Ep #137: How to Be a Better Coach in 5 Minutes a Day

Hey, this is Lindsay Dotzlaf and you are listening to Mastering Coaching Skills episode 137. 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.

Hello, hello, coach. I’m so glad you’re here. First, I have to tell you, my voice is a little wonky today. I think it’s just allergies, but please forgive me. It just keeps cracking. I tried to wait to record the podcast, but I needed to get it in. So we’re going to do it. I have plenty of water, hopefully. We’ll get through it together. But I apologize ahead of time.

I want to talk about a few things today. First, I’m so glad you’re here. Thank you for coming to my podcast. Thank you for listening. I truly love and appreciate all of you. I know that committing to listening to this podcast tells me that you are on the journey to make the coaching industry the best space ever.

I don’t know how else to say it because that’s not true, right? Of course there are so many amazing industries in this world. It just happens to be this is where my heart is and I love coaches that are committed to being incredible at what they do and helping their clients. So that’s all I just wanted to say. I’m so glad you’re here.

I have a couple of things first, to address before we dive into today’s topic, it’s going to be a fairly short episode. But there are just a couple of housekeeping things I want to address first. So first thing, something has come to my attention and I just want to address it quickly before I get started, which is I think you know this about me if you’ve been here, if you’ve listened to my podcast.

I’m very open to being wrong about things. I’m very open to constructive criticism or feedback. And one thing that has been brought to my attention, a couple episodes ago I recorded a podcast – I forget what the title was, but something about haters. And I just want to be really clear, I think that you know this, especially if you’re a regular listener to the podcast, but just in case it wasn’t clear, I just want to say this quickly.

My definition of haters are people who are just being intentionally mean. This is very different than clients or past clients or someone giving me feedback or criticism, constructive criticism or any of that. To me, that’s something totally different. Haters are just people that maybe are saying mean things with no context that just aren’t nice, right?

And if you listen to the episode, I give lots of context and lots of my own personal examples. So I’m pretty sure that you’re not thinking that about me, but just in case. I mean, obviously, you get to think whatever you want about me personally. But I just wanted to be really clear about that just so that the message doesn’t get lost. So that you don’t see the term and think, oh no, here we go, or this isn’t for me or whatever.

And the other thing I will say, so many of you sent me messages, amazing messages about that podcast. And everything that you said in those messages were the exact reason I knew I had to record that. I also think I made this pretty clear in the podcast, but I really didn’t expect to receive as many messages as I did. I actually woke up whenever that was, like the day that episode was coming out and was full of dread and thought, “I have to take it down or I need to message my producer and say don’t actually post this episode. We’ll figure out something, we’ll skip a week, whatever we need to do.”

And then I had the thought, actually, if this just helps one person or two people or five of you listening, it’s worth it. So I’m just going to sit in my discomfort and let it go. And I’m so glad that I did because those of you that kind of needed to hear what I was talking about, I do think it landed and I think it was really helpful for you.

And just know that if you’re a coach that’s like, oh, let’s never have haters, or why are we even using that word? I agree the word isn’t great, I just don’t even know what else to say, right? Besides just making sure that what my definition is or what I’m talking about is very clear. If there’s a better word, tell me what it is. I’m just not really sure.

And again, I’m not talking about clients ever. I’m not talking about past clients or current clients or anyone that is giving me feedback, whether I agree with it or not. I’m just talking about people that send me really unuseful things like the examples I gave on the podcast, right? Like an email that’s like, “I don’t like your voice.” Okay, sorry. I wish I could change it for you, but I just can’t.

So I just want to be sure that you understand that. And I know there’s some conspiracy theories out there that maybe I recorded that and it’s related to other things going on, but it is not, I promise you that. I recorded it a while ago and just it is what it is. So there’s that. That was the first thing. Let me know if you have any questions about that. I try to make it pretty clear that I’m pretty open, I’m pretty honest, there’s not a lot I won’t be honest about.

And I wouldn’t ever not be honest about anything, I just might decide not to address something. But I don’t even know what those things would be. I’m pretty open about things when it comes to me. I’m not going to talk about other people, that just doesn’t make any sense, right? So that’s the first thing. The second thing is, and this is just a total, like, I’m laughing about this. But I’m like, “I can’t believe I did this.” So I recorded the episode that came out last week and then I was preparing to record this episode, which is supposed to be part two. And I had this whole plan and I was so excited about it.

But then what happened is I realized as I was typing things in my notes section. I use notes on my computer, I have a Mac or an Apple or whatever. Whatever, you know what I’m saying. And so I pulled that up, and I was typing all these notes. And I was going through the timeline and I was like, why does this feel so familiar?

And it hit me. I think I’ve already recorded that podcast. I forgot to go back and see what episode it was. But the podcast where I give you a timeline and a breakdown of my first few years of coaching and the clients I had and how much money I made and when I started hiring people and having contractors and all of that.

I’m fairly certain, like 99%, that I’ve already recorded that. So instead of just kind of regurgitating information, consider this an IOU for a part two. But I just want it to be more thoughtful than just like, oh well, I’ll just do it over again. Sometimes I do think there are great reasons to readdress something that I’ve already talked about, which as I keep going, of course that’s going to happen.

But when it comes to just a breakdown and a timeline, that’s not really that useful for you to hear multiple times. It doesn’t really matter what my timeline is. There’s a purpose of me sharing it because sometimes you want context or you want to know about certain things. So there is a purpose of me sharing it, but no need to share it twice, right?

So I owe you a part two. But first, I want to go back and listen to that. See what I covered there. See if I have any new thoughts or different thoughts. Or if there’s anything in that podcast and then leading up to the one I did last week, is there any in between? I just want to be more purposeful about it. So that’s all. Expect that, it’s coming.

And then the last thing, so let’s move on to what I want to talk about today. So not the last thing, on to the topic, how about that? I am really excited to talk about this. I have been planning this for just a couple of days, but we’re just going to implement it quickly and move into this because I think it’s really powerful.

One thing that I’ve been hearing a lot from some of my clients and from just friends, colleagues in the industry, all the things is, for me, when I’m recording this if you’re listening in real time, it’s summer. Where I live a lot of kids are getting out of school or people are vacationing or whatever. It doesn’t matter if you have kids or not, there are just things that we do sometimes in the summer that we don’t do the rest of the year.

Maybe taking vacations or more or different vacations. Or there are several summer holidays, at least in the US, that are long weekends and we like to enjoy those. Just whatever it is, there’s something about summer that sometimes can be similar to me to like the winter holiday season, which is like let’s just take a little pause, right? There’s a little more slowing down for some people, sometimes more vacations for some people, or just having time outside of work, which is one of the beautiful pieces of being an entrepreneur, in my opinion.

And so one of the things that I’ve been hearing a lot, whether it comes through in my spaces or just wherever around the industry is this idea of like, I don’t really want to commit to big things right now. I’m in this enjoying my summer period, or that’s pinned for the fall or whatever. And one thing when I recently had a launch, some feedback that I got was I love this idea. I can’t wait to do it. I don’t want to do it right now.

And that wasn’t from a ton of people, it was just from a few. But it just started my wheels turning, right? And in my certification I have a couple clients who I’m coaching around how do they create a business where they can be at the beach with their kids and their family for however much time they want to be in the summer without being consumed in their mind with their business?

I love the idea of structuring our businesses around stuff like that when it’s possible, right? I think that that is, again, one of the perks of being an entrepreneur. It doesn’t mean that – I hesitate to say this but I’m not a, what would the term be? Like live that laptop lifestyle, I can’t even say it, type of coach, right? That’s just not my style. It is what it is. I like to work at my desk. But I also like to have time off. I love to vacation. I love to have adventures with my family. And I know so many of you are like that, too. And I want to help you do that.

So I was thinking this morning, so my first thought was like, I guess I’ll just wait till fall to do anything big, to whatever. But I changed my mind because I realized I was just believing that that’s true, right? We need to put a pin in it, we need to wait till fall, we need to wait to take on these big projects, because we’re going to overcomplicate all the things.

So then I just started stripping that down. And I was like, but what if we didn’t have to do that? What if we could work on, for example, being a better coach right now in a really simple way, without thinking like, oh, I need to carve out all of this time or I need to, you know, however you think about it. Like this is a big project, I’m going to put it on the back burner, I’ll know when it’s time to do this. Or I need to wait till there’s more room on my calendar, whatever it is.

So here’s what today’s episode is going to be about. I want to teach you how to be a better coach in maybe, let’s say five minutes a day. How to use some of the things that I teach, whether it’s in my spaces or on this podcast, how to pare some of those things down to things that you could do in literally five minutes, every day or just on certain days. It doesn’t even have to be every day.

And I want to make a case for how that can be very powerful. I’m going to give you specific examples, but I want to make a case for how that can be really powerful and sometimes even more powerful than the thought like, okay, this is going to be a lot of work. Let me make sure I have the time and space to take this on. So let’s dive in. Let’s talk about it. So first, one thing that I’m implementing, and it’s happening already. If you’re listening to this podcast and you’re not in The Coach Lab, then it’s already happening without you. You should definitely come join us.

But one thing that I’m implementing for the rest of June and for all of July, is a summer challenge where we are going to be specifically talking about some of these things. How to show up with more impact for your clients by literally focusing on it for a few minutes a day. Versus taking hours out of your week, hours out of your day to work on it.

Which is also really powerful, right? I’m not saying that’s a bad thing to do. I just know that there are times when we don’t want to do that. And I would rather you work on it five minutes a day than put it off altogether and think, okay, I’ll get to this when I can, right?

So I’m going to give you some examples. And before I do that, I do want to say before it gets all the way to the end of the podcast, because I know some of you don’t listen all the way to the end, which is totally fine. I also do that. But I want to plug something.

So I’ve created a masterclass around this. So I’m going to teach you some things today on the podcast. But then I also have a masterclass where I’m going to dig a little deeper. I’m going to spend an hour diving into these things, helping you learn them. And we are also doing this challenge inside The Coach Lab.

So if you want even more support, that’s where we’re doing it, come join us. Take whichever of those three things feels amazing to you, right? Whichever one you’re like, nope, I just need this tiny bit of support. Or there’s the middle option which is like, and I really want to come to this masterclass, I can commit an hour. And then there’s like, and I want your support, my support, continuing this work.

So here are some ideas that I had. And this is kind of a work in progress, the way I’m going to structure this inside The Coach Lab. It’s going to be a little bit like a running list. I’m also going to have some of my clients sharing some of their ideas because, you probably know this, but I don’t always think that just my ideas are the best ones and you should only do those. Some of you will think of things that I’ve never thought of.

So I challenge you, if you are listening, to accept this. To join my challenge called the summer challenge. And I just mean join mentally, there’s nothing to go click, unless you want to come to the masterclass, then you can in the show notes. But join me in doing this and I would be so curious for you to report back to me and tell me if it worked. Tell me what you took out of it.

So some examples of how to improve your coaching without a huge commitment. I’m just going to go through a list. These are some examples that I came up with. So number one, you know that I teach, I’ve talked about it here, there’s a whole episode on it here on the podcast and then we dive a lot into this in The Coach Lab, but I teach you how to evaluate your coaching, right? After a call or even after a week’s worth of calls or whatever it is. How to evaluate, like dig deep.

And an entire evaluation can sometimes take a while if you really do it properly and put thought and effort into it instead of there’s, you know, the performative piece of it or there’s the deep learning piece of it. And it can take 30 minutes, sometimes even an hour, I’ve had people tell me. And sometimes people will say, “Oh, I hate to commit to that because that’s so much work.” Great, I’m going to give you an alternative. Although that is really powerful and I highly recommend you do it sometimes, I’m just going to give you a different alternative. What if every time you had a coaching session, you took two minutes between your calls before your next session, or before you moved on to whatever it is that you’re going to do, to just write down

This is all you have to do, write down what are the top two things that went really well in that session? What are the top two things that come to your mind that didn’t go really well? Or that you want to improve on? That’s it, leave it. Just write them down when they’re fresh in your mind. That might even take 30 seconds, right? Just like right after the session, jot down in your notebook or in your notes app or wherever it is, just jot them down, two things.

Now, imagine if you did that in every session for a week, right? That’s all you do, nothing from there. Don’t do anything with it, whatever. That’s all you do for the whole week. Then at the end of the week, you spend a few minutes, I don’t know how long it will take. It depends on how long you want it to take. It could be two minutes, it could be 10 minutes, reading through these and saying, okay, from all of this, what are the top two things I want to keep doing in my coaching sessions? And what are the top two things I want to focus on, like focus on changing or improving? And how would I do that? And let it be simple, like really leaving it just at that.

And you can do that with all of your coaching sessions or you could also do it with just a handful, right? Let’s say you have a client that you’re not quite sure why they aren’t getting results or that you’re like, I need to put a little extra attention here.

Just imagine if, let’s say, for a month after each session with that client, after every call, instead of just thinking, “I don’t know if it’s going well,” and then just ignoring it and putting it off on the back burner and it becoming this big thing that someday you’re going to work on or someday you’re going to figure out.

What if instead you just wrote down, what are two things that went great? What are two things that didn’t? And then you examine them, after you have however many days worth of data, right? Like a month’s worth, four sessions worth of data.

Another thing you could do right before you get on client calls, maybe with each call or with each session, jot down what are the top couple thoughts I’m having right now? And you just do that. And that’s it. And you do that for the whole week. And then at the end of the week, you read through all of your thoughts.

And then just think about it like, are these useful? Are they not? What would I love to be thinking instead? How could I improve these thoughts? How can I celebrate myself that these are all really useful thoughts, right? Like just kind of examining, like, okay, I have pages worth of data at this point at the end of the week? What can I do with them? What do I want to learn from these thoughts?

You can also do the same thing after a call, right? Instead of thinking about, like, what went well or what went really well, or what didn’t. What went well or what went really well, that’s what I just said, that’s amazing. What went well or what didn’t is what I meant to say.

Instead of that you could write down, like maybe if you’re a coach, you know, I have a lot of clients that come to me with, I think the session actually went really well, but I can’t stop beating myself up after the session, or I can’t stop obsessing over I did this thing wrong or I did this thing wrong.

So if you did that, if you’re like, “Let me make this about me,” you could write down what are the thoughts I have about myself after this session? And you just do that for a whole week, you don’t do anything with them. You don’t write it down and then think I need to coach myself out of this or write it down and think, oh no, this is a huge problem. Just jot it down, put your notebook to the side, move on.

And then at the end of the week, if you read all of those thoughts, even if some of them are pretty negative, but if you look at them from the viewpoint of, how is this affecting my coaching in general, right? If I’m just telling myself this after every session, how is that affecting the way I always show up for my clients? How is that affecting it? It also gives you something really useful to bring for coaching, right?

So if you are in The Coach Lab and you’re listening to this and you do this exercise, and you’re like, “Wow, every thought I have about myself after a session is really negative.” Great, bring that for coaching. Let someone help you with that. Maybe it’s not with me, maybe it’s with someone else, right? But let someone help you work through those things and figure out why you’re having them and are they true and all of that.

Let’s say maybe you’re a coach that’s currently thinking about building a new container for your clients, right? A new structure, a new offer or whatever. And it feels like this big thing and you’re putting it off. You’re like, okay, but in the fall, in September, in November, in wherever, I’m going to figure this all out.

But you notice that it keeps coming up for you and you keep thinking about it. And maybe you even feel excited about it. But you’re like, no, no, no, this is a big thing, a big project, I have to put it off. You could do the same thing with that. You could spend five minutes every day, what are my ideas for this today?

You could explore a different question around the container every day. What are the results people are coming for? Spend five minutes on that one day. The next day, how do I want to structure it? Five minutes, write all your thoughts. The next day, how often am I going to coach in this container? What does that piece, what does the coaching piece look like? Write all your thoughts. The next day, is there a community? What does that look like? Whatever it is. Come up with those questions.

At the end of the week, imagine that, let’s say Monday through Friday you spend five minutes a day, now you’ve spent 25 minutes or almost half an hour, but in five minutes a day very pointedly answering questions. So now at the end of the week, you have all of this information that you didn’t have when you started, right? And it might take a lot of the pressure off, a lot of the weight off if you’re feeling it in creating this new container, this new offer for your clients.

And you can do that for anything, right? Maybe you’re seeing a problem in some of your containers or things are coming up that you’re like, I don’t know how to solve this. It feels like such a big thing. Put it on the back burner. You can use this.

Find a question, ask yourself this Monday through Friday, whatever days. You pick the days. Monday through Friday, spend five minutes answering and then move on, what will you have at the end of the week? Try it. Just try it once, I bet it’s really powerful.

I’ve done this before because sometimes I think it’s really useful. My brain loves to overthink and go down these giant rabbit holes and next thing you know, I’ve spent two hours trying to do this thing. And I don’t actually have a lot done because I went down so many rabbit holes and got super distracted.

Try this if that is happening for you and you’re like, “Oh, this feels really heavy, I don’t really want to work on it.” Try this method and see if it works for you. And if it doesn’t, change it however you need to to make it work for you.

Here’s another solution. One thing that a lot of my clients bring to coaching, especially in The Coach Lab is when I’m in a coaching session, sometimes my brain is racing or I’m really trying to hurry and lead my client somewhere to the result that they want and to these thoughts that they’re having. And I just want them to see it and blah, blah, blah, right? And I do a lot of coaching on like, how do you slow that down?

So if that’s something you’re working on, five minutes a day. How do you slow that down? Is it maybe take 30 seconds before each client call where you take deep breaths, you focus on calming your mind and remind yourself to focus on being curious and asking questions and that you don’t need to actually drag your client wherever they want to go. You can do the coaching and that is very powerful.

Another one is maybe one thing you’re working on, which is related to the last thing I said, maybe you’re working on asking better questions. Asking more powerful questions. On my website I do have a link, you can go click it and grab, I have a whole list of questions. But they’re not the right questions, right? They’re just like, if you don’t know what to ask, here are some.

But for the most powerful questions you can come up with for yourself and for your clients are the ones that you ask, right? So maybe if that’s what you’re working on, then every session you end, you think what was a really good question I asked in that session, and you just write it down. At the end of the week? How many amazing questions would you have that came out of your brain in a list, right? Try it.

So some of these are just my examples. I encourage you to find some of these things for yourself. And you can also use this concept with some of your clients, right? Like sometimes we don’t have to do the deep, deep work.

Sometimes it can be, what can I get done in five minutes a day? What are the things that I can do today in five minutes that are going to direct my attention to something that I want to work on that feels maybe big, or even sometimes it’s like it feels fun but it also feels big and far away. It doesn’t have to be like a scary thing.

How can you just start working on it now? And how can you create this for your clients? How can they start working on it now? I can’t wait to hear everything you come up with. Please post about this on Instagram and tag me or send me messages or whatever you want to do and let me know.

Because I think that this concept sometimes, especially for me on this podcast, I can go down the road of like, yeah, but I love to geek out about the power of coaching and the depth and all of the things. But sometimes I think then it becomes this big thing that we should always be working on.

So this is my encouragement for you and for myself, of course. How do we slow it down? How do we take it into small chunks so that it’s not this big thing that’s only for the future? And I just want to say one more time, if you love this and you’re like, yes, okay, I’m in and I want more. Maybe you’re in and you’re ready to just do it, go for it. Maybe you’re in and you can’t wait to hear more of this from me or learn more about this, join the masterclass that I will be hosting.

Okay, so to sum this up, here is my ask of you. If you love this, in this episode I’ve mostly talked about this concept of how you can take things that feel big and simplify them, right? Break them down into small steps, instead of putting them off and making them this big thing. How can you just work on them now a little bit at a time?

If you really love this, and you love what I’m talking about and you want to take this work a little bit deeper and if you’re like, “Yes, this is something I want to add to my plate right now. I want to work on being an amazing coach and I want to do it in five minutes a day or less,” join me for the summer challenge.

I am kicking it off with a masterclass on June 21st at noon, Eastern Time. And I would love, love for you to join me June 21st. We’re going to dig into this a little deeper. We’re going to talk about, here on the podcast I mostly got into the theory of it and why it’s so good. But in the masterclass I’m going to really teach you some things, we’re going to dig into how you can do this work.

You can pick a specific activity that you want to try, because obviously today gave you a bunch of examples. And you could do them all if you wanted to, but that kind of defeats the purpose, right? Because we are kind of talking about how to do this work in five minutes a day. If you’re doing all of them, that’s a lot more. More power to you, it’s fine. But I really, really would love for you to join me.

Let’s kick it off with a huge masterclass. Tell everyone, tell your friends, it is going to be free. I want this to be, again, following that theme of just keeping it as simple as possible. I’m inviting all of my clients, anyone that follows me on social media and anyone here on the podcast. So I would love for you to join, the link is in the show notes.

And if you are listening and you’re like, “Okay, I’m all in, I’m ready to do this. And I’m ready to kind of join you to take this work to really the next level,” then just come join us in The Coach Lab now. You don’t have to wait, we will already be working on this by the time the masterclass happens. And we will be deep into this work in The Coach Lab.

So you can come join us. You can be on the call this week, we have weekly calls. You can be on the call this week and get to work. So that’s it. And I do want to add one last just small note at the end just in case this is useful for anyone. A client the other day, one of my clients asked me what’s the difference between a webinar and a masterclass. And I went down kind of a rabbit hole thinking like, I don’t know, what is the difference?

And then I paused and I was like, wait a minute, what if I did know the difference? What is my definition? How would I talk about what the difference is and why am I calling this a masterclass? So when I think of a webinar, and caveat, some of you may disagree and that’s completely fine by me. You do not have to take this on as your definition. It’s just how I think about it.

I think of a webinar, like if I sign up for a webinar, I know I’m going to be sold something, right? Sometimes they feel, to me, like extended commercials. There might be tons of value. I’m not saying they’re not valuable, but it’s kind of like here’s some value and then here’s why you join me in this thing.

To me, a masterclass, if you think about it, I don’t know. Most of you probably at least have heard of the app Masterclass that you can join and you pay like a yearly or monthly fee, I don’t know, and they teach you all these different things. And I think that’s why the term has become so popular. But to me a masterclass is when you’re coming to learn something. You can just walk away just with the thing and that’s it.

Now, will I be inviting you to join The Coach Lab at the end if you’re into that kind of thing? Absolutely. But it is going to be a full standalone hour of us doing this work together and I cannot wait to see you there. So register now. And if you’re listening to this in the future, just join us in The Coach Lab, you can come watch all of the summer challenge replays and just get to work on it, no matter what season it is.

Let’s go, better coaching is always in season. 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.