Ep #101: Let’s Get Down to Business

Hi, this is Lindsay Dotzlaf and you are listening to Mastering Coaching Skills episode 101.

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, so as promised last week I am back this week to just answer more questions. If you are new here and this is the first time you are listening to this podcast, I have asked the listeners to submit questions, personal questions, business questions, coaching questions, all the things. And I was going to record them for my 100th episode.

But I got so many questions that I decided to break it up into two or possibly three, we’ll see when we get to the end of this episode. And so that’s what we’re doing. So this is episode two, you can definitely listen to them out of order. So even though it’s episode two you do not need to necessarily go back and listen to one unless you just want to.

I will tell you, last week I answered kind of more personal questions. Questions about my life, questions about how I got into coaching, just my background, all of that. Just more about me questions. And today I’m going to answer more business questions.

And I think what’s going to happen is that actually today I’m going to answer questions that are specific to my business. A lot of you submitted questions like how did you do this thing specifically or how do you make this decision, like it’s very much about me. And then I think that it’s going to be a separate episode next week, which will be all questions more like coaching theory, or strategy, or how do you suggest someone else does this, mostly things that I kind of teach.

I didn’t know that that was going to happen as I started recording these, but as I was kind of going through the questions I saw this kind of evolution of personal questions, and then questions that are kind of personal but about business, about my business. And then questions that are very more generic coaching questions and mixed in with a little bit of business, of course.

So let’s just dive in, shall we? Okay, so today’s first question, how did you make the jump from coaching clients to coaching coaches? Was this always the end goal?

So first of all, when I first read this question, and I should say I said this on the last episode and it’s still true. I have not prepared my answers for any of these. So all of my answers are going to be very off the cuff and just like this is what I’m thinking about it, this is what’s on my mind right now.

But this question did make me giggle because the question, how did you jump from coaching clients to coaching coaches? Although I now coach coaches, they are still my clients. So even coaches get to be clients. I am positive that whoever asked this didn’t mean for it to not, you know, didn’t really think about it that way. But I don’t know, that just made me laugh. So, yes, all of my clients at this point are coaches.

Was this always the end goal? I’m going to start there, the answer is absolutely no, it was not. And actually I did my best to resist it for a very long time. I actually thought that I didn’t want to coach coaches, I really did love being a general life coach and I coached mostly women, I had one or two male clients at the time when I was a newer coach. And I really loved coaching women on just all of the things.

And I think what happened, and I know a lot of coaches experience this as they make money, a lot of coaches knew that I was making money and they started wanting to hire me as kind of their business coach. Now, one thing I have always been clear about just for myself is that I did not want to be a business coach.

And when I say business coach in this way what I mean is I did not ever, I’ve never wanted to specifically focus on business strategy or signing clients or helping coaches make money, although I do think making money is a, of course, a result that a lot of my clients get when they work with me by focusing on their skill. I just have always known it’s not something I wanted to focus on.

So I kind of feel like my niche chose me. And that is maybe a little cliché, but what I mean by that is I found myself getting to the place where it was kind of all I could think about. I really only wanted to think about kind of coaching theory, and coaching skills, and creating a space where we just talk about coaching and the actual skill of coaching.

And this was years ago, so how fun is it now that I have the Coach Lab, which is a room full of a hundred coaches, oh, sorry, hundreds of coaches talking about coaching? What? It blows my mind that that is like the thing that happened. But I will say, I don’t know, I just resisted it for a long time.

And then I had a lot of coaches wanting to hire me and I would either tell them no or I would make it very clear that they could hire me but I was not going to teach them how to make money, I would coach their mind. I would be a mindset coach.

So for a while I just kind of called myself, like the iteration between general life coaching and what I do know is I called myself, I think, it feels so long ago, but I called myself a mindset coach for coaches. Or maybe even just a mindset coach and just it was coaches that were hiring me. But it was just kind of an evolution.

So I don’t know if that feels helpful at all. I do see a lot of coaches that are like, oh, I should get into business coaching because that’s where the money is or it’s going to be easier to coach coaches, or it’s going to be easier to sign coaches as clients. And I would just question that if that’s you and that’s what you’re thinking.

First of all, it’s certainly not easier to coach coaches. It might be easier for them to understand what coaching is because they are a coach, but coaching coaches comes with its own set of challenges and obstacles. And I love them, I love those challenges, I love those obstacles, but they’re not for everyone. So just know that that is not true.

It also is not where the money is. It might be in your awareness if you have surrounded yourself with a bunch of coaches, which most of you probably have. You’re probably in communities with other coaches and just surrounded by coaches and you think it’s like all these coaches who are buying coaching. I promise you, there is a whole world full of people buying coaching.

I literally geek out about the coolest niches. Like I get so excited when people tell me their niche and I’m like, “What? I’ve never heard that before, that’s amazing.” And it gives me chills thinking about coaches helping people that I’m like, whoa, that is so needed, that is an incredible niche.

So if this is you and you love your niche but you for some reason are thinking that coaching coaches is easier or like the path to money or whatever it is, trust me, just question it. If you’re like me and it just feels like this is what you’re called to do and there’s no other option for you, then go for it.

Next question, I think I remember hearing you say that you were a successful coach without being certified first. Why did you decide to get certified with the Life Coach School? And how has being certified impacted your life and business?

So yes, I was a successful coach before I was certified through the Life Coach School. I didn’t get certified until after I was making well over a hundred thousand dollars a year. And I will say though, I want to be really clear about this, I do think coaching skill is important, obviously, it is what I teach.

So you can come into my space and learn how to coach. You can come into the Coach Lab and learn coaching skills, but you do want to learn them somewhere, I do want to stress that. I don’t think, although coaching is not regulated I don’t think that just deciding today like, “Oh, I’m a coach” without really learning to coach, I do take that very seriously. But with that being said I felt very confident in doing what I was doing because I had worked with a coach for over a year and a half before I started my business.

I also have a background in psychology, so I have, I don’t think that that necessarily benefits my coaching or makes me a better coach than any other coach. But I do think it just gave me a better understanding from the beginning, from when I was starting of thoughts and feelings and all of that, like all the things we talk about as coaches. I think I just have done a lot of work in that area in the past.

When I think about why did I decide to get certified with the Life Coach School, I was already listening to Brooke’s podcast and I was pretty familiar with the model. And my decision was based solely on I want to have a better understanding of how to use the model. I also, at the time, wanted to use the model in my coaching, like I wanted to have that choice.

And I know some people use it without being certified. But for me it just felt very in integrity to go get certified to really be an amazing steward of this tool that I wanted to use. Now, that being said, I also just love learning new tools and new things. And I also have other certifications.

So right now probably when this podcast comes out, I will be certified or almost certified through the Institute For Equity Centered Coaching. And so for me that was a very different reason of choosing that certification because I really feel like as just a white woman I don’t know what I don’t know. And I wanted to make sure my eyes were open to anything I might be missing when it comes to equity and safety in coaching, in the coaching space.

That’s really important to me so I have spent a lot of time recently focused on that. And hopefully I will be certified through there soon, I’m currently submitting all my things. So when I say hopefully I will definitely be certified, just when it will happen I don’t know. And I don’t know how long their certification process is. I have been working with them for the last year and so that has been really amazing.

And then so the second part of the question was, how has being certified, and the question was specifically how has being certified to the Life Coach School impacted my life and business? I don’t want this to sound bad but when I think about how it’s impacted my life, I would say I don’t think it has impacted it a ton. Only because, the only reason I say that because I was so familiar with coaching coming in, right?

I do know people who have been to the Life Coach School or any many number of other certifications and say like it has changed my whole life. But that’s how I feel about coaching in general, right? Coaching has changed my whole life and I’m so grateful. When I think about this specific certification, it has changed maybe the way I look at coaching and the way I use this one specific tool. I don’t think it’s had as profound of an effect on my life.

And the same answer will be true for how has it affected my business. I think that it’s affected my business just in the way that I think about using the model, which is what the Life Coach School teaches and really deepening and solidifying my confidence in using the model.

The next question is what have been some of the biggest positive shifts in your business? And what do you believe contributed to those results? So this question is so broad, right? I have really no idea how to answer this but I guess here’s what I will say, is that every shift, which I would say have mostly all been personal shifts that have contributed to success in my business.

But I think every shift has been important for different reasons, right? And when I think about all the things I’ve worked through building my business, all the things I’ve worked through on a personal level to be where I am right now, there is no way I could make even a handful of shifts, right? So if I think all the way back to the beginning of my business, I had to work through all the same things that every single entrepreneur and or coach has to go through, right?

I first had to believe I could do it and be a coach, and be an entrepreneur, and learn how to build my business. I had to figure out how I was going to talk about what I did, and where I was going to talk about it and feel comfortable doing that. I had to go out into the world and to networking events and all the things and use a lot of my energy making connections and meeting people and just talking about what I do. Like just all the things. In the beginning it feels like every single day is a shift.

And then I had to really learn how to make money and how to have money, which I didn’t even know was a thing that would I have to work on. But just knowing how to have money in my business, where I wanted to spend it, where I didn’t want to spend it. I had to work on believing that it was going to keep happening, right, that I would keep signing clients and that with each new level of success that I could keep it going. Like that’s still a thing that I am working on.

It’s like I don’t even know, at some point it shifted into believing that I could be the CEO of a company. That I could run a company, that I could run a team, that I can have people helping me, that I can ask for help, as I talked about in the last episode. So I don’t even know where to begin with that question.

All those examples I gave you are just some of the examples of all of the things. And I think with each thing comes a reward, right? With each thing that I’ve worked through it feels so rewarding on the other side. And when I think about like, how have I created those results? What do I believe has contributed to those results? As a coach, I’m going to say what has contributed to those results is me becoming the person who can do this thing, right? Who can be a coach, who can have money, who can run a team. Like really the way I think and the way I embody that person, that’s what created the results 100%.

So for you, if the reason you’re asking is like, oh, what are the shifts I need to have? It’s like all of them. Have all of the shifts every day. Be thinking about what’s the next thing? Like what am I working on? What’s the awareness I need to create in myself to be this person that I want to be? That’s probably not the answer you’re looking for, but it’s the answer I’m going to give.

All right, next question, can you please talk about where and when to hire an OBM? How you delegate, how you wrote her job description, and the price range for their fees? Thank you.

So this is a very loaded question. And here’s one thing that I just do want to say about all of these questions is that, and I love this question by the way, Nothing wrong with this question, I just want to kind of get this out there. That it’s really easy to watch someone who’s doing the things, who have maybe like figured out something that you don’t yet know how to do and say like, oh, they just have it all together. Like she obviously just knows how to do this.

And what I will say about this is this thing that you have asked me has been a work in progress for years. And my business manager now is incredible. She works for me full-time, this is kind of a newer thing that has happened. And I am so in love with her. She’s never allowed to leave, I just love her so much.

But what you may or may not know, because I think I’ve talked about it in previous episodes, it’s not like she’s the first person who has worked for me. And she didn’t just come right into the role that she has now. So if you rewind a few years, I don’t even remember exactly what year it was, maybe 2019. 2018 or 2019 I hired my first VA, so that stands for Virtual Assistant.

And to me the difference is, and listen, this could not be true, but it’s the way I think about it. So if it isn’t true for you, don’t worry about it. But if you have never heard of this before, just consider this. The difference is a VA is someone who does, this is how it was explained to me, someone who does kind of hourly tasks, right? Like I’m going to give you tasks and you’re just going to do them, right? Like here are a list of things for you to do this week and then you just do them.

Whereas a business manager or an OBM, an Online Business Manager, and they go by different names as well, is someone who works a little more, like that is their profession, they know. They’re more of like a project manager. So Aqeelah is my business managers name and she pretty much knows how to run most of my business. Like not the coaching part, but all the other parts.

She helps me schedule things, I mean she literally helps me with everything, she will like plan out an entire launch at this point. I mean, we do it together but she probably could do it just on her own. She tells me what she needs from me, instead of me telling her what I need from her. So I just want to say that. That’s kind of the difference if you’re thinking about like am I at the place where I should hire someone?

So when I hired my VA, I think I was making around $300,000 a year. I had hired a couple other people before her, but that was the first person I had hired to help me with my actual business tasks. And there’s a whole other episode about who I hired and when, so if you’re interested in that, go listen to that.

But so I hired her and it worked great for a while. And then until we got to the point where I just realized, like she was amazing, this has nothing to do with her. We were almost too similar, I think. And the person who works for me now, we are also very similar in some ways, and then in other ways we’re very different.

She is super organized, she just keeps me on task all the time. She calls me out when I say I’m going to have this to you by Monday. And she’s like, no, you’re not, you are going to take longer than that. So how about you have it to me by Friday or whatever.

But when it comes to hiring, here are the things I have learned. The first thing I would do is think about what do you want? Like you decide that first instead of letting someone else tell you. And then decide how do I want to find this person?

There are options, there are hiring agencies. When I hired my VA I used a company, I don’t even know if they’re still around, but they’re called Priority VA. And they kind of set you up with like a good match, that worked really well. So you can find people that way.

And your next question was how do you delegate? And I think that is just something that you have to decide, like here are the things that I want to delegate, right? And I would even think about those before you hire someone, is what do I want off of my plate? Like what makes sense for me to take off my plate and give to someone else?

You’re not going to love my question for how did I write her job description because I didn’t. I actually had a VA at the time. I kind of decided I wasn’t sure how well that was working, I mentioned something to one of my colleagues. She said, oh, I actually know someone who is looking for an OBM position, you guys might be a great fit.

And this might be a little more common when you think about hiring an OBM, they might already have, like they would have their own job description. They would say this is what I I do. So that’s what Aqeelah did, is she sent me, I just had like her, I don’t know, her website or something and it was like, here are all the things I do, this is how I work. Which I think that that can be another difference between a VA and an OBM.

So when it comes to thinking about how much you’re going to pay them, this can vary also wildly depending on the job they’re doing and if they’re a VA or an OBM. So when I think about a VA, someone who’s doing tasks, this is definitely how it worked with my VA, is I just paid her hourly, and she worked a certain number of hours per week or per month or something.

And she tracked that and she would just tell me, she would like update me. I’m pretty sure that I never used all of the hours because I know I just talked about delegating, but I’m not the best at delegating. And so that’s kind of how that would work.

And I think a VA could be you hiring someone who that isn’t necessarily their profession, but you know that they’re good at this thing or they would just be good at doing tasks, right? Maybe someone to help you with your social media, or help you schedule emails, or help you plan events, or whatever that is. Like if you don’t have the money to hire a professional for full-time work, that would be a good place to start. And it could be anyone, right?

So sometimes you see people posting on social media like, looking for someone to help me with this or looking for someone to help me with this. And the people that apply might not do that professionally, but maybe they’re coaches but they’re just starting their business and they want to work a few hours over here. Great, that’s totally different than an OBM, at least in my experience.

My OBM is like a professional OBM, it is what she does. And she actually started working for me in the same way. So she was working for me and she was working for other coaches or other business owners, I don’t know if they were all coaches. And I have no idea, I cannot remember how much I paid her but I paid her to work a certain number of hours. Now I’ve hired her full-time.

So when it comes to how much would that be, I would say anywhere from, I don’t know, $20, $25 an hour maybe if you’re thinking about a VA and depending on what they’re doing and how much they’re working. All the way to a salary of possibly, I don’t know, I would say starting at like $50,000, to hire someone full-time who’s working for you in your business.

I’m not going to tell you how much I pay my OBM because I feel like that’s kind of personal to her and I don’t know if she would feel comfortable with me sharing it. But let’s just say I love to pay people a lot of money. It feels so good to me to just think about me making money and then putting it back into the world. So I definitely pay her quite a bit more than 50,000. Just like I pay anybody that works for me a lot of money because I love it.

And lot, a lot is just a thought, right? So that’s just my opinion, to you it might be a lot or it might be a little. I think that you could probably find, like if you are looking to hire someone full-time, you could find those ranges by Googling it, which is where I would start if that’s what you’re wanting to know.

Okay, next question is who is your, meaning my, ideal client? Tell me all the things about them as a coach. All right, I feel like I’ve said this more than once, but I don’t think this is the answer you’re looking for and you might not love it. But I will say my “ideal” client has definitely shifted over time. And I actually don’t love to think about things in terms of ideal client. I never think about it that way.

Now, when I was a newer coach and when I was working with one-on-one clients I would spend some time thinking about who she was, what problems she was having in her life, what she would want coaching for. And I spent a lot of time kind of studying the clients that I was working with, thinking a lot about them. And then letting that kind of transfer into the way I was talking about what I was doing.

I think in the beginning it’s very normal for your ideal client to kind of be someone similar to you, right? Kind of working through things that you’ve already worked through, wanting to work on things that you’ve already worked through and all of that.

But where I am now in my business and what feels really good and motivating to me is to think about what are the things that I love to talk about? What are the things that I believe in? What are my values? Like how do I think about things? How do I teach things? And then I put that out into the world.

And if you want to think about it in terms of ideal client, to me it’s the person that resonates with all the things I’m saying, or at least some of the things that I’m saying. So that’s my answer. I don’t know if that’s what you were looking for, but there it is.

Next question is what’s the best advice for someone in your mastermind about what they should be thinking about and how they can set themselves up for success? I love this because I know who this question is from and she is actually in my mastermind, the one that started recently. And so if this is your question I would say, and for anyone listening, whether it’s coming into my mastermind or into someone else’s, there are a couple things.

The first thing is just believing I’m already good at this and this is only going to get better, right? Like I already know what I’m doing, and that goes for anything. If you’re going into like a business mastermind where they teach you how to make money, I already know how to do this and this is only going to make it better.

If you’re coming into my mastermind that’s all about coaching skills and coaching mastery, I already know how to do this and this is only going to make it better. I think that is one of the most useful thoughts you can have.

And the next one would be I am here to learn and take everything that Lindsay is teaching and Lindsay’s process to make what I do better. Instead of I’m just here to do things like Lindsay or to learn how to do things exactly like Lindsey, the latter I just think is not a useful thought. And again, this isn’t just for my mastermind. This is for any coaching space that you’re going into.

And then a last thought which has always been really useful for me is I’m here to get what I came for. And to me what that means is, I love it when people come into my spaces and ask for what they need, right? So instead of having the thought, oh, I hope she teaches this, or I hope we learn this thing, or I hope we go over this, ask for it.

Show up, ask for the coaching, come into the Facebook group and ask for the coaching. Whether you’re in the Coach Lab or Coaching Masters say, “This is what I’m working on. I’m hoping you can help me with this.” And I’m either going to say, oh yeah, that’s part of the process, we’re going to be talking about that. Or I’m going to coach you in the community, right?

Because I think like thinking, oh, this coach is here as the expert and knows 100% how to guide me, is just like not the best way to think. And again, this goes for any community, not just mine. That is one thing that I think has propelled me further than a lot of things, a lot of thoughts that I’ve had, is like I’m here to get what I came for and I’m going to figure that out no matter what that looks like.

So just try that on and see, this is for all of you, right? Like what if you showed up in every space thinking, I’m here to get what I came for? What does that look like for me? Now I’m not saying ask for things that are outside of the realm of what that space is for, or to do things that are inappropriate, or that might harm other people. But to really say like, this is what I need, how do I get this out of this space that I’m in?

And then to wrap it up, one question that I received from several of you, I received it in my email, and onto this type form where I let you submit questions, and a little bit in my DMs. And I considered not addressing it, but I decided I’m going to. And the question is some form of some people have left, have stopped working with the coach that you work with, why haven’t you talked about it or what do you have to say about that?

And I’m not going to answer that specifically. Well I am, but probably not in the way that you want me to. Here’s what I’m going to say. First of all, I think it’s totally fine to stop working with coaches at any point. Although I have worked with some coaches for a while.

One thing that I always do is I always evaluate, I always reconsider it. It’s not just, I don’t just assume, oh, I’m going to keep working with this coach. I’m always asking myself like why would I? Why wouldn’t I? I’m always being very self-aware and exploring that for myself. And I always make the decision where it’s like I love the reasons.

But the biggest thing I’m going to say about this is that you will never, and I’m sorry if this disappoints you, like truly I really am because I know that there sometimes could be reasons to do this. But you will never ever hear me talk about other coaches on social media in a negative way. That’s like a promise that I make to you.

And there are several reasons for this, but one of them is I feel like it just discredits the industry. And when I mean social media, I mean on any platform. It’s just not what I do. It’s not who I am, it goes against my values, I think it discredits the industry. I also think coaching is a very weird industry where there are so many of us on social media.

So many of us use social media to build our business and to sell coaching. And I think it can be very easy to get caught up in this like this person, and this isn’t just talking about this situation, but just in general, this is wrong or this person is doing it wrong or this person’s doing it wrong. And I just can’t, I don’t subscribe to that. I will never use anyone else’s platform to build my own business.

So I will never say, and you’ve never heard me say because I don’t do it. I will never say like, work with me because this other thing is bad. And that could be a specific person, but that could also be like a method, right? I’ve talked about before I think all coaching methods, well that I know of, maybe there are some that I would completely disagree with, I don’t know. And it’s one of those like anything can be used for good or for bad.

But you will never hear me saying like, oh, this method is terrible so you should do mine, or come hire me or whatever. I think there’s so much space, so much room for all of us. And there are coaches that are great for me, there are coaches that are great for you, there are coaches that are great for everyone, and they’re not all going to be the same. And I think that’s okay. I think diversity in the industry is so important, just like in any other industry, right?

I’m also not going to use my platform, which is this podcast, to talk about something that’s happening between other people. That just doesn’t make any sense to me, it doesn’t really have anything to do with me. And I think that’s really all I have to say about it.

This also isn’t to say that I don’t think there are bad coaches, because I do. You will just never see me talking about them anywhere, hearing me talking about them here or anywhere. And part of that is because I believe every human has the capacity to learn and do better and grow. And that’s it, so I’m sorry if that’s not the answer you’re hoping for.

One thing I was thinking about when I was reading these questions is like, okay, why would people ask this? And one, I think sometimes we just have a propensity to like gossip and want to know all the things. So I understand that. And also, I’m not going to contribute to that. But I think too, and this is the thing I will address, is that maybe you’re thinking like how do I know if a coach is for me or not, right? Like how does this affect me? How do I know?

And I think I could probably do a whole podcast on this, but what I will say about it just right now is that I think you have to trust you and don’t listen to what other people say, either way, positive or negative, to know if a coach is for you, right? So like really listening to the coach, listening to their message, listening to the value they’re putting out in the world, and saying is this for me?

I have worked with coaches that people think are incredible that I’m like, oh, I don’t think this is for me. And that’s okay. It doesn’t mean that they’re a terrible coach, or that they’ve done anything wrong. It just means they’re not for me.

And so for you, if you’re thinking about that and you’re like, how do I know? You just have to trust yourself and trust that if you are in a situation where you’re like, “Oh, I don’t think this is for me,” that you can have your own back, right, and like recognize it and be willing to say something about it to the person, right? Like directly, not on another platform, not on social media, whatever.

That’s just my opinion. And I know that a lot of people would totally disagree and think that there are amazing reasons to put other things, like do opposite of what I’m saying. So I hope this was helpful. I am so grateful, again, for all of you. I just love you so much. I love all of the questions that you have submitted. And I will be back next week to talk about the last portion of this, the like coaching application strategy portion. All right, talk to you then. 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.