Ep #208: Scaling Your Business: Why More Money and Clients Isn’t Always the Answer

Hey, this is Lindsay Dotzlaf and you are listening to Mastering Coaching Skills episode 208.

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, Lindsay here, and before we get started on today’s episode I want to give you a little prompt to join us for Coach Week. Coach Week will be October 28th through November 1st, and it is the third annual free Coach Week that includes workshops, trainings, and of course coaching, and a lot of fun.

We also have some added bonuses and just fun extras this year which we are including, some of it for free and some of it in the expanded experience, which will be if you choose to upgrade. But even if you don’t, you can come, you can join us for free, you can dip in, watch whatever workshops you want to watch and pick and choose, look at the schedule. But no matter how you join, I can not wait to see you there. We are in full-time prep mode for Coach Week right now and I’m having so much fun creating it for you.

So click the link in the show notes, you can join and register there for free. You can also find the details about the expanded experience there. You can also find it in my Instagram bio, just @LindsayDotzlaf on Instagram. Or send me an email if you can’t find it anywhere. Last ditch effort, shoot me an email and I will get you the link because you have to be there. If you’re a coach, it’s a must. All right? See you there. Now onto today’s episode.

Hey coach, I am so happy you’re here today and I want to say this episode feels a little personal and just a little bit like half of you may never listen to this podcast again. I don’t really think that, but maybe. Maybe I do. We’ll see. I’m going to talk about something that, again, feels quite personal to me, it feels a little vulnerable to talk about, and I think it needs to be said. So here we go. I’m going to try to not laugh to get through it because sometimes I think I cover some of my vulnerability with laughter, which is a tool that sometimes is useful, and right now that doesn’t feel like what I’m meant to do.

So, I want to dig into this a little bit because I’ve realized something. I’ve learned something really valuable from talking to a handful, or more than a handful, a few handfuls of coaches over the last couple of weeks. And it has kind of brought up something for me that I’ve wanted to share for a while but I think I’ve been a little scared to.

So a while ago, I don’t actually know what episode number it was but I shared about creating intellectual property and how I think kind putting pressure on yourself to do that as a coach isn’t necessary. And how it’s kind of like a weird industry thing where we think we need to be consistently creating new intellectual property and how it can kind of create some weird things happening in the industry and how it can affect your coaching.

And this episode feels very similar to that. And after that episode, I got so many messages and so many emails saying, oh my gosh, thank you for saying it. Thank you for talking about this. And so this, maybe this will be that way too.

If you love what I say today or hate what I say today, either way, I invite you to message me and let me know because maybe I’m wrong. But it’s just something I’ve been thinking about. And I know I’m not wrong about how I feel, but maybe I’m wrong about projecting this into the industry, but I think it’s just something really important to consider and something that could be affecting the way you coach your clients and the results that your clients get.

So I want to talk about the kind of thought in the coaching industry that scaling your business is what you’re supposed to be doing or is important. And I want to be really clear from the beginning, there’s nothing wrong with scaling. I do not believe there’s anything wrong with it. I think like, go for it. Right?

I love making money. I love helping all the people. I love putting all my work out into the world. And I love all of those things for you as well. And there are lots of ways to do that. And I think that there was this kind of thing that started in 2020, which, you know, in 2020, obviously, all of a sudden, a lot of people were home because of Covid and all the changes happening in the world.

And within the coaching industry, I think this thing happened where it was kind of like, now is the perfect time to go all in, right? To quit your job, to be a coach full-time, to scale your business. And even if you’re a brand new coach who’s gotten in the industry recently, I think there’s still just like lingering effects of this, which was a thing that was kind of like, okay, now’s the time, go all in, scale your business, make a lot of money as a coach.

And especially when it comes to social media and paid marketing on social media, which I’m not demonizing any of this, I 100% have paid marketing on social media. So I want to be very clear, none of what I’m talking about is a bad thing. I just think there needs to be some awareness created around it.

So in that time, when it paid very well to say like, hey, now’s the time to start your business. It’s such an easy industry to get into. It’s such an easy industry to make a lot of money. I think that there were some quite big name coaches and coaching schools and coaching programs and trainings and all the things taking advantage of that market, right? Which makes sense for them. Like good on them, make that money.

But I think what it has created is a little bit of, and now if you’re a coach, the only way to be a coach is to make tons of money, to scale your business and like, that’s what success looks like. And I want to be really clear there are parts of my business that I am all about scaling, right? So this is not an anti scale your business podcast, but I think there needs to be a conversation around that’s not the only way.

There’s so many ways to be successful. And I’m saying successful in air quotes, because that is totally based on your opinion and what you decide you want to do. There’s so many ways to be successful as a coach, to help your clients, to make an impact. And I think there needs to be a conversation around it.

At least I’m sure there is probably that conversation happening in other places, but I think there needs to be a conversation here on this podcast where I talk about coaching skills and kind of how that thought of like, I need to scale, scale, scale can affect you as the coach and can affect your clients. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Let’s do it.

So as you know, if you are a regular listener you may know because you’ve heard me talk about it, I’ve been launching a brand new mastermind. A business mastermind called Reimagine where I am helping coaches really think about things like, how is their business going now? What are the changes they want to make?

Kind of like a full business audit, a full looking into each and every part of their business and saying, what do I love? What lights me up? What do I want to keep? And what changes do I want to make? And how do I make those changes without it having a negative influence on my current clients, right? Or like, how do I keep my business running, keep the lights on all the things without, or while making these changes.

So through that, it’s been really interesting. I’ve learned a lot about myself and I’ve learned a lot about so many of you because I opened up my calendar and I was like, hey, come chat with me or send me a message or whatever, and let’s talk about, is it a great fit for you? It’s my first time selling it. So I was open to having all the conversations with all the people.

And so many coaches, most who joined and some who didn’t, told me, I’ve just fallen a little bit out of love with my business. And these are mostly coaches who have quite successful businesses. They’ve scaled their business. They’ve done the things that you see a lot of big business coaches talking about around, you know, scale, make a lot of money, here’s how you do it, et cetera, et cetera. They’ve done all of those things and they have succeeded.

So when I say succeeded, I mean, they have created a business that is making a lot of money, as in bringing in a lot of revenue. And they’re at a point right now where they are kind of reconsidering some of it. And I think honestly that a little blip in the coaching industry or a little blip in sales since 2020 has been a gift to some, some, not all of you. I know some of you are going to hate hearing this. You’re going to be like, nope, hate it. So frustrated.

But it’s been a gift to some coaches who’ve built quite successful businesses, but were feeling a little out of touch with their business or were feeling a little bit like I built this whole thing and now I don’t know how to run it. I don’t even know if I like to run it. I don’t even know what I’m doing. And it’s given them a gift of questioning a lot of what’s happening.

So this is what I’ve been doing even before, I think, most people were like, oh, my business isn’t bringing in as much money as it was before. I was already kind of in this phase of like, okay, I built this whole thing. Amazing. And I want to be very clear, I love what I’ve built. Nothing has gone wrong. Nothing is like, oh no, I’m tearing it all down. But I’ve just been looking at all of it and saying, okay, what do I love? What do I want to keep? What lights me up? What do I look forward to every single week? And really digging into those questions.

Which after a year and a half of that is where I decided to launch reimagine because I thought, oh, so many coaches need this, need to do this work. And I know there are at least 10 coaches out there that need this work. So I’m just going to go ahead and put this out into the world. And the response I’ve gotten has been so interesting.

So I’ve talked to, again, so many of you that are like, I’ve fallen out of love with my business. I don’t know what to do from here. I don’t know how to make changes. And there’s a lot of sentiment around, maybe I built this big team and I don’t know what to do with it. Or I have all of these clients and it turns out, I don’t really want to run this business that has all these moving pieces.

And I think what we don’t talk about enough is what a business looks like when you scale it versus when you – And by scale, I mean, just like take the format, add a lot more clients, like do it in a way that all the clients get the same teaching, but you can add as many clients as you want into an offer and the results match the number of people in it. So the results continue to be equal, no matter how many people you add into the offer.

And so The Coach Lab, for example, is something like this. And I feel amazing about The Coach Lab. I love it. I love it for what it is and what it does for people. And I took a second to think, wait, there are so many ideas that I have for The Coach Lab and how to make it this bigger thing and this bigger thing and to do all these things. And I think I’ve just taken a step back and said like, okay, are those things what I really want to do? Do they actually enhance my life? And if not, then is that okay? What does it look like?

So I want to be very clear. As of now, The Coach Lab is going nowhere. I love The Coach Lab. I love all of my current offers. Just if you’re my client and listening, I want to make that very, very clear, this is not a thing where I’m going to blow up my business.

But so many of you have come to me saying, I built the thing. I did what I was supposed to do. And now I hate running my business or I just want to get back to coaching, which is what I love. Or honestly, I just want to have one-on-one clients to feel more connected to my business or to my offers.

And just like I gave the example of creating intellectual property and that being a pressure that in some circles is placed on coaches, I think scaling is kind of the same. And so I want to offer to you, if you’re listening to this, that you do not have to scale your business. You can have an incredible coaching business, helping the clients that you want to help, running your business the way you want to run it without making it bigger and bigger and bigger and raising your prices and hiring a team and just adding on more complication.

For me, one of my values in my life and my business is simplicity. And what I’ve noticed is that as I scale my business, it creates a business that is less simplistic, right? There are more moving pieces. There are more clients that need to be consistently taken care of. There are more just things to consider all the time.

Now, that doesn’t mean I can’t run a simple business and scale, but those two things do kind of come into odds with each other every once in a while and it forces me to look at that, right? To say, wait, is this really what I want? And to unpack kind of, well, here’s what I’m hearing that I should grow, grow, make more money, make more revenue, versus actually I love my business the way it is.

So I want you to think about this. Why did you get into coaching? For most of you, it is if you’re running a business, if you’re running your own business as a coach, I’m assuming you got here because you want to make money, one. That doesn’t have to be the number one, but that has to be a piece of it if you’re running a real business versus like a charity, although charities also have to make money. So that’s a different thing, right?

Like there are different reasons to learn how to coach and to love coaching. But if you’re running a coaching business as a business, you have to want to make money. That has to be a thing. If even right there, you’re like, I don’t know, then maybe stop and question that. Like, are you sure you want to run a business?

A business does need revenue, preferably profit. And like, those are just parts of running a business, right? You can run other things. You can go coach people all you want without having a business, making no money, totally fine. I don’t know many coaches that want to do that, but if that is what you want to do, amazing.

And a part of a business has to be, you want to help others. You want to make an impact. I’m assuming both of those things are true for you, for anyone listening. So just think about that. As you hear this message, scale your business, make more money, bring in more revenue, I want you to just consider those two things.

And I want to point out from experience that as you grow, you can bring in more revenue and actually make less money personally, depending on your investments, depending on what it costs to run your business, right?

So when you scale, and by scale, I mean, create some sort of container that holds a lot of people without you having one-on-one connections with them, having one-on-one kind of interactions with all of them all of the time, because you can’t scale your time infinitely, right? Without having resources, without having maybe videos or something. Like in The Coach Lab, for example, there’s a portal, my clients log in. They can get all of the learning without me coming there and saying, like, here’s your one-on-one learning to each of them.

But with that, so that’s a program. With a membership, with possibly a mastermind, it requires more expense, right? Your business expenses go up. I don’t know of any program or membership where you don’t have more business expenses, even if they’re small to start with. You have to be able to host calls, you have to be able to host content, you have to be able to send emails regularly telling them, here’s your link to join the call, like all the things.

Probably most of you that have a membership or a program, you either have a VA or a business manager or some sort of team or person or people that you are paying to help you run your business. And there’s nothing wrong with this. It’s amazing. I love paying the people that help me in my business every week.

But if you aren’t prepared for this, right? If your mind is just on making more money personally, you might not realize that scaling a business doesn’t actually just mean that you have more money. That’s not how it works. It’s not how business works. And now you also have added responsibility, not only money responsibility, but personal responsibility to the people that you’re paying, right?

If you have a team, if you have contractors, you are going to have to pay them regularly. Now the money that goes out in your business every month is going to go up and up. Again, not a problem if this is what you want, if this is the type of business you want to run. I have just seen so many people recently saying like, now that I’m here, I didn’t realize this is what it was going to take.

Because it’s not only money that you’re paying for all those contractors, for all those employees, but you also are paying with your time. You are in charge of the entire business. You’re managing the people, you are meeting with the contractors, or you’re paying someone to meet with the contractors in your place if you’re not doing it, right? And I just don’t think that these things are pointed out often when you see like, oh, I’ll help you grow your business.

You could actually be running a business that brings in a few hundred thousand dollars a year and paying yourself more than some people who are running million dollar businesses and paying a lot to contractors, to employees, to all their business expenses, and then paying themselves, right? And hopefully building a reserve and all of that.

Again, I want to be clear, I’m not suggesting that you don’t do that, but you have to be really tapped into the reasons that you want to do it. So let’s just look at those, right? So when you think about building a coaching business, as I just said, one reason is to make money. Another reason is to help other people and to have an impact on whoever it is that you’re helping.

And a third, which I didn’t mention before, but I feel like is really important when you’re making these decisions is your personal enjoyment. This is something that I noticed recently when I went to Italy, which I just feel like this might come up on every single podcast I record from now on because I loved it so much.

But when I was there, I enjoyed so much of what was happening and I felt like people that were there were enjoying, like people that lived there were enjoying life. Things moved slower, like so much was pointed out to me where it’s like, I’m enjoying this so much here. And then when I came home, it was such a contrast to my life.

Not that I don’t enjoy my life. I do. I love it so much. I’ll do a whole podcast, separate podcast about this. I promise it’s coming. I had to unpack it and sit with it a little bit because it really felt so impactful.

But if you are running a business, if you are growing a business, you have to consider this part as well. What is it that creates enjoyment for you? Is it the day-to-day of running the business and all the things that you’re doing? Do you get enjoyment just from making money? If so, great. Scale away, make all the money, do whatever you want, right?

But for most of us, if you really check in most of the decisions, and this is true for your clients too, most of the decisions we are making as humans is how do we feel more joy or more enjoyment from moment to moment? Those are the reasons that most of us are here, right?

You probably started a business because you wanted to leave a corporate job or because you wanted to be in charge of your time to make your own decisions, to just whatever it is, all of those things, to help the people. All of those things create more joy and enjoyment for you as a human. And so you can’t leave that piece out when you’re thinking about your business.

So here’s my kind of homework for you or what I want to leave you with when it comes to this. I want you to just consider this and consider these things. Ask yourself these questions and be really, really clear about what your answers are moving forward, because that will help you make better decisions around investing, around seeing an ad on Facebook or Instagram or wherever you’re seeing ads and decide like, is this for me or am I getting caught up in like the hype of it? Or making decisions around how you work with clients, what the format of your coaching is, and all of that.

Hopefully, and I want to be clear, I’m just making an assumption that everyone is here because they want to be a great coach and they want to have an impact on the world in some way. If you’ve made it this far, if this is your very first podcast episode of mine, maybe this isn’t true. But if you are like a longtime listener and you’ve heard a lot of what I have to say, you wouldn’t still be here if that wasn’t the case.

So we’re just going to assume that part’s true, right? That you want to make an impact, that you love helping people, that you love coaching, you believe in coaching.

So beyond that, I want you to consider this for your homework. What do you want your business to look like? What is it that drives you? Is it money? Is it impact? Is it joy? Is it something else? Is it legacy? Is it something completely different that I haven’t even mentioned, right? Like what is it that drives you? What kind of business do you want to run?

So when you consider what it is that drives you, then you can consider what kind of business you want to run. And is the business that you’re running now, does it match with the drive, right? So for example, if your drive is impact and joy, you just want to be clear that if you decide that you want to scale your business, does that still do those things, right? Like, does it still fill those buckets?

I want to be also very clear. I’m not saying it can’t. Just notice, I’ve just noticed as I’ve talked to so many coaches, so many of you that it’s like, oh, this vision that I thought I had, now I got here, I like did the thing and it turns out it doesn’t, it’s like not doing what I want it to do for me personally. It’s not filling the buckets or it’s not actually having as big of an impact as I thought it would, right?

I think that when you make sure that all these things are a match, that you know what you want, that you know what kind of business you want to run, that you know what’s driving you and what your values are, which I hadn’t talked about yet, but I have some previous podcast episodes that can be really useful for that to just consider what are your values and is what you’re creating, like is it a match for your values?

This felt just like a really important message to put out here today because over, again, over the last couple weeks, I’ve been talking to so many of you who are like, I’ve fallen out of love with my business or I did the things, I made the money and now I’m like stuck in this business that I don’t know how to unwind or it’s like not what I want now and I don’t know how to undo it.

There’s so many things. I’ve just been hearing so many things that I’m like, wait, what? How did we get here? And of course, I can help you, but also if you can prevent it, so if you’re on the journey of building it now, to just stop and question. Like take these things into account. Notice when you are being sold something that, let’s be very clear, isn’t a bad thing, but is something that you don’t necessarily want, that’s just pushing on your desires without taking into account everything that it’s going to take for you to have those things.

That’s all. That is all I have for you now. And again, if you’re a client, I want to be very clear, I love you. I’m so glad you’re here. I cannot wait to continue to be a better and better coach for you and to help you build businesses and create the coaching containers that you love, love, love, love to be in whatever those might look like.

All right, so glad you’re here and I will talk to 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.