Last week, we went to a workshop in California with James Wedmore, whose work has been part of the conversation Angie and I have been having around our digital business, and one line from the very beginning stayed with me the entire time.

“Fear is a vision of what you don’t want.”

Then came the question: Are you a product of your fear?

I have been sitting with that ever since.

What I realized is that Angie and I were not fully connecting to our message or to the people we most want to serve through SEAR. The challenge we kept running into when we talked about it was not actually confusion. It was fear. We kept saying that we help coaches and helping professionals, and while that is true, it was also broad enough to keep us safe. Broad enough to avoid excluding anyone. Broad enough to avoid the vulnerability of being known for something specific.

But somewhere in the middle of talking to people, getting feedback, and hearing ourselves say the same thing over and over again, it clicked.

SEAR is especially for coaches who want community.

That landed hard for me, because I could immediately see what had been underneath my resistance to saying it more clearly. Part of me was afraid that if we got more specific, we would turn people away. And if we missed business, maybe that would mean this thing we are building would not work.

That is a lot of pressure to put on one decision.

And if I am being real, that pressure had me creating from a place of desperation instead of confidence, curiosity, and service.

That was probably the biggest gift of the workshop for me. It was not just the business strategy. It was being confronted with the inner frequency I had been operating from. I could feel that fear had me trying to speak to everyone, just in case. Just in case being broad would protect us. Just in case being less specific would somehow make success more likely.

But it was doing the opposite.

It was pulling me away from what feels most true about why SEAR matters.

Because the truth is, coaching can feel lonely.

Even when you love your work. Even when you are good at it. Even when you have been doing it for years.

There are still the questions most coaches quietly carry.

• What are other people charging?
• How did they decide that number?
• When did they know it was time to raise their rates?
• What do you say after a really difficult client session?
• Have you ever had to end a client relationship?
• Have you ever been fired by a client?
• Are these normal growing pains, or am I the only one dealing with them?
• Do I suck?
• Am I great?

Those are not small questions. They are the kinds of questions that can make this work feel surprisingly solitary.

And that is why the clarity mattered so much.

SEAR is not for everyone, and that is actually a relief.

It is for coaches who want to grow in the company of other coaches. Coaches who want practical tools, yes, but also honest conversations. Coaches who do not need more performance, more posturing, or more pretending they already have it all figured out.

They need room to ask real questions and become even better at work they care about.

That is who we are here for.

One of the other ideas from the workshop that stayed with me was the Dutch word vanzelf. (Thank you Rianne!) The translation shared with us was “from self”, or what comes from who you are naturally, automatically, without force.

That resonated because fear does not usually make us more ourselves. It makes us more guarded. More generic. More careful. More likely to shape our message around self-protection than service.

And I could feel how far that had pulled me from my own vanzelf.

So this week, I want to offer you the same question I have been asking myself.

And just to be clear, I am not saying all of this to sell you something. I am saying it because I know what fear can do, and I want more us to stop building from it.

Where is fear shaping the way you are showing up?

Not just in your business model or your marketing. In your coaching. In your voice. In the conversations you are avoiding. In the part of you that knows what is true, but keeps softening it so no one can reject it.

What vision are you really living into right now?

And is it your vision, or your fear’s?

I do not have this mastered. I am still practicing it. But I left that workshop with a kind of clarity I had not felt in a while. The moment I stopped trying to say everything to everyone and started speaking more honestly about who we are here to serve, something in me settled.

It felt lighter. Stronger. More real.

That is the direction I want to keep moving in.

And if any part of this hits home for you, maybe that is your invitation too. As always, we want to hear from you. Hit reply and let us know if this resonated!

P.S. You may have heard us mention James Wedmore before - you can check out his coaching here. You will definitely be hearing more about him from us.