Ep #237: 3 Steps to Reimagine Your Business

Hey, this is Lindsay Dotzlaf and you are listening to Mastering Coaching Skills episode 237.

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. I have something; I have some big announcements today. This is going to be a power-packed episode. So I hope you are ready. I’m going to talk about several different things today, which all, of course, play well together. Everything will be kind of around a central theme, but I’m going to address the theme from a few different ways. So the first thing is, I have some really big news. And you might be… but I’m very excited, and hopefully, you’re going to be excited. But it might feel, when I deliver the news, it might feel like a little bit of a letdown just in this moment because I don’t have all the details for you, but I maybe have something even better. Okay?

So the big news is, there are a bunch of changes coming in my business, to this podcast, just lots of changes that are, that feel very, very exciting to me. And I am hoping that they will also feel very exciting to you. I’m not going to tell you what they all are in this moment. I haven’t actually even made all the decisions, but there is a reason that I’m telling you about this today. Actually, there are two reasons.

First reason is, because I know some of you may not love change, and you may, your first thought might be, “Oh no, I’m not going to like it.” And that’s okay. I get that. I don’t really get it. My brain is totally opposite. I love new things, for the most part. Love novelty. I always get excited by it. But it’s okay if you’re not like that. And if you’re like, “No, this is my comfort podcast.” That’s okay. I promise you, whatever is taking its place will still be equally as, hopefully, bring you whatever you feel when you listen to this podcast. That shouldn’t change.

And I’m just letting you in so that you kind of know what’s coming. You can start preparing yourself. I don’t have an exact timeline at this point, but you will see some of it rolling out. And if you are not on my email list, now is the time to be there. So if you usually are just a regular listener and, you know, you’ve never joined the list, you’ve never considered working with me, whatever, even if you’re like, “I’m not really in the market to hire a coach right now.” That’s okay. You still want to be on the email list so that you can be the first one to hear about all the shifts happening and watch them unfold in real time, if you want to. Okay, so we’ll put a link for that. No fluffy stuff, whatever, just a link where you can join the list, if that’s what you would love to do.

And it’s not just my podcast. There are some really big and fun business changes coming, which again, if you’re my clients, especially, and you’re hearing this, you might be thinking, “Oh no.” But don’t worry, I’ve got you, right? I’ve always got you. I will take care of you. Nothing to be alarmed about. If anything, if you love working with me, if you work with me currently, any changes that are coming are only going to enhance the experience that you have working with me.

So, there’s that. I kind of feel like a cat with a mouse. I’m like, like so, I feel so excited and wish that I could let you in on all of it. But not today. But that day will be coming, be coming very soon.

So, in the vein of all of that, the other thing we’re doing right now is opening up the applications for my Reimagine Mastermind. So you may have heard me talk about this in the past on the podcast. I ran it for the first time about 7 months ago is when we started. So it’s actually still running. And we have a couple of months left. We’re finishing up, we’ll finish up this summer. And a lot of the changes that I am making, and just an overall business overhaul, are inspired by my Reimagine process. So, I will actually be taking myself through my own process. And even though I already have a lot of the ideas and they’ve already been incubating for quite a while and have become clearer recently, I will be really going through the Reimagine audit process to solidify all the things.

And a very exciting announcement is that I’m going to be doing something this summer that I have never done before. And I really hope that you want to come with me. So I’m going to be hosting something for 3 months called Coach Unfiltered, which is going to be almost like a documentary series of me making all of these changes, making the decisions, getting the coaching I need, getting the support that I need, meeting with experts, making big changes, working through all the fears that come up, which are normal when you do these things. And I’m going to let you in every step of the way. Which is why I can’t tell you all the details about all the changes because I literally haven’t made the decisions yet.

But if you want to join us this summer, it’s going to be something I’ve never done and I am very thrilled to offer this. I had this idea. I love reality TV, which is ridiculous. If you don’t like reality TV right now, you’re totally rolling your eyes. That’s fine. I don’t like all reality TV. For some reason, I only trend towards shows like relationship shows, right? Dating shows, stuff like that. And I watch a lot of them. Now, I don’t watch necessarily, I’m not watching them every day, but if I’m sick, that’s my go-to. I will binge Love is Blind or Love Island or I don’t know, whatever, you name it, I’ve probably seen it.

So I had this crazy idea because I was really thinking I want to do something that’s just different that I’ve never done before and that I’ve never really seen anyone else do before. So my first thought was, it’s like a reality show. But then when I really sat down and started working through like, okay, what is it going to look like? How am I going to be interacting with people and sharing the things? It’s really going to be more like a docuseries where you get to join me in a community for 3 months where you will get to see all of the behind-the-scenes that I can provide.

I will be doing some diary-style videos where I’m telling you what I’m working on or the fears that are coming up or almost confessional style, and also setting goals, like here’s strategically the things that we’re doing. But then you’re also going to see how some members of my team and I work through some of the details. You’re going to see me meeting with some of the people that are going to be helping me along the way, some of the experts that I’ll be working with. You will even get to see some of my coaching, which feels very vulnerable. But listen, I’m all in. It’s going to be all access. You get to see all of it.

And I will also be providing any frameworks, any questions that I’m working through. For example, the specific Reimagine framework that I will be working through. I’ll be taking myself through a full business audit in the beginning. You will get access to that. And I just hope you join us. We will put the link in the show notes. Hopefully, the link will be ready by the time this podcast comes out. But if not, don’t worry, it will definitely be available next week. And it doesn’t cap at any certain point, so it’s not like it will sell out. You can join next week.

But we are doing some kind of special discount for the first 100 people that join. So, I hope that you come along. Come with me. You’ll get to be on the journey with me. You’ll get to ask questions along the way and we’ll be doing actually monthly Q&A. So if you have questions, how to implement some of this into your own business or how I made some of the decisions, that will be for you. You’ll get to come have all of your questions answered. You’ll even have some special interactions with some of the experts that I will be working with.

So we haven’t again figured out every single detail, but I’ve talked to a few of them and they are totally open to doing Q&As in the community, doing maybe some giveaways where you might get a chance to work with them. And overall just seeing the thought process, seeing how I make all the decisions, seeing the real human things, all of them that come up along the way because I think we tend towards in this industry, there’s a lot of, here’s the new product, ta-da, it’s launched, here you go. And you might get some behind the scenes, right? You might get to, I’ve seen some of my amazing colleagues doing it where they get some input on which logo do you like, which brand colors do you like, which, whatever, stuff like that.

This is not that. This is going to be very different, much more intimate. I mean, there will be some of that and you might even get to help me make some decisions. Maybe there’ll be some voting on some things. But for the most part, this is going to be much more intimate, much more step into my world. You’ll get to see all the things, probably see me cry. We’ll see, maybe not. Maybe it’ll all run smoothly. But these big shifts can sometimes bring up things that you just don’t expect.

So, I’m going to leave this here for now and just invite you to come along. We will put any links that we have, we will add them to the show notes. We will also add a link where you can just make sure that you’re on the email list so that you’re seeing all of the updates in real time.

Okay. So, as I said, I will be going through my own Reimagine process. That is going to build up to another round of Reimagine beginning in September, early September. And so it will be me going through the Reimagine process over the summer and then starting a new round of Reimagine in September. And what we are doing is we are opening the doors to that now.

So Reimagine, this round of it, we’ve made a few changes. This round will be 8 months of business mastermind where you get to bring anything that you want to reimagine, anything that you want to change and anything you want to make changes to, anything you want to shift about the way you work, your offers, your marketing, your selling, anything, the way you deliver whatever it is, right? Anything that has to do with your coaching practice and we turn it over, dig into it, see, do an audit, keep what you love, change what you don’t love or what isn’t working or that needs to shift with maybe in ways that the industry is shifting or some things that just aren’t working anymore that used to work that you really need to spend some time rethinking.

That is what Reimagine is all about. I have had the best time coaching my clients in it over the last 7 or so months and I can’t wait for another round. So, we are actually opening the doors to that now. We will definitely put the link to that in the show notes. And what that looks like is a small, smaller, much smaller group of coaches, maybe 15 to 20 max. And it’s an application process because I really like to curate the room, be sure that everyone is a good fit and that everyone will play well together, that everyone, it makes sense that we’re all what everyone is working on and the level of business that they’re in.

So, what I want to talk about today on this podcast is the three steps that I think about when I think about reimagining. And this is something that we will be doing inside the Reimagine Mastermind. It’s also something I will be doing, which I’ve already done parts of it. You’ll see that in a minute. Also something I’ll be doing that I’ve been doing that I’ll be doing in this 3-month Coach Unfiltered over the summer. So, when I think about reimagining, here is what I have really come to see after running this first round of the mastermind, is there’s three steps to reimagining.

And actually, before I tell you the steps, I want to make something clear. You can use this for anything in your business, right? For literally reimagining anything in your business. But you can also use it outside of your business and you can use it with your clients. So I’ll give you some examples of that as well after I explain the steps.

So the first step is the imagine or reimagine step, right? So if you’re creating something totally new that you’ve never done before, it’s not really reimagining, it’s just imagining, right? Stepping into that, what do I want it to look like? Creating that vision. And maybe it’s a vision of something you’re already doing that you want to make changes to. Maybe you have a membership that you want to completely gut and redo. I’ve had people do that in Reimagine.

Maybe you have a behind-the-scenes, the way you work process that just isn’t really working for you, right? That you feel maybe your business has taken over your life and everything feels very overwhelming and complicated. I’ve had people work on that in Reimagine, right? And you want to just completely redo it, believing that you can still create any results that you want to create, but changing it so it just feels it runs smoother, it feels more natural to you. Maybe you want to build something totally new that you haven’t done before. But the first step of it is just figuring out what the vision is and getting as clear as you can about it.

Before I move into the next step, I want you to consider too that these three steps, they might overlap a little bit, right? They’re not totally black and white where it’s just, “Okay, I imagined it, done, cut off, now we’re moving on.” So, the vision can be something that evolves, right? Over time. That is completely normal. And sometimes you might be stuck in the vision space for a while. I have definitely over the last year, I’ve known that some big changes were coming. I could just feel it. It was something that was bubbling up. I call it incubating. That’s what it felt like. It felt I didn’t have a lot of control over it.

And I’ll probably do a completely separate episode just about this piece. But it was just something’s there and I would consistently ask myself questions about it and try to figure it out. I wasn’t ignoring it. It just was asking me for patience, is what it felt like. Right? I just need you to keep going, just calm down, keep doing what you’re doing and it’s going to become clear, which is exactly what happened. So sometimes that reimagining part could take a little bit.

So, that’s the first step, right? Just getting super clear about the vision, about the goals, about what are you putting into the world. You could say that in so many different ways. The second step is implementation. So, after the vision is super clear, next step is you’re going to say, “Okay, how do we bring it to life?” Right? What are the things that I need to put in place in order to make this work? So, it might not actually be doing the thing. So if let’s say you’re creating a new mastermind or something like that, a new group offer.

In the implementation stage, you’re not necessarily going to host the entire offer and complete it, but you’re going to put everything in place that you need to put into place in order to make it happen. Right? Maybe you’re going to get it all on paper, make a sales page, make it really clear what is it, create the container, create any assets you need for it, right? It’s just digging into all the strategy behind it and thinking through, how do I bring this vision? Maybe this is a great way to say it. The implementation is bringing the vision to life, bringing it into reality and letting all the things bubble up that are, “Ooh, I didn’t think about this,” or “How is this part going to work?” or “Now that I’m making it happen. Oh, I have even more ideas.” That’s where the overlap comes in a little bit.

Then the last stage is expansion. So you’re going to imagine or reimagine, then implement, then expand. And in expansion, what that might look like. Again, let’s just use the group offer as an example, is now how do you get it out into the world to all the people that you want to get it to? What would it look like for that idea for you to fully step into it, own it and expand it? Everything else, all the groundwork has been laid out, right? The vision is clear, the assets, maybe whatever those are, are all in place and there’s a plan, there’s a strategy. Now, how do you take all of that and expand it out into the world?

So, if you’re a coach and you’re an entrepreneur and you’re listening along, you probably can relate in some ways to the example that I used, right? But think about how could you use this idea with your clients? You could even teach them this, right? It’s a fun concept, I think, to think about it this way in the three steps. Let’s say you have someone, let’s say you’re a relationship coach and you have someone who wants to have a better relationship with their partner. And one of the main things that they are working on is just feeling closer to them, right?

Maybe they’ve been together for a while and they still love each other and all of that, but they hired you because they just something, they feel something’s missing. They want to feel, how would they say it? They want to feel that spark. They want to feel closer. And so, think about those three phases, right? The imagining phase or reimagining, maybe in this case because they’ve been in this relationship for a while, might look like really painting that picture of what do they want, naming it. What do they want the relationship to look like? How do they want it to feel? How do they want the interactions to be different than they are now? How do they envision it being on the other side? So that would be stage one.

Implementation would be, okay, now I have the vision. Now, how would I bring some of those things to life? What are the things that I can do that I’m in control of that can help create some of those, right? That could be maybe thinking about having a different way to communicate and practicing that over and over, or planning dedicated alone time with your partner, maybe without kids or whatever. Right? And something that’s whatever the strategy is that aligns with the vision.

Maybe it’s planning a special trip every year just for the two of them. Maybe it is, once a month getting a hotel room even close to their house because maybe they have kids and they have a hard time getting away, stepping outside of the family roles. There could be so many different things, right? To me, that’s how I would think about the implementation in that phase. And in this case, in this type of situation, I would think of the implementation also as they’re going to maybe start experimenting with some of that, right? With different ways of communicating, with trying some of the strategies that they have come up with.

And then that last phase expansion, it could be a couple different things actually, depending on what your client wants. That could look like, okay, now how do we take this thing that we’ve created examples of, right? We’ve started implementing it in small ways. And how do we make it even more, right? If one of the goals is feeling closer and they created some strategies and started implementing that and it’s working and they’re like, “Oh, this is great. We do feel so much closer.”

The expansion could be how do we, what’s the long-term plan for that? How do we make sure that keeps happening? Or how do we grow that even more? Or it could be, this is a different angle. It could be how do you expand that outside of that one relationship, right? How do they feel closer to their friends and to their family? How do they create special time with their maybe best friends that they wish they saw more often but don’t. Those things are for you as the coach to help them through, right? To help them figure out what would each of those parts look like. And it’s okay if they don’t have the perfect answer. You can start with just the first step. Right? You don’t have to say, “Okay, here are the three parts. Now let’s imagine what all three of them would be.” I actually wouldn’t do that in most cases.

If you take my business into account, right? I told you I’ve been in the reimagining stage for a while. While I was waiting for some of that to really show me, here’s the clear picture, I couldn’t really step into the implementation phase, right? I couldn’t really say, “Oh, here’s the exact strategy,” because if I didn’t have a clear vision, obviously I wouldn’t know the strategy and I definitely wouldn’t know what the expansion looks like. But now for me, now that the reimagine has happened, now that phase has become clear, now I can step into, okay, how do we implement all of it? Right? Which feels really exciting. And because that’s where I am right now, I don’t know exactly what the expansion phase looks like, right? I have some ideas and I have some notes that I’ve taken.

But until I’ve really decided how to implement it all, I won’t be able to fully address stage three. So although there’s some overlap and maybe even some going back and forth, right? You might get into the implementation phase, realize, “Ooh, I’m not quite clear enough, I’m not quite ready,” and then go back a little bit. I feel I’ve been doing that a little bit over the last year where I’ve had some ideas, we’ve considered implementing them. We get them on paper. I meet with my business manager, we talk about it. And then it’s, “Ooh, it doesn’t feel quite ready. Let’s sit with it.”

And because of where I am in my business, I do have a rule for myself that I just don’t force stuff like that, right? I already have amazing offers. I already have incredible clients and those are always available, so I don’t need to force what’s the next thing. And I actually don’t think that it’s important that there’s always a new next, next, next, next, next thing. Right? Even though businesses are always evolving, always changing over time, I’m never going to force something just to force it, just to have a new thing or a next thing.

All right. I hope this was really helpful. I hope that you can take this concept and apply it into your business, into your coaching, into your work with your clients, into even maybe your own life, right? To think about what is an area of your life that you want to spend a little time reimagining or reinventing right now and how can you use those three phases to get it done. Let me know. I would love to hear from you. You can always email me Lindsay@LindsayDotzlafcoaching.com or find me on Instagram @lindsaydotzlaf. Send me a DM. I read all of them. And otherwise, I will see you next week. Hopefully, you will head to the show notes, go click on all the things, follow along. The next few months are going to be really fun. So I hope you come with me. All right? 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.