Ep #228: Leverage Your Coaching Strengths to Build a Thriving Business

Hey, this is Lindsay Dotzlaf and you are listening to Mastering Coaching Skills episode 228.

To really compete in the coaching industry, you have to be great at coaching. That’s why every week, I will be answering your questions, sharing my stories, and offering tips and advice so you can be the best at what you do. Let’s get to work.

Hey coach, I am so glad you’re here today. So this is an episode for those of you that are coaches and you love coaching, but you also are entrepreneurs and you’re running a coaching practice. I know that isn’t for all of you. Some of you are coaching, working for others or coaching in different capacities, maybe coaching at your job. I know a lot of people listen to this podcast that aren’t entrepreneurs, but this episode is specifically for – I mean, it’s for everybody. Everybody is going to get something out of this, but this will be hopefully especially beneficial if you find yourself navigating both of those roles at the same time.

And just from the experience I have coaching hundreds and hundreds of clients, this is something that comes up often around, you know, questions around how do I be great at both? How do I balance both? How do I know when to work on which one and which one to focus on and which one to put first? And if that’s you, I have some great news for you today. I also have an announcement at the very end of the episode. So stay tuned for that. Or if you’re not interested at all in what I’m about to say, then just fast forward and listen to the end. But actually that’s not true because if you’re interested in the announcement, you’re also going to be interested in what I’m going to talk about today.

I have some really good news for you. I want to give you, take you through a little stroll through five areas that I think are qualities that great coaches have. And I wanna show you how those are also qualities that are required for building a business. All right? And I’m going to kind of go through them briefly and mention each one. And there are more, I’m positive of that. I’m sure that you could even think of some after you listen in here. These are just the first five that came to my mind and some of the things that I’m going to be focusing on when I’m talking about my new offer. So just a little hint. But let’s just dig in.

I’m going to go through each one and give you some examples of why they make you a great coach, which you probably already know, some of them I’ve already talked about on the podcast, and then why they are really great skills to have when you’re building a business. Because sometimes I think, and I’m even guilty of this myself, I think that we can get kind of in our heads about like, well, I’m really good at this thing, but really bad. I’m really good coach, but like not great at running my business or sometimes the other way around, right?

So if you’re listening and you don’t think you’re a great coach, but you’re like, but I know how to sell things. I know how to run a business, this will also be useful because it can go either way. So the first one, which is one, something that I talk about all the time, especially inside The Coach Lab, is curiosity.

I think it is one of the most important skills you can have as a coach, right? Just to be curious, curious about your clients and what they want and what they’ve tried, what they haven’t tried, what they believe, what they, whatever, like curiosity can be the cure for so many things. It is the answer to so many questions I get inside The Coach Lab, right?

Whenever one of my clients tells me that they maybe are judging their clients or feeling frustrated with their clients or any emotion that feels negative in the moment when they’re working with clients, I always offer for them to channel curiosity, right? Like how would you handle this differently if you were really curious? What would you ask, wanna know from your client if you were really, really curious? Just to kind of show them what the difference is between the way they’re showing up and handling something when they’re feeling judgment towards a client or something like that that’s creating a reaction that they don’t love versus what do you think, how would that be different if you completely dropped any judgment or whatever and just really tapped into curiosity. That’s a very powerful coaching skill.

Now, consider what this means in business. I have been thinking about this a ton recently, and for me, I think curiosity really first does some of the same things that I just talked about for clients, right? What it can do for me when I tap into – really tap into curiosity when I’m thinking about my business, it can remind me to drop judgment, to try to stop trying to figure out what’s the right way to do something and just be really open and curious. It can help me access, you know, creative ideas or things that I may not have thought of otherwise that might be great in my marketing or in my selling.

Also, one thing that’s really powerful for me, which I’ll share in case you connect to this as well, it can really allow me to reframe a goal. Sometimes I don’t feel as connected to, you know, let’s say, just gonna make one up on the spot. Let’s say, you know, I’m like selling a new thing and I have a goal that’s like I wanna sell $100,000 worth of the thing. That’s not very clear, whatever. You can hear I’m making it up, right?

But instead of, like to me, Okay, like that’s fun. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I just don’t feel like it doesn’t move me. But what I do feel moved by usually is being really curious about what will it take in me, in myself as a person, to create this new thing, to bring this new thing into the world and have it do really well and deliver it flawlessly, right? Like just the curiosity of like, who will I be when I do this thing? That always feels so fun. Who will I be when I do this thing? That always feels so fun. Who will I be when I commit to this goal that I have and go after it no matter what? Like, who will I be? I think it takes a certain amount of curiosity to wonder things like that.

The next one is great listening. Now obviously as a coach, this is a like a mandatory skill. It’s not always the easiest for everybody. This is actually something we also coach on often in The Coach Lab is, you know, some of my clients saying like, I always just want to jump in and like give my opinion or tell a client what to do. And so we coach a little bit on how can you be a better listener, right? Like that is a skill that you can develop that many coaches are either really great at or like already, you know, just good at, kind of more natural at it, or they have to work on and get better at and better at.

Now consider that in your business, right? What if you didn’t have to just figure everything out in your mind all on your own. But you could instead flip it to what if you’re just a really great listener? What if you listen really deeply to things that your clients tell you that you can use in your marketing? I’m not saying like don’t use their name or without their permission or any of that, right? But just the general, like, what are they coming? What are their biggest problems? What are the things, like, what are the reasons and their words that they hired you? What are the beliefs or doubts that get in their way?

It can also be useful when you’re just thinking about marketing and maybe you don’t have any clients yet or you haven’t worked with very many clients. Just being in the world, listening to people that could possibly be your client, right? That like mimic your ideal client, even if that person themselves isn’t gonna be your client, and just listening to how they talk. What are they saying? How are they describing it? Why is it so painful for them to have the results that they have now versus whatever the thing is that they want?

And then you can take that and say like, okay, now how do I translate this into my marketing? It will actually give you the words to use when you’re building your business and when you’re thinking about selling and marketing your coaching.

The next one is compassion. Now, I think this is an amazing skill to have as a coach, right? I think compassion can really let you just be fully present with your client and just kind of have this thought that’s like, of course, like we’re all human. We all have hard things. And it allows you to show up in a way that your client feels so cared for and allows them to trust you as their coach and just allows you to be kind of that soft space for them to come and say whatever it is that’s on their mind, whatever it is that they’re working on. Not that you have to be equal, like you being soft as a coach, right?

Like some coaches have very gentle coaching approaches, some don’t. I don’t think that matters because I think that’s different than compassion. You can have a lot of compassion for someone and for their situation and do your best to help them and to show up for them.

Now, consider what compassion does for you in your business when you’re running a business. Some of you might be like, that doesn’t sound like a very good skill to have as a business owner. Someone actually said this to me recently. I completely disagree.

First of all, it gives you compassion for your clients and potential clients, for things that they’re struggling with, so that you don’t get frustrated or irritated with like, oh, the same problems over and over. This is something I hear sometimes from my clients. Or, you know, just I don’t know, whatever thoughts that we have as coaches that – or when you want your clients to like be moving faster, right, And you are making it mean something about your coaching. And then that is like showing up in your marketing.

Having full compassion for like, we’re all just here having a human experience will really allow you to just show up differently in general for the people that you’re talking to, your potential clients, but also, and this one feels huge for yourself, right? Because if you can have a lot of compassion for other people, you can also channel self-compassion, which is going to really change the game when it comes to building a business.

Because as a business owner, the last thing that I wanna feel regularly are things like shame and be really hard on myself, because that just slows me down. Instead of, it takes me right out of the learning and the shifting. It takes me out of the how do I evaluate and then implement on things I want to change. Because the more time you’re spending beating yourself up, the less time you’re able to spend just with a clear head looking at like, okay, did this work? Did it not work? Why do I think it didn’t? How do I solve those things and just keep moving forward?

And the next one is innovation. So you may have heard me say before that I don’t think that all coaches all the time need to be innovating, right? As far as need to be like reinventing the wheel.

I don’t think that every single coach that coaches needs to be just constantly coming up with new brand new concepts and new things, new ideas because I think that can put a lot of pressure on especially for newer coaches. But there is just in general running a business does take a certain amount of innovation, especially as things in our world change, right? And as there’s like new technology to adapt to and new, new, all the things to adapt to constantly.

So it can be a really great skill to have as a coach if you see, oh, here’s a gap missing in the industry and I’m the one that’s gonna fill it. Here’s a gap missing in my coaching process and I’m the one who’s going to solve this in a way that maybe I don’t think others have solved it before, right? It can be a really good skill to have, especially when you’ve been a coach for a while and you are really at that place where you are creating a lot of your own intellectual property and your own, you know, developing your own body of work.

As a business owner, I think it is almost an imperative skill, right? Because you have to be able to innovate and change as, again, as the world changes, especially an online capacity. So for those of you that are online coaches, which most of us are, I know not everybody, but a lot of us are, there are just constantly things changing.

Even if you are innovating to solve for things happening in the world. How do you, like right now, one thing I’m doing is, and helping a lot of my clients with, is how to make coaching more accessible, right? So many of us believe that coaching is a really important thing for people to have and that we want it to be in the hands of more of the humans, especially when the world feels hard or when there are certain things going on, which could be really at any moment, depending on where you live, what you’re surrounded by, all of that. And so innovation, right, can be really important to say, how do I solve this in a way, like instead of looking to your colleagues, to your coaches, to whoever, and saying like, okay, well, what are they doing? Let me just copy that.

Innovation can be a really good skill to have when you’re asking yourself, like, what is maybe an idea that I’ve not seen done before? What could that look like? That’s one thing that as a coach, running a business is going to help you really stand out.

And then the next one is forward thinking or future thinking, right, which as a coach, this is so much of what we do. It’s like ingrained in us, whether it’s like setting goals with clients, setting goals with yourself, really helping your clients get in that future state and picture, like what am I creating, what will this look like there?

Now, think about that in your business, right? If you can do that with your clients, you can also do that for your own business. If you’re great at it with your clients, then don’t tell yourself you’re bad at it in business. Use whatever skills you have when you’re doing that work with your clients to turn it around for yourself and say, okay, how do I use these skills for my own business? How do I really start to envision? What do I want this to look like? Where is this business going? What do I want it to look like in 5 years, 10 years?

And just like you would with your clients, be really honest with yourself, right? Create so much self awareness that you know exactly where it is that you’re going, or at least you think you know where you’re going for now. Because in my experience, that’s always shifting.

And use those skills, right? Like all of these things are so important. And even if you heard a couple that you’re like, I don’t know if I’m the best at that. My guess is as a coach out of those five things, you are good at some of them, at least a couple and probably even great at them.

So instead of telling yourself, I’m a really good coach, but I don’t know how to run my business or the other way around, check in with yourself and ask yourself, like go through those five things, show yourself what you are already really great at and ask yourself in your particular business, if you’re running your own business, how can you use those skills that you’re great at to shift them into your business and to use them there as well, right?

Like sometimes I think we, myself included, can get in this place where we think like, oh, well, I’m not great over here and I’ve never really done some of this stuff before, so I have to go learn all new skills and I have to find people that know exactly what they’re doing to tell me what to do, which sometimes is very useful, right? I’m not just like, oh, this is not the opposite of last week’s episode where I said you shouldn’t be able to do it by yourself all the time. This is not the opposite of that, but this is, like you can do that, you can ask for help, get the help that you need, and also show yourself that you already have skills that will make you good at running your business, no matter what happens.

Okay, I hope that was really helpful, and I want to transition quickly into just an announcement, an exciting announcement, particularly if you’re listening in real time and if you’re a Coach Lab member. It might still be exciting for you if you’re not a Coach Lab member because you could – maybe this is the thing that’s going to put you over the edge and decide that you wanna be today. But this is also something that will be expanded at some point outside of The Coach Lab. But for now, there is a new offer coming just for you. And it is the number one thing that my clients ask me for. It’s the number one thing that I get questions about, like can you teach us how to do this?

So I’m not going to announce all of the details on here, but there is an email coming tomorrow that will give you all the details if you’re a member of The Coach Lab. If you’re not a member of The Coach Lab and you’re like, okay, but I want the details anyway, feel free, if you like, to email me or to let us know or to just go ahead and join The Coach Lab because maybe this is gonna convince you to do so.

But one thing I do in The Coach Lab, I have coaches all over the industry, brand new coaches, coaches that have been doing their thing for a while. And one thing that I have seen is there is this kind of missing gap that I see in business support, especially for newer coaches. And there are so many amazing business coaching programs and masterminds and all the things, so this is not a knock on anything that anyone else is doing, but there is a gap that I see, which is a space where clients get to be in a small group and don’t have to spend a gazillion dollars to get business support, especially for new coaches. I am not one that believes you have to spend all of the money in order to have some huge transformation and that’s how your business is going to work.

I think sometimes in the beginning when you’re new, when there’s a lot to figure out and you have a lot of unanswered questions, it can be really useful to just have the support of someone showing you, oh, here, this is useful, this isn’t useful or whatever, and just kind of guiding you and coaching you.

So what we’re doing starting tomorrow is opening up something we’re calling The Coach Lab Business Pods, which is going to be a very accessible business program, mastermind group coaching. I’m not sure, I guess I haven’t thought about what it’s called yet. But it will be really focused around teaching you how to build a business that aligns with who you are, with your natural talents, with the things you’re already good at, with the things you prefer to do.

There are so many things that can be hard about a business, especially if you’ve never run one before in the beginning. And the best thing you can do for yourself to set yourself up for success is to figure out, it’s like the low-hanging fruit, right? Like what are all the decisions I can make and choices I can make for my business that don’t have me constantly feeling like I’m swimming upstream, that I’m like fighting against something all the time.

That’s what I’ve created, a space where I’m going to teach you and give you a little quiz even to kind of show you and tap into some self-awareness around what are the things you’re already good at and how can you use those to build a business that feels really good to you or at least as good as it can. Right? There’s always going to be hard things, things that feel scary and things that like, oh, this might fail, that’s totally normal. But to take off some of the challenges and really consider like, where is the best place for you to be marketing your business?

What is the best way for you to be marketing your business? Is it in person? Is it online? Is it teaching? Is it doing workshops? Is it masterclasses? Is it paid ads? Is it, right? Like how do you figure that out?

Most business spaces that I see are kind of teaching like, here’s the way I do it and then I’m going to show, I’m going to teach you that. And I don’t always think that that’s useful because oftentimes when you’re newer, you might not really know. And that can leave you spending money that you’re like, well, okay, I spent this money and what I learned is that that way is not for me. I’ve been there, I’ve done that. It can be quite painful sometimes.

So this is gonna be the opposite of that. And there are many more. I’m sure I’ll be talking about this in upcoming episodes, but if you want all of the information for this, be sure you’re on my email list. Be sure that if you’re a Coach Lab member specifically that you’re paying attention to your email tomorrow because a link will be coming with all of the details and I cannot wait to show you how all the things that make you a great coach are also the things that you can translate into running an incredible business.

All right. I could not be more excited for this. It feels like this has been in the works, in the back of my mind for a really long time. I’ve been working on it behind the scenes and it feels like I’m just coming out because I for a long time have said, I don’t know that I’m a business coach. But what I’ve learned after years of running The Coach Lab is that there’s such an overlap between the two things that what I actually mean is I’m not a business coach when it comes to doing it someone else’s way, but now that I see this gap and see where my expertise can really help especially newer coaches figure out the path they want to be on, now I’m ready.

So I’m really excited to do this work with you and I hope you enjoyed the episode. See you back here 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.