Ep #223: Overcome Obstacles and Achieve Your Goals with The Project Formula

Hey, this is Lindsay Dotzlaf and you are listening to Mastering Coaching Skills episode 223.

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 happy you’re here today. This is my first episode that I’m recording post-new year, post-2025, post-surgery. If you heard me say I was having surgery at the end of December and I recorded a bunch of episodes ahead of time and I’m just so happy to be back and in the swing of things and yeah, just happy to be here. Happy for you to be here listening.

And I have something short and sweet to share with you today that hopefully will be really very useful. It’s something I’ve been teaching. It’s something I teach inside The Coach Project, it’s actually the formula that I use to help my clients work through any project, any goal that I’ve really been working a lot on recently and as usual, there are two ways you can listen to this or one way to listen but you can use it in two ways.

You can use it for yourself, obviously. Take what I teach and apply it to anything you’re working on. You can also use this concept with your clients. All right?

So what I’m gonna do is I’m just gonna teach you something I call the project formula and go through each step of it. And if you want a more in-depth lesson on this, we will put a link in the show notes linking to a replay of an open house or a workshop that I hosted actually today as I’m recording this around this formula where I help people apply it and I talk a little bit about The Coach Project.

So if you’re listening to this in real time, The Coach Project which is a three month group offer that helps you work through any project that you’re currently working on or that you have going on right now or this year. Hopefully you’ve heard about it. Hopefully you’ve heard me talking about it. But if you haven’t, we will put the link to that in the show notes as well, but it actually starts Thursday.

So if you’re listening in real time, take quick action if you wanna join, or if you hear this episode and you’re like, yes, this is what I need, I need support with this, join us, it’s gonna be great. If there are still spots available at the time. We will link all of that up in the show notes and you can watch the replay of the open house. You can join us for Coach Project if you like, or you can just listen to this episode, take the information and use it as you will.

So here’s the formula. I’m just going to tell you the formula and then I’m going to go through and talk about each part of it. So for any project you want to complete, here’s the formula. You take your idea or your goal or the thing you want to create, plus strategy, right? So like what are the steps to create this thing, plus commitment, which I’ll dig a little more into in a minute, minus obstacles, any obstacles that come up along the way, equals a completed project.

So let’s break down each piece of that. And you can apply this, you may have heard me already talking about this in previous episodes, but you can apply this to anything, any goal that you can very clearly say like, here’s the end point, here is the idea of what I want to create. It can be something very tangible that you’re creating like a workbook, a workshop, a new program for your clients, your coaching process, any of those things. It can also be a little more like a bigger overall goal that you want to break down into smaller chunks.

So maybe it is spending three months really understanding your process to sign a client or really understanding how to speak very clearly about what you offer and what coaching is, right? Like any of those things. So just get something in your mind and just decide for the next 10 minutes or however long it takes me to explain this, that like that’s your project, right?

So I want you to take that and say, okay, this is my idea. Now get really specific. What does that look like? The timeframe I use inside The Coach Project is three months and I recommend you doing this, breaking your goals down into three months or even less than three months so that you can, even if it’s ongoing after that, you can kind of take a break and evaluate, okay, this is how it’s working, this is what I need to change, revamp, rethink, any of those things. And it will start to really help you get more clear and concise when thinking about, okay, what are the exact steps to create this? And when you’re putting all your focus on that, then you are really kind of forced to address anything that bubbles up that’s gonna get in the way of you completing the project. So let’s just go through them one at a time.

So the idea, right, is the very clear, like this is what I’m working on. Here is exactly what I want it to look like when I’m finished. Here is the kind of endpoint. Here’s what it will look like if it is complete. Like just answering all of those things, right? Getting super clear on what that is.

If you think about using this in terms of your clients, you can also apply this to anything they want to work on, right? And you’ve probably heard me talk about this before, but it’s always important when you’re setting goals with clients and when you’re talking about like, why did they hire you?

What’s the thing they want to work on? That you and they, right? That your client and you are both very clear about what success looks like or what does it look like to really accomplish this thing, right? Like very specifically, especially for those of you that are working with clients doing something not 100% like measurable or tangible to think about how do we make it that way. How do we take this thing that you’re wanting, let’s say your client is like, I just want to feel more confident. I just don’t feel very confident and that’s my main goal is to just increase my overall confidence.

You as the coach, part of your job is to get really clear, like what does that mean for them, right? That could mean a hundred thousand different things. What does it mean to them? What will it look like when they accomplish it?

So use that same idea here, right? What is the project or what is the goal and get really, really specific about what does that look like when it’s finished? When you’ve accomplished the thing, what does it look like?

The next part is strategy. So with anything you’re creating, there’s gonna be strategy, right? There are going to be steps that you’re gonna need to work through to get it done.

And so inside The Coach Project, one of the first things I have my clients do after they decide really specifically what their project is, is to just start thinking through, okay, what do I think all the steps are that will be involved in completing this? And these could be things like decisions that need to be made. They could be things like researching pieces of it that I don’t know how to do. They could be things like deciding, am I gonna hire someone to help with pieces of this? Am I doing it all on my own? And then they could be things like the actual steps to completing something, right?

So let’s say your project is to create a podcast or start a podcast. So if I asked you, okay, well, what do you think the steps would be to complete that? You could probably start to list a bunch of things. They might not necessarily be in the order that you’ll do them, but you can just start making a list. What are all the things I know I need to get done? Right, I need to be really clear what the podcast is about. I need to choose a name. I need to have some kind of cover art. I need to decide if I’m hiring a podcast producer or doing it all on my own. If I’m doing it on my own, I need to learn how to produce the podcast. I need to figure out how to get it on all the different platforms, right? Like you could just start listing, start with like what you know from your brain to create a strategy.

You can also use tools that you already have access to, free tools, right? Like you can use the internet and just search. You could just ask it like what are the steps to do this thing. Most strategy, you probably heard me say this before too, but most strategy is usually searchable, right?

Like when you, and I know that this is the part that most of you get stuck on that you think like, oh, but this is the harder part. This is like the thing I need to focus on, but usually it’s not the harder part. You’ll see what I mean in a minute. It’s just the part that maybe there are pieces of it that you don’t know how to do or you haven’t done before. You might be doing them for the first time, but actually figuring out the steps and the process isn’t usually the difficult part.

You can also use AI to partner with and like brainstorm, you know, to help you come up with ideas of how do I accomplish this thing. There are lots of different ways to get support around strategy. Also know that as you are working through the project or you know, goal, that the strategy may evolve, right? You may add things, you may subtract things that you realize aren’t necessary. You may change something altogether. So it could be that the strategy is constantly evolving.

The next part is commitment, right? So idea plus strategy plus commitment. When I say commitment, the pieces of that that I usually consider are, why are you doing the thing? Like, why are you connected to this? Why are you committed to it? What is the result that you’re trying to create? Like not the tangible thing that you’re creating, but the bigger overall result.

What is it connected to, right? Is it so that you are having a bigger impact with the work that you’re doing? Is it to help your clients have a better client experience? Is it to increase your sales or make your processes more streamlined? There’s so many different whys behind different projects, but the more committed and connected you are to why you want to work on the thing, right, other than like, oh I heard it’s like a good way to, you know, market my services or someone told me or my friend does this or whatever.

I want you to really examine like what is your real reason to accomplish this thing that you want to accomplish and the reason this is important is because at some point it’s gonna feel hard or things are gonna come up that you’re like I just really don’t want to do that and this will help you tap back into like, right, but I’m also gonna keep going because here’s the reason, the bigger reason that I’m doing this thing.

You can also think about commitment, like your time commitment, right? So over the next three months, if you are creating something that you’ve not created before, you could think ahead and say how much time am I gonna commit to this each week, each day, you know, whatever, whatever your schedule is, like how much time am I committing to this? And do I want to add it to the calendar? Do I want to say I’m going to work on it every Tuesday morning? Do I want to?

There are so many different ways that you could think about that part, but really finding the way that works for you and just kind of up front saying, here’s what I’m willing to give to this project or goal. Then the next part, it’s all those things. You add up those three things and then you subtract all the obstacles.

So there are two types of obstacles that are going to pop up. And this is where the coaching becomes very important, right? The obstacles will be either actual, like physical obstacles that are outside of you, right? Like you don’t have access to something, you don’t have the money to pay for something that you want to support you while creating the thing, your partner isn’t on board with this project that you’re working on, could be anything, right? Things that are just going to get in the way. Maybe obstacles could also be things that you don’t know how to do, which also is going to come up in the strategy piece, but just recognizing like, oh, here are some things that I know will slow me down that I’m just going to make a list of, so that going into creating this project, I just already know here are some of the things I have to solve for.

The other type of obstacle is the internal obstacle, right? And to me, these are the things that actually stop you from completing a project or hitting a goal or creating whatever it is that you’re trying to create, right? It’s that voice in your head that pops up that’s like, who are you to do this? This is too hard. This is overwhelming. This feels hard. I don’t wanna work on it today. I don’t know, whatever other version there could be, again, hundreds of thousands of versions of different thoughts that just pop up and get in the way. Some of them feel really true. Some of them are based on past experience. Some of them are, you know, your go-to response to working on something that’s hard.

All of those things are the things that are really powerfully helped by coaching. So when you put those all together, it’s a very simple formula and it will point out every single piece of whatever it is that you’re working on or whatever it is that your client is working on that you need to work through. Coming up with a clear idea.

Coming up with like, okay, how are we going to get this done? Figuring out like what’s my commitment to this and then working through everything that comes up along the way. Some of the obstacles, of course, you’ll know ahead of time, you’ll just already know. Here are the things I don’t know how to do. Here are the thoughts I’m already having about this being hard or whatever, or thinking I’m not good at following through, I never finish things, whatever it is. And some of them, of course, will pop up along the way.

So I hope that this was helpful. Again, just a short episode to let you in on something I’m working on currently, something I’ve been teaching my clients and sharing with them. If you want more support around this, please consider coming to join me in one of my spaces, whether it’s a coach project, if you’re hearing this in real time, or I’m sure we will be launching that again in the future. So even if it’s in the future, just, you know, come find me, see what’s going on, or inside The Coach Lab, of course. These are all things that we can talk about.

So, hope this was useful. I’m so glad you were here today, and I’m so glad to be back. I will talk to you 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.