Ep #1: Know Your Coaching Method

Hey, I’m Lindsay Dotzlaf and you’re listening to Mastering Coaching Skills, episode number one.

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 coaches. Here we are, episode one of the Mastering Coaching Skills podcast and I am beyond grateful to be here with you. This has been quite a long time in the making and I just feel so excited to get it out into the world.

So first thing, just in case you have found me for the first time, my name is Lindsay Dotzlaf. I am a certified life coach and help coaches be freaking amazing at what they do. I have worked with coaches all over the board, all types of coaches, with and without certifications, with and without niches, really all of the coaches. I love them.

And this is going to sound a little cheesy, I’m just going to get a teensy bit sappy here at the beginning, and then we’re going to move on. But I just have this belief that the world would be a better place if everyone had a coach. Just think about that for a second.

I also happen to believe that coaching is the best job that there is. What that means for you is that we need lots of incredible coaches. And that if you, as a coach, don’t feel incredible about what you do, you are definitely missing out.

So in this first episode, I’m going to give you a few tangible things you can take away with you and apply right away so you can be a better coach for your clients starting today.

One thing that you will learn about me in this and upcoming episodes is that everything I do I love to approach it from two different angles. So the first one is always of course, as a mindset coach, I’m always thinking about how are you thinking about this and how is it affecting your results? So that is one thing that I always look at is how do your thoughts play a huge role in the way you show up as a coach.

And then the other side is and also, what could be very useful to learn and apply right now? So you will hear me talk a lot about those two different things and how when you bring them together into your coaching, they can really help you create your own personal coaching style and help you show up more powerfully for your clients.

So today we’re going to cover just step one of being the best coach for your clients. It’s super simple and also something that so many coaches get hung up on. Step one is know your method and coach yourself using it.

Now, when I say know your method, what I mean is understand what you actually do with your clients and how it helps them. You would be probably very shocked if I told you how many clients I have, some of them making quite a bit of money, that don’t really understand how to explain the coaching methods they use, how to make them their own, or even how to explain them to their clients or potential clients.

When I talk about your method, I’m not necessarily talking about your niche, although sometimes these can go hand in hand. Your method may be tied to your niche, but it can also be a lot more broad. So what I’m interested in is can you actually explain what you do to someone that isn’t a coach? Someone that doesn’t understand the coaching industry or coaching lingo.

So if your mom or your sister asks you, what is a coach? What do you do? How do you actually help your clients? Can you explain this to them using non-coach words? I’m going to give you some examples.

So this might sound something like I show my clients how the thoughts that they have now, the thoughts that they have every day, how do those thoughts create their results, and how can we work on finding some different thoughts to create new results.

Or I help me clients learn to really feel and experience their emotions, and I show them how processing through those emotions instead of avoiding them, emotions like anxiety or overwhelm, I make them much less scary for my clients.

Or this one’s a little more niche specific. I use a specific nutrition plan and help my clients understand the way they think about eating and weight loss so they can learn to think differently about it and create a sustainable, healthy lifestyle that works for them.

So those are just three examples. Your answers to this may be all over the board, but I want you to just spend some time thinking about this for yourself. Are you ready? This is the first episode, I’m just going to give you homework.

Homework number one, after this podcast episode, I just want you to spend time thinking about how specifically do you help your clients. What methods to you use and how would you describe those to someone who wasn’t a coach?

So for example, don’t say I help my clients live their best life. What does that mean? What does that mean? How do you do that? So get really specific and don’t let this freak your brain out. It doesn’t have to be hard. Just think about it in the most simple terms. How would you say exactly how you help your clients?

Maybe when this podcast is over, take a minute to write them out or just if you’re like me and you love to listen to podcasts in the shower or while you’re driving, just spend some time in your own brain thinking, how do I help my clients? Come up with a simple way to say it.

And then the real challenge is describe it in 25 other ways, or as many as you can come up with. This exercise is so important and it’s something you can revisit over and over and over as your coaching business evolves. I still do this on a regular basis.

One thing I notice with many of the clients I work with is they tend to think that in order for their clients to get killer, amazing results, they, as their coach, need more tools, more methods, or more learning. And my philosophy is this is just not true.

It’s better to be really great at what you already do than having 100 other skills. So when you master what you already do, then you can move on to learning something new if you choose to, because it’s fun, because it will be helpful for your clients. But don’t skip the part where you really learn what it is that you already do and how to be great at it.

So I know I said that this is step one, but it’s kind of a two-piece step. So I said know your methods and coach yourself using those methods. Do your own self-coaching. Be your own best client. I promise you, this will pay off.

And every coach can do this. It doesn’t matter what your methods are or what your niche is. And I can already hear some of you arguing with me for sure, but hear me out. Even if your niche is something very specific that you aren’t going through yourself right now, so for example, if you help your clients find a job and you are obviously a coach, probably not looking for a job, or if you help your clients let’s say through divorce, if you’re a divorce coach, you aren’t currently going through a divorce yourself, you can still adapt whatever methods you have, whatever methods you use with your clients to any of the goals that you are currently working on.

You might not always use the exact same strategies that you have for your clients, but you can use all the other pieces of your coaching. The methods, the mindset, emotional awareness, any other pieces of coaching that you use, you can apply this to yourself and your own goals.

The reason this is so important and possibly one of the most important ways to be an amazing coach is that the more you use your methods, the more you will believe they are the answer for your clients. So when you create your own results and blow your own mind, everything will change about the way you talk about what you do, how you sell and market it, and most importantly in my opinion, how your clients experience your coaching.

We will dive so much more into in the upcoming episodes, but for now, I just want to leave you with this. No matter what kind of coach you are or how long you’ve been doing it, this work that I talked about today, it will be the foundation of your coaching and your business at every single level.

So don’t skip it and don’t put it off. Don’t do it later. Do it today. Start today and I promise you, you will notice results quickly in the way that you coach your clients, in the way you feel about your business, and the way you feel about yourself as a coach.

Then come back next week to learn the next step to becoming a coaching master. I want you to be able to coach every client every time on whatever they bring you and feel great doing it.

If you enjoyed today’s show and don’t want to miss an episode, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you usually listen. If you haven’t already, I would really appreciate it if you would leave a rating and review to let me know what you think and to help others find Mastering Coaching Skills.

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Please visit lindsaydotzlafcoaching.com/podcastlaunch for step-by-step instructions on how to subscribe, rate, and review Mastering Coaching Skills today. See you next time.

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.