Hey, this is Lindsay Dotzlaf, and you’re listening to Mastering Coaching Skills, episode 290.

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. Today I want to talk about something that keeps coming up in all of my spaces. It’s so funny. It feels like a ripple that is going through the coach verse right now. And it came up today on a call and I thought, I have to record a podcast about this. So here we are. That’s what I’m doing.

What this thing is, it’s some form of clients telling me that they feel a little disconnected from their own personal transformations, like the ones that happened in the very beginning when they first found out about coaching and maybe they first worked with their own coach. And they had these huge transformations and they felt so amazing. And, you know, then maybe over time they became a coach. Oftentimes, for many of us as coaches, that’s how we got here. We experienced coaching, we loved it so much, and for some one reason or another, we decided to start our own business as a coach.

And so, you know, my clients are coming to me with this, like, I don’t feel very connected to those transformations. Like I just don’t feel those big, huge feelings of like how amazing coaching is and I just know I need to reconnect to that. And can you help me do that? So if you have been feeling this at all, this episode is for you, or if you’ve ever felt this.

Now, if you’re a brand new coach, you might not understand what I’m about to say. That’s okay. Just take it in. Maybe save it for later so that you can listen to it a couple years from now when you might experience this for yourself. But often when I see this come up, it’s usually from coaches who have been coaches for a few years. They have been, they’re several years removed from their kind of own original transformations, whatever those things were.

And of course, they’re still using coaching and using coaching tools on themselves, but they don’t feel like they’re kind of living in that constant breakthrough, kind of like you do when you’re, when you’re brand new to the work.

And they start thinking this is a problem or I’m, you know, feeling like I’m falling out of love with coaching or with my business or my marketing just really isn’t working or isn’t hitting and I think it’s because I’m not feeling this connection. And I really need to reconnect with that old version of myself and remember how amazing that was. Maybe they’re even avoiding marketing altogether because they just don’t feel that lit up by it or you know, like they know how to talk about what it is that they do because it’s been so long since they’ve experienced it.

Maybe even they start to wonder, you know, do I need to change my niche? Do I need to, do I need to like make some kind of big change in my business to address this? Or do I need to kind of create this next huge big goal for myself because that’s what it’s going to take to get me back in this energy and this energy where I feel great about selling and everything’s kind of working. So maybe you relate to some of these. Maybe one of them or all of them, maybe you’ve experienced them.

And the advice that I hear often for this type of thing, there are a few different directions that people go with it. One is that you have to reconnect to your why, right? If you’re feeling like disconnected from your work, you need to reconnect to your why. And but when I hear that, when I hear reconnect, that makes me think that that advice means you need to go back, kind of what the coaches are thinking they need to do. Go back and like remember why it is you’re doing this in the first place.

And sometimes that’s great advice. But also other times it’s not great advice because maybe you can’t connect to it anymore. Maybe it’s changed, maybe it has evolved. Right? Like maybe you’re human and you’ve changed over years. You don’t stay the same for years and years. And so maybe it’s just taking a pause and not reconnecting but re-analyzing what does it look like now?

Sometimes I, you hear the advice that you do need to reconnect to your those first big transformations that you had and how amazing they were. And sure, sometimes this can be useful, but the use in my opinion is a bit limited. And then the biggest one I hear that I would push back against pretty hard is that you have to be in constant transformation energy in order to sell coaching or to be even in integrity selling coaching or that you need to be living in your own breakthrough constantly.

And yes, sometimes very useful. I always say I sometimes love working with a coach who I know is like in the midst of a big breakthrough because there’s something different about that energy. But that doesn’t mean that you need to be doing that all of the time. In this episode, I’m going to make a little bit of an argument for how that can actually, like why that’s not great advice and how it can harm you a bit.

The biggest trap that happens when you’re thinking that you need to be in that constant transformation energy in order to sell your own coaching is that it keeps you in a constant state of I’m not there yet or I’m not enough yet, or there’s like a next place that I always have to be going for and reaching for and it has to get bigger and bigger and bigger and more exciting and you know, that I always have to be in this constant personal breakthrough.

And first, I mean, that can be exhausting. Even just saying it out loud, I’m like, oof, that sounds like a lot. But it can also keep you kind of chasing a goal, chasing transformation in a way that you’re never actually enjoying what you’ve created or where you are right now.

So I want you to think about this. I’m going to use a metaphor for a second. Okay? Go there with me. I want you to think about in a relationship, like a romantic relationship. When you’re in a brand new relationship, everything about it feels exciting and you’re kind of on a high and you want to talk about it all the time and you want to tell everyone and you want to talk about how great it is and talk about how in love you are.

And there’s so much infatuation and chemicals and energy behind it that you do kind of feel in a constant high, right? A little bit of a delirium almost. And it has you kind of living in that heightened state. Right? Sometimes it’s even like hard to sleep or hard to think clearly. And over time, you can’t sustain your relationship on that high. Right?

You can’t be in a 10-year relationship with your partner and constantly be trying to recreate those butterflies and the infatuation and that high state of energy. That would be impossible to live in that state 100% of the time 10 years in or 15 years in or 20 years in. That’s just not a thing. We’re not made to sustain that energy. So those butterflies just can’t remain the fuel of your relationship. The fuel has to shift and the butterflies shouldn’t be the fuel of the relationship. You have to find a different anchor, a different fuel.

So now think about a relationship, let’s say 10 years in or 15 years in. Think about, if you’ve ever been in one, you know, or if just imagine, I’m sure you can imagine what it’s like, you have to recognize like what a more mature love looks like, the love that you have now and what you want that to look like and how you shape it now when the butterflies aren’t there and the infatuation isn’t there all of the time.

And you want to think about, you know, connecting to that current version of your partner and yourself in that relationship, not the one from 10 years ago or 15 years ago. You would never want to be living in the past, right? Thinking about like I have to constantly reconnect to what it was like to be in a brand new relationship and constantly chasing that feeling and that high and that excitement of it all.

You’re also going to address whatever real concerns are happening right now in real time. So you’re not just going to see where you are now and be great with it. There will be things that come up that you’re like, oh, I want like this part could be better. I want to put some work in here or some energy in over here. I want to connect to this new version of us in this relationship.

Now I want you to think about what this looks like as a coach. Right? So in the beginning, as a coach, so exciting, like I said, right? You want to tell everybody, you can’t stop talking about it. You can’t stop possibly even coaching people without consent, everyone around you. Most of us know what that’s like. I’ve definitely talked about that on the podcast before.

And there’s just this high, right? And you talk about your transformation and so much of your selling becomes kind of modeling that transformation and showing people like what that transformation looks like and how you did it and what’s different and what has changed. And just all of it and it all feels so exciting.

And that energy kind of has you writing that high and being able to just show up and talk all the time about what you do. But over time, that isn’t sustainable, just like a romantic relationship. So what has to happen is you have to start redefining your business now, what you want from your business now, how you show up for your business now, the energy you want to be in now when you are creating maybe content or talking to potential clients or talking to your clients.

And you have to start seeing your business, just like the relationship, through those more mature, what I would call like expert eyes, not the brand new, oh my gosh, I’m in love with everything about this version, but the I know what I’m doing, I know how to talk about this work. That’s the version you want to tap into. And you want to connect to your current business, to your current self, and to your current clients, not the version that you were that your business was when you started and it all felt so exciting.

And of course, just like the relationship, you want to address any real concerns, right? You do want to say like, what is my next area of growth, but not in a way that it’s constant and that you’re relying on that living in the transformation or that transformation energy in order to sustain your drive to run your business or to show up to create content or to, you know, write your sales page copy or write emails or any of the things that you’re doing in your coaching practice.

So here’s the trap that I see so many of my clients who’ve been doing this for a while fall into is that they’re kind of chasing those shifts in their personal energy as signals to is this working? Is my content performing? Is this a sign to overhaul my business? Do I need to blow it up and make a bunch of changes?

But something to consider is that early on in your business, just like I said, you often sell and show up from that own, from your own transformation energy. But over time, that, just like the infatuation phase of a relationship, that isn’t sustainable. So over time, you have to expand beyond your own lived experience. You have to start seeing that your clients and the people that are paying attention, they have different lived experiences.

They have different beliefs, they have different wants, they have different drives. Like they’re just different humans than you. And there’s a skill here that has to happen, which is shifting from being in that just heightened energy transformation state into the more expert, let me spend more time thinking about my clients and what they are actually experiencing or my potential clients, and what they are actually experiencing, and talk about that more often than I’m talking about what’s going on for me.

Now of course, you can always do both, but especially if you are a person or a coach who relies heavily on being in that energy of your own transformation, it can feel a little confusing or discombobulating, thinking like it’s not working anymore. I can’t like connect to that version of myself anymore.

But I think what’s actually happening is there’s a maturing that’s happening that’s actually not a problem at all. It just feels maybe awkward or you’re just not fully grown into it yet where you don’t rely on or you can’t rely on that heightened energy state all the time because again, just like relationships, you can’t stay there. You can’t live there in that space all the time. So you have to develop the skill of showing up and talking about what you do when you’re not feeling that way.

And I know this can be a hard skill for some people to learn or to believe like, oh right, this is what I need to do. But trust me, when you’re there, it actually feels so much better because you don’t have to rely on that energy to sell coaching, to show up in the world, to create content. You can do it any time because you can always tap into the expertise of what it is you do.

So, if this is you, if you’ve been feeling this way, first, do not blow up your business and make a bunch of changes and chase this feeling. Do not change your niche so that it aligns with something that you are personally working on so that you can sell from that transformation. Do not constantly be putting yourself in this state of chasing the next thing and chasing the next thing because that’s the only way you know how to sell. I want you to lean into, or first maybe take a deep breath and tell yourself, it’s okay. This is just a new skill to learn. This is just problem-solving.

And then lean into, you are an expert. You’ve been doing this for a while. And start to think about your business that way. How do you show up in your full expertise instead of showing up as the person in the middle of a transformation? I give you permission to stop chasing those butterflies as fuel because just like in a relationship, that’s exhausting or it will have you going from relationship to relationship to find the new butterflies, right?

Which is what some of you are doing in your business when you’re changing things, changing your niche, changing, you know, the platform you’re on, changing the things. And of course, sometimes there are real reasons to make those changes, but the first step is just being honest with yourself and kind of knowing what phase of this are you in right now. And is part of it just a discomfort of needing to make this shift from transformation to expertise?

And one of the things that I have been noticing in my most recent round of Reimagine is that my Reimagine mastermind isn’t necessarily about everyone reimagining all the things in their business. It’s really reimagining together how we think about business, how we want to show up for our businesses now, and reimagining our relationships with our businesses and what our goals are now and how we create them in a way that is enjoyable for us.

And yes, sometimes that means hitting these huge goals and having transformations. And sometimes that means really leaning into the work of learning to talk to your potential clients as an expert instead of someone in the middle of a transformation.

So, if that’s something, if that’s work you know you need to do, consider joining us. I will be launching a new round soon if you’re listening in real time. We will put a link in the show notes for the waitlist opt-in.

And you should join us if you know this is work you need to do or if you have been feeling this pull to, you know, like really reconnect to some huge transformation and go chase all of the butterflies in your relationship with your business. But really maybe the work is leaning a bit more into being an expert.

All right. Hopefully, this was helpful, especially for those of you that have been experiencing this right now in real time. Let me know. Let me know if it was helpful. Find me on Instagram @lindsaydotzlaf. Tell me your thoughts. Otherwise, I look forward to being here with 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.