3: Your Executive Coaching Home Office

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. Hello and welcome back to the business of executive coaching. I've got a fun one for us today and I want to talk about your executive coaching home office. So space and environment are a really crucial part of our house of change that we can tend to ignore. So, so we're often really good at thinking about our thoughts, our emotions, our behavior. But what about environment? When we're setting up our business, our environment is really important. So I want to talk about what I think is important in our offices so that we can show up with our clients, so that we can focus when we need to and so we can just feel really great about being in business. This is particularly the case when we're transitioning into our own business. But I think it applies all the time. And I'm one to sort of revamp my space pretty frequently if I can. I want to say right off the bat that this is not about having a perfect space and it's not about having a space that is always clean and tidy. No interior design experts required here. And that is absolutely not the advice you're going to get from me. So when it comes to cleanliness and tidiness. Look, I know that people say a cluttered desk is equal to a cluttered mind, but my response to that has always been, well, what does that mean about people with an empty desk? Nothing going on upstairs. So I think let's not stay fixated on things like whether your desk is a bit messy. No space is perfect. I get grumpy because my husband has a bookshelf in my office and the books are not pleasingly color coded in rainbow order like mine. There are Lord of the Rings figurines in there. There is a huge collection of CDs and those are purely sentimental because we do not have any CD player in this house or anywh to play CDs and in my office, look, there is too much light. Frankly I probably should get curtains instead of just a blind, but it can sometimes trigger my migraines so occasionally I sit with the blind closed. There is no perfect space and in my view we work with what we've got. We figure out what our non negotiables are when it comes to our physical space and we do our best to make the most out of it. But that requires us to be intentional because there is no one size fits all to this. Everyone has their own preferences of what works for them. It is absolutely a choose your own adventure. I'm going to share some of my favorite elements and tools and things to use, but I also want to introduce some principles so that you can set up your own office space in a way that works for you. And gosh, I feel like there are a lot of disclaimers up front in this episode. When I say your office, this may mean space that you use for work that is not a dedicated office. So it could be a desk in a room that has another purpose. It could be a space you go to with your laptop. Ideally it is not your couch. And I say that because I care deeply about your neck and back. So please don't work from the couch. I think that whatever the space, it should be a consistent place that you go to where you get into the zone of work and it needs to trigger that quality of attention and focus that you want to bring to your work work. You can also think of your space as having to serve a few functions, at least two, maybe more, because we have two or more different energies that we bring to the different work that we do as executive coaches. Firstly, the coaching itself. And in this work we show up, we're very present, we're reflective, we hold energy. You know the vibe when you're in that coaching zone. The second type of energy we have is more the work of working on the business where we're focused on things like sales or marketing. We might be writing programs that we facilitate, we might be writing content for our newsletters, we might be doing Our finances. We might be learning something or admin. Your space needs to serve all of the purposes that you need it to serve, at least those two. So once you're clear on what the space you have to work with is, my first question to you is to ask, how do you want to feel when you are in that space? When I ask myself that question, there's a couple of things I want to feel. I want to feel focused, like I'm really showing up when I'm in this space, whether for my clients or for myself in my business or for the community that I've built, that I'm communicating with. I also. And this is. I don't know if this is just me, but I also want to feel excited. I want, like, I want to bring that energy of that sort of fizzing excitement, like, wow, I get to do this because I know that that brings out my best and it makes work more joyful for me. So have a think about how do you want to feel in your space, in your work? And that will then inform what you do and don't allow into the space. So, for example, because I want to feel focused, I need to not look at too much clutter, although you wouldn't know it looking at my office right now. And because I want to feel that sort of fizzy, excited, grateful energy as well. I need energy in my space. And for me, that looks like a lot of art and a lot of color. And so these are things that are meaningful to me, and I need to have those around me, not necessarily right in my face, but as part of the room that I'm in. One example, and I feel like this is slightly embarrassing, but. But actually, I think I'll just own it. If you're a Ted Lasso fan, you'll get it. So Ted Lasso is a TV show, and Ted is a coach who has been bought from America to the UK to coach a Premier League soccer team. Now, I don't know a lot about soccer, so Premier League may not be right, but you know what I mean, you know, the very. The top of all of the soccer competitions, right? And he's obviously a bit displaced because he's come from America. He's been put into this team in the uk. And I'm not going to give any spoilers because if you haven't watched it, you absolutely must, especially as a coach. But in this TV show, Ted Lasso is this coach, and he puts this piece of yellow paper up above a door frame, and it says on it, believe and it's taped over the door. And as the players and the coaches go through this door, they'll give it a little tap. And the tap is, I don't know, sort of for good luck. But it's really more of a reminder to themselves to believe in their mission and to believe in what they're there to do and to believe in themselves and their ability to do that. So I've made myself one. So over my office door, I've got a little yellow sign with believe written on it. And every time I walk out that door, when I notice it or when I'm sitting at my desk and I see it, I just get that little kick of excitement and I go, oh yeah, this is what I'm here to do. I'm, I'm, I believe it, I'm in it. And that is a really great feeling for me. And it helps to trigger that feeling that I want, that, that sort of excited, grateful energy. Of course it will be something else for you, but once you know how you want to feel, what could you add to your space to facilitate that or what might you need to remove? So that's sort of, you know, a little, a little bit more woo woo, which, which I'm, I'm kind of about getting more practical after that high. I think it's also important to come back to earth with my probably most important tip. That is the most boring, definitely the most important, and that is to have a good chair. Well, good ergonomics overall, really Investing in a good chair completely changed my experience of working from home for years. I always found it just slightly uncomfortable. Even though I got it done, you know, I would do a lot more work out of the home, but I have a bit of a dodgy back and neck. And once I got a proper chair, I experienced significant improvement and a significant change in the way I feel about sitting at my desk. And I bought this chair. It's like, it's a bit designy, it's, it's a Herman Miller one if anyone is, is interested. And I love it deeply and my back loves it deeply. And I will never go back to having an office chair that is not suitable for my back. So it's an investment that I made and I would make that investment again and again. So get a good chair. If you work in bed or on the couch, please don't tell me about it because it will hurt my back just thinking about it. But think about whether that is serving you. If it is, then, you know, I am not the one to say don't do that. If you have those magical bones that don't hurt from doing that, then you know, more power to you. But for the vast majority of us, particularly once we're over 40, think about ergonomics. If you have a dedicated desk related to ergonomics, you will not regret investing in a big monitor as well, which you plug into your laptop and that lets you have two screens at a minimum. Get a riser so your laptop sits at eye height. Apparently phone books work well as also, but I actually don't know if they still make phone books. You can easily buy from from stationary stores or Amazon a riser for your laptop. So you should be sitting at your desk and your eyes should be looking straight ahead rather than bending your neck down or up. Standing desks are also great. I have one and I love the idea of walking desks where you have like a little walking treadmill under you. But I think that for clients that could be a little disconcerting to see a coach bobbing along on Zoom while while you're having a session unless they are also walking. So I really like my sit stand desk, but I can't stand up personally during meetings because it detracts from my ability to focus. It's like 10 or 15% of my attention is being used for the standing, so my focus is deteriorated. I suspect you might get used to it. Maybe that's how it works. And not everyone is like me. And I know standing is really good for us, but for me standing works for admin tasks rather than for meetings. You also, as part of your home office, need to think about your AV setup. So if you do the bulk of your coaching remotely, which many of us do, then there is the question of tech. So assuming you use Zoom or teams or WebEx to conduct a lot of your coaching, there are five factors that I think you should consider. The first one is reliable high speed Internet, the second is sound, the third is video, the fourth is light, and the fifth is the backdrop you have to your video. So Internet speaks for itself. You must have good Internet. And by good Internet I mean it must have good fast upload and download capacity. Because when you're on video, your ability to upload video of high quality to the Internet is just as important as your ability to download video from the person you're streaming with. If you don't have it, get it. This is an investment you cannot scrimp on. You may have issues with home Internet, and I know that's the case, and if so, invest in good wireless Internet or a good mobile hotspot. Bad Internet can make a good coaching session almost impossible and most people have probably had that experience. When it doesn't work, it can be super frustrating. Sound is also a really important one and it depends on your computer to some degree. If you have a good quality computer then the inbuilt microphone may suffice or it may not. You can do a test by recording yourself on zoom and playing it back just to hear how you sound. If you think it sounds muffled or tinny, you might want to consider investing in a proper microphone. I've heard good things about blue Yeti microphones and I really like my rode microphone. You can drop me a message if you want specifics of the microphone that I use and I use this for podcasting for all of my my meetings and my coaching calls and I have got one of those little fluffy black things that goes over the top to stop me making funny sounds when I speak. Video is also really important. You're going to need a good camera. Some computers have good cameras built into them, but you'll find that a really high quality webcam is a totally different kettle of fish. So I use the Logitech Brio 4K webcam which was recommended to me and it's pretty reasonably priced, but it is night and day from the inbuilt camera in my laptop. It makes me look a lot perkier than I generally am and it is high enough quality that I can use it for video recording. Also, if you have good quality video then you need to capitalise on this by having good lighting. So natural light is the best, but if you don't have that, experiment with lamps or room lighting until you get it right and check yourself out on zoom to make sure it's right. You want it to be warm light, you want it to be indirect so you don't look like you're being interrogated. You don't want it to leave a lot of shadows on your face, and you don't want to be in a place where the light goes from light to dark very frequently as your camera will struggle to keep up with that. Of course, lighting is especially specific. Lighting is not required, but if you've ever been on a call with people who don't have good lighting, you'll know that it can detract from the ability to be present and to connect meaningfully. That takes us to backdrop. So the backdrop you use on your videos is a fascinating debate. To blur or not to blur? That is the question. My preference is not to blur and not to use artificial backdrops where possible, but to set up your background with what you would like to present to people, what you want them to see. For me, I always have some books, a piece of artwork. At times I have a plant, which is always my preference, but I'm not great at keeping them alive, so sometimes they have to leave to go into plant rehab. If you need to work in a place that means you have to use a backdrop or you have to blur your background, you then make sure that whatever you present represents what you want it to say about you. So I've had meetings with people who've had gorgeous backgrounds that are like close ups of nature behind them, but then you get a bit fixated because it looks like they have a ladybug crawling out of their ear or something like that. There was some research during COVID into what backgrounds were perceived most positively by others. And the overwhelming answer was that having no artificial background was best in that people were perceived to be more trustworthy. If you can avoid it, keep it real. Apparently people with books were perceived to be the most credible and trustworthy. So, you know, sit in front of your bookshelves. I don't know many coaches who don't have copious amounts of books, so think about whether you could arrange those in a useful and aesthetically pleasing way. Another important factor in your office is privacy. So while clients generally, in my experience, don't mind if there's some noise in the background, if a doorbell rings or a dog barks, they are rightly less impressed. If you have people walking around behind you who may be able to hear the session. And particularly if clients are paying you for your time, I think that, that, that's reasonable. And I think privacy is really important and plays into the, the significance and the commitment we make as coaches to keep sessions confidential. So either a door that can be closed is important. And don't worry clients, clients are really accepting if your kid barges in, or you know, you have a reason why you need to pop up. That's all good or good quality headphones, at least, so that no one is hearing the conversation. But just be really mindful of privacy and particularly protecting the privacy and confidentiality of your clients. And then finally, my favorite part of office setup is personality and ambiance. Come back to how you want to feel. What do you need to have or remove from this space, this environment, in order to feel that way? So I thought I'd end with a bit of a list, a shopping list of ideas to consider of things that you could consider. So you could. You could add to your to your office. So you could add plants. They could be real or fake. I prefer real, but there are some really good fake ones these days. You could remove the clutter that is in your office that may be from some source that is not your work. You could add a gallery wall of inspirational art or decorations. You might choose to have fresh flowers every week. You you might respond well to an essential oil diffuser. You could build a wall of bookshelves. You might have a fancy dog bed next to your desk so that your dog, who is obviously very quiet and peaceful, unlike mine, can sit with you. You might invest in a fancy water bottle. You might invest in dedicated charges for all of the equipment that you need to charge on your desk in your office so that you aren't constantly changing your charges every time you want to go out. You might put up a wall of photos of loved ones or things that mean something to you. You might invest in getting the temperature right so adding cooling or heating if you need it. And then you might want to invest in practical things like a document shredder or good storage solutions. So these are just a few that you might want to consider. The fun stuff you can do with your office is totally endless and there are lots more ideas and I would really love to know what you have in your office or what you might want to include. Drop me an email@ellieucentorg.com and I would love to consolidate all the ideas you have and share them in a later episode. So thanks again and I look forward to speaking to 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 or my free resource 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.