Ep #3: Make Coaching Your Own

Hey, I’m Lindsay Dotzlaf and you are listening to Mastering Coaching Skills, episode three.

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. How are you feeling today? I’m feeling a little feisty, thank you for asking. So before I dive in, I want to tell you that I just spent the last probably five minutes or so laughing so hard that I now have tears running down my face.

And I haven’t shared a lot up until this point about my actual coaching business, so to just give you a quick background, which pertains to this story that I will tell you that made me laugh so hard, I’ve been a coach for about five years. And this year, which is 2020, in case you’re listening in the future, I will end the year right around $500,000 or so for the year.

So things are going pretty well in my business. And over the large part of this year, 2020, my family and I, I have a husband and two girls, we built this amazing new house and it’s been really fun getting moved in and getting settled.

And when I started recording this podcast, which I thought would be a great idea to do, literally the week that we moved into our new house, my podcast producer quickly let me know that the sound was not going to work. That apparently, empty rooms with lots of windows and hard surfaces everywhere is not ideal for podcast sound. A lot of you probably already know this.

And because of this, I’m recording in our master bedroom closet, which isn’t really that unusual. But the reason or the thing that really made me laugh is that right before I hit record, something happened and then I really started thinking about how it is probably the opposite of what you picture when you think of what it’s like to live this glamorous life and be a half-million-dollar coach.

So I’m literally sitting on a meditation pillow, thank you Danielle, if you’re listening. Surrounded by half unpacked boxes of clothes and shoes, with my computer propped up on a giant rubber made container with my very fancy mic attached to a little makeshift desk platform situation that my husband threw together with plywood.

And I’m somewhere in between the hanging dry cleaning bags and dirty laundry, if I’m being honest. And to top it all off, we have this little dresser in the closet and it’s pretty old and a little wobbly. And I just leaned back against it and a pile of sweaters fell on my head. Just everywhere, all over me.

And literally all I could do was just laugh. And I just looked around and I saw my surroundings, and then I thought what it would be like if you guys could see me righty now, and it just – I don’t know, it just hit my funny bone. I just laughed so hard. And then I thought, doesn’t this just seem perfectly fitting for 2020?

Just a little out of whack, a little unpredictable. That’s just where we are right now. So that’s all. I just wanted to give you a little sneak peek into the glamor of what you can expect when you grow your coaching business. In the corner of a closet, sitting on the floor, with a pile of sweaters on your head.

Let’s move on. I want to dive into what I want to talk about today, which is the third step to being the best coach for your clients. Although the first two steps and the first two episodes were very straightforward and step by step, this one is a little more kind of a mixture of several things and a little more – I’m just going to give you some ideas to just think about.

So in future episodes, maybe this will be broken down into multiple steps, but for now, I just kind of clump it together with the heading of step three, own who you are and have fun. I have this rule in my life and I love to apply it to my business that if I’m not having fun, I’m doing it wrong.

And what I mean by that isn’t of course that every single thing in my life is fun. But when it comes to the big things, my business, my family, the general feeling that I want to have around all of the important things in my life is that this is fun. I choose to be here, I choose to do this, because I’m having fun.

And what I kind of include under this heading when I’m teaching it is the idea of making your coaching your own. I’ll explain what this means in a second. Being creative and open and flexible with your methods, and enjoying the process.

So I do want to be clear when I say have fun. I do not mean – there’s two things that I don’t mean. One, I don’t mean everything should be fun always. Of course, there are going to be parts that are uncomfortable, especially when it comes to growing your business.

And second, I don’t mean not to take your business seriously and not to really get in there and coach your clients hard. I think you can do those things and have fun doing them.

But what I do mean by this is make the coaching your own. So I work with lots of coaches that have certifications from different programs or different coaching schools, or are a little more self-taught, having worked with coaches of their own.

And both of these things are amazing. Having a certification, great. Working with a coach you love, great. But when it comes to your own coaching, you have to find a way to make it you, to infuse some of your personality. This is why your clients will love working with you, as opposed to working with other coaches.

There are plenty of other coaches. Clients can choose anyone. But you want them to choose you because of who you are and of course, because you’re a great coach. Don’t be afraid to question why you do certain things.

So for example, a lot of clients will come to me trying to kind of emulate coaching that they’ve received from someone else or that they’ve seen somewhere else, and it just doesn’t work for them because it doesn’t match who they are as a person.

So maybe they’re trying to be super rigid and structured when that’s not their personality. Or they’re trying to be sweet and fun and bubbly, maybe that’s not their personality. So for you, I just want you to think about this. How can you add more of you to your coaching?

The next thing is be open and flexible with your methods. So what I mean by this is get to know your clients and the kind of coaching they need. Do your clients need more of a gentle approach or do they need a no-nonsense coach?

Do they need you to ask them at the beginning of each call what their celebrations are today, or do they need you to remind them to go celebrate all the things? Or do they need a coach who’s super focused and just dives right in and just gets started all business?

Only you can know these things, and really, they may vary from client to client. If you can learn this skill and learn to be a little flexible, a little open with your coaching, your calls won’t feel so serious and heavy. And another way that this shows up is be open and flexible with your methods.

You have to know your clients. So I’m going to give you an example. I used to work with a coach who, she coached moms or soon-to-be moms right before they had a baby, during the birthing process, right after they had a baby, and for a couple months following that.

And when she started working with me, one thing she told me is that her clients were having such a hard time coming to calls and they were always canceling calls. And when it came down to it, what I learned after a little bit is that she was coaching them on Zoom.

She was requiring them to show up on video, on camera, and her clients had just had a baby. For any of you that have just had a baby, you know, some days you’re lucky to have brushed your teeth or brushed your hair. Maybe that wasn’t the best method for her clients.

So we made some changes to her business, she started coaching her clients over the phone, at least for the week or two immediately following them having a baby. Because they wanted to come. They wanted the coaching. They wanted what she was offering. They just didn’t want to be on camera, which really kind of makes a lot of sense.

This is the filter I use when I’m thinking about stuff like this. I call it the what is best for your client filter. I am sure there will be an entire episode on this in the future, but what I want you to really takeaway from this and really hear me saying, this doesn’t mean what is easiest for your client. What it does mean is what is best for their growth and you facilitating them hitting their goals.

So if you think about the example I just gave, it wasn’t that the clients didn’t want the coaching. And so my client had to think outside the box, think okay, I learned this one method that clients are supposed to come to calls and show up on video, but maybe for my clients, for the people that I work with, they don’t want that, they don’t need that. It’s not the best thing for them because what it was creating was them just not showing up, strictly based on their appearance.

And we don’t want clients not to get coaching because they haven’t slept in two weeks. And last for today, possibly the most important, probably not because I’m sure I’ve said the most important a couple times now. Enjoy the process of coaching, of learning to coach, and of growing your coaching business.

Enjoy all of it. Notice when you’re in a hurry, whether it’s in a hurry for your clients to get transformations or in a hurry to grow your business and make money. Clients can feel this energy. It does not feel good to them. So slow down, enjoy what you’re doing. I guarantee your clients want a coach that is loving their life, having a good time, and really enjoying the process, no matter where you are in that process.

So even if you’re at the very beginning of your business and you can’t wait to make more money, you can’t wait to grow the business, that’s fine. But when you get super graspy and you’re in a huge hurry, your clients can feel that. Even if you’re making lots of money and you’re doing launches and all the things, every time you slip into that energy of I must go faster, I must go faster, your clients can feel that too.

I want you to imagine that there are clients out there looking for exactly what you offer and they are ready to hire a coach today. What do you want their impression of you to be? Or think of a coach you would want to hire. What would you want to believe about that person or about that coach?

My guess is you would probably want to believe they love what they are doing, right? Okay, so just for a quick review of these first three episodes, step one to being an amazing coach is know what you do. Step two, spend time in your clients’ brains. And step three, or maybe kind of step three with lots of bullet points under it to being the best coach is own who you are and have fun.

The one last thing I’ll say, you are a life coach or some type of coach that is helping people with something in their life. If you aren’t enjoying your own life, let’s change that starting today. Deal? Thank you so much for listening. I do have one quick request.

You may have heard this on the last episode. But in some upcoming episodes, I plan to answer listener questions, so in order to do that, I need to know what your questions are. If you have specific questions regarding something you hear in one of the episodes of just general         questions about coaching, or handling certain coach-client situations, send me an email. I created one just for you. It’s podcast@lindsaydotzlaf coaching.com. Can’t wait to see what they are. 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.