Hey, coach. This is Lindsay Dotzlaf, and you are listening to Mastering Coaching Skills episode 301, and this is called The Unfinished Series. What does that mean? You’ll find out in a few minutes.

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.

But first, welcome, and I want to tell you a quick story. So, a few months ago, I did something I almost never do. I listened to my own podcast back. I don’t even remember why. I think maybe I had done a client interview or an interview with another coach, and for some reason, I was going to listen to the replay to the episode, and I was listening for something specific. But when the episode started, and some of you have already heard this, I heard my intro. It started playing, and I listened to the words I was saying.

And I was sitting at my desk, listening to the words, and I got full body chills, not in a good way, specifically when I heard myself say out loud, “If you really want to compete in the coaching industry,” Does that sound familiar? You probably just listened to this about 90 seconds ago in my intro. But that word, compete, I do not build a business around competing. If you’re in my world, you know this. I don’t think that’s what any of this is all about. There’s no need to compete.

The work I do right now with clients, I think of it as I help them build coaching practices that only they can build. What about that is competition? Nothing, right? And community is one of my highest values in all of my programs. So, the word compete, it just felt so jarring. It really almost felt like someone slammed me up against the wall and said, “Hey, pay attention to this.”

Now, the version of me who wrote that intro, she thought she knew what she was doing at the time. I wasn’t writing something that I didn’t believe or that I hadn’t learned. But over the years, over 300 episodes, those words have just stopped being true. And unfortunately, I don’t know where you all have been, but none of you sent me a notice and said, “Hey, like knock knock, change your intro.” I mean, let’s be clear, it’s not your job, but had you done it, I would have been like, “Oh yeah, thanks.”

I’m even guessing some of you, especially if you work with me, when you hear me say that intro, there might be something you hear that’s like, I don’t know, that’s not quite right. It feels a little off brand. And if not, that’s okay. But you’re going to know what I mean over this episode.

So first, hello, coach. If you’re new here, I am Lindsay. I work with coaches. As I just said, I help them build practices. I help you build a practice that only you can build. And that means so many things. But what I want you to know right now is that you’re going to notice something is changing around here. I teased it a few months ago, and then, if I’m honest, I just didn’t have the time. I had lots of changes happening, a new offer, learning to sell it, all the things, wanting to give my clients my full attention.

But there is a new podcast coming, a new name, new branding, new artwork. And what hopefully you will hear is that I’m leaning so much more into the work I really do now that aligns with my values and where I dive in so much more to what I really care about.

But just to put you at ease, just so you know, it’ll be in this same feed in the same place. So there’s nothing you need to do. You don’t need to go resubscribe anywhere. But this is just the first of 10 episodes that will kind of feel like a simultaneous off ramp and on ramp into what’s next. And I’ve decided to call these 10 episodes Unfinished. So it will say Unfinished at the, if you see the episode artwork, that will be the title, or if you’re in the podcast feed, that will be at the beginning of the title.

And here’s why. And I have a hard time naming everything. You may know this about me by now. And so I was going back and forth. I was talking to Chat, actually to Claude about it, and Claude is actually really terrible at naming things. I think all AI is pretty bad at naming things. But he mentioned something about Unfinished and I said, “Wait, stop.” That feels so true, so sexy, and I had to explore why. And this is why. This is what called to me about that word. Because this is not just an end of one chapter and a beginning of a next chapter. This is work that truly feels never finished.

And so many of my clients say consistently to me words that often let me know they think there’s some sort of finish line. There’s some version of once I get there, it will all be clear. And there means some version of fill this in for yourself, but some version of, you know, over there where the messaging is dialed in, where all my offers just make perfect sense and everybody understands them, where I stop second guessing myself, I stop feeling insecure, I never fail anymore. I just kind of overall know what’s going on all the time and it just feels like easy, like easy breezy.

And I’m sad this isn’t a video because I just did like a hair flip on both sides as I said that because that’s kind of the attitude, like there’s some there, and I’m going to get there. It’s all I’m working towards. And once I get there, everything will just be easy.

Unfortunately and fortunately, here’s what I’m here to tell you. 10 years in, there’s no there. I promise. I know you’ve heard this a million times. And I remember hearing this and thinking like, well, I know, but there is like a easier than where I am now. So I get it. Like you don’t have to believe me right now. Just stick with me and I’ll just keep showing you. But there really is no there. There’s no magical land that you arrive at that’s like, “Hey, everything’s easier now.”

And so unfinished stood out to me as a word that I had to use for this series, and honestly, which I’m just making the name of the entire series because it’s all unfinished, and it will always be unfinished. Even when I decide I’m no longer a coach, I’m guessing because of the way my brain works, this work will still somehow feel unfinished to me, as in I will keep doing it in my life in some form. Plus, when you think about the nature of online business in general, I have a feeling that it’s going to be a major evolution for the next however many years we have left.

So, why am I doing this now? First, I’ve given you a bit of a hint, right? I have evolved. Things have evolved. But there are also a few exciting things happening all at once. As you already know, I’ve recorded 300 podcast episodes. Are you kidding me? When I started this podcast, never in a gazillion years would I have bet on being able to consistently show up and deliver 300 episodes every single week. That is crazy. If you are listening and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I could never,” just know that was my thought too. But here I am and that’s a huge celebration.

The next thing is, I have been in business for 10 years. Now, the exact date depends on what we’re looking at, like when I actually filed and made my business legal, the first time I sold something, when I very first started talking about it. That’s all a little murky, but I do know we are right in between all of those things right now. And I think when I officially kind of like filed for my business to be legal, that will be 10 years this fall. So that is coming up. And I just crossed a million downloads on this podcast. What? That’s also crazy.

So this feels like the perfect time, the perfect culmination of all of the celebrations to take a pause and say, “Hey, I’ve changed. Let’s make sure that this work that I’m putting out into the world is a great symbol of where I am now and where I have kind of landed when it comes to the work that I do.”

And just so you know, if you’re a new coach, another example of unfinished is the feeling you might be having, which is like, “Someday I’m just going to fully understand what I do.” So just watch this. Just use this as an example of nope, you never quite land. It just always keeps evolving and growing with you because you’re human and you grow and that’s just part of who we are, okay?

So, what I’m about to do is give you kind of a brief summary of my business and the major turns I’ve taken over the last 10 years. And don’t worry, this is not self-indulgent. This isn’t like, here’s where I was and here’s where I am. I will be doing a little bit of that, but I have lessons for you in all of them. And as this is the first episode of 10, this is kind of setting the stage for everything that’s about to come.

Although there have been so many shifts over the 10 years of my business, I’ve broken these into what I will call three chapters, into three main shifts that I’ve made. So, chapter one, I’m going to tell you about when I was first a coach.

First of all, I was a general life coach. I actually had no idea I was supposed to have a niche. Like nobody told me. Also it was 10 years ago, so there weren’t 20 social media platforms with one gazillion experts shouting at me, telling me the way to do things. I was just kind of figuring it out on my own. I had hired a coach, I had worked with her for a year. It completely changed my life. I also had a background in psychology and I’d worked in a psychology lab. I’d also sat in on a bunch of therapy sessions as I was working towards a degree, and it just felt like, how did I not know about this? And oh my goodness, I’m so glad I found it.

Honestly, that was my intro into coaching and then even deciding I wanted to be a coach. I am naturally a super curious human. I love learning all the things about all of you, about all the other humans, and it just felt like, where has this been all of my life? Not only in my own transformation and the execution of me hiring a coach and transforming who I was, but also in finding this path, which I just didn’t know was an option.

But once I did, of course, I started talking about what I did. I had no idea I was supposed to have a niche. I hadn’t been through any official trainings at that time. I just knew this is something I could do. I started consuming every piece of free content, which at the time, honestly, not great, right? Like Tony Robbins, I don’t know, mostly guys, he’s the main one I remember. And just learning and consuming what it’s like to be a coach. Like what does that sound like? What does that look like?

And so when I started my business, I didn’t know I was supposed to have a niche, so I just started coaching everyone on everything, and I loved it so much. And I did this for years. So I started my business at the end of 2015 into 2016. Again, I don’t know, I have some controversy around the actual date.

But over time, what I realized, as I started being in other spaces with other coaches, and then eventually signing up for coach trainings and coach certifications and just learning as much as I could, is that, “Oh, I’m doing something different than most of what I see happening.” I am really good at attuning my style and my methods to each client that’s in front of me, instead of thinking there’s a formula that I should be following and kind of running everybody through the exact same thing. I noticed it and I clocked it and just kind of put it on the shelf for a minute, like, “Okay, I wonder what I’ll do with this.”

And then over time, as I was in spaces with more and more coaches, and I noticed them just feeling so consumed with, “What’s the right way to coach?” I felt so pulled into this niche that you know me for, which is also how this podcast came about, which was really leaning into coaching skills and helping coaches understand what they’re doing, being great at what they’re doing and helping them form kind of their own style.

This kind of felt like the first time I didn’t really decide my niche. I just noticed it and it just kind of pulled me in. Literally like it kind of grabbed a hold of my arm and it just kept coaxing me like, “Come on, this is where you’re supposed to be.” And then I just kept getting signs like, “Yep, this is the right path.” Plus, I was just in proximity to a lot of coaches. And then I was being hired by many coaches. And I just kept noticing. I just kept finding all these clues.

And what I would say about that at this point that I still teach is that you do not have to just decide a niche from the very beginning of deciding you’re a coach. And actually, I think it can be quite detrimental when coaches decide a niche because it’s really just what they think they’re supposed to do instead of feeling very connected and pulled by here’s what I want to be talking about all the time.

Here’s what I want to be helping people with, and I can’t stop thinking about it, which is exactly how I felt. And at the time, I had already worked with quite a few clients. I had quite a successful business. And so I had built my business coaching everyone, literally, on everything. You name it, I’ve probably coached on it besides a few things that I’ve been pretty clear always about like, “I just don’t coach on this.”

And I’m so glad that that was my intro into coaching. I’m so glad that I didn’t hear out of the gate, “You have to have a perfect niche. You have to know exactly what you’re doing,” because that would have been so, so hard for me. Now, side note, if you’re listening and you are a general life coach, notice the way I’m talking about it, which is I still felt very, very clear about what I was doing. I wasn’t confused. I wasn’t like floating around always thinking I should have a niche but not having one. I just owned that I didn’t and I made it work, which I think is a totally viable thing to do even today.

I have noticed over the years with myself and with so many of my clients that when you aren’t just logically deciding a niche, but when you feel the niche truly pulling you in, that is when it works the best. If you think back to a couple weeks ago with my client, Jo, where she was talking about being a coach for classical musicians, you could hear the passion. You could hear the like, “I saw this need and I saw that not many people were filling it. And I decided, okay, here you go. Like, this is your chance. You better do it. Like this is your job. Let’s go.” Of course, she didn’t say those words, but her message was similar to that.

Think about how different that is than when you’re sitting alone with Claude or with a Google doc or with your notes app or talking to your sister or whoever, trying to think your way into the right niche, trying to decide like which one is just going to pay me money? Which one is going to work? Which one just makes sense for the people that are surrounding me right now? That is a very different exercise. And what you’ll hear over the next couple chapters is that my niche has always chosen me every time, even when sometimes I have some resistance to it.

But being chosen means you have to be in the room. You have to be in the arena. You have to be surrounding yourself doing the work, saying yes. I always joke that looking back, I’m like, “I literally just said yes to everything. I think that was my original business plan.” I was invited to do something. It was a yes. A coach offered like, “Hey, you should do this training or do this thing.” I said yes and I figured it out. I just was willing to put myself in rooms where someone was asking me to help with something, to say yes, and to figure it out as I went. Also knowing I like to be really good at things and having a general understanding that I wasn’t going to deliver anything like half-assed. Like I was going to make it happen in a powerful way.

Now let’s transition to chapter two, which is me discovering what I was and also really resisting what I knew I wasn’t. So as you heard me mention a second ago, what I kept seeing was coaches convinced that coaching was a specific formula that they had to learn and they had to get right. Listen, I love math. I love a formula. If you’re a client, you have maybe seen me do math that you’re like, “Wait, how do you just know that?” I truly, I love math. My brain loves math. It’s so logical. It always makes sense. And also, when I was watching coaches do this and struggle with this, I just knew like, “This is not my path and it’s not what I’m here to help people with.”

So, while 2016 to 2019 was me being a general life coach, coaching everyone on everything, 2019 is where I took a real turn. I started this podcast, and I decided I was going all in on helping coaches be amazing at what they do. It’s also the year that I built The Coach Lab, which was a lifetime access program that I ran for years. Shout out if you were in it. And it was built entirely based on helping coaches with their coaching skills. I also had a mastermind at the time.

And I also had a very firm line, which if you rewind this podcast, I’m laughing just thinking about it, I’m sure that you can hear episodes where I very clearly say, “I am absolutely not a business coach.” I just knew that is not my thing. I am not a business coach. What I know now that I didn’t know then is at the time, which I haven’t done this for years, but at the time, I was mentoring inside a business coaching program, and I was delivering or coaching on a formula that I didn’t create. It wasn’t mine. So I knew what it felt like to teach someone else’s system, and it wasn’t a bad system. It just, if I were to be a business coach, it is not the formula I would teach.

And although I had quite a bit of business experience, even outside of coaching at the time, I just knew that 100%, I was not a business coach. That’s not where my skills lied. So I kind of built a wall around it or drew a line in the sand where it was very clear in my mind, like, “I am this and I’m definitely not this.”

But here’s what I didn’t catch is those years were actually really beneficial for me because I over the couple years was constantly noticing, here’s what I agree with, here’s what I don’t agree with. Here’s what I agree with, here’s what I do instead. And not saying it on the outside, just kind of taking a mental note. At the same time, I was pushing away from, “And this is not what I do.”

And that is the time when this podcast came about and probably where that compete language came from. It’s funny because I hear it now and it feels so foreign that I can’t even say like, “Here’s exactly what I was thinking when I recorded that,” because I don’t know. But I do know it did feel like me at the time. And here’s what I hope you take from this chapter is that whatever you’re building right now, whatever season you are in in your business, it will evolve. It will change. And that is exactly what is supposed to happen. I hope for you, truly, that at some point, you look back, you hear yourself say something from two years ago, four years ago, six years ago, that makes you kind of cringe, that makes you think like, “Ew, can’t believe I said that.”

And here’s why. Because you’re always growing. You are always evolving. And that’s what makes this whole thing amazing. One of the things you will hear me talk about in one of these 10 episodes is some things I regret, some things I wish I could redo, even some things people have said about me on Reddit, and I am going to fully own them and say, “Yeah, they didn’t know any better at the time because that probably is what I was saying or at least at the very least, I wasn’t correcting them. I wasn’t giving them proof that it wasn’t true.”

And what I know now is that I can look back at those things and learn from them and say, “Of course, I said that. And here’s where I’ve grown. Here’s where I’ve changed.” Hopefully, everybody listening would expect that from me and expect it from yourself. Again, you want to look back two years ago in your business and say, “Wow, I have changed.” That is a really great sign.

And you will find this to be true about all pieces of your business, your website, your welcome sequence, your bio, your podcast intro, whatever it is for you, I promise you, at some point in the future, even your photos, your business photos, you’re going to look back and think, “Who even was that person? How did I write that? How did I create that?” Just know that is never a bad thing. That’s great. All of that was written by a version of you that just doesn’t exist anymore. You are growing. I am growing. I am still learning. This is one more reason this whole series is called Unfinished. So whatever that is for you right now, whatever version of yourself you are thinking back to and flinching, I’m just here to say it’s okay. And not only is it okay, it means you’re doing it right.

So, chapter three. Here’s what started happening. So at this point in my journey, and I’m going to say this is around 2022, I am working with hundreds of coaches a week inside The Coach Lab. And what I started noticing is that they were consistently starting to ask me for more and more business coaching, specifically because they knew my take would be different than what they were getting everywhere else. I would say this space isn’t for that, and they would say, not in these exact words, they would say some form of like, “Right, but we want to hear it anyway.”

And here’s what I would do for a while. I would send them somewhere else to go find a formula, which is the exact thing they came to me to avoid. So they were in my world, learning how to develop their own voice as a coach. But when it came to business, I was saying like, “I don’t know, don’t look at me. Go look somewhere else.” And so, I just noticed that wall that I had kind of built, it wasn’t protecting my work anymore. It really was starting to feel like it was failing the people that I had built it for. And clients first has always been my motto. It is the thing I care about the most. And that wall kind of became a direct violation of it.

So, I started giving some business advice. I started coaching them here and there on their business a little at a time because I could just couldn’t deny it at that point. Now, was I feeling a little confused? Yes. Did it feel like something I wasn’t supposed to be doing? Absolutely. But I just noticed my clients kind of leaning in. I noticed some of you, some of the listeners leaning in. You started to ask me different questions. Now, not everyone, some people really didn’t like it. I had a feedback form. I got some negative feedback from a few people, but a few out of hundreds felt okay to me. It showed me I was on the right track. People want to hear this.

And once again, it felt like my niche was pulling me. I always say, not always, actually, not anymore. I used to say I was a reluctant business coach. Like people had to pull me kicking and screaming into coaching them on their business. But the other thing that happened at the time is for a while, I had no longer been mentoring in someone else’s business program. So that kind of language and thinking kind of started to fall away.

And I started to really develop my own business voice. It was already there, but it was like I started to peel off the layers of what I would consider like borrowed clothes that I’d been just kind of putting on. Like my style was still underneath, but I was just like, “Oh, I’m cold. I’ll borrow this sweater. Oh, this thing. I’ll borrow your shoes.” Right? Kind of like playing a part.

And as those started to peel off, I really noticed, “Oh, my take on this actually is different. My voice is different. I do see what they’re saying.” And people just kept kind of leaning in more and more. So, at first, I was very reluctant, but then, of course, just like all the other major shifts I’ve had, when I started to notice like, “Oh, this is actually unique,” I gave myself full permission to lean in myself and to do it.

So over the last few years, the muscle I have been developing the most, or maybe the belief I have been operating from the most, is that I think business goals are amazing. Making a lot of money, as much money as you want, doing whatever you want, also amazing. But running a business that you truly in your soul enjoy running, that fits with the life you want to have, is the thing that determines whether this is working for you or not. So you will never hear me say, “Scale at all costs or make all the money or sell more, sell more, sell more or sell your soul to the marketing gods or any of those things.” Or you’ll also never hear me say, “I have the one perfect formula,” because guess what? I don’t. I am in this with you.

But this is where I have landed for now, is that I help coaches or at least mostly coaches, I know a few of you aren’t coaches, shout out. I’m so glad you’re here. I help you build the business that only you can build, the one that only you would love running, the one that works only for the way you work, for the way your brain works, for the way your body works. I help you build the business that keeps you enjoying your life and not putting it on hold to enjoy when you finally have reached some magical summit of the business mountain that says, “Now you can enjoy the view.”

I want you to enjoy the view the whole way. It doesn’t mean there won’t be hard parts. There will absolutely be hard parts. I promise. There’s no escaping them. But we are all human. We do not build businesses in vacuums. We build them alongside everything we also have going on. Families we have to take care of, friends that we enjoy visiting, walks that need to be taken, bodies that need to be taken care of, vacations that no one’s going to take but you, right? Destinations that are just calling to you. Okay, maybe I’m talking to myself now, but you get the point.

Here’s what I want you to take from this last chapter. Not the last chapter, let me reframe that. The last chapter for now, the last chapter of this podcast episode. If you listen, the clients you’re working with will always tell you what your work is before you’re ready to hear it. It’s true, and you can’t force it. You can’t force your way there. If you listen and if you’re patient, your work will pull you in the direction that inevitably feels the most aligned and that is meant for only you.

And when something or anything that you build stops fitting, it may not actually be because it’s broken. It may not be because you need to quit or give up. There’s a chance that something about it just doesn’t fit who you are, and a slight shift could correct that. A slight listening to the what people are telling you, what your clients are telling you, what the world is asking of from you, and what your heart, honestly, it sounds so cheesy, but what your heart is saying, that’s how you know your work.

And I want to be very clear, this is very different than a voice of fear that tells you that you’re confused, that you shouldn’t keep going, that nobody wants what you’re offering. These are very different things. And I really hope you can start to notice the difference. Mostly you’ll notice it by the way your body feels. It is always the signal, even for those of you that are maybe not great at noticing such things.

So here’s the irony of all of this to me and a bit of the direction where I’m headed. I started this whole thing by coaching whole, complete humans on anything that they brought. And then, over time, I noticed a need, and so I started to really narrow to a very specific skill set, which is how I got here, which may be why even you’re listening to me. Those humans happened to be coaches, and I started helping them or you with your coaching skills.

And now, even though I still work with coaches, in this point of my evolution, I feel like I’ve gone so much closer back to the beginning except with so many more skills and thousands and thousands and probably tens of thousands of hours of coaching under my belt. I still work with coaches, but I’m helping them look at the entire process, the entire ecosystem of their business and how it balances with their life.

And it’s so funny to me to think that throughout these turns, the work kept choosing me and my process looked a little bit like I saw something, I tried to avoid it, then I noticed it a little more and I resisted it. I pulled away, and then it pulled me in anyway. And then I put my head down and went all in. And just so you know, that’s the point of the journey you find me in right now where I am head down, going in all the way. That’s what this podcast change is a symbol of.

If the work keeps choosing you, it can never be wrong. If it feels right to you, if you just know, even though you have no proof it will work. If you know that’s the destination because it’s calling you, you can’t go wrong. And here’s a moment of vulnerability is that every one of these turns has felt like something that I had to follow. But every shift, it’s always come with a few seconds, metaphorical seconds, or whatever symbolic seconds, which felt like way longer than seconds of, “Oh shit, what am I even doing? Is this going to work?” And then, like I said earlier, put my head down and I get to work because I just know it’s the path. I’m going to figure it out. There’s no other option.

In the beginning, it did feel a lot more like I was throwing spaghetti at the wall, right? Just kind of throwing all the spaghetti. Every move I’ve made has not been calculated, but it has gotten more clear and more calculated as I’ve gone. And by that, what I mean is I’ve gotten more clear about my values and my voice and I just keep following that. What feels different this time is I’m more clear than I’ve ever been. So in some ways, this is a lot less scary. This pivot feels like, “Ah, I’ve done it before. It’ll be great.” But there’s also feels like there’s a lot more on the line. So in some ways, it also feels a little more scary.

And here’s what I haven’t figured out. Sometimes I still believe that selling with a specific formula is a lot easier, especially with a lot of people in my world. I know right now that if I offered all of you the magic wand that I could promise you would work no matter what, you would take it. You would take me up on it. You would buy it if I could prove that it would work.

But instead, because I know that it is my path, I’m choosing a different way and I can’t wait to show you what that way looks like because I know so many of you that are still here, that are still following along, that are still listening, that this is the type of work you do too. You don’t necessarily hand all of your clients the exact same magic wand or magic formula that just works for all of them.

Now, you might have some formulas and you might feel pretty confident in them and or you might just be super clear, here’s my formula. It’s not for everyone, but who it is for, come along. But I just know my work in this industry is to go against the grain, to go against conventional wisdom, to cover a lot more ground for you and open myself up to helping you in so many areas in your coaching practice rather than continuing to narrow and narrow and narrow.

So over these next 10 weeks, some of you might decide this isn’t for you. I hope not. I hope you’ll stick around, but some of you may drop off the feed. Some of you may unsubscribe from my emails. And that, of course, that’s scary. This is my livelihood. I’m human. I have feelings. And unfortunately there’s no escaping those. But here is what I do know. I do know this works. It is working with my clients. I’ve done this enough times to know it works in the end. What I don’t know yet is exactly what all of it will look like. But I do know I’m on to something, and I also know I’m having the most fun in my business that I have in years. And it is my goal to help all of you do that as well.

What I also want to say is I’m so grateful for so many of you. A lot of you have been here through all of this. A lot of you have been here since the very beginning, since I started this podcast, and I’m so glad you’re still here. You know who you are. Some of you have even been in my inbox since 2019, keeping me company, giving me praise, telling me what resonates, and sometimes what doesn’t. And I sometimes pinch myself, like I literally can’t believe that I get to talk into a microphone every week and that anyone, even like five people, want to keep hearing my voice and hearing what I have to say. That’s kind of crazy.

If you’ve been around a while, you also know there have been a small number of people that have very vocally let me know that they hate my voice, that they would rather never hear me again. Why they took the time to email me these things, I don’t know. Like you can just not listen, right? I share this just to normalize it, just to let you know sometimes these things happen and that’s okay. But I just feel so much gratitude for those of you that have stuck around and those of you that are brand new and are thinking like, “Wait, this sounds a little different than a lot of what I’ve heard. Let me check this out.” If that’s you, welcome. I promise you, you’re in for a treat. I’m not going to disappoint.

So here is specifically what’s coming. This is the first of 10 episodes. Some of the episodes will be specific lessons that I have learned over my last 10 years or 300 episodes that will definitely add some value to what you are doing as a coach.

Some of them will be discussing my most popular episodes or my most unpopular episodes or the ones that I look back and wish, oof, one in particular, I wish I could delete that one. Now, I know I can. I’ve left it, but just a little teaser, that’s coming up. You’re going to hear what it is and what I would say now. I’m actually really excited for that one. I can’t wait to record it. There will also be a couple very special conversations that I’m having with specific people for very specific reasons that I don’t want to tell you now because then you might know who they are.

But every episode is going to be a very specific value deliver for you and let you in on a little behind the scenes, some jokes that you may not know about yet, and some really, really fun surprises that I’m not announcing yet, but I will be announcing over the 10 weeks. So, if you’re here, if you’re listening, here is one request I have from you, and I’m serious. Like I want you to stop and do it right now. In the show notes, I’m going to put a link or you can DM me on Instagram. I’ll talk about that in a second.

I’m going to put a link where you can ask me any question that you have. It can be personal, it can be about my business, it can be about coaching, it can be about your business, it can be about why I’ve made certain decisions. I’m talking like no holds barred, like ask me anything. I’m pretty much an open book. Unless it’s completely inappropriate, I can’t imagine not answering it because this is my age of transparency. I’ve been talking about this a lot.

So, click the link, ask me the questions. If you don’t want to click the link, or if you’re driving and you’re like, “I can’t do it right now, Lindsay,” then later, go to my Instagram, just @LindsayDotzlaf and send me a DM and say, “Here are my questions.” And I promise you, I will answer them. It could be a three hour episode for all I know. I will answer every single question that comes in and I will answer it very honestly. That will be one of the last of the 10 episodes to kind of wrap it all up, but not the last because there’s going to be something exciting happening then.

So, here are your assignments. Send me questions, stay tuned for exciting announcements that are coming. Stay tuned to hear what the new podcast actually is, and just know I’m so excited about all of this. And also know you’re going to hear that really annoying intro where I say whatever I say about competing in the coaching industry. You’re going to hear it for the rest of these episodes because when the new podcast starts, it will be totally redone. It will have a new intro. You won’t hear it anymore, but now there’s something kind of funny or kind of ironic about just leaving it and letting it not match what I’m talking to you about. All right?

This is the season of leaning in. Let’s do it. Let’s all be more ourselves. This is how we connect with the other humans. It’s how we have amazing businesses. It’s how we make money. I’ll die on that hill. And last but not least, I’m 10 years in, and I’m nowhere near done. My work is completely unfinished, and I know that yours is too. I cannot wait to see you back here next week. Bye, coach.

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.