Now What?® Coaching

from Laura Berman Fortgang

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The Boundary Blur: Why Your Clients Are Treating You Like an Employee (And Why It’s Your Fault)

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When was the last time you got a client text, email, or message outside of regular business hours — and answered it right away?

Maybe it was a Saturday morning.
Maybe it was 10 PM on a Tuesday.
Maybe it was that quick question in the DMs that turned into thirty minutes of back-and-forth.

If you just winced — welcome.

We’re talking about what I call the Boundary Blur: Why your clients have started treating you like an employee, and the uncomfortable truth about who actually trained them to do it.

What Most People Get Wrong About Client Boundaries

Most coaches, consultants, and experts think the problem is their clients.
They’re needy. They’re disrespectful. They’re demanding. They’re entitled.

That’s not the case.

The uncomfortable truth: You trained them, and only you can retrain them.

You trained them when you answered that after business hours text.
You trained them when you said yes to the extra ask.
You trained them when you didn’t put clear scope in your contract.
You trained them when you kept the Zoom running thirty minutes after the session should have ended.
You trained them when you let the discovery call turn into a free coaching session.

Every one of those moments taught them:
This is how it works. This is what I can expect. This is who she is to me — available at all hours of the day.

Now, mind you — some of you like giving that level of service, and that’s fine. I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to the people who are feeling burned out, crispy around the edges, and ready to do something about it.

The good news? You can retrain them. The bad news? Only you can do it.
Nobody else is going to walk into your business and set the boundaries for you because you are the business.

The Boundary Blur: Why Your Clients Are Treating You Like an Employee (And Why It's Your Fault) by Laura Berman Fortgang

The Three Most Common Boundary Blurs

Scope creep. You agree to one set of work, one project, one thing. Then they ask you about something adjacent. Then something tangential. Then something that has nothing to do with what you were hired for. You keep helping because it feels awkward in the moment to renegotiate. But six months in, you’re basically running their business for them and burning out doing it.

Time creep. You said the session was sixty minutes. It went ninety. You said the engagement was weekly. Now it’s daily texts and DMs. The 60-minute call that happened once at 90 minutes is now 90 minutes every time. You keep telling yourself it’s just this once. It isn’t.

Role creep. This is the sneakiest. Somewhere along the way, you stopped being the coach, consultant, or expert and started being the friend/the therapist/the on-call emotional support. It’s not a terrible thing on its own, but when you’ve become their 24/7 safety net, you’ve blurred your authority. You’ve blurred what you were hired to do.

These three blurs aren’t just an energy drain. They quietly erode the very thing clients hired you for — your authority. The more you blur, the less they treat you like the expert. The less they treat you like the expert, the less your work actually produces results for them.

Three Practices to Reclaim Your Boundaries

Put it in the contract. Everything that’s gone unspoken gets written down. Response times. Session length. What’s included. What’s extra. What happens when they miss a session. The clearer the contract, the fewer awkward conversations later. If you’re embarrassed to put something in writing — that’s exactly why you need to.

Use scripts to hold the line. When scope creep shows up mid-engagement, you need language ready to go. Try: “That’s a great question; it’s outside the scope of what we’re working on, but I’d love to talk about adding that to our engagement.” Or: “I want to give that the attention it deserves, so let’s talk about it on Monday.” The script is the boundary. Without one, you’ll default to over giving. With one, you have an exit ramp.

Charge for the extras — or stop giving them away. When a client wants more than what they bought, you have two options: Add an upsell – create an extra access package, or build in an hourly rate for out-of-scope work (that one’s more for consultants than coaches). The one option that’s not on the table anymore is giving it away for free and quietly resenting it. Because resentment is the final cost of a blurred boundary. It’s what leads to burnout, and it’s always more expensive than the money you were trying to avoid asking for.

The Mindset That Makes It Stick

Here’s what I want you to internalize:
Your clients are not your bosses, but they will be if you don’t hold the line.

Boundaries aren’t rude. They aren’t unfriendly. They aren’t bad for business. They are how you stay in business, and how you serve your clients well. They’re what prevents the burnout.

Every boundary you hold is a vote for your longevity, your energy, your results — and ultimately for your clients’ results too.

Your Homework This Week

Pick one boundary you’ve let slide — the late-night texts, the sessions that run long, the free advice between calls — and put it back in place this week. You don’t need to write a dramatic email. Just retrain them, quietly and clearly. Have a little script. Hold the line.

Coaches, consultants, and experts who’ve built the most sustainable businesses stopped blaming their clients, and they retrained them. Better yet — many of them never had to retrain anyone because they had clear boundaries written into their contracts and clear agreements from the beginning. That’s the best way to deal with it. But if you have to correct — you can correct and retrain.

Here’s the secret nobody tells you:
Clear boundaries don’t lose you clients. They’re how you get to keep doing the business you love.

The Authenticity Advantage: Three ways to stop looking like everybody else

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The Authenticity Advantage: Why Bringing More of Yourself Is Your Best Branding Strategy

If someone landed on your website, your Instagram, or your LinkedIn right now — would they know it was you?
Or would it look like every other coach, consultant, expert, or leader in your space?

Same colors. Same fonts. Same headshots against the white brick wall. Same three-word taglines. Same buzzwords. Same everything.

Let’s talk about the Authenticity Advantage — how it’s your best branding strategy, and why bringing more of yourself into your business is not a distraction from your brand; it is your brand.

What Most People Get Wrong About Branding

Most entrepreneurs think branding is your colors, your logo, your website, your fonts, the Canva template you spent three days making.

Those things are important; I’m not knocking them. But they’re the packaging, not the product.

Real branding is how your work makes people feel. What is the ethos of it? It’s that specific flavor of you that comes through in your content, your delivery, your voice, your way of being, your point of view.

It’s what makes someone say: I don’t just want a coach. I want that coach, that consultant, that employee.

The Authenticity Advantage: Three ways to stop looking like everybody else by Laura Berman FortgangThat flavor doesn’t come from getting more polished. It comes from letting more of your actual self show.
Your passions. Your hobbies. Your gifts. The things you love. The season of life you’re in.
The stuff you normally leave out because you think it’s not professional enough.

Because in a world where every coach and every internet expert is starting to sound alike, the most strategic thing you can do is refuse to blend in. Bring more of yourself to the picture.

What This Looks Like In Real Life

I have a client who’s a coach and also loves to knit. Instead of leaving that as just a hobby, she brought together a knitting circle — a group coaching container where women knit together and get coached at the same time. It’s completely differentiated. Nobody else is doing that. And it fills up because her people don’t just want coaching; they want the community, the hobby, the togetherness. Her passion became her hook.

I have another client, a retiree, who was trying to get a life coaching business off the ground and told me, I don’t want to work so hard. I don’t want to grind through all this marketing. This isn’t fun. So we found what was fun. She loves helping people write their memoirs — not full books, just stories about their memories. We saw quickly how that could become her coaching. Not that she’s a writing coach — she uses the past that people surface in their memoirs to inform the future they want to create. Same coaching skills. Completely new brand. Instantly recognizable in a crowded market.

On a personal note — you might notice if you see me online, I’m going for a Cruella de Vil look. I’ve decided to grow out my silver after much struggle and consternation. Will it be professional? Will it make me look older or younger? Will there be ageism? Prejudice? You know what — maybe there will be. But I’m at a stage of life where I’m ready to let it show. Stop coloring. Stop performing. Start being. That’s the lesson I’m teaching my clients, and I’ll let you know how it goes. (By the way — authentic also means changing your mind. So if you see me go back to all-dark, you’ll know why.)

Your knitting. Your memoir writing. My silver hair.
These aren’t distractions from your brand; they are your brand.

The Authenticity Advantage – Three Practices to Bring More of You Into Your Business

Take inventory of what you’ve been hiding.
Sit down and make a list of things about yourself you’ve kept out of your professional life. Maybe you don’t think they’re cool, but write them anyway. Your interests. Your unusual background. The book obsession, the sport, the second language, the weird collection, the personal story, the phase of life you’re in. Anything you’ve decided isn’t professional enough. If you’ve followed me long enough, you know I was a musical theater performer in a past life, and every now and then, I’ll do a Broadway-inspired newsletter. That’s me bringing my hobby in.

Look for the intersection.
Where does one of your passions intersect with what your clients actually need? Not everything on the list will become an offer. But sometimes there’s a beautiful overlap that everyone else has been missing, like my knitting-circle client or the memoir client. Here’s another one: I know a gentleman who worked on a NASCAR pit crew. He turned that into a leadership and teamwork experience for corporations. He takes them out on the track and teaches them to work as a team doing pit crew work. Nobody else does this to teach leadership. That’s the intersection.

Let the messy be seen.
We always think we have to be perfect, polished, tightened up. But sometimes the truth is you’re going through something — a new season, a body change, a health journey, a creative pivot, a late-life reinvention — and letting people see that process is what makes them trust you. Authenticity isn’t just about hobbies; it’s about honesty.

Authenticity Advantage – The Mindset That Makes It Stick

Here’s what I want you to internalize:
Branding is not what you put on top of your business.
Branding is what leaks out of you when you stop trying to look like everybody else.

Your colors, your logo, your website — those are the wrapper and the container. But the reason someone picks you over the ten other people they looked at? That’s you. Your voice, your point of view, your knitting, your memoir obsession, your silver hair, your dog, your pit crew knowledge, your late-life reinvention.

You’re not too much. You’re not too weird. You’re not too niche. You’re just under-integrated.
Integrating who you actually are into what you actually do is the most powerful branding move you’ll ever make.

Your Homework This Week

Take the inventory. Make the list.
Then pick one thing you’ve been keeping out of your business — one hobby, one passion, one part of who you are right now — and let it into your content this week just once. A post. A story. A newsletter mention. A photo.

Notice the world doesn’t end. People don’t judge you as much as you think they will.
Most of the time, the right ones lean in and get more interested.

Stop trying to look like the industry template.
Be messy. Be real. Be specific. Be you.

Priced to Feel Safe – Three Signs It’s Time to Raise Your Rates (or ask for that raise)

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Priced to Feel Safe: Why What You Charge Has Nothing to Do With What You’re Worth

When was the last time you thought about raising your prices — and then chickened out? You talked yourself right out of it!

Maybe you rehearsed the new number in your head.
Maybe you went so far as to write the email to your clients.
Maybe you told a friend you were going to do it.
But then somewhere between the plan and the actual asking, your stomach dropped, your nervous system went haywire, and you quietly kept charging what you were charging, or if you’re in a corporate setting, stayed at the salary you were at.

Here’s what actually happened: You priced to feel safe.
I want to tell you why safe pricing is one of the most expensive habits you have in your business.

What Most People Get Wrong About Pricing

Most coaches, consultants, and experts think what they charge is a reflection of their self-worth. So every time you set a price — or go to raise a price — you’re not making a business decision. You’re taking a personal referendum on your value as a human being.

That’s why it feels so terrifying.
That’s why people round down instead of rounding up.
That’s why you offer discounts nobody asked for.
That’s why, when a prospect flinches at your fee, you cave — or worse – you apologize.

I’ve seen this over and over and over.

But the truth is: pricing is a business decision, not a self-worth decision. Your rate has nothing to do with whether you’re a good person, valuable as a coach, or valuable as an employee. It doesn’t indicate whether you’re worthy of taking up space in the world. It’s about the value the marketplace receives, the market you’re in, and the business you’re actually trying to build.

Most solopreneurs have never been taught to separate their worth from this business decision.
Therefore, every pricing conversation becomes an identity conversation.
When your identity is on the line — of course you price to feel safe. Who wouldn’t?

The Expensive Truth About Safe Pricing

Cheap pricing isn’t humility. It isn’t accessibility. It isn’t kindness.
Most of the time, it’s just fear in a generosity costume.
(Pause on that for a minute.)

The version of you that’s afraid to charge more is also the version of you that stays exhausted, stays small, and stays stuck. That safe number in your head isn’t protecting you; it’s keeping you exactly where you don’t want to be.

Priced to Feel Safe: Three Signs It's Time to Raise Your Rates (or ask for that raise)

Three Signs It’s Time to Raise Your Rates

You’re booked or close to it.
If your calendar is just about full and you can’t take anybody else on, it tells me you’ve probably been undercharging for a while. Demand has to exceed supply for you to raise your fees. If you’re already at capacity, the market has been telling you for months that your price is too low. Every full calendar is a message from the market.

Your results have gotten better, but your pricing hasn’t.
Let’s say you set your prices three years ago. Since then, you’ve completed more certifications. You have deeper expertise. You have better outcomes with your clients. But you’re still pricing based on who you were. Solopreneurs and entrepreneurs evolve. If your value has doubled and your prices haven’t gone up? That’s not humility; that’s a math problem – charge more.

Your ideal clients are saying yes too easily.
I know this one is surprising, but when people don’t flinch, don’t argue, don’t take a moment to think about it – no one’s negotiating with you — your price is likely too low. When they say yes really quickly, you probably can charge more.

I don’t want to sound totally mercenary, but there’s nothing wrong with making money. The marketplace will bear it in a lot of instances. When everyone says yes without blinking, you’re probably leaving money on the table.

Corporate leaders — this is where it applies to you too. For salary negotiations, budgets, and internal work, the same emotional patterns show up in salary conversations that show up in fee-setting. Same trap, different setting.

The Mindset That Makes It Stick

Here’s what I really want you to embrace: You are not your price.

Your price is a number attached to a service in a market. It can go up, it can go down, it can be tested and adjusted. And it has nothing to do with your worth as a person, your value as a coach, or your right to be in business.

Set a number. Test it. Watch how the market responds. Then adjust.
You’re not going to die. Everything’s going to be okay.

Your Homework This Week

Look at your pricing and ask yourself one honest question:
If a colleague I respected charges what I charge, would I think they were charging enough?

If the answer is no, you have your data. Now the only question is whether you’re brave enough to act on it.

Pick one offer. Raise the price. Not by five percent; that’s still safe pricing. Raise it by an amount that would make you slightly uncomfortable. Say it out loud and just once — and notice, you’re not going to die. Most of the time, the client says yes.

Stop pricing to feel safe. Price to grow!

Let your worth exist somewhere outside what the market can touch.
Let your worth live in the rest of your life — not in your fees, not in your salary.

Why Selling Is So Hard – Your worth is not on trial

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Why Selling Is So Hard: The Real Reasons You’re Avoiding the Call

How many of you have outreach on your to-do list right now that you’re quietly hoping will just go away?

You know who you are.

If you’re one of my A-List coaches, you know exactly what I’m talking about — we’re in the middle of a sales challenge for the month of August, and the resistance is real. If you’re a consultant, a coach, or anyone else who has to sell yourself for a living, this is for you too.

Because what separates the coaches who talk about their business from the coaches who have a business is simple: the ones with businesses are willing to do the selling.

What Most People Get Wrong About Selling

Most coaches, consultants, and self-employed entrepreneurs think selling is hard because they’re afraid of rejection.

Yes — rejection is part of it. But if it were just rejection, you’d have found a way to get over it by now. We all get ghosted. We all get told no. Most of us have survived way worse in life than a prospect not writing back.

If it’s not the rejection itself, then what is it?

When you sell yourself, every no feels like it’s about you. Not your offer. Not your pricing. Not your timing. You. Your worth. Your value. You doing what you do in the first place — that’s what feels like it’s being judged.

When you sell a product — shampoo, a shoe, a piece of software — a no is about the product. But when it’s about us, we make it about our entire identity. That’s why every outreach feels like standing on the edge of a cliff. It’s not just business; it’s personal, and your nervous system knows it.

Why Selling is So Hard: Your worth is not on trial by Laura Berman Fortgang

The Four Hidden Reasons Selling Feels Impossible

Reason One — You’ve conflated your worth with the outcome.
If they say yes, you’re valuable. If they say no, you’re not. So every outreach becomes a referendum on you as a human being. No wonder you want to avoid it.

Reason Two — You’ve made selling mean something ugly.
You’ve seen too many bro marketers, too many sleazy pitches, too many cringy launches. You’ve decided that selling is manipulation and that’s not you — you won’t do that. Then you resent your business for not growing. But you don’t have to be salesy or manipulative (we’ll get into that).

Reason Three — You’ve never separated yourself from your offer.
Just like the shampoo is a product separate from the company that makes it, your offer is separate from you. But when someone says no to your offer, you experience it as them saying no to you. Not your program. Not your fee. You. So you avoid asking because you can’t afford another vote against your identity this week.

Reason Four — You may actually be afraid of the yes.
This is the one nobody talks about. Because if you get the yes, you have to be visible, you have to deliver, and you have to get results for that person. Rejection is actually more comfortable than getting a yes because the no lets you stay where you are, and the yes demands that you grow.

Three Practices to Get You Moving

Separate your worth from the outcome — on paper. Sit down and literally write this sentence: My worth is not on trial. My offer is. Put it somewhere you can see it before every outreach. When you stop treating a no as a personal indictment, you free yourself to send the next one — and the next one — without dying inside first. Rejection stops being existential. It becomes information and data.

Redefine what selling actually is. Selling is not convincing, not manipulating, and not chasing. Selling is inviting the right person into a solution they already need. That’s it. You have the solution; they have the need. You’re not begging. You’re not tricking. You’re not performing. You’re extending an invitation, and anyone on the other end gets to say yes or no. When you understand this, selling stops feeling gross. It starts feeling generous and like service.

Track the outreach, not the outcomes. Most of you are measuring the wrong thing. You’re tracking who said no, who ghosted you, who didn’t buy. Instead, make your success about the outreaches you made. Because the more outreaches you send over time, the more yeses you’ll get. Stop making the game about closing a sale. Make the game about making the outreach because that’s what you actually control.

The Mindset That Makes It Stick Regarding Selling

Here’s what I want you to internalize: Selling isn’t a personality. It’s a practice.

The coaches who are booked aren’t just the extroverts, or the ones with the loudest personalities, or the ones with the perfect pitch. They’re the ones who keep sending outreach on the days they don’t feel like it. They stopped waiting to feel confident. They stopped waiting to feel ready. They stopped waiting for the perfect offer, the perfect messaging, the perfect script.

They just keep inviting, and they let their worth exist somewhere the market can’t touch.

Your Homework This Week

A-Listers — this one’s for you. Send five outreaches before the end of today. I’m being kind — I actually make my group do twenty. Five outreaches. Not the perfect pitches. Not the five that get answered. Five sent.

Before you send each one, take a breath and tell yourself:
My worth is not on trial; my offer is. I’m just extending an invitation.

The coaches and entrepreneurs who build the businesses you admire figured out the same thing. They didn’t get better at selling because they got braver. They got better because they stopped making every outreach a life-or-death situation. They stopped making it about their identity. They made peace with the truth — that a no is just a no, a yes is just a yes, and the only thing they control is whether or not they sent the outreach in the first place.

Send the outreach. Be consistent. Then selling won’t be so hard.

The Compliment Trap: Why Praise Is Making You Worse at Your Job

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When was the last time somebody told you your work was amazing? Your presentation was brilliant. Your pitch was fantastic. Your leadership was inspiring. Your service was the best they’d ever experienced.

Felt good, right?

Here’s the uncomfortable question — when you got that compliment, what did you actually learn? I want to make a case that’s going to sting a little. Getting praise may actually be quietly making you worse at your job.

Welcome to The Compliment Trap.

The Reframe

Most people think praise is the goal. It’s the confirmation that you’re doing everything right, the signal that you’ve arrived, that you can relax. So they optimize their professional life around getting more of it.

But praise is essentially useless as a growth tool.

It feels good; I’m not knocking that. Take it in, enjoy it – but there’s nothing you can act on.
“Great job” doesn’t tell you specifically what worked so you can repeat it.
“Loved it” doesn’t tell you what to do more of.
“You’re amazing” doesn’t tell you where the sharp edge of your growth is.

If you’re an entrepreneur, this hits especially hard because your clients love you. They tell you you’re wonderful. They send you glowing testimonials. But they would actually do you a better service by telling you what could be improved, so you could make your offer better, your business tighter, your delivery stronger. Instead, you slowly become allergic to the discomfort that would take you to the next level.

If you’re in corporate, same trap. Your boss says “nice work.” Your peers tell you you’re crushing it. Everybody’s happy. But what did you learn? What’s the specific skill you still need to develop? What’s the thing you’re doing well that you should repeat? Nobody wants to be the person who volunteers that information.

Learning to Give — and Get — Real Feedback

I learned this from a friend when we were both in the theater. I went to see her in a show and afterward said, “Oh my god, you were so great.” She said, “Well, what was great about it?”

At first I thought she was being a little egotistical. But then I realized she was teaching me how to give good feedback. Real feedback names what specifically worked so the person can do it again, and names what didn’t so they can improve. Vague praise doesn’t help anyone.

That conversation changed how I ask for feedback too.

Why We Get So Much Praise and So Little Truth

Giving useful feedback is hard; it’s socially expensive. Nobody wants to be the one who tells you your pitch runs too long, your emails come across as cold, or the thing you’re most proud of is actually holding you back.

People default to praise. Praise is safe, keeps the relationship warm, makes the giver feel generous and the receiver feel good. Everybody wins in the short term, and nobody wins in the long term.

Meanwhile, the people getting better fastest — the ones you watch moving up and forward — stopped waiting for feedback to come to them. They’re actively hunting for it. They’re pulling uncomfortable truths out of people who would otherwise never volunteer them.

Here’s the secret about those people: They’ve built a taste for the useful sting.

The Compliment Trap: Why Praise Is Making You Worse at Your Job by Laura Berman Fortgang

Have you ever watched Chopped? Whenever the judges give feedback to the chefs, the smart ones don’t fight back with “Yeah, but I tried.” They say, “Yes, chef.” They take the little sting, they swallow it, and they learn from it. That little wince you feel when someone tells you something true you didn’t want to hear? That’s a growth point; we want more of that.

Three Practices to Escape the Trap

Ask better questions. Stop asking, “What did you think?” That question invites praise. Instead ask: What would you do differently? What was the weakest part? If I paid you to find something wrong with this, what would you point to? These questions give people permission to give you what you actually need.

Pick two trusted truth-tellers. You don’t need feedback from everyone. Find two or three people who love you enough to tell you the truth, and are sharp enough to see what most people miss. Not your mom. Not your best friend who loves everything you do. Real truth-tellers. Cultivate those relationships on purpose.

Separate the compliment from the celebration. When someone praises you, take it, run with it, enjoy the praise. But don’t confuse it for data. Compliments feed your soul. Feedback grows your work. Both matter, but they do very different jobs.

The Mindset That Makes It Stick 

You can’t get better at what you’re already being praised for.
You can only get better at what you’re willing to look at honestly.

The most successful people I know have a higher tolerance for that little sting — for that Yes, chef. They’ve learned to hear the part that isn’t working without getting defensive.

That shift — from craving praise to hunting truth — is one of the biggest career unlocks I know.

Your Homework This Week

Pick one piece of work you’re proud of: a presentation, a launch, a project. Go to one of your truth-tellers and ask: “What’s the one thing you’d change if you were doing this instead of me?” Not “What did you think?”

When they tell you — don’t defend and don’t explain. Just listen (Yes, chef).

Notice: Did you wince? Good. That wince is exactly where your next level lives.

People building the boldest, best, most enduring work in the world figured out the same thing. They stopped being addicted to applause and they got hungry for the useful sting.

Sunday Scaries: Dread is not the problem. Dread is the messenger.

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The Sunday Scaries Are a Data Point: What Your Dread Is Trying to Tell You

It’s Friday while I am writing this, but I want you to think about today – Sunday.
Toward the end of the day, the light is changing, the weekend is fading, and something shifts in your chest.

You know the feeling – The Sunday Scaries.

That low-grade dread that just keeps rolling in before the work week starts up again.
Everybody jokes about it. There are memes about it.
But almost nobody stops to actually listen to it. And that’s the problem.

Today I want to make the case that your Sunday Scaries aren’t a personal failing you’re supposed to push through and discipline yourself out of. They’re a data point. They have information for you; they’re trying to tell you something important.

The Reframe

Most people treat the Sunday Scaries like the weather. Something that just happens to them, and is something to endure, medicate with wine or Netflix, and shake off with enough coffee Monday morning.

But the Sunday Scaries aren’t weather; they’re a signal. Your nervous system is trying to tell you something about the week you’re walking into, and most of us are so busy numbing it that we never actually decode the message.

If you’re corporately employed, this might look like dreading a specific meeting, a scary conversation with a boss, or a presentation coming up. It might be something bigger – you’re dreading the fact that you’re doing work that no longer fits who you are. That’s a much bigger problem.

If you’re an entrepreneur, the Sunday Scaries are really interesting because you don’t have a boss to blame. This is the business you created. Which is either really useful information — or really uncomfortable information. Usually both.

Either way, the dread is data.
Your job is to assess it and figure out what it’s trying to tell you.

Two Kinds of Dread

When the Sunday Scaries show up, there are really two kinds of dread, and it’s crucial to know the difference.

The first is healthy dread. This is situational. You have a big presentation Monday. A hard conversation you’ve been avoiding. A client you need to fire. A launch you’re behind on. Healthy dread is your brain saying, Hey — pay attention to this specific thing. Once you handle the thing, the dread goes away.

The second is signal dread. This is the one people don’t want to look at. Signal dread is constant. It doesn’t come and go once a month because you have something on the calendar. It’s there all the time. It might have been going on for six months. It doesn’t attach to one deadline or one project; it’s more like the overall Sunday Scaries that take you over like the blob.

Signal dread isn’t telling you to prepare better. It’s telling you something is misaligned. The reason you don’t want to deal with it — the reason you’d rather have more wine or watch Netflix — is because dealing with it actually means changing something. Change is what people hate most.

Three Practices to Read the Signal

Get specific. When you feel the Sunday Scaries roll in, grab a piece of paper and ask: What specifically am I dreading? Specificity is diagnostic. Vague dread stays vague. Named dread becomes actionable — either you handle the thing, or you realize you can’t name one specific thing, which itself is important information.

Check the pattern. If the dread comes and goes once in a while, that’s just healthy dread. But if it’s constant — if it’s been six months of dread — that’s a signal you have to listen to. Something needs to be fixed.

Ask the misalignment question. You’ve got to get really real here. Grab that piece of paper again. Ask yourself: If nothing had to change externally — no logistics, no financial risk, no other people to consider — what about my current life would I choose again on purpose? Whatever you wouldn’t choose again is exactly where the signal dread is coming from.

One of my viewers, Mignon, wrote in during my live Friday Focus and said: “I’m a firm believer that you can tell if you’re in the right job by how you feel on Sunday nights.” Absolutely! If the dread is constant, it’s a message. It’s not about logistics, financial risk, or about what other people would think. It’s a current life choice, and you need to look and see if it’s time to choose again.

The Mindset That Makes It Stick

Here’s what I want you to internalize:
Dread is not the problem. Dread is the messenger.

Listen to the messenger. Don’t shoot it!

The most self-aware people I know don’t have fewer Sunday Scaries than you do. They’ve just stopped treating them as an inconvenience and started treating them as intelligence. It’s intel and information you need to act on, so don’t numb it away.

Your Homework This Weekend

See how you feel on Sunday. I mean really tune in. Grab a piece of paper and ask yourself:
What specifically am I dreading, and what might it be trying to tell me?
Just five minutes. Only honesty.

Because the people building the boldest, most aligned, most sustainable lives and businesses have all figured out to stop ignoring the signals and start reading them. They absorbed the data, and they made the changes those signals were asking for long before the dread had to get any louder.

Change is hard, but you can do it.