On the scariest day of the year, here’s something truly scary:

“All your clients will be just like you.”

An experienced coach told me this years ago. I laughed it off. I was six months into developing my coaching practice, working with business owners across different industries, different business sizes, different stages. What could they possibly have in common with me?

Everything, as it turns out.

The clients who stayed the longest? They had built their businesses through hard work and real-world experience, not fancy credentials. Just like me.

The ones I loved working with the most? Brilliant at their craft but exhausted from doing everything themselves. Sound familiar?

The conversations that had the biggest impact? Work-life balance. Stepping back. Learning to trust others.

Then one day I was helping a client craft their story – the narrative that shows potential clients you understand their journey. At the end of the conversation, I realised I had not clearly done this for myself. Here I was preaching the need for a story, and I didn’t have one.

That’s when it got scary.

Because I finally understood what that coach meant: When my clients are just like me, I am not just coaching them – I am coaching myself.

Every conversation about letting go? I am working through my own control issues.

Every conversation about building a business that does not require me 24/7? I am confronting my own indispensability complex.

Every time I challenged a client about taking a proper holiday? I am reminding myself to do the same.

It is like holding up a mirror every single day. And sometimes that mirror shows me things I am uncomfortable seeing.

But here’s what I learned: that shared struggle is not a weakness.  It is authenticity.

The clients who resonate with my story trust me because I am not preaching from a pedestal – I am in the trenches with them. When I say “I know how hard this is,” they know I mean it.

So this Halloween, I am owning the scary truth: I attract clients who reflect my own challenges back at me. And every time I help them break through? I am breaking through too.

That’s terrifying. And it’s exactly how it should be.