Shortening Your Coaching Journey: Mindset, Business Planning, And Success Strategies

Are you struggling to bring your coaching journey to the next level? Stop treating it like a hobby and start creating your own business plan. Juliet Clark is joined by Lin Yuan-Su, Founder of Enlightened Success Institute, who shares her story from having a zero-business background in healthcare to building a multi-million dollar coaching business. They discuss why a sustainable business success requires a long commitment to training your mindset, building long-term relationships, and bringing value to others through prospecting. Gear up and learn why you need a well-crafted business plan, not just an engaging marketing plan.

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Shortening Your Coaching Journey: Mindset, Business Planning, And Success Strategies

In this episode, we’re going to talk with Lin Yuan-Su about an event that’s happening at the end of the month that I think if you’re an author, coach, or speaker, you’ll really enjoy. Before we get started, I want to talk about, we have a plant panel coming up. It is our book writing, platform building, and beyond with AI panel. I know authors are really having a tough time with AI. I never encourage you to write your book with it. Keep your creative juices flowing and maybe use it for minor things.

The truth is here that AI can be a huge boost in your book marketing and platform building. Definitely something you should show up for. We have three great guests. Tracy Hazard is going to be talking about her new AI program called Brander, and it is a way to get yourself fully branded and really dive into your look and who you’re actually working with as a profile.

Gary McDermott, who is my partner on the Perfect Reader Playbook, which is a book marketing playbook for those non-fiction authors who have a business and a book. It is really the way to get your name out there the right way with the science of marketing, not just a throw spaghetti against the wall and hope it sticks.

Also, Adonna Moriarty, who is the creator with Pro Book Launch. If you’re a self-published author, you need this because it will give you all sorts of help with those fine details that you need to publish your book correctly when you’re uploading and also getting your social media out there. You can find out more about this. It’s on March 17th, 2026 so show up in green at 9:00 AM Mountain Time and you can sign up for it, register at BreakthroughEvents3.com.

My guest is Lin Yuan-Su, who is a Mindset Trainer and Strategist. If you saw our training in January, you probably are already familiar with her. She helps high-achieving, heart-centered, and passion-driven entrepreneurs create meaningful success with more ease, alignment, and joy. A former registered dietitian who walked away from a successful but unfulfilled career, I’m hearing a lot of that, I have a couple of dietitian clients right now, Lin built her life through mindset mastery, inner awareness, and spiritual alignment.

Now, she teaches entrepreneurs that 80% of success comes from how we think, not how hard we work. Through her Enlightened Success Institute, she guides clients to release old conditioning, tap into their potential, and build soul-led lives and businesses that feel as good on the inside as they do on the outside.

Lin offers support in mindset and strategies that work. She keeps it real and practical, sharing her lessons and tactics that allowed Enlightened Success Institute become a multiple seven-figure impact-generating business so her clients can do the same. Stay tuned for my interview on this event coming up at the end of the month with Lin.

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Lin, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. I’m so looking forward to having this conversation with you.

The Basics Of Creating Your Own Business Plan

I’m excited to talk about your coach business planning workshop because so many of our authors are coaches and here’s the typical that I see. They jump in, they say, “I’m going to be a coach.” They don’t know anything about funnels. They don’t know anything about how they’re going to get the message out. They take a couple workshops, they flounder, they don’t know what they’re going to create. It takes years to get off the ground. Let’s talk about that because you need a plan, not only a business plan, a marketing plan, you need all that in place. Otherwise, you’re just spinning your wheels trying to get appointments. Where do we start with all this?

First of all, I think my background and I spent the past years to build my coaching business. I came from a completely zero business background. I was working in healthcare. I was a registered dietitian. That’s what I went to school for. I worked in that career path for almost a decade. I know, I don’t look like that. Just kidding. When I first start this, I got certified just exactly how you described it. I got certified because I found a passion. I found something I wanted to do so bad. I want to make this impact in other people’s lives through something called life coaching.

Never built a business, never worked on a business plan, never had a plan for anything else because I was an employee. I saw that over and over amongst a lot of my fellow coaches because a lot of us went through the same thing. We worked as an employee, whether we retired or made a change in our career path like I did and we are jumping into this coaching thing without anything remotely to understand what entrepreneurship is.

What does that even mean? What is a business ownership? What does that even mean? What is a business plan? I spent all of those years to finally figure out what it is, why it’s important. Don’t do anything just for making money, but if you’re a coach you have this passion, you want really meaningful impact, to bring meaningful impact in other people’s lives and also you want that to positively impact your life and you want to build it as a business and generate revenue, then you are building a business. You got to treat it as a business.

The business mentality is the first thing. I didn’t know that. My passion and I went through this entire journey, if you can imagine somebody just running, thinks they’re a runner but they don’t really know how to run. I have a three-year-old so I can picture that very clearly. You just stumble, you fall, you learn along the line. I don’t regret any of the parts of my journey but my passion is to help. I’m so passionate about helping others to shorten their journey.

That is why if you’re a coach, you want to make money that means you want to build a business. You cannot treat it as a hobby. Hobby costs money. Beading is a hobby for me, it costs me a lot of money. Yet business will generate money for you. You want to have a business plan. It doesn’t have to be fancy. It’s not one of those 153 pages of report all typed out. Honestly, a piece of paper with your idea, your passion, a system that makes sense for you, for the coach individually. You don’t have to copy it anybody else. Just because it worked for somebody else, it may or may not work for you. I’m sorry I’m throwing so much at you right now.

That’s okay because I’ve had things happen lately. First of all, I’m going to go back to when I started my first business which I was a real estate broker. You would be amazed how many real estate people get in trouble on their taxes because they don’t know they have to not only withhold their portion like they did with an employer, but you have to withhold the employer’s portion as well now. That’s one thing. The other thing is in 2025, I worked with a coach that came to me for a marketing report. One of the questions you have to fill out you went through our marketing program. I asked her, “What is the name of your business entity?” She’s like, “I don’t know.”

I’m like, “Hold on. Do you not have an LLC? Do you not have a business entity? Do you not have a bank account? Were you going about co-mingling your funds which is death if the IRS catches you?” Her answer was all of the above. I was shocked as a coach that none of these basic things had been put into place. I made her that day. I’m like, “I’m not going to run your report until you go get an LLC.” It’s those basic that they don’t think about.

It is because you never thought about anything as a business owner. This is a different direction but a similar concept. I’ve never changed a diaper until I had my first baby. I did not know. I did not know how to wipe a baby’s bum. Too much information. I learned really quickly. None of those things are hard concept or difficult. Some of it is, but most of it is if you have this passion for the impact, you adapt, you learn. It’s actually a lot of fun. I’m having fun now. Not always in the past but if you really have this passion, then those are things it’s so important to know. Once you know, it’s easy.

We’ve already established the business basics, then you have to have the mindset. I find that one of the biggest mindsets that I find people can’t overcome is asking for money. They get that client on the phone, especially with the spiritual advisors out there, they think asking for money is a bad thing. Let’s talk about that because you can’t have a business unless you’re bringing money in and in order to bring money in, you have to be able to close a deal and ask for money.

I was actually talking with a fellow coach who was also a real estate agent and she said something that when she was doing that, something she learned is that if you don’t prospect you don’t eat. That sounds harsh, especially for, again, coaches who are just coming from this place of love and passion and peace and all of those amazing energy. Knowing that when you’re asking, you’re giving for me is so important that mindset shift of you’re giving people the opportunity to invest in themselves.

When I sign up something for free or receive something for free, the energy is so very different. Not that I don’t appreciate, I’m not grateful for it, but I do treat it differently versus I invested whatever amount of dollar. Money is currency, currency is energy. When somebody says, “It’s so important for me to invest in myself,” I always say, “Coaches, you are not important. You’re very crucial but take yourself out of the equation. It’s not about you. A client says yes because they resonate with your message, they love your personality. That is all awesome. You are a fit and your job is to give your client the opportunity to really create transformation, changes that they want. That money represents that.”

Most coaches, myself included, have done free work in the stages where I cannot ask for money. For me, I was in a job, I show up, I get paid. My client never pays me. My patients, as a registered dietitian, never paid me. I get a payment from my employer. I’m a helper, I work in healthcare. How can I ask people for money? It was a total mindset transformation to understand what that money represents. It is coming from here, coming from coach’s understanding of their work, of their business, of their offering. That is all about your client’s transformation.

Yes, and a funny conversation, I was talking with Gary, who’s my partner on the Perfect Reader Playbook and he actually said he charges $10,000 a month for what he does. He said, “I’ve had so many people come lately and say, ‘Can’t you do it for $2,000 or $3,000 a month?’” he’s thinking about in his head everything he does, the value he brings in teaching people how to buy and sell companies and he’s like, “No, I can’t.” You really have to go through that because here’s what I find. I don’t know about you but every time I discount something, I get the worst client ever because they’re short on money, they’re demanding, they want more than the contract says that they get and they’re just really difficult.

When we are underselling ourselves, that’s the kind of energy of the clients we’re attracting. Nothing wrong with that. I remember my very first VIP clients. I had my price set and in my head, I’m like, “That is way too much.” Yet, I was like, “I think that carries that amount of value.” Literally, this is what happened. I said the investment amount. I knew that client would pay full price and I got scared. I said, “But for you, 50% off.”

Again, I’m sharing this because I want to use this story as a demonstration for coaches to say it’s a process. It’s okay. If you go ahead or if you have done exactly what I have done, nothing to be ashamed of. I’m very proud that I did that but I learned valuable lesson from it and of course, later on, as my price continue to expand and to grow and it’s because my understanding of what that investment amount is for my client has grown. It’s coming from the space of love and holding the space. Can I offer my program at much lower price? Yes, I can because I’m the boss. I say whatever. I want that that amount of transformation for my client.

The other thing in that is as a coach learning how to close. I talk to so many coaches who think it’s about I’m going to give them an offer, I need the money and they’re going to say no and it’s going to be devastating. I think it’s really important for coaches to flip that script because we always had to in real estate as well, flip that script and listen to what they’re saying and then decide if you want to make an offer.

If you just go out there with this sense of desperateness and you’ve got somebody that says, “I’ve been with 3 or 4 coaches and I didn’t get results,” and they’re blaming it on the coach, you have to determine is this person going to do that to me? Do I want to make an offer? Do I want to work with someone like this?

I will tell you, 9 out of 10 times, I won’t make them an offer. It’s just like, “I have this low-cost thing over here. It’s a DIY. Go work it yourself and see how motivated they are.” I think once you flip that script in your head and just say, “Maybe this isn’t the right person,” your whole world expands as far as that. You’re a mindset coach, how do you get people into that mindset where they can take or leave a client?

It takes training. I cannot guarantee you we have a conversation, you’re going to be good to go. I had that experience with clients, and I can tell you it’s very rarely, and those clients very often they have done extensive mindset training. Mindset is a process. To change your belief, to change the way you think, it’s a process, it’s an ongoing process. Sometimes, as coaches, we’re just talking about this idea with one of my clients who is a coach and we’re talking about the idea of marketing doing running a campaign on a magazine. I said, “For me, I don’t recommend that.” Why?

If you just want to contribute articles and share whatever you believe or tips, trips, tricks that you have that’s amazing. You’re adding value to the readers. If you’re looking at ROI, it’s selling a concept selling who you are as a coach and this concept of coaching is difficult through just reading articles or looking at an ad. It would be very different if I’m selling ice cream. I can describe the ingredients whatever and then people get it because it’s a tangible thing. Mindset takes work. It requires this commitment and it requires ongoing process. Now here’s the thing. It doesn’t mean you can’t go ahead and start seeing result. It’s not like, “You need to have years of mindset training until you see result.” No, it happens parallel.

It comes with a decision when you decide to say, “What I’m showing up as a business owner, as a true entrepreneur, this is my business and I’m serving my vision of my business.” Have a vision. Have a very clear vision what are you what are you attracting for this year or next three years whatever. Be very clear in your business.

Be very clear of what your quarterly goals. Every three months, what are you generating. How many clients are you serving? If you’re just like, “I don’t know,” make it up or double your previous year’s income. If you’re saying, “I’m a new coach. I don’t have an income from my coaching business yet.” If you ever made money before, double that or just use that number as a reference. You can keep growing your passion, growing your understanding your mindset.

It’s definitely a process and what I can say is it’s a wonderful thing to understand. When you built this relationship with truly understanding of who you are beyond a coach, beyond who you are as this beingness and you understand how your mind is translating into your daily experience and how you can change your daily experience through your own thinking.

Adding Value To People’s Lives Through Prospecting

It is a very powerful thing, it’s a very beautiful thing. The world has peace. The news only has positive things to say. Peace of mind, coming from here, feeling abundant. I promise you, you can keep saying, “When I have $1 million in my bank account, then I will feel rich, then I will be in abundance.” I promise you, that’s not how it works. It starts here. That’s the whole truth of it.

Let’s get back to prospecting for a minute because that was something we did a lot in real estate. I do mine a little bit differently now than I did when I was in real estate but the one thing people don’t understand is it’s relationship building. Power partners. It’s not just, “I’m going to build a relationship with this person to get them as a client.” It’s building that overall relationship and building trust. How do coaches get into that mindset? I know they’re all like, “The business will just come to me.” I know a lot of them don’t prospect. They don’t do the networking, they don’t do any of that.

Yeah or sometimes people just don’t understand what that is. Even though they understand it literally, again, the whole is part of the shift of coming from being employee into being a business owner. What does that even mean? I believe for a coach is to add value into other people’s lives. If you’re coming from, “I’m serving, I’m adding value,” it’s not about, “Juliet, you need this. Let me shove this down your throat.”

No. Actually, I believe serving especially the beginning is to zip it and listen more than speaking. You be very genuinely interested in other people, in the person in front of you. Ask questions. Be genuinely interested. If you run into people, you’re just like, “That person,” no, then don’t approach them.

Approach the people whose energies feel attractive. “Let’s have a conversation. How are you? What do you do? What are you working on? What are some of the challenges?” If you feel that is a space where you can ask those questions. “What do you what was your previous career? Who is your family? Where are they? Do you have a fish? Do you have a dog? Do you have a cat?”

Be genuinely interested in other person then you can sense, “Do I feel connected with this person,” from what they’re sharing with you, then you can genuinely feel whatever I can share, whatever coaching you offer. Do you feel what you have to share can really add value for this person? If you do sense that, please open your mouth and say, “I think I have something that can really benefit you.”

That’s it. “I have a workshop, I have a webinar, I would love to connect. Let’s talk more about this if you’re open.” Ask invitation. The other thing I was watching a youtube video was from Jim Rohn and he’s funny. That’s all he said. He’s like, “What can you do to get things you want in life to get all the sales whatever? It’s ask.” You got to ask.

Very often, I’ve been there done that. We make up those stories. What is that person to think of me? What if they say no? What if I’m asking too much money? They’re going to tell all of my relatives that I’m salesy now.” I had those thoughts and they’re your own fear. They’re not coming from the other person. They’re your own fear.

I even got a invitation from somebody who you pure acquaintance and we just know of each other and we never talked on any private level. She sent me a Facebook message, through voice message and I could tell she was very nervous. She was inviting me to consider her business, her network marketing business. She just said, “You’re probably just rolling your eyes.”

I understand that is coming from her own fear because I was not thinking that because she was somebody I look up to and she’s sharing this with me. I’m so honored and I’m so looking forward just to catch up to say, “How are you doing?” We make up those stories. That’s our own fear. Nothing wrong with that. Please don’t feel like, “I do feel that.” We all have that. As long as we’re breathing, fear is part of our DNA.

We can all have fear. Full transparency, even now, sometimes I invite people to work with me, I notice that part of me too. I just don’t let that part of me run the show. I double check sometimes. I double check with myself. “Would I truly love to serve this client this person?” If I hear, “Yes,” then it doesn’t matter what my fear says. I cause myself to say, “I would love to work with you.” It’s an open invitation and detach.

By all means, been there, done that. I need the money to pay for whatever and that became the driving force of that conversation. Guess what that shows? Even if they say yes, like you said, Juliet. Later on, we figure we start working together realize, “That’s not really good,” but that’s okay too, coaches. We all go through ups and downs and my passion, again, is to help coaches to have less of this dramatic roller coaster ride and really have a consistent steady business going on.

I think that’s so important. I probably get a dozen “abundance” coaches a year and it’s so funny because when I make the pitch to them, 9 out of 10 of them will tell me they don’t have the money. It’s like, “You’re an abundance coach?” Back to that other for a minute, here’s a great example, you guys. Lin came to me and asked me if I could promote something. I actually thought, “I can’t this month. I’ve got too much but could I at another time?” I ventured I was a little bit scared like is Lin not going to ask me anymore? I went back and I said, “I can’t. I’ve got XYZ going on. Is there another opportunity?” We found another opportunity there. A no is not always a hard no either on some of these things.

I had a client who now is one of my top clients and she stayed on my email list. She came through a campaign we did years ago and she stayed on my email list for a good two and a half years. She registered a whole bunch of my workshops and never showed up and then she’s has always been there. Eventually, at the right time for her. When I met her, I eventually got to know her a little bit I realized it was her timeline. It was her readiness. You don’t want to call somebody into your world when it’s not their time and when your time and their time is not connected. It’s just trust yourself and keep doing the work.

I was just telling another client, she’s a coach too and put a time, could be half an hour, if you’re really adventurous, an hour, even just three times a week start to start with, it’s called prospecting. You’re prospecting. What is prospecting? You’re intentionally asking somebody to work with you or you could be intentionally asking somebody to connect with somebody.

It may lead into a sale, it may lead into just a time to connect. Be very intentional of those ask but you keep asking. I promise you, if you keep all of this activity consistently, your income will be consistent. Once you have income coming in, my friend, please do not do not stop generating that income. How do I know? Been there, done that.

Lin’s Upcoming Coach Business Planning Workshop

You have a coach business planning workshop coming up. Tell us about what people are going to get from that and learn from that and where they can sign up for it.

When I first to understand the concept of having a plan for my business , I got overwhelmed. I didn’t even know where to start. If you ask me to write a nutrition care plan, I can do that with my eyes closed because I trained in it. This is the thing. Let’s do some training to understand the how. It’s a three-hour workshop, so be ready. It’s fun. It’s very intimate, depending on the size of how many people are coming in.

My intention is to be making it very interactive and I walk the coaches through a process that is coming from the years for me to build my coaching business. Not to brag or anything, it’s just to demonstrate where my business is at. I’ve generated multiple million dollars cumulatively since 2021, since the moment I incorporated my business. That is something I’m very humble, I’m very grateful for. That also came a lot of lessons and failures.

My passion is to put it all together so your journey can be smoother and can be shorter as well. We’re going to get together to go through a step-to-step creation of your own business plan. I’m not taking you through a generalized process so you are going to have all the same thing. It’s going to be something specifically for you. That is my intention. It’s really for coaches who, whether you have already done, you have an LLC, you have your business bank account or you’re newer and you’re taking your coaching business very seriously, then this is for you.

That’s great. It’s Events.EnlightenedSuccess.com/coach-business-planning. Lin, thank you so much for sharing and hopefully, all of you will get on board with the workshop if you’re a new coach.

Thank you so much. It’s a great conversation. We didn’t really follow a script or anything. This is great. Thank you.

Important Links

• Lin Yuan-Su
• Impact Coach Business Planning & Implementation Day
• Lin Yuan-Su on LinkedIn
• Perfect Reader Playbook
• Breakthrough Author Events

About Lin Yuan-Su

Lin Yuan-Su is a Mindset Trainer and Strategist who helps high-achieving, heart-centered and passion-driven entrepreneurs create meaningful success with more ease, alignment, and joy. A former registered dietitian who walked away from a successful but unfulfilling career, Lin rebuilt her life through mindset mastery, inner awareness, and spiritual alignment.

Today, she teaches entrepreneurs that 80% of success comes from how we think, not how hard we work. Through her Enlightened Success Institute, she guides clients to release old conditioning, tap into their potential, and build soul-led lives and businesses that feel as good on the inside as they look on the outside. Lin offers support in mindset and strategies that work. She keeps it real and practical, sharing her lessons and tactics that allowed Enlightened Success Institute to be a multiple-seven-figure impact generating business, so her clients can do the same.

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