Ep #69: Unhelpful Coaching Thoughts – Part 4: I Need Assets to Be a Good Coach

Hi, this is Lindsay Dotzlaf and you are listening to Mastering Coaching Skills, episode 69.

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.

Oh, hey coach, it’s Lindsay and I want to let you in on a little secret before we get started in today’s episode. And really, it’s not such a little secret because it feels really big and exciting, and it’s not really a secret because I’ve hinted at it a couple times already on the podcast, and today I’m just going to give you the details.

I know some of you are going to be very excited based on the number of emails, and questions, and messages I have been getting just begging for the information and I just haven’t given it to you. I’m sorry. But now I’m ready, I have a plan, and I cannot wait to tell you.

So pull over, turn off the car, stop cooking dinner, get out of the shower, whatever you need to do. Grab a pen and write down, just scribble a little note, Lindsay’s new program, The Coach Lab launching March 9th. And then make a little asterisk beside that and then write March 9th to March 11th promotion for founding members.

What that means is I created a program for you and I can’t wait for you to be there. And because of that I also created a special bonus and a gift for you when you sign up in the first couple days the program is open. So, if you want more information, if you can’t wait to join, if you’re curious, whatever it is, come join the wait list. This is very important, that way you will not miss that promotional period.

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Hey coach, how are you today? I am so excited for this episode. We are going to call it – I am going to call it in this moment an unhelpful thought number four. So I’ve done three of them already, this is the fourth one.

The thought is in order to be a good coach, I must have all of the assets. Now, I know that some of you immediately are like, “Oh no, she’s going to call me out.” And I am, but only with a lot of love, all right?

One thing I notice that a lot of coaches do, that a lot of my clients do, that I’m sure probably a lot of you do, is you tend to think that a serious coach, a good coach has a lot of assets that they’ve created. Maybe worksheets, workbooks, spreadsheets, content, blogs, videos. The things that you give to your clients or you’re teaching your clients.

And to pile on top of that a lot of times you tend to think this has to be unique to me, my own branding, my clients have to know that this came from my brain, nowhere else. And you spend a lot of time on your assets. Now, for some of you, I know that you love to create stuff like this. And I’m not saying don’t do it, I’m just going to give you some reasons why it doesn’t actually make your coaching better.

Ironically, I know a lot of coaches, newer coaches especially who have tons of assets. They’ve created tons of worksheets, workbooks, all the things, and they don’t have many clients. I also know some of the best coaches, some of the best coaches who’ve been in my mastermind, some of best coaches in the industry who have very few assets.

And here’s why, because the coaching is the most important thing. And the more time you’re spending on creating assets, the more time you could be taking away from the coaching. So I’m going to tell you a story, to start with it has really nothing to do with coaching, but I’m going to tell you the story of two restaurants where I used to work.

In my 20s I worked in several different restaurants and loved waiting tables and bartending. And I’m going to tell you a story about two different ones. There’s a reason, obviously, that I’m telling the story, I’m going to relate it back to this very thing to what we’re talking about.

So when I was about 20, when I was in college I worked at a restaurant called Janko’s Little Zagrebs. And if you’re familiar with it, it is a tiny Steakhouse in Bloomington, Indiana, which is where I went to college at Indiana University, or at least part of college, Indiana University. And anyone who went to IU has probably heard of this restaurant.

It has a bit of a cult following and it is very known as a restaurant that’s been around for a while and is kind of part of IU tradition. And in case you’re curious, the name just comes from the owner, his name was Janko, he’s not around anymore. And he was from Croatia, the capital of Croatia is Zagreb. And part of the restaurant, I don’t know all of the history, but a couple of the recipes were, I think, kind of his family recipes.

But mostly, it was just a steak house. And it was known for steak and other grilled meat, but mostly steak. And people would come there and what they would expect is to have the best steak they’ve ever had, period. Like literally that was the whole experience. It was not a fancy restaurant, there were red and white checkered tablecloths. And I could go on and on about how interesting this restaurant was.

But hands down, it is still the best steak I have ever had ever in my life. And even my husband would agree, and he’s a bit of a like steak connoisseur. So it was kind of a hole in the wall, but the most expensive steaks in town. And you knew if you were coming there, you were coming for the steak and maybe the wine list. There was also a great wine list.

And there was just no doubt that your steak was going to be amazing. The service would maybe be okay. It would be packed. You might have to wait two hours, they sometimes lost your reservation. Now, listen, some things have changed since I worked there, so it is still one of my favorite places. You should definitely go eat there.

It was just an interesting place and when people came there, they just expected to have the best possible steak. There were a lot of famous people that came there. If famous people were in town, they would come there. I waited on all of the football coaches, all the basketball coaches, just all of the people who you would know if you lived in Bloomington, Indiana were anywhere near there, they would come eat there.

And it wasn’t like a place to be seen, it was kind of the opposite, they usually wanted to sit in the back. John Mellencamp frequented there a lot, he loved to just sit in the back, you know, where no one could really see him back in the corner. It had kind of a dark, shadowy vibe in the back of the restaurant. And it was just not a fancy place, it was a hole in the wall with the best steaks. And people came there expecting that and they left so happy, just thrilled with their meal, thrilled with their steak, period.

Even the sides, now I think this has changed since I’ve been there. But even the sides, like you ordered a steak, you got a big potato and a salad. That was it, no options. And actually when I worked there it was at the height of kind of the Adkins craze. So people would say like, “Oh, I can’t really eat the potato, what else could I have?” And the answer was like, “Oh, nothing. We can leave it off, that’s no problem.

If it was someone I really liked, if it was like a regular, maybe I’d hook them up with like a big salad, like two salads. And the salads were not fancy, okay? This place was just something. It is like an experience to be had.

A little later, I worked at a restaurant closer to Indianapolis when I was out of college and I think I had just gotten married maybe and I was still waiting tables on the weekends. I loved waiting tables, like loved it so much. I loved bartending, I loved taking care of all of the people. And this restaurant was the opposite.

It was so fancy, I’m not going to say the name because it’s not there anymore. But If you know of it, I don’t want you to think I’m talking badly about it, even though I am a little bit. I loved working there as a server, I had so much fun. But the menu was super extensive, it had so many options. Some of them were really well done, but the quality was kind of hit or miss.

Sometimes it would be great. Sometimes it would be bad. People would have experiences and walk out just kind of like, “Well, the vibe here is really cool, but, I don’t know, the food was okay.” And it just couldn’t have been more opposite. I would say the only thing they had in common was this place also had a great wine list. I do love wine. So, you know, maybe that was just a trend. I loved picking restaurants that had amazing wine lists. I still do that now when I go out to eat.

But this place, you just went there for different reasons, right? You went there for the vibe, it was kind of a place to be seen. There was a club, a dance club on the top floor. It was a three story restaurant. On the top floor there was a dance club and people would come there.

What’s interesting is even there I waited on a lot of sports people. They would rent out the entire place, they would have a party upstairs. Like a famous football team would just come there, all of the players would come and then they’d have a party in the club upstairs after. It was just very interesting.

But this place was not known for the incredible food, right? It was good food, and sometimes people would love it and they would nail it, but not always. They didn’t deliver like the restaurant where I worked in Bloomington, Indiana.

And what I want you to think about, like what does this has have to do with your coaching? I want you to think about the first example, right? The first restaurant, the steakhouse where I worked. That’s an example of a coach who says my coaching is the most important thing. The most important period.

Everything else is extra, I’ll get to it when I can. Maybe I’ll create a workbook, maybe I’ll create worksheets someday. But right now, my coaching is the most important part of what I do.

And then the second restaurant is a little more like the coach who puts lots of time and energy into making things pretty, and creating all the things, and making sure that there’s a worksheet for every tool. And you know, something that just like goes along with, it’s more of like what does it look like to my clients versus what are the results that my clients get?

Now, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have these things, right? As I continue to grow my business, I do have a lot more of these. I create workbooks, I create worksheets, I create assets that I didn’t used to have. There’s nothing wrong with having them, it just is like which one comes first?

Interestingly, thinking back to the very first restaurant that I was talking about, they have actually made a lot of changes, I think in the years since the owner is no longer around, they’ve made lots of changes. As far as I know, I haven’t been there in a while, but as far as I know they’ve still stuck to the steak is the most important. But they’ve added on some things, right?

They’ve added on options, they have thought a little more about their menu and about the presentation of things, while still staying true to the steak being the most important. And I want you to think about this for your coaching, which one are you putting first, the importance of your amazing coaching? Or the importance of do I have a worksheet for that? Do I have a workbook for that? Do I have all of the assets to give my clients?

And if you’re the second one, it’s okay. Just take a second and question, where is that coming from? What thoughts are creating that? What thoughts are you taking those actions from?

Because here’s what I will promise you, if you’ve been a coach for a while you will probably 100% understand what I’m about to say. As a coach, your brain will always be ahead of your assets. So even when you think, “Oh, I need all the worksheets, and the workbooks, and the all the things to give my clients, as soon as you finish creating them, especially something bigger like a workbook, your brain will always be ahead of what you’ve created.

So even if you think I put together this whole workbook, it’s my perfect process. It has everything I teach my clients from A to Z. I promise you, six months from when you create that workbook you’re going to want to change it. And you can get in a cycle of constantly, constantly wanting to make changes to all of your assets.

The same is true for branding and colors, anything that is visual that has to do with your business is also true, for most coaches that I know anyway. So in the beginning you just want to question it, right? How much time are you spending thinking, I need all of these things before I can get started?

Now, if you love creating worksheets, and you love doing your brand and changing your brand colors, and you have an eye for that and you just really love it and you want to do that in your business, by all means go for it. But you really just want to question what is that taking away from? When are you spending time doing that, when you could be doing other things?

You could be marketing. You could be selling. You could be watching a video in my new program, The Coach Lab, and working on your coaching skills, right? You could be evaluating a coaching call, coaching session. You could be doing so many other things besides creating a worksheet.

So I’m going to give you my breakdown of when it’s not time to create assets. And when maybe it is a good time to start creating them. And, again, I know some of you have learned something so different than this, and I just want you to know that these are just my thoughts that I’m offering you.

They have worked really well for me and all of my clients. And it doesn’t mean you have to throw out all your workbooks, throw out all your worksheets. If they’re already created, that’s perfect. Just check in before you create anything new. Okay?

So, here is when it is not the time to create new assets. Number one, when you’re a new coach. Because, the main reason here, when you’re a new coach, you don’t have a practiced process that you’ve used over and over and over. You don’t even know what assets your clients probably need yet, right? So just wait until you know, because you’re going to waste so much time creating these things.

Number two, when you are creating an asset that is just for one, or two, or a couple clients, right? Because you’re thinking, “Oh, I don’t have a thing to give this person to work on. I want to give her homework, I want to give my client homework. And that homework means I need to give them something.”

That’s not true. And not only is it not true, but it’s going to keep you in this space of constantly hustling to try to create more things every time you think a client needs something extra from you besides the coaching.

Number three, when you have a perfectly good asset that someone else has shared with you, of course that you’re allowed to share, let’s be clear on that, that your client could use just the way it is. I’ll give you a couple examples of when I see my clients doing this a lot.

So some of you, for example, have been certified through a certain coach school or certification program. And within that program, they give you assets. They might give you worksheets or tools, you can print them out, you can use them for yourself. And most of the time you are also allowed to use them with your clients, it’s literally what they’re for. And I see so many coaches want to take those and make them their own.

What? Why are you doing that? What a waste of time. Now, that’s very different, and we’ll get to this in a minute, but that’s very different than you’ve been coaching for a really long time, you started with this one particular asset and now you teach it in a very different way and you’ve adapted it for your clients and you’ve totally changed it. Okay, maybe that old worksheet isn’t going to work anymore. But again, we’ll get to that.

Another example of this is that maybe you read a book and you love a concept that’s taught in the book. And instead of just telling your clients, “Hey, you should read this book.” You think, “Oh, I have to make this my own. I have to create the worksheets. How do I teach this without telling my clients that it’s this book?” You can literally just say you should read this book.

When I was a newer coach, when I was a general life coach, one thing that I kind of said that I did is that I helped my clients say yes to themselves. Because I was working with a lot of women who were entrepreneurs, a lot of them were also newer moms. They were relatively in the stage of their life that I was in at the time. And I was helping them just learn how to make decisions and own them for what they wanted, right? For what they wanted to do, to be a little more unapologetic about it and all of that.

And one of my good friends gave me this book and said, “You have to read this. It reminds me of what you do and it’s just amazing. It is The Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes.” And listen, if there’s anyone out there that knows Shonda and you’re just like, “You need to be on this girl’s podcast,” send her my way. Literally, I’m obsessed.

This book is everything. If you haven’t read it, do it now. I highly suggest it on Audible because she reads it herself, one. And two, I think I’ve talked about this book actually on this podcast already, but there is a graduation speech that she does for, I think, the college that she went to, which I can’t remember what it is now. But she actually reads, like there’s a recording of the speech that she gives.

And I promise you, I can’t listen to it without crying every single time. She’s just amazing. Chills, just thinking about it. Can you hear in my voice? But anyway, I digress. The point of that was I read the book, and then I told all of my clients to read the book.

I was never afraid they were going to go hire Shonda, I don’t think she’s available for the coaching hiring. But I was never afraid of that. Like, no, read the book, it’s so good. And then when and if you want to apply any of these concepts to your life, we can coach on that. Such a waste of time doing it the other way.

I’m just going to get a little lecture-y about this. lecture-y, not luxury, those are two different things. I know some of you don’t believe this, but your clients do not care if every single thing that you talk about in your coaching or that you give to them is your brand new intellectual property.

Now, I want to be sure to say this, if you are using a concept from someone’s book, a worksheet that you got from somewhere else, just give credit to whoever it is, right? And don’t use things you’re not supposed to do, obviously. I feel like I shouldn’t have to say this, but you guys would be shocked at some of the comments I get when people misconstrue something that I’m saying.

One third example of this is at one point I had a client who wanted help with some time management things. And I had just found this particular way of scheduling that was working really well for me at the time. And I just sent her to the website of that concept that I was using, right?

I didn’t try to make it my own. I think she even like bought the scheduling thing, right? So that’s fine, too. Because it is not our job as coaches to have a strategy for every single thing and to develop brand new intellectual property with every single thing we do. It just doesn’t even make sense.

Another time when you don’t want to create assets and you have to really be on to yourself is when you’re doing it to get out of teaching or coaching on a call. When you’re thinking, “It would be so much easier if they just do this work on their own.” Sometimes when you just send your client off with a worksheet, you’re missing an amazing opportunity to really just ask them the questions.

Think about that. You could literally on a session, and especially as a one-on-one coach, whatever you’re thinking of creating, ask those questions with your client. It’s going to be so much more powerful than giving them the worksheet and saying like, “Okay, come back later.” I promise you, your clients will rather talk through all of this with you, then just do it on their own. Just try it, see what happens.

And the fifth time to know that it’s not time to create more assets is when you’re thinking, “My clients have to be doing all of the homework, all of the tangible work to create results.” This is not true. The homework that you give your clients, if you give them homework, could be something like notice all of the times this week you think this thought, X, Y, Z. Record how you’re feeling every morning when you wake up. These are just silly examples but they are simple examples of homework that you can give.

And if you are a person that loves all the homework and loves to do the worksheets and do all the things, I would also question that. But even if you are it doesn’t mean that that is going to produce the best results for your clients. Your clients don’t need to be sitting down with pen and paper to get their work done. Sometimes they just need to be examining their own mind, tapping into their own body. How am I feeling today?

Just let that sink in a little bit. I know for some of you this is like a, what is happening right now? I just love the worksheets. And that’s okay, I’m not saying you can’t have worksheets. You just want to check in with all the reasons that you’re doing them.

Okay, and now I’m going to dive into how you know when it is time to create assets. Even though when you create them, your brain is still going to be ahead of your assets, I promise you. And although you can probably at this point use them longer, just know once you create them, you are probably going to still want to recreate them and there’s going to be a time when that’s appropriate and a time to resist those urges. Okay?

So how do you know when it’s time to create your own specific assets? The first one or the first couple are probably very obvious. When your client to coach ratio is very high. So maybe you’re selling a program or a course and everyone needs to be on the same page because the volume of clients is very high and they don’t get a lot of high touch with you.

That’s very different than one-on-one coaching, or even group coaching. A program or a course, the kind of structure of that usually is going to be here is a library of assets of some sort. And maybe with a program, you get weekly coaching or something along those lines. But the coaching is going to be a little more minimal and you want to be sure you’re coaching everyone on your content, right?

A course, the same thing, a course is going to be mostly 100% your own content. If you’re creating a course, that is very different than coaching clients, right? A course, usually at least a course is very content driven, very asset driven. Those two are probably pretty obvious.

Now I’m going to get into a little more nitty gritty on maybe if you’re a one-on-one coach, or if you’re a group or mastermind coach and you’re wondering, should I be creating my own assets, here’s how you know when to do that.

One, and this would be specifically for one-on-one coaches, you are teaching all of your clients the same thing. So you have a specific niche, or you could have a not specific niche, but you use some of the same things over and over. And you spend time teaching on each call, and you have lots of clients, and you’ve practiced it a lot. And you are just teaching the same thing over and over and over, and it’s kind of costing you time not to create assets, right?

Like every single client, you’re teaching them a specific thing, at some point you could decide, okay, I teach this very specific strategy for my very specific niche. And how can I create an asset for them, a worksheet, maybe a workbook, a video, whatever is your preferred method, the easiest way for you. How can I deliver this to all of my clients so we don’t have to spend time on the calls teaching, right?

Maybe it’s like the basics of what you teach. I have a five step program, everyone needs to know this and I’m going to record videos or make some simple worksheets, or a workbook to teach all of my clients the exact same thing, and they can do this at some point while I’m coaching them. Maybe it could be this as part of the intro, like before you get started. It could also be at some point that makes sense during their coaching.

But you know it’s time to do this when you’re coaching all of your clients on the same thing. You’re teaching all of your clients the same tool, the same strategy, and it’s literally costing you time not to record the video, to record the audio, write the workbook, whatever it is.

Also, when you think about when it’s time to create your own assets, it’s when you can’t find what you want. So maybe you have learned different strategies, you’ve learned different tools, and over time and over coaching lots and lots and lots of clients you’ve created your own strategy, your own tool. You have made it very much your own. It hasn’t been forced, it’s just happened over time because you’ve worked with so many of the same clients.

And you can’t find a resource that’s in the world that you’re aware of to give to your clients. And it doesn’t make sense to keep teaching them over and over, just like I said in the last point, right? Like it’s costing you time not to create the assets, and you can’t find what you want. Now it’s time to create your own.

And then the last thing I would say is when the assets literally write themselves. Which means you aren’t spending tons of time and energy creating the assets, and you’ve checked off all the things that I said before this. But it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t feel hard, or it doesn’t feel like your brain is doing a lot of work.

Because sometimes it will because you’re creating something, you’re getting it out of your brain and onto paper, which is a very different exercise than just walking your clients through some steps on a call or in a session. So it might feel difficult, but the content literally writes itself, right?

You’re not spending hours, and weeks, and days and whatever coming up with how do I say this? What is it that they need to know? Because you already know, right? If you’re at this point, you know what your clients need to know. You know the tools they need, you know the strategies, and that is how you know that it’s time to create your own assets.

And again, just be aware that you’re probably going to want to redo them at some point, even when you do create your own. And just know you’re going to have to probably resist that urge every once in a while. For example, I have a workbook that I’ve been sending to my mastermind students. At this point I wrote it, I don’t know, maybe my third or fourth mastermind. And I think now I’m on my maybe ninth mastermind.

And we go over what’s in the workbook, but we don’t go over it together question by question, page by page because I’ve adapted the way I teach it so much. I have improved, improved each time and now I’m going to use the workbook for so many things. I mean, I’m so glad that I have it, but it is never, I’m never thinking of it as this is the most important asset of my business, because it’s just not. It is an iteration, the first iteration of many assets to come.

And I just want to give you permission as a coach to, again, allow the coaching to be the most important thing. That is all, thank you for listening and I will talk to you next week. Bye.

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.