Ep #115: Did You Hit Your Goals In 2022?

Hey, this is Lindsay Dotzlaf, and you are listening to Mastering Coaching Skills, episode 115.

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 coach, I am so happy to be here today. So happy to be recording this podcast for you. Today I am actually going to record the podcast that I wanted to record for you for the last week of 2022.

So if you’re listening to this in real time, this was supposed to come out a couple of weeks ago so that you could end your year thinking about all the celebrations because, as you know if you’ve been listening, December was the month of celebrations. And also just happened to be the month that I was sick pretty much the entire month. I’ll actually get into that a little bit on today’s podcast.

But this is the episode that I wanted to record for you at the end of December when I didn’t have a voice at all, and I just could not do it. So here I am, I’m back feeling great and so glad I can record this.

I didn’t want to skip it, even though we’re now into a new year and December, the month of celebrations is over, because this is something I feel very strongly about. I think it’s very important. I think it’s very important for you as a coach.

If you are listening and you’re a coach, and you have your own business or don’t have your own business, it doesn’t matter. I think it’s important. But I also think it’s very, very important to do this, to think about these concepts when it comes to our clients and coaching our clients.

So the other day I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who also happens to be a coach. And she asked me, it was something along the lines of like so how was 2022 for you? And it was just like a very broad question. And I said it was great. And she said, oh yeah, me too. And I was like, oh, good, like what was great about it? And she said, well, I didn’t really hit my goal but… And then she went on to say something else.

And I said, well, what do you mean you didn’t hit your goal? Like your one singular goal for the whole year? And she kind of laughed, and she said, well, you know what I mean, like my money goal. And I said, oh, I didn’t either, but my year was still amazing. You know, we had a whole conversation about it.

And so I really started thinking about this because I had planned to record this podcast for you and I had planned to record me telling you kind of all the ways that I celebrate at the end of the year, all the things that I take into consideration. But I think it’s so important to just have this conversation as coaches, especially if you’re running your own business, of all the ways that we can celebrate that isn’t money, right? All the things, all the measurements, all of the accomplishments that are important that aren’t money.

Now, hear me when I say I love money. I love making money in my business. It is not a bad measurement to use. There’s definitely a reason to use money as a measurement when you’re setting goals in your business. It really helps you be able to track like am I on track? Am I signing clients? Am I helping the number of clients I want to sign?

When it’s a problem, when it can become a problem is when it becomes the singular focus. And one reason I think it’s so important to talk about it is because this is true for our clients too, right? So some of you might be coaching your clients on business, on money goals. But some of you might be coaching them on other things that do have maybe one clear measurement, like money, you know, something that can be measured in a very clear like, did it happen, or did it not happen? And that’s great.

And I just feel so strongly that we should also be considering what are all the other things that we can celebrate? What are all the other things that we can help our clients celebrate, right? Because I noticed for myself at the end of 2022, as I was kind of looking over everything and looking over, you know, how much money did I make? What was my goal? There was a moment when I just felt a little defeated, right? Which is normal, but it was like I felt so defeated.

And then I kind of shook myself out of it. And I want to be clear, this doesn’t mean, not measuring the money doesn’t mean not looking at it and saying like, oh, how did I create this or whatever. This is different than that. This is saying, okay, I made however much money I made, and what are all the other things that I’m proud of?

What are all the other things that went really well this year? What are the things that I want to note? Because as I move forward, I want to keep doing them or I want to keep feeling proud of myself for these things.

So I made a list and I’m going to share them with you. Some of them are things that are specific to me this year, but could be specific to any of you who are coaches. Some of them, you might not be quite ready for yet, or you may be even past them. But I want to give you all the examples. And then I’m also going to give you some examples of things that I’ve celebrated in the past.

But I’ll give you examples in the way that I think about it, why I think it’s important and why I think it’s, you know, maybe fun to think about or worth celebrating. I’ll use some personal examples, and then I’ll also use some examples maybe of clients and of myself in the past.

So before we move off of money, one thing, I know I’m saying this is like the things that we celebrate that aren’t money. But before we move away from that, one thing I want to address is that the other possibility is that you can celebrate the money you made, even if, I’m saying this slow, so everybody hears it, that even if you didn’t hit your goal.

Goals are so interesting to me. I know some people are like, oh, I hate setting goals because I never hit them. Or I hate setting goals because I pressure myself, or the way they feel about goals, and you might feel this way too. I think goals are fascinating because they’re so arbitrary. Literally, especially when it comes to this, when it comes to how much money do I want to make in my business this year?

It is literally an arbitrary number that we pick out of the air. Now, if you’ve been in business for a while, you might be making like an educated choice on it, right? Like, okay, this is how much I made this year, this how much I made the year before, like this is what I think is possible. That is definitely a thing.

But it’s still arbitrary, right? It’s saying, oh, I made $100,000 last year, this year I think I can make 200,000 or 250,000, right? Or, oh, I made $25,000 last year, this year I think I could make $100,000, right? And one reason it is important to do that is because it then allows you to plan. Okay, if I want to make $100,000, here’s how I could do it, right?

How many clients would I have to sign? How much would I charge? It really just allows you to put numbers, put a plan in place, put a, you know, like here is the roadmap, it allows that to happen. But it is still very, very arbitrary. And there are so many reasons to celebrate the money that you made, even if it’s less than what you had planned to make.

So, for example, for 2022 I made right around $750,000 in my business, and my goal was a million. That’s like kind of a long way off. And I did have an opportunity at the end of the year, I’d planned to relaunch, the like irony of this is I was sitting in the discomfort of having not hit my goal. And I had not filled my last launch for Coaching Masters, I had not hit the goal that I set.

And so I was going to relaunch, and I thought you know what? I could do this, I wasn’t planning on doing it in December, but I could and maybe I want to. And I felt like kind of motivated to do it. And then I got sick. And then I was coming out of it, and I was like, okay, there’s still time. And then I got sick again.

And it literally felt like the universe was just like, not happening, not happening. Like it just almost like it kept taking it off the table like this is not even a thing that you are going to think about. Which is so fascinating because it really forced me to look at the number and say –

And I’m pretty good, I’m pretty neutral about numbers. Like when I say goals are arbitrary, I really believe that, and I really can see it. So there wasn’t like, you know, I wasn’t devastated. I didn’t really make it mean a lot about me. But there was this feeling of like, this is what I said I was going to do, and I didn’t do it. And that’s just kind of a bummer, right?

But when you do what I’m about to give you the examples of, I think the problem with looking at the one number and basing the whole year, okay, my year was a fail because I didn’t hit my goal. The problem with that is it takes away all the magic of all the other accomplishments. Especially when you’re an entrepreneur and you’re growing a business, and you’re learning how to coach, and you’re trying to become the best coach for your clients, and you’re trying to help as many people as you can, and, right?

It’s like you have all these things and there are so many aspects of it. To measure it on one single number is not fair to you. And it’s not fair to your clients if you’re doing this with them. So here are all the things, so I didn’t hit that goal, right? But I still want to celebrate that amount. What? Like $750,000 is a lot of money. Why in the world would I not celebrate that, right? There’s absolutely no reason I should go straight to like, oh, this is terrible, I didn’t do it. So there’s that piece of it.

And I do want to tell you, no matter what the number is, even if you made your first $5,000, if you made your first $50,000, if you made your first $100,000, right? If you made $200,000, but your goal was $500,000, I don’t care what the actual number is, you can still celebrate it. You still created that, whatever it is. Even if you made your first $500, $200 as a coach, that’s still money you created and you get to celebrate it.

Okay, so that’s all the stuff about money, but now I want to go through just a list of all the other ways that you can celebrate your year. All the other accomplishments, all the other things that you can measure. Some are very measurable, like with numbers, and some aren’t as much, but it doesn’t matter.

So one thing that I used to do, I don’t do this as much anymore. One thing that used to like really light me up, like on fire, made me feel like the equivalent of making a bazillion dollars was to add up the number of hours I spent coaching.

I actually tried to do that this year, I tried to do it before I recorded this podcast, and I couldn’t. I was having a hard time, too many variables went into it that I didn’t track throughout the year. I’m sure I did kind of track them, but it would have just taken a lot of work to go back and add them all up, right? Because sometimes I have guest coaches in the Coach Lab, there’s just a lot of variables. I’m coaching in other people’s programs on occasion.

But I used to take every hour that I coached. So that might be with clients, especially if you’re a new coach it might be with friends or colleagues who have specifically asked you to coach them. Not like I secretly coached my mom for an hour and I’m going to count that. But people who’ve asked you to coach them, even if it’s for free, doesn’t matter. If you are coaching for other coaches, coaching in other programs, coaching in a corporate setting, you know, getting paid to coach for someone else, any of that you can count that.

I’ve never done this, but you could add hours that you’ve spent coaching yourself, could be very powerful, right? Just really seeing like, oh my goodness, look at this. To me that always felt so empowering, especially as I was starting to make quite a bit of money and I had a lot of one-on-one clients, and I was coaching a lot. There was something about that, that just felt like so much fun and so empowering to me. It felt different for some reason than like this is how much money I made.

You could also, one huge thing I’m celebrating this year is anytime I have completed like a training, a learning, a certification. So I was master coach certified at the beginning of this year. And at the end of the year, which was perfect, it was like bookends. The end of the year I completed a yearlong DEI coach certification. So those two things happened, which I think this one in particular I feel very proud of.

And I think, you know, I see my clients that come into Coaching Masters celebrating this too, right? Like I encourage them to celebrate this, I completed six months of focusing on my process, on my coaching, on being better for my clients. And that always feels very significant to me, for myself and for my clients.

You could celebrate I invested X amount of money on my own coaching or spent a certain number of hours getting coached. I used to also add this up and celebrate these things. I don’t, again, don’t have the numbers this year. I did spend a lot of money on my own coaching and my own learning, over $100,000. So I don’t know the exact amount, maybe around 150. And I don’t also know the number of hours I’ve spent getting coached, but it’s a lot. And those feel really fun.

And I think me not knowing those is a really good example of you deciding what feels great to you to celebrate, right? These are things that I have celebrated in the past and this year it just doesn’t, I just know it’s a lot and I feel great about it. I don’t need to know the exact amount or exact number.

One thing that felt really big for me this year that I definitely want to celebrate is creating a new program. I created the Coach Lab. This is something I help my clients do, I help them create new programs and new processes, new coaching containers, or like really solidifying the ones that they already have.

And so for me to do this and to kind of go through my own process felt really fun, like a huge accomplishment. And when I think about this, I don’t just think, oh, I created this new thing, I get very specific. I created this new thing and also I filmed like 45 videos for the vault. And I created a private podcast that goes along with that.

And I then launched the program for the first time, which this kind of gets into the next celebration, which is planning out a new launch or launching a new product or launching in a different way. I launched, you know, this new thing into the world. I sold it to hundreds of people, which feels like one of the biggest celebrations for me of the year.

And this is one of the things that really helps me feel so settled into what I do, into who I am as a coach and what I offer the industry. And this feels very important to me. And it’s also, of course, one of the things that I love to help my clients do, right? So there’s a lot of overlap of the things that I see my clients do that I teach them that I feel like is so important as coaches, it’s totally in integrity for me to be celebrating these things for myself, right? When I do them for myself.

And if I only focused on the number, if I only focused on how much did I make this year, I would be losing all of that, right? It would be like, well, none of that matters as much as my money goal. And it’s just not true. So, there you go.

Another thing, of course, that I love to focus on and love to celebrate is the results that my clients create. And I would really encourage you to do this, whether it is, you know, the results of one client, one free client, 20 clients, 100 clients, however many clients it is, really thinking about and if you want to, especially if you’re a one-on-one coach, even spending time thinking individually about each client and saying what are the results that they created?

You can do this with them or without them. I was actually talking to one of my clients today and we had this discussion around something that I think is really important to consider when you’re thinking about these things, right? When you’re thinking about celebrating your clients results or helping your clients celebrate their results.

I was having a conversation with her in the terms of her thoughts about herself as a coach. And one thing that she told me is that she was having a hard time, like sometimes she didn’t believe that her clients were getting results or that she was an incredible coach.

And she said, you know, I just finished up some calls, I think they were kind of like off boarding calls, with some of my clients. And I said, well tell me some of the things that they were celebrating, right? Like give me some examples. I said, when you see those, can you really see how much of a difference you’re making?

And so she thought about it, and she told me some. But one of them was, one of her clients, I think she’s a general life coach and one of her clients had had this situation in her family or with a friend or something like in a relationship in her life, an important relationship that wasn’t great. And she hired my client because she’s like, I want to move past it. I want to stop kind of thinking about it, obsessing over it.

And so one thing that I reminded my client is like whatever you focus on, whatever you put your attention on is what grows. So her client came to the last call and said, this is incredible. Like I still think about it, it still comes up, but when it does I’m able to see, oh, this thing happened, and I’ve moved past it, and I don’t have to focus on it anymore. And I just think it’s important as coaches to think about, okay, that is one specific thing.

But what if that coaching hadn’t happened, right? What if that client out in the world was still obsessing over the thing that happened? Obsessing over this thing in her relationship, like not letting it go, not moving forward? How would that affect the next 10 years of her life, possibly? Versus moving through it, deciding she doesn’t want to obsess over it anymore, really forgiving herself and like letting go of it? How will that affect the next 10 years of her life?

Now, these are kind of arbitrary results, right? And I would encourage you when you’re going through them with your clients to let them kind of guide you through these and say, oh, I see this. You could ask them, what do you think the next five years of your life would look like if you hadn’t worked through this thing? I just think it’s so fun to show our clients how one small, it’s like the pebble that makes the giant ripple. That’s what this feels like to me. All right, I got a little off track. But I think that there are just so many ways to think about the results that your clients create.

One thing huge for me this year that also feels very fun is I hired my first full time employee. And so for some of you that might look like you hired your first contractor, you hired your first assistant, your first VA, your first podcast producer. And some of you, if your business is more like mine, maybe you have a handful of contractors that have worked for you, but you hire your first employee.

And again, when I think about this, I don’t just say, oh, I hired an employee, because that’s great. But to me, the bigger celebration is, oh, I hired the employee, and we had such an amazing working relationship throughout the year. I grew so much, I learned to believe that maybe I’m not terrible at having employees, right?

It’s just something I’ve never done before. And I think I just had this thought going in, like, why would someone want to work for me full time? I’m probably not great at it. But turns out, I’m not terrible. We had an amazing working relationship. That, to me, is a huge, huge win.

I was able to take vacation and or travel for work, but take time off, and more than ever trust that my business wouldn’t dissolve without me. I know most of you have had this come up for you before, whether you’re taking vacation, or traveling for work, or maybe you’re sick for all the month of December. But a lot of you I know it comes up for you because you tell me, right?

Just having the peace of mind of, oh, I did this thing and I felt more comfortable than ever that my business was okay without me. Now, that doesn’t mean that there weren’t bumps in the road, because absolutely there were, there were bumps in the road. There were balls that got dropped. There were things we didn’t get done.

And it’s all okay. I was able to see them, to say okay, yep, and I’ll handle that after or let’s bring in someone to help me. Let’s have Sheri come in and record my podcast intro. Let’s have someone fill in for me here. Let’s cancel this call and we’ll reschedule it, I’ll figure out how to make it up to them, right? Like there were things I had to do in order to, you know, especially when I was sick because that wasn’t planned.

For vacations, I’m able to plan ahead. Or when I know I have work trips I’m able to plan ahead. And these are all big celebrations because I didn’t used to be able to do them. I used to, you know, last minute like, oh no, I’m traveling for work, what am I going to do? And deciding at the very last minute what I wanted to do with client calls, or shuffling them around, or canceling them or whatever. And I’ve gotten better and better and better at it each year. But this year, I just felt much more solid than I ever have.

One thing you can celebrate is being asked to be a guest coach or asked to teach or to speak, right? To teach in someone’s community, or to speak on stage, or to speak in a community, or to be a guest coach, or to fill in for someone. These, I take as like the biggest honor. Anytime someone asks me to coach, hey, can you coach in my program? Can you fill in for me? Anytime they trust me with their clients, I take that as one of the biggest honors ever.

It’s kind of like I think the same way about when I was a one-on-one coach, I thought the same way about referrals, right? Like if I had a client and they referred me to someone else and said, hey friend, hey family, like whoever it was, I think you should contact Lindsay, I think she could help you with this thing.

My thought is, that is the biggest honor that they would even tell someone about me, right? Tell someone, hey, you should spend your money hiring this person as your coach because she’s great. I wanted to add that because I know sometimes some of you discount that you’re like, oh, I know, but like a lot of my clients come from referral. What? That’s like the highest honor that there is. Okay, I’m just going on all the tangents getting sidetracked.

Something else that you can celebrate is consistent content creation of any kind. This is something I celebrate. Some of you this isn’t maybe a celebration, you’re just great at it. For me, this is something I’m constantly working on, is just being consistent and showing up when I tell people I’m going to show up. Not for coaching, I’m great at that.

But for example, recording 52 podcast this year, right? Showing up every week, even when I was sick, figuring it out. It doesn’t mean I was perfect, but I figured it out. Maybe sending a weekly email. Maybe it’s, you know, you do a weekly Instagram Live. Maybe it’s a, you know, you do a monthly training. Whatever that is, right? Whatever it is for you, don’t use my things or my measurements, think about what are the things for you.

I am also celebrating being more willing to feel uncomfortable feelings. So specifically, this isn’t just like any uncomfortable feelings. I’ve obviously worked with coaches for a long time, I have really leaned into feeling all the discomfort and all the things, especially when it comes to running a business.

One thing that I noticed at the beginning of this year is how not amazing I am at receiving. So this is probably going to go a different direction than you were maybe thinking. So not feeling uncomfortable feelings like I’m sad, or I feel anxious, or I feel super disappointed. Those, I have those covered. Like I’ve got those. The ones that feel the most uncomfortable for me are when someone says something to me like, I’m so proud of you.”

I’ve been practicing this all year. I tell myself, Lindsay, I am so proud of you. It is also why I decided to do this whole month of celebrations and to end, which obviously didn’t happen, but that’s okay we’re going to move past that, to end with this where all I’m talking about is celebrations. All I’m talking about is ways to say, hey, I’m so proud of you. It has been a practice all year.

And I have been willing to hear other people say it or say other versions of that and to just sit in it and not squirm my way out. Not like, you know, oh, thanks, but… Or oh, I didn’t really do that thing, right? Like just noticing, oh, I feel very uncomfortable in these emotions and so I’m going to practice them.

Maybe you want to celebrate hosting something for the first time or creating something like a training, or a webinar, or a sales page or whatever it is right? Like creating something new for the first time, or even recreating it. So I had several of those this year, they all feel so fun.

And, again, these are the things that if you only focus on money, you totally forget. Like I would have forgotten these. I would have definitely left these off the list. And it’s so funny because looking back I’m like, oh, these are actually some of the most fun things that I did in my business this year.

So I hosted my first Coaching Masters in person event. And that will be continuing. So there’s another one coming up in March in Miami, which I’m very excited about. But I hosted that for the first time in Chicago in 2022. And I’m pretty sure we all cried, every single one of us. Maybe not, but that’s what it felt like to me because it was so great. It was so great.

I also hosted Coach Week for the first time. So if you participated in that it was just a week full of trainings and a private Facebook group and all of that. I’ve never done anything like that besides just, you know, like one little training or a live coaching. This was a whole week of workshopping and coaching.

I also had the podcast party, which if you listened to those episodes those were so fun, luckily recorded in November before I got sick. But they were so much fun and not only was it so fun to do them and have these conversations that were kind of outside the box, it was also fun to get some of your feedback, which is just, you know, some of it was just different feedback than I get when I’m just interviewing coaches or talking about coaching.

Maybe you want to celebrate, and I already mentioned this a little bit, but I have it on the list here so it’s worth mentioning again. Maybe you want to just celebrate feeling more settled into you. I have really been leaning into that this year, just really feeling more settled into this is who I am, this is what I do, and I’m good at it.

And I encourage you, if you don’t have those thoughts about yourself, to practice them, right? And to think if you’re like, oh, well I’m new. It doesn’t matter, you can still be good at what you do and be new. I give you permission. It doesn’t mean ignoring, oh, maybe I need to work on this, or I want to focus some energy or time and attention here. I’m not suggesting that, but you can believe, and I’m a new coach, and I’m great at what I do. Or I’ve been coaching for 10 years and I’m great at what I do.

And then there are some things that I just want to throw in here that weren’t on my list, but just in case. They are also things that popped into my mind, so just in case you’re like, oh, what about this? Or what about this? I’m also really interested in hearing what else you celebrate. So let me know, send me a message. Find me on Instagram, slip into my DMs, slide into my DMs. Oh my gosh, I think I just aged myself. It’s fine. It’s fine, it’s fine.

But other things you can celebrate, just anything that you’re doing for the first time, right? Feeling scared and doing it anyway. Did a Facebook Live for the first time. You posted and came out as a coach for the first time. You told your family you’re a coach. Maybe you had conversations with your family at, you know, a holiday dinner about hey, like I’m a coach. Or hey, I’m thinking of quitting my job and like doing this thing full time or anything like that.

Maybe you had a conversation with your partner about money and about wanting to invest in yourself and wanting to invest in a coach, wanting to invest in your business. Maybe you were really good at ending work at a certain time each day, right? Like maybe you’re like, all I want to do is be available when my kids get off the bus and I did that. Maybe you took Friday’s off every week, or you rested more than you ever have, or you had something difficult come up in your life and you were able to handle your coaching business around it, right?

There could be so many things. I highly, highly encourage you, it felt so energizing for me to make this list and to see, right, like move way past like here’s the one measurement, but also here are all these other ones. And it doesn’t mean that I don’t also have a list of here are some things that weren’t amazing and didn’t go great and here are things I want to do differently, or here are just different places I want to put my focus for this year.

It doesn’t mean I’m not doing that, but sometimes I think, I know because I hear you say this, that some of you think like well, but I’m like not allowed to celebrate all those things because I didn’t hit my goal, or I’m like new and they’re not as exciting as Lindsay’s, or I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I should be further along.

Whatever the thoughts are that are getting in the way of you celebrating all of the things about yourself and yourself as a coach, and yourself in your business. I want you to set those thoughts aside and just do this anyway because it’s so fun. All right?

So that is all. This should have been the podcast that wrapped up 2022. I’m so glad that I had the opportunity to record it for you anyway, and I can’t wait to hear what you think. Again, let me know what I missed, what you’re celebrating. And I’ll talk to 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.