Hey, this is Lindsay Dotzlaf and you are listening to Mastering Coaching Skills episode 264.

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 happy you are here today. Today I want to talk to you about something that I see at every level of coaching, from brand new coaches to coaches that have been at it for years. This is a pattern that I have consistently seen over the years come up that I have recently been teaching on, and I thought I should bring this to the podcast and share it with everybody. So, this is the pattern where we think that making a change, whether that is something about your schedule, a change in your marketing, a change in your coaching, means that we need to become a completely different person overnight. Let me explain.

I see this show up everywhere, but I’m going to start with marketing because that’s where I see it come up the most often in calls for me recently. So, I call this the January 1st marketing plan. It’s where you try to go from zero to everything all at once. If this sounds familiar, I made this episode for you, right? It’s where you are like, I need to be better at marketing, just a general quote. And then what you make that mean is you need to be more consistent, and what consistent means is you need to do everything, show up everywhere, all at the same time. Be a different person by tomorrow. That is the only way that your business will ever work, right? Does this sound familiar to you?

Okay, so here’s why I call it that pattern, the January 1st marketing problem. So, if you think about January 1st, maybe you’ve done this or maybe you haven’t. I’ve never been a huge New Year’s resolution type person, but some of you might be, or you, even if you’re not, you know people that do this, or maybe your clients do this. So, if you think about January 1st goals, right? It’s the new year. You’re going to be a completely new person this time. You’re going to work out every day, you’re going to eat healthy, you’re going to wake up at 5 a.m., going to journal, meditate, drink more water, read more books. You get the point, right? All of the things all at once starting tomorrow or next week or whenever January 1st is.

And using that example, what usually happens is one of two things. Either you go all in and you do all of those things all at once starting the same day, and by January 15th, you’re completely exhausted, burnt out, you hate the new plan, just mentally over it. Or you wake up January 1st with the best of intentions at 5 a.m., or at least your alarm goes off at 5 a.m., and either you don’t get up or you do get up and you start working on some of the things, but you quickly become overwhelmed. You decide that’s not for you or you’ll start tomorrow or you need different goals. And then by January 15th, you’ve done none of it, except maybe those couple days that you got up earlier.

So, if you think about that concept, I see coaches do this exact same thing all the time, especially in their marketing. And here’s how it kind of shows up. Here’s what I hear. Here’s how they bring it to me. They’ll show up and say, I haven’t been consistent with my marketing, or I haven’t emailed my list in a year, or I haven’t been posting at all. And so I’ve decided I really need to be consistent. And then they describe to me what consistent means. And they’ll say something like, so here’s my plan. So I’ve decided I’m going to email my list probably 2 to 3 times a week. That feels doable. And at first, I’m kind of nodding along like, okay, yeah, that might be okay.

And then, you know, they’re like Tuesday, Thursday. Oh, probably Sunday too. I think my clients will like emails on Sunday. And then I’m going to take those emails, and I also need to be better about posting on social. So I’m going to turn those into Instagram posts, all 3 of them. They could probably be a couple posts each, honestly. And then I really want to start showing up on TikTok and LinkedIn. I created a LinkedIn account, but I haven’t really posted anything there yet. I’ve just been kind of learning it and trying to figure it out. And maybe also on Substack, but I don’t know, that Substack might be for later. But all of these other things, I think that seems like a pretty good plan.

And they might even pause then and say like, “Oh, and also, of course, like those posts, I could turn those into stories and maybe add just some stories throughout my day. That seems really easy. And then, you know, probably at least one of those posts should be a reel. And then, yeah, I don’t know. What do you what do you think? Like, does this sound good? Do you think it’s enough?” I love this. It’s my favorite part when they say, do you think that this is enough or some form of that? Right? Because in their mind, they’re going to go from doing mostly none of this to all of this starting today or next week or whenever they’re telling me. Does this sound familiar to you? I’m guessing we all do this in some form because I do this as well. Sometimes I even do it in my marketing. But it also definitely shows up in other places in my life.

Here’s what usually happens when I see clients try to implement a plan like this, right? It’s very similar to being a new you starting January 1st. It might go something like this. They know they have to start by writing those emails. So the first one’s going to go out on Tuesday. But Monday, they like to have client sessions on Monday, so they have a few of those. The day kind of gets away, but that’s okay because the email doesn’t go out till Tuesday. So Tuesday morning, they sit down to write the email. They might even spend a couple hours working on it because they’re out of practice. They haven’t emailed in a while. Then they start overthinking it and they question like, should I apologize that I haven’t been sending emails? Should I tell them where I’ve been? Should I explain it? What should this first email back be about? It has to be really good because I’ve been gone for a while. You get the point, right? They spend the day thinking like that. They don’t actually send the email.

By Wednesday, they do some other work, but they’re feeling pretty exhausted from all of the overthinking on Tuesday. And so they’re like, I need a little break. I’m going to put this off a day. It’s okay I skipped Tuesday because I still have Thursday. I’m going to send an email Thursday too. And okay, so maybe I’ll send that Tuesday email. I guess I’ll send it on Thursday. So they sit back down. They have an email that they wrote on Tuesday. They just didn’t send it because they spent so long on it that by the time they were done, they thought it was terrible. So now they’re looking at it on Thursday and they’re like, oh, this is terrible. I need to start over.

So they try to start over. They maybe even spend a couple hours working on it, or they do take that one from Tuesday, they edit it, and they have a finished product. And maybe they do send it. That email might go out. They might not feel great about it. How do I know? Because they come get coaching from me about not feeling great. But they’re like, that’s okay, it can be B minus work for now. I’m just getting back into the hang of this. Now, okay, I need to create those Instagram posts and do, right, and they go down that list of all the things they’re now going to do with that email. That sounds like a lot.

So they’re like, okay, at least I sent the email. And so by tomorrow, I can work on these other things. You guessed it. Tomorrow comes, tomorrow’s Friday. At this point. And it’s Friday. They’re like, I don’t usually work much on Fridays. So I worked hard this week. How about I’ll just start this next week? And then they put it off. And then it feels even bigger and even more overwhelming. And by Sunday, maybe they throw up an Instagram post because they feel so guilty about not doing any of the other things, except possibly sending out that one email.

I just want you to think if you are doing this in any form. Maybe it might not be this dramatic. Obviously, I am over dramatizing, dramatizing part of it because I want you to really see what I’m talking about. Again, we all do this. This is nothing to feel bad about, feel shame about any of it. I want to give you a plan that’s going to work so much better.

I call this the Tuesday plan. So not the January 1st plan, but the Tuesday plan. Here’s what the Tuesday plan is. What to do instead of deciding all of those things is to pick one thing, one thing that you haven’t done in a while or that’s new, right? You’re going to write that Tuesday email every week. That’s it. One thing. Then you make it consistent, then you add the next layer and repeat.

So, if your thing is that you haven’t been emailing your list for a while, maybe you don’t even have a list yet. So you’re going to start one. And if you’re starting one, the first thing is just like write one email. But if you have a brand new list, maybe just decide, or a list you haven’t emailed in a while, or a list that you’re just quite inconsistent with, just decide, pick a day. This one day a week, I’m going to send one email. That is it. Commit to that. Not 3 emails, not an email that turns into all the posts, not a perfect email, just one email every week. That’s it. That is the whole goal.

But here’s what happens when you do this, when you set the goal like this. The first week, it might feel rough, just like it did in that example I gave. It might take you hours to write the email. You might not love it. You might overthink it. Like that could still be a thing. But you get it done. Because even if you have to come back to it, let’s say Thursday, you don’t also have the pressure of, “Oh, I have to get this email done because I still have 2 more emails to send this week and all of that content to create from each of the emails.” You know all I have to do is get through this one email. So you don’t overthink it, or you might overthink it, but either way, you send it, right?

Then week 2, maybe it still takes you a little longer to write the email, but because you sent that first one, maybe you got a couple responses from it, you were feeling a little better about it. So there’s just some overthinking, but like a little less. And it takes you a little less time and you actually send the email on Tuesday. And then week 3, maybe it still takes you 2 hours to write the email, but you feel great about it. You’re finding your rhythm, feeling a tad more confident. Week 4, maybe this time it just takes you an hour. You know what you want to say. You even sat down at your computer with 5 ideas that you had throughout the week of what you want this email to be about.

And then if you keep doing that week after week after week, by week 8, you can write an email in an hour or less. And now it’s just what you do on Tuesdays. It’s becoming a habit. Now you might consider adding that next layer. What is the next layer? It might be the second email. Maybe you send one on Tuesday and one on Thursday. Maybe the second layer is taking that Tuesday email and turning it into one or two Instagram posts. Maybe you take it and turn it into some other type of content. And you can see how that can keep going, right? Whatever that next layer is, then that’s the only layer. That’s the only new thing. You do that week after week after week. You feel more confident over time.

Now, you can add another thing. And over time, instead of giving up completely or burning out or feeling exhausted, when you follow the Tuesday plan instead of the January 1st plan, your confidence is increasing all the time. You are actually building consistency in your marketing, layer by layer. That is what true consistency looks like, right? Something that you can actually keep doing over and over. Then that pattern will start to expand. This is where I notice after working with so many of my clients, when they learn to do these things and they do them over and over, and they become consistent, then they’re able to take that confidence and that consistency and apply it other places. Right? Because this can work the same with new coaching tools, right? Maybe try one new coaching tool at a time instead of implementing 5 new frameworks in the same week.

Maybe you see this show up in the way you take care of yourself and your self care or your boundaries around your work or your life. Maybe with that confidence, you start to add one thing to your morning routine or your evening routine, or adding a new workout a few times a week, or adding that regular coaching appointment or therapy appointment that you go to. All of this will influence the way you show up everywhere.

And there is a chance when you do it this way, when you add one thing at a time, if you go back to the marketing, for example, think about if you just did that for a whole year and you just got super consistent with one thing at a time. You might not even recognize your business a year from now. Not only will you feel good about yourself and will you feel like, oh my gosh, I’m consistent, but you know who reacts to consistency? The clients, the potential clients, right? They notice it. They start looking forward to these things.

It’s like this podcast that you’re listening to right now. I’ve never not had a podcast come out, but I have had, like I think one week we had, I don’t even remember, some behind the scenes issue where it didn’t come out until later. The amount of emails I got that morning, people were concerned. They wanted to know where’s the podcast, what’s happening. So again, just imagine taking this Tuesday plan. Obviously, you don’t have to do the things on Tuesday, right? That’s just what I call it.

Imagine taking that and implementing it for a whole year, for 5 whole years, for the entire time you’re running your business. What would that look like? Just imagine. This is what real growth truly does look like. And it is what creates the consistent results. It is what creates you being able to show up consistently for your clients, for your audience, for the people that are paying attention, and for the people that need your help that are just like waiting for you to say the thing to them to make them want to hire you as their coach.

I’ll give you a really specific example of this in my business. When I started this podcast, it felt like such a stretch for me to say I will have a podcast episode ready on time every week. Now, on time is a stretch because I do work with a podcast team. They require I have my episode in a week before it comes out. And I’m not always on time. So, if you’re listening, podcast team, I love you and I’m sorry that sometimes I’m not. But I am on time as far as the latest cutoff possible. I do try to mostly be on time also for just getting it turned in on time for them. But that was a huge growth for me to just simply turn in a podcast episode on time every week.

After doing that for a while, then it became, okay, now I’m going to write an email that goes along with this podcast. So, at first, that took some effort. Now, obviously, years later, most weeks, I’m writing that email while recording the podcast, right? So I record the podcast, I just immediately write the email. We have a file for that. And now my team has the email and they’re not waiting on me. That’s not always true either, right?

Of course, I’m late on all of these things sometimes. Or every once in a while, we don’t send a Tuesday email because of strategically, that’s just not what we’re doing. But that’s a great example of how when you build that habit over time, then after doing it for a while, you might start to edit, you might start to make some changes, right? So you’re going to see fairly soon, I probably won’t be sending that Tuesday email anymore. I’m actually starting a newsletter. So the podcast episode will be wrapped into the newsletter. But that will be another new pattern for me. That will be me learning one new habit, writing that newsletter every week.

So I just invite you to practice this. And I’ll give you a little CTA, call to action right now, something that you can do immediately after listening to this podcast. Pick one thing that you would love to do consistently, or that you think you want to be better at. Just one. It can be small. Maybe it’s one email, like me. Maybe it is one Instagram post. And this is on top of things you’re already doing. So if you already have habits that are locked in, you’re just picking one new thing that’s going to help you move towards a goal that you’re currently working on. And then put it on your calendar. When are you doing it? Just pick a day. Again, it does not have to be Tuesday. And then just challenge yourself. Can you do that one new thing every single week on the day you say you’re going to do it for at least 8 weeks?

Now, now’s the time when I want to say not everything will take 8 weeks to solidify. And some things may even take a little longer. But some of the things you might start doing them and realize, oh, this actually feels pretty natural. Or I used to do this, I just got out of the habit. Now it’s not going to take too long to get back into the habit. So you don’t always have to wait 8 weeks before layering in something new. You get to be the judge, right? You always get to know yourself and get to decide like how does this work for me. I just use 8 weeks as an example. Okay, I can’t wait to hear. Come find me on Instagram @lindsaydotzlaf. Tell me what’s your one thing. Report back. Let me know how it goes. I cannot wait to hear.

And if you’re listening to this in real time, just know The Complete Coach, the membership opens December 3rd, and this is actually something I’m teaching inside the membership. We will be talking a lot about this. We will be going very deep on how to implement this in your coaching business.

All right. Thank you so much for being here and I will 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.