also feel like they've been heard so i'll summarize what it is that they shared with me and then i'll go deeper with question asking i'll say okay i just want a little bit more detail around the landscape so is it okay if i ask you a Few few more questions okay so where are we at with credit card debt and just go right for the jugular okay

where are we at with um do you own your home are you renting um do you work for yourself or you um do you you know have a w-2 income uh where are we at with taxes where are we at with your credit i'm i'm getting so granular with them Because i'm so i'm so curious about everything that's working and not working and then i give them my recommendation because i'm the expert so it's okay awesome based on everything that you shared with me it's just a couple of things i always say it's just a

couple of things because i want them to feel like okay it's only a couple of things it's not like this huge gigantic you know problem that um i uh is weighing me down Um i i say it that way because then it feels like okay this is doable and then i i have a certain um uh what would you say like dialogue i guess that's the word and and for most people it's what i what i see in your situation it's just a couple of things we're lacking visibility and strategy to create the financial stability

that You're really looking for and so with my clients i usually guide them through five steps and it's goal setting and i go into that and it is crunching the numbers creating a budget the strategy of what it is that you're wanting to accomplish and then implementation and so then i'm getting their buy-in because i'm giving them you know what most people Say is that you know i really like that you have a step-by-step plan and it's laid out and it's simple and then from there then i say you know most people at this point

i just go right into it most people at this point they have a few questions they want to know more of like what does it actually take to coach with me and then i share with them coaching sessions are typically uh one a week i you normally just start with do a Handful most likely five and um and everything is confidential i often do a flat rate and this is the rate and then for my clients that have a cash flow issue um i have some clients where it's not a problem and i keep a

credit card on file and i have other clients you know that are managing their cash flow that will set up some type of payment plan that fits inside of budget And then at that point what i'm doing at that point is managing any of their objections time money how often is this something that can actually work for me um and um is this something that that is a timing of it right for myself and then i just go right into asking them how soon do they want to get their finances on track do you want

to Start this week next week that way it's an option close an assumption option close of a yes is it we're just gonna do it here today this week or next week and it's it's moving them into their answer by guiding them if that makes sense i love that uh thank you so much michelle for sharing that i feel like anyone i can now refer everyone to this interview just listen to the five minutes of michelle saying what to do on a Discovery call and you've got you know your own little plan there for for

your own whatever it is you coach it can be adapted to that um in the last sort of five minutes here michelle it's obviously been a long journey um it's a it's an amazing amount of money for a side amount of hours like you know 20 25 hours a week uh yeah a week um that that is i don't even know if you've imagined reaching that point when you first started this business uh maybe you Did because you were you're pretty ambitious um for those listening in who are thinking well okay i want to follow

michelle's footsteps maybe i want to even do it a little faster than you because you know 13 years is a long time to wait to get to half a million a year i can i get there in five years can i get there in three or something like that what would you advise them to do to really grow A fantastic lucrative you know one-on-one coaching business yeah that's such a good question um one of my um coaching clients um because she was working at a regular job and the first phone call she had with me

is michelle i want to quit this job and i want to be a coach and i need help with my finances to get there and um it is number one um be searchable online so Just like me be on yelp be on google my business and also be on numi and linkedin and um with that being said um i think that's what's also important is to have a website that is sort of like a brochure that doesn't give any information about rates or anything like that but it really just Touches upon the pain points of

what it is that that they're i'm running into um and about you i would number two so searchable number two is gather as many testimonials as you can and if you get long testimonials chop those up into smaller testimonials and sprinkle them because if you were to compare coach a to coach b and coach a has three Testimonials and coach b has 35 most people would have an impression that coach b is more successful and would be more interested in going with coach b and then the fourth would be to know your numbers know your

numbers in such a way that then you're tweaking okay if i just raise my rate here or if i just had this many more sessions during the week that i could handle um if i could just offer Something um at this price point uh i think that you'll go faster than i did because um the client that i mentioned who left her job to be a coach in three years she hit 30 i know she hit 84 000 in three years um uh as far as this year she's gonna do 84 000 in coaching and

it took me oh my goodness like eight or nine just to get there um so that's what i would say definitely be searchable gather testimonials and know your numbers in your coaching Business so that you know what to tweak to keep um creating more value and charging at the rate that you feel you know is worth that yeah that that rake part i imagine is a real hiccup for a lot of people like they're thinking i can't justify 250 an hour for my time now i haven't taken any clients yet i have you know i'm

50 an hour or something like that Do you think that like as a if you go back to say michelle right at the beginning those first few years when you were charging around 50 would you advise her to start at 100 instead or start at a higher price or do you think it's necessary to go through free and then very low cost as part of your evolution with pricing uh i think that if you're gun shy to charge start with free if you have a belief in yourself that What you are doing brings value um

i would pick a number that you can resonate with because here's the thing i can i've talked to other people where they've said a number to me but i could tell just intuitively that they couldn't deliver at that price point they didn't feel it was it was over it was a number that they pulled out of the air that they were reaching for but they couldn't stand behind it and um I don't know if it's just like women's intuition and i'm learning about that um now actually but there is something about that um and for

yourself if you feel confident about because you can feel it inside too like if you feel like i can't charge that person this much money not because of the value but just because it doesn't feel right in you then then um someone Else will pick up that frequency so to me there's some coaching around you know self-coaching or personal coaching that you can dive into to get to to that sticky point for yourself and when you can work through that i think that then you'll break your own barrier because it is always about Breaking your

own glass ceiling above you not anybody else i totally agree it's you're right it's almost like a resonance a a sense of i am worth this much because i can deliver this result to you and you kind of intuitively know what that feels like and what and you know even how long you've been doing something or how much you've lived through or the experience you have that that really helps so michelle wrap it up for over an hour um For people who are interested in learning about you maybe even hiring you as a coach where

should they head to yeah absolutely so um they can go to my website michelletasco.com and they can google financial life coach los angeles and find me you know four times on that page i'm actually in vanity fair this issue Um i have it here beside me um right here it's the july august issue that's awesome and um if you want to learn about um making more money and just following other um women entrepreneurs that have hit you know that million mark and beyond um this book the science of getting rich for women and i've written

a chapter in it myself and so you can Learn more about me there and yeah any of those methods i'm able to be reached that's awesome uh thanks michelle is there anything else you would like to share with the audience before i stop by recording today yeah you know just honestly in my heart of hearts The world needs coaches because there are areas or categories of coaching that are just never going to be taught in school and it's not even about there not being enough teachers it's about people that have life experiences people that have

a passion people that have a calling and a message that they know that they're meant to impact others To be able to live the life that they're meant to be living have the career they're meant to be you know working um having a most amazing marriage being an amazing parent being a successful entrepreneur and uh i just say that there are people that need us and um if not now then when and if not you then who because If you don't step up to the plate someone else will and you don't want to miss that

and look back and say my gosh i never followed through or i never did that and so i think that this is one of those like can i believe in myself enough to go the distance and you know a wise person said to me to be successful in business you've got to Stick around long enough to be successful in business and it's it's not just are you um willing to put yourself out there but are you willing um to go all in and to go the extra mile and to to um uh i'll say succeed

no matter how long it takes no matter how long it takes because you know yarrow i know you um you're here to Impart your own wisdom and knowledge to create community to inspire others that yes it is possible because you're living proof of it yourself and so if we just all link arms together i think that we really can transform the world in a beautiful way it's a great message michelle and i think you and i are both examples of longevity and and uh you know your story you went through all those years it's not

like yeah it's eight thousand it's ten thousand the Next year it's twelve thousand the year after that and you know i started blogging in 2005 this podcast started in 2005 and we're recording now in 22 so yeah if you're enjoying what you're doing and you can really make an impact on a lot of people as you have done so thank you for sharing the story um keep up the great work i look forward to seeing you know what you do next and of course on the occasional coaching call that we Talked through my programs we

always talk about you doing some kind of group program or some some sort of self-study program so hopefully one day we'll see that come out from you as well absolutely thank you yarrow it's such a pleasure and honor to be here as a guest