Ep #86: Expansion Week: My Experience

Hi, this is Lindsay Dotzlaf and you are listening to Mastering Coaching Skills episode 86.

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 am so glad you’re here today, I want to talk about something super fun, which is the expansion week that I hosted for a few of my clients in Palm Springs. Hopefully you’ve already listened to part one of this, which was two weeks ago where I talked to some of my clients who were there and we just dove into all of the takeaways that we had from the week, takeaways that they had from the week and how it all went down.

So today I want to talk a little bit quickly, briefly about my experience, why I planned it, and how you can plan something like this for yourself. So the whole thing started, the original idea was that I wanted to ask a few of my clients to come with me somewhere and we were going to do some photos and some videos and capture just some of their stories. How they got into coaching, what they love about coaching, their experience of working with me, and of course some marketing photos.

What it turned into was way more than that, way more than the couple days that I had envisioned. I decided to make it an entire week and then just use two of the days as those really like this is what we’re doing these days, we’re having photo shoots, we’re doing videos, there was a caterer that came in.

And I do want to give a shout out really quickly to a few people who we could not have done this without. First of all, our amazing photographer, Teresa Earnest. Second, our videographer Matt Kjar, and hopefully I’m saying that right, it’s K-J-A-R.

He’s told me how to say it four times and for some reason it just isn’t imprinted in my brain yet. Matt, love you, sorry if I got your name wrong. And his wife Lindsey who is also incredible was with him too. And a makeup artist who I met for the first time in Palm Springs, her name is Chanel Temple. You can find all three of those people on Instagram just by searching their names.

So, I wanted to kind of put that in there because it takes a lot of work to make something like this happen and when you see the photos it looks like oh, this is just magic. Just everyone looks so perfect and beautiful and pulled together and all of that. And if you’ve been here for a while you know that I love to keep things very real and I just want you to know there was an entire team of people there helping us, making us look beautiful, doing the videos, asking us questions, being silly to get us to make great faces for photos, all of that. So I just wanted to throw that in there.

But that was the original vision, was to have a couple days of doing these things. Then I decided why don’t I just get the house for a whole week and I can invite everyone to come, they can come if they want. I’m not going to give them a lot of direction, they just get to come and be who they want to be for that week, right, whatever they need.

If their growth is to take the week off and work on relaxing and being off and out of their business, they can do that. If they want to come there and work from Palm Springs for the week and be out at the pool in between calls and all of that, they can do that. So I really just left it up to them. I planned a few dinners but besides that, the rest of it was just kind of up to them, what they wanted to do, show up however they wanted to show up.

So that’s what we did and it was pretty magical, as I’m sure you heard in the episode where we all kind of talked about how it went. For me, the reason I wanted to do that, that’s what this podcast is going to be about. More about my thoughts, what I put into it, what I wanted to get out of it.

And one of the main things I wanted to get out of it is just really hitting pause and expanding into this version of myself who I already am, who I have already become. But I wanted to kind of hit pause and appreciate it and celebrate it. And for me what that looks like is being surrounded by my friends, my clients, people that have been on this journey with me for a while.

And if you’re wondering how did I pick the six people that I asked, six of my clients, how did I pick them, it is not a complicated answer, it is very simple. I just thought of clients who have been working with me for a while, who have worked with me in all different aspects of my business. So maybe one on one coaching, and group, and a lot of them actually are coaches that teach now in the Coach Lab, which is really fun.

So they’ve all kind of been with me for a while, they just know me very well, I was very comfortable just showing up and being 100% me around them. And I knew that they would all fit together very well, which they did and it was beautiful.

So, there wasn’t a lot of thought I put into that, right? I just picked the people, I asked them. They all ended up wanting to come for the whole week, which was so fun. And I just spent the week really being present in the moment.

I did work a little bit while I was there, I actually got a lot of amazing work done. I wrote some emails, I planned part of a launch, I journaled a little bit. which is something that I don’t do often. But I did because in that moment I really wanted to capture some of the things that I was thinking, some of the things that I was feeling.

And it was so fun to just watch them all interact, even if I wasn’t in the moment with them, right? Maybe I was in my bedroom but from my room I could see the pool so I could see them sitting out there just laughing, having the best time. Or crying and talking and coaching each other and working through some things. It all took place that week. You name it, it happened.

There were big shifts, there was so much laughing, so much, just so amazing for my soul, for everyone’s soul I think. Who doesn’t love to laugh? And that was really my main intention, besides the two days of capturing the videos and the testimonials and the photos. One of my main intentions was to just be. To just be in the moment and really practice observing this thing that I had created. So that’s what I did.

And I didn’t go into it with a super solid plan, I just went into it with like that was my only intention, what I just described. And so that’s what I did. And then the last couple days were very different, they were a lot more structured, we had people showing up to start makeup at 8am.

We started photos, we did photos all throughout the day, we did videos all throughout the day. But we still stayed in the same energy, we laughed a ton. I mean, I just can’t tell you how much learning, how much growth even happened for me that week that I just didn’t even expect.

So I’m going to give you a couple of my biggest takeaways, and then I’ll tell you how you can create this experience for yourself. So one of my biggest takeaways is my clients love me for me. Now, this is something that I teach everywhere. I teach it in the Coach Lab, I teach it in my mastermind, I talk about it on this podcast.

And it’s still something that I am consciously working on all the time. And this week was, this week in Palm Springs was such an incredible time for me to be able to hit pause and really experience that and really solidify it into my body, into my brain.

The second thing was, and these are not my words, I believe they are Jennifer Brown’s who was one of the coaches who was Jennifer Dent-Brown. She is one of the coaches who was there with me that week. Exposure equals expansion. Of course I’ve always known this concept, but the words the way she said it, hopefully they’re her words, hopefully someone will correct me if not. I need like a fact check at the end of these episodes.

Nothing is more true to me. And what this means to me is that just putting yourself in a situation, just being around people who are doing things that you want to do, that inspire you, that promote your growth, even if you don’t go into it intentionally with this is exactly what I want to learn, this is exactly what I want to get out of this experience, just from being in the moment with the people, you will have that expansion.

I’ll give you a couple quick examples. One thing that I noticed that happened for me that week is we had a photo shoot at the end of the week and so there was a lot of clothes trying on and talking about what we’re going to wear and where we want to do photos and all of that. And one thing I noticed is that because the clients that were there with me were so comfortable all week in their bodies, and maybe not in their heads, I don’t know.

But just the outward expression of just being comfortable in their bodies, we were in our swimsuits most of the week. There were lots of opportunities around beautiful people to be self-conscious and I wasn’t not once. And I saw that happen kind of for everyone.

And this is such a good example of just being in a room full of people who are comfortable with themselves, who are comfortable embracing this is exactly who I am, what you see is what you get, it rubs off. And you are then able to access it a little easier than you would if you were in the room of maybe opposite, right?

So that’s just one small example, but if you put that into context of other things, right? If you put that into context of like, whoa, all of these people know how amazing their coaching is, they know the difference they’re making in the world. And you put yourself in the room with those people, you’re going to start to believe that about yourself too.

So whatever it is that you are working on, that you want to work on, just consider that, putting yourself in a room full of people. It’s one of my favorite things about my mastermind is it’s just a roomful of people who are becoming more and more and more confident in who they are and what they do and it just is so contagious.

And then my third takeaway, even though I’m sure I could come up with probably 20, but these feel like my biggest three is that it’s okay to ask for what I want or what I need in the moment. This is something that I have had to practice for a very long time and I went into this week telling myself that I was going to do this.

So I’ll give you a couple examples, at one point I was recording some videos with Matt and I felt very stuck. It wasn’t going well, my brain felt very jumbled. And I said, “You know what, I think I’m done for today. It’s okay, I know we didn’t get a ton and I think I’m done. Let’s come back and start tomorrow.” Now, I also knew we had two full days and it wasn’t a problem. But I really just allowed myself to lean into that and listen to my body. It was saying, I’m done, I’m exhausted, I need a break.

There were also a couple of times when there was just a lot going on, right? It’s just a lot of planning and a lot of logistics and there were a couple of times where I paused and asked for help. I would find someone, one of my clients who was there and said like, hey, can you help me with this thing? Can I give you this assignment?

Can you see if we can have an Uber here at six o’clock to take us to dinner? Can I put you in charge of that? If I give you my credit card can you make sure everybody here gets their lunch order in, right? Like whatever it was I just leaned into, hey, I don’t have to do at all. I have a room of fully capable people who would love to help me and who don’t care to hear me say, hey, this is my truth, I’m exhausted right now I need a minute.

There were a couple of times where I just would say, hey, love you guys and also I’m going to go to my room for an hour or so and just be in the quiet because I just need a little bit of quiet. I just really practiced listening to myself, listening to my body and asking for what I needed.

And when I say asking, I was never really asking a lot of anyone. And maybe the better way to say it is just speaking my truth, right? Hey, I need a little bit of help, can someone help me? I need a little bit of quiet, hope you don’t mind but I’m going to my room.

Whatever it was, just really leaning into that and knowing that it was okay. They might have thoughts about me, they might not, in this case I’m guessing they probably really didn’t. But even if they did, I was able to just let it go and just be who I needed to be the whole time.

Okay, now I want to give you some examples of how you can create an experience like this for yourself, and for maybe a handful of your clients. But I also want to say upfront that if you saw photos, if you followed along, if you follow me on Instagram, which is @LindsayDotzlaf, if you followed along while this was going on, it was pretty extravagant.

I rented an amazing house through Airbnb. I had a caterer come in. I hired all these people. I spent a lot of money and it wasn’t a retreat so I didn’t ask, like nobody paid to come, it was just I just invited people to come have this experience with me. And I knew going in that it was going to cost a lot.

And I don’t want you to think that you have to do that in order to recreate the experience for you. If you have the means and you have that money to spend in your business, of course, do it. It’s amazing. But if you don’t, that’s not a problem. There are so many ways you can create this anywhere from a tiny scale to a much larger scale.

And I want to kind of put a pin in here to remind you that this is not, I’m not talking about a retreat, which is a little bit different. That’s where people might pay you to come have an experience with you. And if you’re doing something like that, I would suggest if people are paying I would suggest having a little more of a plan. A little more of like this is what they’re getting, this is what I’m selling, this is why people would come.

This is not that so I want to be very clear about that. But here are a couple ideas that I came up with how you can create this for yourself but first I want you to spend a little bit of time answering these two questions. One, what do you want to get out of it? What is the point? Why are you doing it? What do you want to get out of it?

I think this is one reason that it was very successful, even though I didn’t really have much of a plan besides the two days at the end. But although I didn’t have logistics and a schedule planned out, I did have a plan for specifically what I wanted to get out of it and how I wanted to help my clients who were coming. Like how I wanted to help them get what they wanted out of it.

So I still had a plan for that. So ask yourself that, what do you want to get out of it? And two, what do you want the others to get out of it? Start there and allow yourself some time to answer these two questions.

All right, I’ll give you some examples of how you can create something like this for yourself. And remember, you want to start with what do you want to get out of it and what do you want the other people to get out of it. So some of these are going to be very specific to your coaching, but some of them might just be things that you can incorporate in your life that will still help you create what you want to create.

So my first example is you can plan a Zoom date, a Zoom party, right? This could be for friends, it could be for colleagues, it could be for some of your clients, it could be celebrating some of your clients wins, all of your clients wins, right? This is a basically free thing that you could do, just plan a time have this big celebration, or just a gathering with friends and colleagues where when you decide ahead of time what you want to get out of it, right?

Maybe it’s like I want to create more connection in my life. How can you create that? Hosting a Zoom party with your friends, or a real in-person party if that’s available for you, right? Sometimes stuff like that feels so big for me because a lot of my friends don’t live immediately by me. So I have to think about how can I create something like this without having to travel for the week or the weekend.

The next thing, and I already touched on this a little bit, but client celebrations. You could do an extra call with your clients, you know, a Zoom call where you have them all come together and it can be a special invitation.

So, you know, they have to opt into it knowing, because especially if you’re a one on one coach your clients might not know each other. So you want to be very clear about this is what’s happening, it’s going to be all my clients, we’re going to have this big celebration, come with like one or two things that you want to celebrate. You can plan something like that.

You could also do this on a last call. So I actually do this on a last call in my mastermind, I tell everyone to come with at least one thing that they want to celebrate, that they want to take away, that they want to solidify in their brain that this is something that they intentionally worked on and created in the time that they were in the mastermind.

If you’re wanting to work on capturing some of your client wins, you could do something like recording, having a panel come together and creating a recording or doing some kind of live hosting of a panel with some of your clients. Or if you have a podcast, you could do this on your podcast as an interview or, again, a panel on your podcast.

If your goal is to incorporate something like more playfulness or more fun, which is also a goal I had going into the week that I created in Palm Springs, you can do this with or without clients, right?

You could plan a weekend with friends. You could plan, one of my favorite things and one thing that I have been, I haven’t done it for a while and I’m thinking of doing it coming up pretty soon is you could plan a day with your kids if you have kids, or with friends, or your partner where you just focus on having fun. Maybe being silly, bringing some playfulness, doing things that you wouldn’t usually do.

Ordering room service and sitting in bed all day and eating in bed watching movies. Or one thing I’m actually going to do today after I record this podcast is I’m going to take my kids roller skating. I haven’t been getting roller skating. In I don’t know how many years, it’s been a long time. But we’re going to go roller skating and I can’t wait. And then we’re going to get ice cream and it just is going to be like how silly can we be?

Things like this, even though they may not seem connected can be very connected to things that you do in your coaching and in your coaching business, right?

So anywhere, these are just obviously awesome small examples but you really just want to lean into what do I want to get out of it? What am I looking to get from this experience? What do I want the other people to get whether the other people, maybe it’s your partner, maybe it’s your kids, maybe it is your clients, maybe your colleagues, right? How can you plan something that creates the experience that you want to have? And how can you invite other people in to do it with you?

I’m just going to leave it there for today. I hope that you had a lot of good ideas come out of this podcast and I would love to hear them. So share them with me, send me a message on Instagram is probably the best way, just @LindsayDotzlaf. I’ll see you there, 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.