Ep #142: How to Navigate Coaching in a Changing World

Hey, this is Lindsay Dotzlaf and you are listening to Mastering Coaching Skills, episode 142. To really compete in the coaching industry, you have to be great at coaching. That’s why every week, I will be answering your questions, sharing my stories, and offering tips and advice so you can be the best at what you do. Let’s get to work.

Hey coach, I’m so glad you’re here today. I have a couple of just kind of quick things to talk to you about today that hopefully will be really powerful. Short and sweet and powerful. How about that? But first, I just want to say I realized as I hit record and said the number of what episode this is, 142, what? 142 weeks of consistency kind of blows my mind just on a personal note.

And it also makes me think every 50 episodes I have been doing Q&A episodes. And I had been actually kind of thinking maybe I wouldn’t do them anymore because what could you possibly have to ask, right? Like, what questions could you possibly have? Surely, I have answered them all.

But recently, I was talking to a friend of mine who has also been a client and she was telling me that those are some of her favorite episodes. And before she ever worked with me, those were kind of the episodes that drew her in, that she loved so much. So I am just going to go ahead and plug that now. If you have any questions for me, every 50 episodes I do a Q&A episode.

So in eight weeks from now, I will be doing a Q&A at episode 150. And I would love for you to submit any questions that you have. We will link it up in the show notes. If you’re hopefully listening in real time, you can just go to the show notes, submit the questions.

And they can be about anything. They can be about my business. They can be personal. They can be things that you wish I would talk about on the podcast. Questions about coaching, any of it. Nothing really is off limits. I don’t think that I’ve ever said I’m not answering anything. Maybe just one time. One time I think I’ve said that. So ask me anything, go to the link, submit your questions and I can’t wait to do the next Q&A episode.

But today I want to dive into a couple things that have been on my mind. The first one is just something that I have been noticing recently just in the world. And this does relate to your coaching business, but it also just relates to us just being humans moving around the world. Something that I have just been noticing and I want to talk about it because I think it is important for our coaching businesses.

It has to do with kind of seeing changes in the way people are responding to coaching and the way people are showing up for coaching. Maybe your clients and people that are hiring you and just the way people are responding in the world to coaching that doesn’t have much to do with coaching, but I think it’s affecting maybe some of your businesses or some of your clients or the way clients show up for coaching.

And here’s what I want to offer. And I only want you to use this for you. So don’t let this be something that you’re like, oh no, this is just one more thing to add to my list of dramas that I have about all the things. I actually think it’s really useful to hear this.

One thing I have been noticing is that I think that there is something happening right now just in the world that is people coming out of the Covid lockdown, and I know it’s been a bit since a lot of places have been really locked down. But there’s something about this summer, at least to me, that I’ve noticed that feels like people are just rebelling against some things lately.

And I’ve been thinking about this and also reading some articles and some studies because there are now some studies coming out kind of showing the effects of, you know, obviously there have been effects or been studies about Covid itself, but just the effects of people being isolated and people being in environments that they’re just not used to being in, right? Maybe being at home by themselves or even with their family or their kids or whoever.

And being in those environments, kind of being forced a little bit to be in those environments and how that is, let’s be clear, by force I just mean recommended to stay home or places being shut down, everything being shut down, like all of that, right? The effects of that, I think we are really starting to see them right now.

It seems to me like there is very much this rebellion against a little bit of structure, against being introspective, against just showing up in the world in a way that is anything other than what they want to do, right? I think there are a lot of people searching for connection and freedom and being out in the world without worrying about some of the things that we’ve had to worry about over the last three years.

And I know some of the studies are really showing that people have, some people have PTSD-like symptoms from just being in situations that we’ve never been in before. And I think it’s important to acknowledge this as coaches because I don’t think that that’s a negative for coaching or for our coaching businesses. But I think it’s something to consider when we’re just talking about what coaching is and how we help people, and how we help people do things in the world, maybe that they’ve never done before.

And there’s just a noticing on my end of people are like, you know what? I’m just a little tired of healing and of being so introspective and so forced to be with myself, right? Which just, as humans, we’re just not super used to that. And so, being kind of thrown into that situation, it just kind of feels like there’s a rebellion coming out of it. Like I want to travel, I want to be with people, I want to not go inward for a while, right? I want to just be out in the world.

And I recently was having a conversation with one of my friends, we were talking about – This is a person who is not a coach, we were just having a funny conversation. And he was saying, you know what? If I just never have to make sourdough bread ever again. And we were kind of laughing about it because that was something that he just really enjoyed doing during the pandemic when he was home by himself or with his family, whatever, making it with his kids.

And it was really eye opening for me because I had never considered that. But he was like, there were things I did during the pandemic, during the time of lockdown, during the time that I was home by myself that I was like, oh. His thought about it was, I’m such a great human for doing these things, right? For being the person who makes the bread, for being the person who plays games with my family every weekend and does the puzzles and learns how to do whatever, I forget what his exact words were.

But I think most of us can probably relate to that in some fashion. There are things that we picked up during Covid. I want to be really clear that I don’t think that Covid is just gone, but circumstances have certainly changed, right? We’re not being told to stay home, like the world is kind of opened. And there are things that we all kind of picked up.

And one thing he said was like, I mean, I feel like I was just such a great human. I thought this was so interesting. He said, I feel like I was such a great human, I was like doing all of these things. I was getting up, doing my Peloton, then cooking some sourdough bread and then working from home. And then picking the stuff from my garden for lunch. I might be exaggerating, but it was just one of those like, here’s the perfect day.

And of course, as a coach, I just challenged him a little bit. I’m like, is that the perfect day? If you’re having such a rebellion against it now, and against all of that, because he was kind of comparing and now I’m just doing all these things, right? And I just think that’s really interesting to consider.

Is that really the perfect version of us, whatever that means? Of course it’s not, right? Of course, if that’s not what we would choose to do on any given regular day, then of course that’s not what we’re meant to be doing. And I think that that’s something really interesting to consider because as coaches, I think a lot of coaching businesses thrived during Covid. I think a lot of people were very introspective and very much in a place of like, okay, well, I have nothing else to do, so let me really work on myself, whatever that meant for them.

And I also have an upcoming episode about working on yourself, is that the goal? Like what does that even mean? So stay tuned for that. But I think a lot of people went in that direction. If they had the means to do it and they had the ability to do it, I think that’s what a lot of people did. Or at least a lot of people in my world and probably in yours.

And I just want you to consider that if it’s true that people have this little bit of rebellion in them right now, how can you craft a coaching business around that, right? Like how can you change your messaging, change your marketing, change your whatever, how you’re selling coaching in a way that makes it more conducive to the person who’s like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m tired of all of that.

I think that’s just something to consider. So I just want to pin that. I don’t have the answer. I don’t have the perfect answer for you, it’s just something that I have been thinking a lot about and I wanted to offer it kind of up to you to consider for yourself. So that was kind of an aside.

The second thing, the main thing I want to talk about today, and again I said this was going to be just a short and sweet episode. But the main thing I want to talk about today, for whatever reason I was thinking about when we get into lots of drama in our coaching businesses and I was thinking about kind of the past of my business and when are the times I’ve had the least business drama.

And a lot of you might assume that it’s like, well, obviously, whenever anyone’s making the most money is the time they have the least amount of drama in their business. I just want to offer that’s 100% not true. And it made me think of something and remember something that feels really important that I want to share with you. And I don’t care if you have 1,000 clients, I don’t care if you whatever, I don’t care where you are in your coaching business, this feels really true to me.

One of the times that I had the least amount of drama just about my coaching business, about how it was going, about all of that was when I had the most clients. When I was spending the most hours in my week coaching one on one. And I think that happens for two reasons.

One, because I just didn’t have the time to have the drama, right? I wasn’t sitting around thinking, where does my next client come from? Or how do I do this? Or how do I do that? And I also wasn’t thinking I don’t know how to coach this one client that I have or I don’t know how to do this thing. I was just like from client to client moving from thing to thing.

Now, that created some stress and some whatever on its own, but it wasn’t really in my business. It was other types of things like how do I manage this? How do I juggle all of this? How do I juggle the schedule? So because of that, here’s what I want to offer to you. If you’re a coach who works on your own, who you’re an entrepreneur, you have your own business, I know some of you aren’t, but if you are, I want you to consider this.

The number one way, and I would put money behind this, the number one way for you to get out of drama in your business is to coach more. Do more coaching. It is very simple, I know, but it’s true. And for some of you, you might be like, Lindsay, that is ridiculous. Because if you’re a newer coach and you don’t have any clients or you don’t have many clients, you might go straight to like, how do I do more coaching if I need to get the clients first?

And what I would offer is to find other ways to do more coaching. And don’t just blow this off, I want you to really hear me on this. And then I’m going to talk to those of you that have a lot of clients, who are making more money, who’ve been a coach for longer.

But if you are the coach who is new, you don’t have any clients and you spend lots of time in your day figuring out how to make money, figuring out how to grow your business, here’s what I want to offer to you. Find ways to coach people. There are ways. It doesn’t even mean just taking on a ton of free clients, although that’s an option, right? You can always take on free clients. You could do one-off sessions that are free, you don’t have to commit to long-term coaching packages for free clients.

But you could also offer workshops, which is marketing and coaching because you have to market the workshop and then you have to do the workshop. Even if five people come, just practicing coaching with five people is incredible. You could offer a one time thing where you are like, hey, I have slots open for coaching. I would love to give this to anybody who wants it. Who wants to coach?

And one thing I would say about this is you want to make sure that it’s totally separate from and now these people are going to be clients. Yes, maybe they will be and that will be incredible. But you don’t want to, if you’re doing it for this reason to get out of your business drama, you don’t want to pile more business drama on top of it by thinking, okay, now I have five free clients, now I have to turn them all into paid clients. That might happen naturally, and that’s incredible. But it might not, and that is also okay.

You could offer peer coaching. You could offer to coach family members, with their approval of course, with their consent. You could offer to do speaking things at networking events. You could reach out to people you’ve met at networking events and say, hey, I’m giving one-off free coaching sessions, would you love one?

There are so many ways that you can include coaching in your day to day. So if this is you, I want you to really consider that. I’m not suggesting that that’s all you do and that now you’re spending like 50 hours coaching all the people for free every week. That’s certainly not what I’m suggesting.

But just fill some of your time with coaching instead of, okay, I posted this thing on Facebook, I posted this thing on Instagram, now what? Where are all the people? Why aren’t they rolling in? Trying to figure out the business side is a totally different skill than learning how to coach.

So if this is you, I beg of you for your own sanity, step away from some of the business stuff every once in a while and just make sure that you’re doing some coaching. Because here’s one thing that happens that I’ve seen because people come into my program and talk about this, maybe they’ve been a coach for a while, they’ve really been super, super focused on building their business and learning how to make money that they don’t do much coaching for a while.

So then when, finally, the marketing is working a little bit and they sign a few clients, and there’s this freakout of like, oh no, I haven’t actually coached anyone in months, right? So this kind of is like a two birds, one stone situation, right? Practice the coaching, keep up on your coaching, find people to coach, stay out of some of the business drama while learning both things at once. So there’s that side of it.

And then I will share, from a personal anecdote I guess, that recently I have been having some business drama and I’ve been really spinning in it. And yesterday, I just realized, oh wait, what’s one of the best ways to get out of this that I know? I know the answer to this, do more coaching.

Because although I’m making quite a bit of money as a coach and my business is going well and all of that, I only coach a couple of hours a week, right, because I run group calls. So I have my certification call. I have The Coach Lab call. And just this week I started a Coaching Master’s intensive. And so that’s three hours, maybe, a week. That’s not many, right? That’s like if I rewind back to the beginning of my coaching journey, it feels like time-wise, the time I spend coaching, it’s more like that.

Now, that’s not a problem at all. I have plenty of other things to be doing. I have, you know, just business needs change as your business grows and so there’s just other things that fill my time, and that’s great.

But what happens when you lean into the coaching, at least for me, and hopefully also for you, is that it really allows me to remember, one, I’m great at this. That’s just the thought that I have that feels really good, right? I love coaching. I love it. It’s my favorite part of my business.

And the more I remember that, the more it puts me in a place of, oh yes, I need to share this with people. Of course, I need to tell people, right? Which makes it feel more comfortable than when I’m focused on selling and marketing and all of the things. And it’s like a full circle, right?

It’s just like do more coaching, remember you’re a great coach, feel great about the coaching. Sell more coaching because you’re like, yes, everybody needs this, people need this. Maybe not everybody, people need this. My clients need this. The people that are waiting for me to teach them these specific things are out there. And the more I coach, the more I remember that. And the same will be true for you, I promise.

So even if you’re a seasoned coach and you make a lot of money but for whatever reason you aren’t coaching very many hours right now because maybe you have only groups, you’re not doing one on one coaching, offer some peer coaching or host some workshops. Do a week long whatever for potential clients. Again, it can be a two-for-one situation, right? Doing the coaching can also be part of marketing. That’s one of my best marketing plans, is to do more coaching.

So I wanted to share this with you because I’ve never really talked about it and I think it’s been very apparent for me whenever I’m feeling kind of fuzzy or like, oh, just like I don’t know. Sometimes you just feel that in your business, right? It takes a lot of work to have a successful business, to be an entrepreneur.

And, for me, I just know anytime I get to that place, when I coach more hours, when I do more coaching, it always lifts me out of it. It always pulls me out of it. It always shows me, oh yes, people need this. People want to be coached.

So I wanted to share that with you. Hopefully that feels really helpful for you this week. And I’ll see you again next week. Goodbye.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Mastering Coaching Skills. If you want to learn more about my work, come visit me at lindsaydotzlafcoaching.com. That’s Lindsay with an A, D-O-T-Z-L-A-F.com. See you next week.