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Episode 134: The Future of Coaching: Navigating the Post-Pandemic Landscape with guest, Milana Leshinsky

• Garry Schleifer

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The coaching landscape has transformed dramatically since 2020, with thousands of new coaches flooding the market and digital tools revolutionizing service delivery. Business strategist Milana Leshinsky reveals the essential strategies coaches need to stand out in this increasingly crowded field.

Milana takes us deep into the post-pandemic coaching world, explaining how the combination of career reevaluation and remote work sparked an unprecedented surge in new coaches. This influx has created both challenges and opportunities for established professionals. We explore why digital savviness is no longer optional but essential for creating exceptional client experiences that command premium rates.

The conversation takes a fascinating turn as we discuss AI's growing role in coaching. From using ChatGPT to enhance productivity and content creation to the emergence of AI virtual coaches that provide 24/7 support, technology is reshaping what's possible. Milana shares practical examples of how these tools can augment (not replace) human coaching expertise.

For coaches wondering how to differentiate themselves, Milana offers powerful strategies: "deep niching" to truly understand your audience, developing unique messaging that challenges conventional wisdom in your field, and creating signature programs or tools that showcase your unique approach. Her own Marketing Mojo Method card deck exemplifies how coaches can turn their expertise into tangible products that set them apart.

Whether you're an established coach navigating this new landscape or just starting your coaching journey, this episode delivers actionable insights to help you adapt, innovate, and thrive. Connect with Milana at hello@coachinggenie.com or access her free 5-day course on designing your coaching program at coachinggenie.com/design.

Watch the full interview by clicking here.

Find the full article here.

Learn more about Milana here.

 Grab your free issue of choice Magazine here - https://choice-online.com

Garry Schleifer:

Welcome to Beyond the Page, the official podcast of choice, the magazine of professional coaching, where we bring you amazing insights and in-depth features you just won't find anywhere else. I'm your host, Garry Schleifer, and I'm excited to expand your learning as we dive into the latest article, have a chat with this brilliant author of ours sitting here and uncover the learnings that are transforming the coaching world. Join our vibrant community of coaching professionals as we explore groundbreaking ideas, share expert tips and techniques and make a real difference in our clients' lives. Remember, this is your go-to resource for all things coaching, so let's dive in.

Garry Schleifer:

In today's episode, I'm speaking with business strategist Milana Leshinsky, who is the author of an article in our latest issue What's Hot and What's Not? ~ What is Influencing Coaching? Her article is entitled Evolution! The Future of Coaching in a Post-Pandemic World. Sounds like a novel. A little bit about Milana. She is a business strategist, a certified EFT practitioner, author of Coaching Millions and Simplicity Entrepreneurship and creator of Coaching Genie, a tool that enables coaches to create extraordinary client experiences and deliver more value in less time. A former music teacher from Ukraine Melana helps entrepreneurs grow their businesses without burnout. Melana, thank you so much for joining me today. We've known each other forever.

Garry Schleifer:

And it's about time we got you on the podcast, so thank you for writing the article, and it's no surprise that you would write an article about this, because you're just all about the business of coaching, I think, right.

Milana Leshinsky:

Yes, yes, and first of all, it's my honor and pleasure to be here. I've been called Melania ever since Trump became president.

Garry Schleifer:

That's probably where I got it from,

Milana Leshinsky:

Maybe that's where it's in your head.

Milana Leshinsky:

Yeah, I was a big fan until Melania was the first lady. But yeah, I was, so you know, obviously I already had a lot of ideas, but for me to do some more research and talking to the coaches and experts about what they see in their practices and their businesses post-pandemic was really fascinating. It was a fascinating experience to see what everybody else is seeing and observing in their practice and working with their clients. So yeah it was a fun article to put together, for sure.

Garry Schleifer:

Well, and I love that you connected with one of our other favorite authors, Jennifer Britton, who actually is just kind of up the road, you know, an hour away and who has written for us as well, so I love to see the connection.

Garry Schleifer:

It's a small coaching world after all, right?

Milana Leshinsky:

It is, and what I love about Jennifer Britton is that she has that longevity. A lot of coaches that I started out with 24 years ago they're nowhere to be found. I can't even find them on social media. Even one of my coaches went back to work as a corporate consultant and I just recently had to chase her down and I said are you still coaching? I would love a few coaching sessions. And so it's interesting that not a lot of people stick and we can talk about the reasons why that happens, of course, but Jennifer has been around for a very long time and I was so happy she's still around and we actually took the same class on card deck design.

Garry Schleifer:

Oh, with Marcy Nelson-Garrison, another friend.

Milana Leshinsky:

Exactly so we were in the same master class with Marcy and with Jennifer Britton, so that was a fun little experience in the summer this year.

Garry Schleifer:

Well, give us Milana, give us a lay of the land. What has changed post-pandemic? What are the top things that you've noticed?

Milana Leshinsky:

I mean, if you think about what happened in 2020, when the world kind of stopped and people stopped being able to go to work, everything became extremely virtual. My neighbor asked me have you heard of Zoom? I have been using Zoom for years, 2020, I've always been online. My lifestyle hasn't changed, but a lot of people for sure have, you know had to adjust and modify what their daily life looks like. But the biggest change that occurred is, because people couldn't go to work and many people lost their jobs, this re -evaluation of people's lives and careers started happening and many people started looking for an online business or a home-based business opportunity. Coaching, being at the top as far as the option for people who are experts, corporate consultants, who have had a long career in their 40s and 50s, suddenly finding themselves not being able to create revenue, but also younger people like, oh, I don't want to go to work. I want to be at home making a lot of money.

Milana Leshinsky:

Coaching seems to be a very attractive profession for those reasons, and so thousands of new coaches have entered the field. Certified and not certified. People are just waking up and saying I want to be a coach. That is the biggest change that I've seen, and clients don't really know how to tell the difference between an experienced and a great coach who will produce results and be there for them, and somebody who is just there to make money and create revenue.

Milana Leshinsky:

And we need to do both. We need to make sure that we're making money so we're staying in business, but we also need to make sure that we create results for clients, and so there's a lot of variety of coaches and experts and experts calling themselves coaches when they're really just teaching and consulting and it's like a one-way communication. So that's the number one big one. And the second one is the digital revolution. That happened because in the last few years, even Zoom completely progressed and added so many features to accommodate this new wave of online users. So we can talk more about that, but that's why I would start the conversation for sure. There's just more of us.

Garry Schleifer:

And there's technology, a lot of technology

Garry Schleifer:

Yeah, you make me wonder what would be like like to see what Zoom was like when I first started, because, like you, I was already doing things online. I mean, back in the pandemic I had my 92 year old mother on Zoom and somehow she locked herself out, so we went to FaceTime but anyway, that's another story for another day.

Garry Schleifer:

But when you talk about being digitally savvy, that's exactly what happened with us, with my mom, and transitioning her to FaceTime is helping her be digitally savvy. But what does that mean to coaches? Why is it essential for coaches to be digitally savvy?

Milana Leshinsky:

Well, you know, I've been thinking a lot about this because, as you mentioned, I run Coaching Genie, which is a coaching platform for those who create programs, especially group coaching programs. And you know, sometimes I get customers who say, well, my clients are not using digital tools, and so then I ask this question well then, how do you deliver? How do you communicate with your clients? How do you deliver resources? How do you manage the communication between clients if this is a group program and they're thinking, oh, I guess I haven't really focused on it, and so it really starts with a coach.

Milana Leshinsky:

The reason that I believe it's essential to be digitally savvy, especially right now, is because there's so many coaches out there and the people who want to move forward in life and hire coaches, career coaches, business coaches, executive coaches, productivity coaches, whatever kind of coaching you do, they don't want to work with a mediocre coach. They want to work with somebody who is on the cutting edge, who is efficient, who provides a better, smoother, more streamlined, time-saving client experience. So they will be drawn to coaches who have their stuff together.

Garry Schleifer:

Their act together.

Garry Schleifer:

Yeah, let's keep it clean.

Milana Leshinsky:

We're going to keep it clean, yes, and so, especially if you want to run group coaching programs, you need to automate and streamline certain things so that you could be more efficient and scale better, and then the communication can become a little chaotic without using some type of a system. How do you share resources? How do you create that experience where the in-between. Like what happens between the calls because I think that coaching seems very simple. You just get on a call every week and you coach a client, but we know that the transformation happens between the calls, the actions that people take, the support that they are experiencing from you, the encouragement, the resources, the accountability, the follow-up, like all of these things. Well, that's client experience, and it's very hard to create a client experience without some type of a platform that allows you to put things into your client experience that makes it much easier to deliver, but also I noticed that it's when you are building your coaching package or coaching program with these little touch points, it also can become a higher end coaching experience. You can charge more and, most importantly, you can feel good about enrolling clients, because you know that once that client gives you money, you can be assured that your client will be taken care of and will be happy with the whole experience. So I would say, from the client experience, the digital savviness is essential. But then there is also the client reach. How are you going to reach all those clients?

Garry Schleifer:

Oh, good point yeah.

Milana Leshinsky:

Have to be online, you have to be using those systems and, by the way, it doesn't have to be you. I know that there's some people shaking in their boots right now. Oh my God, I can't learn this technology.

Garry Schleifer:

Yeah, I can hear them.

Milana Leshinsky:

I can hear them. I hear them actually every day.

Garry Schleifer:

Every day, literally.

Milana Leshinsky:

There are people who live and breathe technology who would be delighted to help you and, if you're hiring, people from other countries, like the Philippines, for example, have a really great workforce virtually, very loyal, very easy to work with. They are so happy to support you and help you and get you out there.

Garry Schleifer:

Yeah, and baby steps too. Like I would suggest that if you're online with somebody and you notice something they're doing, connect with them and say hey, you know, I noticed, you did this thing, whiteboard or whatever it is in zoom which I don't really use, but maybe I should and uh, and just find out more.

Garry Schleifer:

And there's YouTube videos, right? You can go online and see how to do this or how to do that and, to your point, hiring support teams. I have an absolutely fabulous one. This podcast wouldn't happen as well as it does without a whole team behind me, so and then I did it baby steps. I started over three years ago with one podcast per month and now I'm up to one a week. So and I love them, I absolutely love them, and I love it because I get to do what I love, like you get to do coaching, listeners, and all the other stuff that I don't really know how to do gets done by somebody else, and quite well.

Milana Leshinsky:

Yeah, and let's make sure to say that none of the technology is the replacement for great coaching. I'm already assuming that you do great work as a coach. You just need to light some fire underneath it, and you know that has to do with putting yourself out there. The marketing, making sure that you're sharing your expertise, you're putting yourself in front of the right people and inviting them to take action. So, yeah, we're just lighting fire underneath you.

Garry Schleifer:

Exactly, and it's It's just what's needed. I mean, how long did we or , did it take before we all had cell phones? And then, how long was it before we did had smartphones. It may as well talk about a car, know, in the early 1900s there was horse and buggy. By 1912, it was only. Like, you know, know leading edge. We don't have to be the leading edge person, but let's not be the last know to close the barn door, as they say. One of the topics that I think we should on, on when we're talking digital support, support is AI and how it fits into coaching. Tell us some more about your feelings about that.

Milana Leshinsky:

you know, it's interesting. When Chad Chat first came out earlier this year, like really mass came out, I was in a networking meeting and somebody said we need more God, we don't need more AI. Oh, Interesting, you know.

Milana Leshinsky:

But I'm certainly hoping that that person is using Chat GPT, because it has made a massive difference to my business and to a lot of the people that I come in contact with every day. It will make you more productive. You will never be stuck in generating content. I should say creating content and notice I'm not saying that you will take the content that ChatGPT gives you and just put it out there. The way I use it is, I would sit and stare at a blank page when I needed to publish a newsletter. Now I can just go in there and type up a topic and ramble, like I ramble a lot with Chat GPT and then it just creates what it is I need to actually say in a nicer way, right?

Milana Leshinsky:

And sometimes I'll say well, that's too sophisticated, can you dumb it down to fifth grade level? And it does. English is my second language and I don't speak like that, so give me something simpler and it does that. So I think it just makes you more productive.

Milana Leshinsky:

I also use it during coaching sessions and coaching calls to brainstorm names. You know, because I do marketing coaching, I generate ideas for names like what can we name this webinar or what are some of the great ways to name this coaching program? Here's what it's about. Here's who it's for. Here are the biggest fears of potential clients. Can you suggest some ideas? So it's a great brainstorming tool and I just recently had a session with a client and within 40 minutes she got the results that would have normally taken us three, four sessions because of ChatGPT kind of streamlined the whole process. Well, let's check this, let's check that. So it just makes it a lot easier for you as a coach and as a business owner. I mean, I used to dread publishing my newsletter and my team would chase me for four weeks like Milana, the next issue is coming up. L ike yes, I know, I know I need to sit down and write that article and I just couldn't do it because I'm not a writer, I'm more of a speaker.

Garry Schleifer:

Verbal process.

Milana Leshinsky:

I can talk about a topic for a while, so I thought let me do videos. But then I had to come up with topics for the videos. Just everything felt so time consuming and heavy. Now I'm at the beach on my vacation and I have a topic in mind. I jot it down down, I come home and I develop an article with the help of ChatGPT. Make sure that it's in my voice and it has my examples. It is just brilliant and if you know how to use it.

Garry Schleifer:

If you know how to use it. It's just like anything.

Milana Leshinsky:

You have to use context. Context is the most important thing context.

Garry Schleifer:

Contest is key.

Milana Leshinsky:

You don't have to talk about you.

Garry Schleifer:

And the beauty of something like ChatGPT is, if you notice it's not getting the context, just change the context. So let's go one step higher. So we're talking now more about augmented AI, so things that support you, and I mean, let's face it, it's already been around for a long time, like those little chatbots, chat with us on this, about your refrigerator or something that's basically that's AI. It's been around since the eighties, apparently. According to a professor of computer science at the University of Calgary, friend of mine, who said oh please, it has been around forever. But what about AI virtual coaches? What do you think the impact is about that?

Milana Leshinsky:

Are you talking about using ChatGPT as a coach?

Garry Schleifer:

Having a coach that's a virtual coach.

Milana Leshinsky:

I have not experienced that. I'm probably not the best person to talk about that. You know, the way that I use all tools is I first ask myself, what do I want to accomplish, and then I look for a tool to do that. Not the other way around, so maybe I haven't had a need for them, but, I'm curious about it.

Garry Schleifer:

I'm gonna okay, so let me jump in because I am in the testing phase of a virtual Coach Garry, and I'm just doing the scripting for voice, because apparently they can add voice now. The technology is there for that, and so what they did is they took the core competencies from the ICF. They keep the history of the client conversation so they can bring things forward, things that human coaches can't always remember. So that's one of the pluses and transcripts of some of my previous coaching sessions and I can watch what is happening on those sessions and see the reasoning behind it. It's kind of like you said you know you're looking at a blank screen and get ideas, so this shows the reasoning behind what the coach is saying. So it's a coach that's available 24 hours a day.

Milana Leshinsky:

Amazing. I mean, I can see this or that is like maybe a separate application, but I can also see using ChatGPT in that way. There is a whole idea of these AI agents you can create. I can create Milana the coach.

Garry Schleifer:

That's what we're talking about, yeah, yeah, it's an agent. An agent is another way of saying it.

Milana Leshinsky:

Okay, exactly, and then you can program it. Program it meaning, like, enter instructions on the format and the questions you know and, um, use it. As my daughter was just saying. I'm using Chat GPT as my therapist.

Milana Leshinsky:

I'm like no, no, don't, don't do that.

Garry Schleifer:

Not yet, but I understand from one of my other author interviewees is that it's now, I think he said because it's important to distinguish, so I apologize if I'm incorrect, but they're in clinical trials to have a virtual therapist. So tell your daughter it's coming, but to be careful with the ones that are out there now.

Milana Leshinsky:

It is not bad at all.

Milana Leshinsky:

I have asked some questions that I would normally ask my therapist, and the way that it works is you need to be a mature adult to recognize good advice, good therapy from bad therapy, right? So I'm like, oh, that's pretty good. I think that's what my therapist would say to me. These are the suggestions. Like, I haven't thought about that, that sounds really good. I mean, if you, you know, if you told me to go jump off my roof, so you have to be the right person to use AI for therapy and for coaching, right?

Milana Leshinsky:

But that's the beauty of it is, it doesn't replace anything, it simply supports

Garry Schleifer:

And that's exactly what I'm doing, so we'll have a subscription offering monthly payment or annual for just the AI coach, and then just for me as a human coach, if somebody doesn't want that, and then a combo package, so you know. So there you go. It's allowing people to have coaching 24 hours a day. I think the biggest thing that I've heard, though, is that this makes coaching available once it's all up and running and working well, not telling people to jump off buildings, etc. It will help reach more people in the world that can't afford some of these high cost coaches, and doesn't mean there isn't a place for them, and that's why I want to ask you the next question. So I've just come up with a way that I'll stand out. You're talking about digitalization. How else can coaches stand out when there's so many coaches out there?

Milana Leshinsky:

Yeah, and that's a really important issue because there are so many of us out there. It's more than ever important to differentiate yourself and, yes, being on the cutting edge is really important, especially if you're marketing to an audience that cares about that, that appreciates and values you being on the cutting edge. But you can also be innovative in different ways, for example, through your messaging, through a signature program that you become known for, right? So I think having an innovation driven brand is really really important. What that means is that you go deep in your niche.

Milana Leshinsky:

I call it deep niching or deep niche mastery. You really learn about the people that you want to advocate for. You stand up for that group of people with your ideas, solutions, support, and so, like I know my audience like the back of my hand. I'm a member of my audience, but I also know a lot of people and I understand what their days look like, what they're worrying about, what they're resistant to. So I know a lot about my niche. So that's deep niching, and then, based on that, you also will know what your people hear every day and what you disagree with. My friend, Michelle Mireille, who I believe is also Canadian.

Garry Schleifer:

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Milana Leshinsky:

He likes to say what drives you crazy, makes you great. So think about what drives you crazy in your niche.

Garry Schleifer:

Yeah.

Milana Leshinsky:

You know, what is it that your people are being told that you disagree with? That's the beginning of that innovation-driven messaging. What are you saying to people that is different from what other coaches are saying? And, of course, you know building trust and relationships. Actually, that's my go-to solution for anything.

Milana Leshinsky:

When, in 2020, people were a little bit scared and didn't know what to do next and kind of stopped, the smart coaches, they went back to their clients, their past clients, to their community, and they deepened their relationships because people still buy from those they trust. They still follow those they trust, um, and so trust trumps everything. No matter what else you do, people will buy from you because they trust you. And so you know you want to be different. You want to build connections, relationships and trust, and you want to become known for something like a signature program that solves a very specific problem. Those three things, I think, will really help you stand out a lot and to be innovative. You just really need to go deeper in your niche so that you can truly understand what your clients want, what they're afraid of, what their dreams and aspirations are and what their thinking is that they probably will never share publicly, but they're hidden and objections that you just need to know what those are and speak to that.

Garry Schleifer:

Right.

Milana Leshinsky:

Hopefully that makes sense.

Garry Schleifer:

Very much. Well being of service and that's who we are and any type of sale, if you want to call it, any type of financial connection, is built on relationship. You buy from those you know, like and trust. So that's, that's never going to change. I know I won't be selling my coaching to people who don't already have an experience of me in one form or another, and the ones that don't have one I need to develop in a different way. So dig deep in my niche, my niche, niche. Oh, there's so many ways to say it, so many ways to say it.

Milana Leshinsky:

And this just reminded me when I went deep into my niche, You know you shared that I'm an EFT practitioner. I just become an EFT practitioner three years ago and I brought my marketing experience and my marketing coaching experience into the EFT practice and I discovered many fears and negative or limiting beliefs that people have around marketing and you can't market when those beliefs are weighing you down. So I started creating these reframes and that ended up to be a marketing card deck. So like I pulled up three cards just now, called. Method card deck. Like marketing is overwhelming. What if someone else steals my ideas? Marketing is a necessary evil.

Milana Leshinsky:

Those are all the things that people.

Garry Schleifer:

Oh yeah, sounds very common yeah yes,

Milana Leshinsky:

And then on the back of each card there's a reframe with a little action question that you can start seeing a paradigm shift, like oh, I haven't thought about it that way. So like that's what I saw and that is my tool that I use with my clients. But I think that that is part of being innovation driven is creating tools. So are you creating tools for your business? Because when you have a program and it's built around a particular tool, it becomes different from that is your uniquely branded tool.

Garry Schleifer:

Right.

Milana Leshinsky:

And that is different from anybody else's coaching offers, and that makes you stand out. So that's just what I've observed is like yeah, you know, if you have a tool, you will stand out. So doesn't have to be a card deck, could be an assessment, a framework, a magazine.

Milana Leshinsky:

That's a tool absolutely.

Garry Schleifer:

Shameless self-promotion here.

Milana Leshinsky:

Having an authority-building tool and it's a marketing tool and it will definitely make you stand out. I need to add magazine to my list.

Garry Schleifer:

Yes, thank you. Thank you. Well, oh, Milana, this has been great. What would you like our audience to do? Well, first of all, I'll ask the question, but I'm going to answer it first with the article. What would you like our audience to do as a result of the article and this recording? In the article, you have this bold sidebar called Take Action ~ Practical Steps to Adapt and Thrive in the Evolving Coaching Landscape, and it's very simple three-step process. Things we've talked about a little bit that makes you have to read that we didn't talk about, and so thank you for that. Other than that, what else comes to mind that you'd like people to do? Where could they find your card deck?

Milana Leshinsky:

Well, the card deck is called marketingmojomethod. com. So if you go to that website.

Garry Schleifer:

Oh, marketingmojomethod. com.

Milana Leshinsky:

Okay, it's a method because it's a bit of a different way to approach marketing. You know a lot of people will teach funnels and sales pages and all of that, and that is very left-brained, and so this card deck really puts you in the more creative, intuitive, innovative thinking so that you can have more fun with it and find your way to market. So it's marketingmojomethod. com. But I also talked a lot about having your own signature program, and designing the program is something that I teach people, and I actually have a five-day video course called Design your coaching program in five days. It's Coaching Genie. Genie like the magic plant. That's the name of my center, coachinggenie. com/ design and it's free.

Garry Schleifer:

Thank you very generous of you.

Milana Leshinsky:

It's a way for you to really look at your body of work as a coach and see how you can package it and offer it as a program, because when you have a program, you can also leverage it. You can deliver it to groups or to one on one clients. Now you have a predictable process that creates results. So and naming it in a branded way also makes you stand out more memorable. There's just so many benefits. But yeah, grab that five day course.

Garry Schleifer:

Thank you very much. Coachinggenie. com/design. marketingmojomethod. com. Awesome, Milana. What's the best way to reach you?

Milana Leshinsky:

If you want to send me an email, just hello@ coachinggenie. com

Garry Schleifer:

Perfect, then you can't confuse Milania or Milana. You just say hello. Oh my goodness. Well, thank you for writing. I heard what you said about it being a bit of a challenge, but I'm glad that you're here for the podcast because that's the easy part for you.

Milana Leshinsky:

That's the easy part. Yes, so this is how it works, right? You take the podcast, you turn it into a transcript and you build that into a written content. That's the beauty of technology if you know how to do these things.

Garry Schleifer:

Look at you going right to the bitter end of our call with more ideas and suggestions and positivity. Thank you. We do need it, though. I mean, a lot of people are just afraid, and a fear is just not knowing, and just know there's someone like Melania, Melana. I'm still doing it, oh my God, Melana Leshinsky, and even me, if you want to talk to me, I'm always available. Thank you very much again, Melana.

Milana Leshinsky:

Thank you, Garry, for having me. Lots of awesome points and hopefully people will take away a lot of nuggets, and if you have questions, hello@c achinggenie. com and I'm here for you.

Garry Schleifer:

Thank you, that's it for this episode of Beyond the Page. For more episodes, subscribe via your favorite podcast app, probably the one that got you here. If you're not a subscriber to choice Magazine, you can sign up for a free digital issue by scanning the QR code in the top right-hand corner, or by going to choice-online. com and clicking the sign up now button. I'm Garry Schleifer. Enjoy the journey of mastery.