the hidden reason clinicians struggle to nail their messaging (and how fixing it grew my income)
signs you have the "unworthy messenger" blindspot
if you are more of a podcast person, you can listen on The $100K Healer podcast.
Do you low-key panic when someone asks “so… what do you do?”
You know what you do. But… how do you even begin to answer that question.
How do you explain the deep, intangible inner work of it all without giving a 15 min ted talk.
You’ve been working on figuring out your messaging.
You’ve done the courses. You’ve filled out the ideal client worksheets. You’ve rewritten your Instagram bio more times than you can count. And still, it feels like you still haven’t quite landed on your messaging. You are adjacent to the message, but not hitting the bullseye.
That frustration you feel means one thing:
the answer you're looking for isn't in a new strategy, it’s in your psyche.
if it still feels like you’re close but not quite there, it’s almost certainly because there’s something deeper going on.
that something deeper? I call it “the unworthy messenger” blindspot.
I’ve experienced it too. multiple times. and every time I broke through this blindspot… I broke into a new level of income.
in this post I want to break down:
what is the unworthy messenger blindspot
3 times I personally experienced it- so you can recognize the signs and symptoms
exactly how I broke through the blindspot- and reached my next income level
and before we get into it, if you want to build a coaching business that replaces your clinical income… the $100K Healer is the space for you.
what is the “unworthy messenger” blind spot?
On some level, you don’t feel worthy enough to fully claim the message you’re actually here to share.
And this feeling of unworthiness can actually be quite sneaky (as you’ll see in the examples I share).
It doesn’t always feel like “I’m not worthy.” It usually feels completely logical.
“If I niche down too far, I’ll alienate people.”
“I need more results before I can claim that.”
“No one will want to buy that”
These feel like rational marketing decisions. But underneath them, there’s almost always a message you really want to say that you’ve quietly decided isn’t safe to say yet.
If it sounds a little vague or confusing right now, the best way to define it, is really through examples.
Here’s how the “unworthy messenger” blindspot played out for me
blind spot #1: I’m struggling to figure out my niche
For the first year or so of my business, I could not pin down my niche. Whenever I signed up for a new coaching course and they had me do an “ideal client” exercise, first I would have SO much resistance.
I’ve already done this. I don’t need to do it again.
Then I’d begrudgingly try to complete the exercise and realize… yea, I don’t have a niche.
Once i overcame my “unworthy messenger” blindspot around niche: I narrowed in from “corporate/ professional/ ambitious career people” to healthcare professionals. And that’s when my business started taking off.
there were signs trying to point me in this direction for months, but because of my blindspot, I was overlooking them.
signs like:
a med student had found my blog (before I was talking to healthcare professionals at all) and hired me on the spot. I didn’t have to do any “marketing” to “convince” her to work with me, she just found my blog- and was like “you get it”.
I got SO fired up whenever I talked to my entrepreneur friends about the healthcare system. They would reflect it back to me and try to point out… there’s something here. I still wasn’t connecting the dots.
It wasn’t even on my radar to make healthcare professionals my niche, until one day, someone spelled it out for me. It was end of 2020 and healthcare professionals were visibly cracking under the weight of COVID.
One of my friends knew I was having a hard time finding clients and they asked me: “why aren’t you trying to help healthcare workers?”
That’s a great question.
When I sat with it… I realized, I had alot of stories to unpack.
I dropped out of residency. In their eyes I’m a failure- not a mentor. (shame)
I left medicine for a reason, I don’t want to go back into that world. (avoidance)
Do I have anything valuable to offer them? (self doubt)
I confronted and processed the stories one by one.
And at the end of this process… once the blindspot was corrected, what came into view was 20/20 clarity.
Yupp. I’m supposed to help healthcare professionals.
I changed my IG handle from @theturquoisetraveler to @coachchelsmd
and within a few months I went from completely inconsistent income to a steady $3k/months.
blind spot #2: I can’t talk about that — it’s not concrete enough
Before I had this breakthrough, creating content felt really hard.
The coaches I was working with at the time would say: just tell your story, how you overcame your situation, and then connect it to your program.
But I was having a hard time making the connection.
My program was pathway to purpose.
I taught values, zone of genius, archetypes and a purpose formula. I had one module on mindset and one on intuition, but it wasn’t the main focus.
Figuring out my values and zone of genius was not part of my story. That’s not what helped me find my purpose.
I found my purpose, but following my intuition.
period.
But I didn’t think that was something I could teach.
I didn’t think it was concrete enough to build a program around.
Plus… what if it’s not even real? what if “my intuition” is just (another) voice in my head?
So I struggled to connect my story to my program. Every time I tried to make content, something felt off. Like there were these two disjointed parts of my content — the story I could tell naturally and powerfully, and the program I was trying to sell . They didn’t seem to overlap.
And while I was busy overcomplicating my content, talking about everything except intuition. Here’s what was happening:
A random podcast episode I did on intuition got significantly more downloads than anything else I’d put out. Like, an outlier.
The intuition chapter of my book, Residency Dropout, got more messages and responses than any other part. (even my uncle commented on it!)
Every single client who went through that module said it was their favorite part.
The signs were there, but I couldn’t even SEE them. Why?
the story in my head:
“the method that worked for me isn’t good enough”
created an “unworthy messenger” blindspot that completely obstructed the obvious signs trying to get my attention.
Once I overcame this blind spot and made intuition the cornerstone of my method everything shifted.
I started filling up group programs
Client results improved.
Client retention went up.
I started hitting consistent $10K months and beyond.
blind spot #3: I’m not qualified enough to talk about that yet
I knew I wanted to do business coaching, before I even hit my first six figures. I loved talking about business, riffing on marketing, helping people plan out strategies.
But I had a rule in my head: I can’t start publicly business coaching until I make 7 figures in my business.
I saw so many online coaches, make their first $10k month and suddenly think they are qualified to become a business coach. I didn’t want to throw my hat in that ring. No thank you.
So I stayed in my lane as a career coach. My business hit six figures in 2022. And then again in 2023 and 2024. It wasn’t just a fluke. I was consistently bringing in a six figure income.
After 3 years of telling the same story about “how I left medicine + found my purpose”, I was starting to crave a new direction. a new evolution.
But I kept telling myself… you can’t move on to business coaching until you make a million dollars.
The signs started to stack up, as I remained oblivious:
There were signs I kept ignoring:
At the start of 2025, my coach suggested I create something to help clinicians who want to become entrepreneurs. I told her: not yet.
The people who had the best results inside Pathway to Purpose… were the ones who went on to start their own business.
When my career coaching clients hired a business coach, it felt like a punch in the gut.wait… that’s what I want to help you with. But I wasn’t positioning myself as a business coach, so why would they hire me for that?
In April of 2025, I finally started listening to the signs. I recorded a podcast episode “I don’t want to be a career coach anymore”.
That same day, a client signed up for business mentorship and paid in full for three months. That week, four more clients signed up for business coaching. Just from that one episode.
And once again, my income grew. Last year I had a $10k cash week, an $18k cash week, and a $34k sales month.
When I finally broke through my blindspot, my income followed.
do you have blindspots?
the diabolical thing about blindspots is… they don’t feel like blind spots. They feel like facts. Smart business decisions even.
My business needs to make a million dollars before I can call myself a business coach.
I can’t sell a program about intuition- that’s not concrete enough.
But at the root of it all, the reason I didn’t want to talk about these things- is because I didn’t think I could.
I had a brain filled with “unworthy messenger” stories that blurred the clarity right in front of my eyes. A blindspot that made my message genuinely invisible to me.
Once I confronted and released the stories, I finally claimed the message I’d been circling. Content felt easier. Clients came through. My income grew.
Because I was finally speaking from the white hot center of my truth. And nothing sells like the truth.
If you’ve been doing all the messaging work and it still doesn’t feel quite right, it’s no longer just a strategy problem. There’s probably some “unworthy messenger” blindspot blurring out the thing you’re really meant to say.
And when we finally confront that…. that’s when your messaging clicks and your income follows.
If this resonated and you know you need to figure out your messaging. I’m building a 5 wk immersion“Breakthrough Messaging”. Together we will: break through your imposter syndrome, break through the noise of the algorithm, break through your next income level. Early bird pricing is coming soon drop your name on this interest list and you’ll be the first to know when enrollment opens.
to go deeper with this work…
1:1 Client Inflow Intensive: fill out this application to start the convo.
The Client Inflow Fix: learn the messaging framework that opens up the floodgates to clients.