11 - The power of one... at a time.

Welcome to the business of executive coaching. I'm Ellie Scarfe, an ex lawyer turned executive coach. Over the last 17 years I've coached in house, I've been an associate coach and I've run executive coaching businesses with teams of coaches around the world. My clients have ranged from global brand names to boutiques, startups and organizations doing good in the world. I now run the Impact Coach Collective, a community of executive coaches who want to level up their business skills and take action in a community of like minded peers. I'm a traveller, a reader, a mum, wife and dog parent and I know firsthand that our stories have a huge impact on our businesses. The executive coaching business is tough and I've learnt all the lessons through plenty of mistakes and also with some great mentors. This podcast is all about growing a thriving executive coaching business. You can build a coaching business that is profitable, sustainable and that supports your personal goals, whatever they are. I'll be sharing tips and ideas translated for your context, as well as stories from the field with brilliant coaches and mentors. If you want to level up your executive coaching business skills, then this is.

The place for you. Hey, it's good to be here. So I'm going to get right into it today. I've been thinking a lot about focus lately and I think generally over the last five years I've been thinking a lot about focus because the truth is I'm not good at it. Naturally. I'm the person who likes to have a few books on the go at once. I like to work on lots of different types of tasks. I find routine difficult. I like to do things different ways. My name is Ellie Scarf and I also have severe Shiny Object syndrome. It's particularly bad when it comes to ideas and business ideas. I have never met an idea that I couldn't imagine working really well in one way or another. And I've always had a story that I've told myself throughout my life that I'm pretty good at lots of things, but I'm not really good at any one thing. Like I'm not. I'm a broad, not deep sort of person and this is a story that I'm working to throw off and, and I'm doing that for a few reasons. So firstly, it's not entirely true, you know. Yes, I have been a generalist in many ways, but actually I've been a coach for over 17 years now and I think I'm pretty, pretty good at that and I've stuck with it and I've done it in different ways. Yes, but, but there's a, there' consistent theme and I think there's a level of expertise that I have developed as a coach. Secondly, I don't think it's a helpful thing to think because when I am telling myself that, you know, I'm, I'm good at lots of things but not really great at anything, then that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. So, so that's not helpful. But, but mostly I'm trying to throw, throw this idea off by proving myself wrong and by reforming myself a little, I'm endeavoring to become someone who can have focus, right, who can have laser focus on my most important priorities. And I'm thinking particularly here in a professional sense, because I know this is important, but gosh, it is hard for me and I know it's hard for some of you as well, but I think we still need to do it. So what do I mean by laser focus? I mean that if we are able to be focused on a small amount of priorities, ideally one, but, but geez, that's hard. We have an exponentially greater chance of achieving them than if we pursue multiple priorities at the same time. It's like when you set New Year's resolutions. If you have one, you're a lot more likely to achieve it than if you are like me and set 20 goals across all of your life domains and then do none of them. So, so this idea of being focused on a small amount of priorities and having a much more, a much greater chance of achieving them really rings true to me and the idea feels right. So I heard a great metaphor for it recently and I absolutely cannot remember where I heard it or who it's from, otherwise I would credit the source. But please know, this is not my metaphor and I have most likely butchered it, but this is how I understand it. So the metaphor is along the lines of being stuck somewhere, I think, on an island. And to get off this island we need to build a bridge to the mainland. So we start construction and we start gaining momentum and we make progress. But along the way we come up with some ideas or we think about other ways that we could have built the bridge. And someone looks at our bridge and tells us some other ways that we should be trying and tells us some different strategies of how we could get to the other island. So we take all that on board and we start working on another five bridges in order to achieve our goal of getting over to the mainland. In fact, what happens is that once we start building our other five bridges, we suddenly slow our progress down and while eventually we get there, it will be more than six times slower than if we had just built the one bridge to get where we're going. So this really, this really rings true to me because we have a choice in many different contexts of choosing to put our energy into the one bridge or, or splitting our energy into the additional five bridges. So six bridges, right? And that is a bit of a fundamental decision that we need to make. Are we going to choose to go slower but do it in a broader way, or do we want great attraction, greater progress earlier by focusing on one priority, the one bridge at first. So how does this apply to coaches and coaching businesses? So one of the challenges of being a business owner, and a coaching business owner particularly, is the sheer amount of balls that we have in the air at any one time. And we can't really afford to drop any of them, can we? We have to pay our bills, we have to keep selling and marketing. We must keep delivering an exceptional service, right? So the actual coaching or facilitation that we're doing. But I do have a few ideas of how coaching business owners can leverage the power of focus. The first one is very simply don't have too many offers that you're selling. So I have done this in the past. I have had coaching offers across multiple levels. I've had multiple facilitated programs, I've had a very bespoke, you know, let me build exactly what you need approach, you name it, I had it in my portfolio of offerings. And while that works in some ways, it really doesn't work in a lot of ways. So my recommendation is have your coaching offer, which may have some levels within it, and have one or two coaching adjacent offers and that's all, and be really focused on those. So your coaching adjacent offer may be a facilitated program or a consulting offer, but the focus comes from making sure that all your offers support each other and depending on your number one priority, making sure that all roads lead to your core offer. So for example, if your coaching offer is your core offer, make sure that those coaching adjacent offers are connecting you with coaching decision makers, users of coaching in organisation, and that the content is very aligned with what you would like to be perceived as an expert in so that you're called in as a coach when opportunities pop up. The second idea for how executive coaching business offers, business owners can leverage the power of focus is to pick a monthly priority. So each quarter you should be reviewing your strategy against the key strategic pillars. So things like, you know, your offers, your sales strategy, your marketing strategy, Your financials, all of those things. So you should be doing that every quarter. And each month you should then have, as a result of your strategic priorities, you should then have a key focus each month. So although you need to keep doing certain activities to keep your business moving, of course your investment of discretionary effort and discretionary work time outside of the must dos should be focused every month. So, for example, one month you may choose to focus on high volume, warm outreach that then in subsequent months will move into a maintenance mode. The next month you might work on your content generation and posting strategy and work on it really intensely for that month. You'll get a lot more traction if you do it that way. Then in the third month of the quarter you might move on to systems, you know, so really getting efficient systems and automation in place. My tip is to try and pick one focus for each month. And when you have any time, that is what you dive into, that is what you work on. The third suggestion I have is to have a daily focus. So just like we have a quarterly strategy and we have a monthly focus, have a daily focus as well. This is going to help you to get a lot more done. So what that might look like is that alongside, you know, of course, any coaching or delivery commitments that you have that you might then say, okay, on Monday I focus on marketing, Tuesday I focus on coaching prep, Wednesday is my learning and development day. Thursday I'm working on systems and task completion, and Fridays for internal admin like finance metrics, etc. What you're doing there is not only are you being focused, you're also removing the decision point where you say, well, what am I going to do in that hour of power that I might have available to me each day? So you are both focused and you're clear, which means a lot less faffing about and procrastination. And for me, that clarity to avoid procrastination is key because I can procrastinate anything if I'm not clear about what my goal is. But give me a goal, give me a target, give me a clear pathway, and I'm like a road train, I'll just get it done. So those are good ideas. But the hardest part of being able to have a singular focus on any time horizon, whether that's daily, weekly, monthly or annually, is, is actually taking the time and thinking through what is truly important. So what is the priority? So a really great book that can help you think through that is essentialism by Greg McHugh. And I recommend giving that a read. I really love listening to it on audiobook, so I would recommend that. But Greg explains really beautifully the power of directing all of our energy in one direction rather than sending our energy in all directions at once. So it's a lot like the five bridges analogy, focusing on one bridge. Focusing on one direction is a lot more powerful and productive than focusing on all of our six bridges and sending out energy here, there and everywhere. He also talks a lot about how to clarify what those priorities are, so I recommend you give it a go. I'd love to hear how you do or don't stay focused. Is this as challenging for you as it is for me? Drop me a note on LinkedIn and tell me your story with this so I know I'm not alone. So this has been quite a radical transformation for me. And you know, I still come across roadblocks to this all the time, so I'd love to know what you do and how you experience this. Now just to wrap up, we are officially less than a month out from opening the doors up again to the Impact Coach Collective, my mentoring and education community for executive coaches who want to grow sustainable and profitable businesses right from the start, and particularly with a focus on selling to corporate clients. So I will be sharing a lot more info in the next few weeks about what we'll be doing in launch week, what's included in the Impact Coach Collective. But I just wanted to let you know that you can register now for my free webinar that I'll be running during my launch week and that is on the eight foundations of a thriving Executive Coaching business. It's very practical and we also work through a self assessment so you can do a bit of triage to identify which of these foundations are most important for you to focus on at, you know, as a, as a first priority, which is very relevant to the topic today.

So I'm going to put the registration.

Link to this in the show notes or do head straight over to elliscarf.com forward/8foundations to register. I really look forward to meeting some of you in the masterclass. And until next week, or until the masterclass, I wanted to say thank you for listening in. Thank you for all of you who have been sending me messages saying that you've been finding the podcast helpful. I am deeply grateful. I really enjoyed this process. So look forward to seeing you next week.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Business of Executive Coaching. If you found it helpful, please share it with a colleague or friend on LinkedIn. And don't forget to tag me so I can say thanks. I would be tremendously grateful also if you would leave a review on Apple Podcasts. More reviews means more people can find us. This episode was brought to you by the Impact Coach Collective, where executive coaches grow their businesses in a community of peers with business, education, mentoring, deal clinics and more. If you'd like to contact me or work with me further, all my free resources, courses and more info on the Impact Coach Collective can be found@elliscarf.com have a brilliant week and I look forward to talking to you again soon.