The cost of playing small for executive coaches

Hello and welcome to The Business of Executive Coaching Podcast. I'm your host, Ellie Scarf, and I'm here to do two things. I'm here to share practical advice and to share stories from coaches out there doing it to show you that not only can executive and leadership coaches build businesses serving corporate clients that are profitable and flexible and purposeful, but I also want to show you that you can do it too. I think as coaches working with organizational clients, we will create a positive ripple effect far beyond our work, and my job is to take all all the business advice out there combined with my 20 years as an executive coach growing businesses and my time as the head of sales capability at a billion-dollar company, and I wanna share what really works and what really matters so that you can change the world one client at a time. Now, today I'm bringing back an episode that was incredibly popular that is all about the cost of playing small as an executive coach. Now, I want to bring this episode back for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because I know that there are a lot of new coaches who are tuning in and I wanted to highlight that while I share so much practical content to help you to grow your business, you must also be aware that there is a mindset game at play. And this episode is all about that. Secondly, I'm very excited to announce that next week I'm going to be running a free live masterclass that is called the Executive Coach Business Growth Workshop: Your Pipeline to Consistent Clients. Now, I don't often share the exact frameworks and models that underpin what I do with my clients inside the Corporate to Coach Accelerator, but inside this workshop, I will be doing just that. So please sign up as I would hate you to miss out. In 60 minutes in this workshop, you'll discover the Executive Coach Pipeline Model, uh, the core process behind bringing in consistent corporate clients so that you know exactly what you need to do every week. You'll also learn how to replace ad hoc marketing efforts with a system, and you'll see how clarity and structure and rhythm give you confidence that your BD activities are actually working. And of course, I'll show you the big contextualized picture that shows you that any one thing, things like LinkedIn, things like outreach, are all part of a holistic process. I would love to have as many of you, uh, podcast listeners join me as possible. So please do sign up if you haven't already. You can sign up at www.elliescarf.com/playbook, and I am so looking forward to it. We have a few times available. I'm going to run it a couple of times so that wherever you are in the world, you can join the session. I'll put that link in the show notes as well to make sure that you have the link. Now, please enjoy the episode today. Okay, so this episode is titled The Cost of Playing Small as an Executive Coach. Right? And I'm aware that this sounds a little clickbaity. It sounds a little bit self-helpy. It sounds a little bit new age business coachy. And I was aware of that, but I decided to stick with that title anyway, because it is actually really important. And I couldn't think of a better way to describe The ways that we sabotage ourselves and the ways that we get in the way of our own progress when it comes to growing our business. So what I want to talk about today is I'm going to talk about a couple of things. I'm going to talk about how I spot a coach who I think is playing small, and I'm going to talk about the cost of that. And of course, at the end, I'll share a little bit about how I can help you if you recognize yourself in this story. But I really want you to think about whether any of these patterns are patterns that you are seeing in yourself. So as we go through, think about which of these might be patterns that are emerging and getting in the way for you. So one of the first ways that I spot a coach who is playing small is by looking at a pattern over time. Of things that they aren't doing. And they are generally not doing things like outreach, right? So reaching out to people in their warm network. And that's not necessarily the thing that shows me that they're playing small. What shows me that is that they have got a lot of reasons why they can't do it, why they don't do it, or why the advice to do it doesn't apply to them. And if I look at those things in isolation, it makes sense, right? So in any given week, like, yes, it makes sense that you're not doing it because of this. But the problem is that when I look at a pattern over time, it becomes very clear that it is not about the reasons, or you might call them the excuses. It is about something that is a systematic blocker. And almost always what that blocker is, the barrier that is coming out in excuses and lack of traction on those activities such as outreach, almost always there is a fear at play, of course, right? But that fear could be a fear of failing, a fear of not failing. Sometimes, you know, that, that upper limit problem that you might have read about in Gay Hendricks's work, The Big Leap. Sometimes the fear is of judgment of others. Sometimes the fear is judgment of your own. There are so many stories and fears that are at play when we are growing our businesses, right? Because they represent the stories that we've heard our whole life. And it could be stories about our own potential, right? We might've had a story that we were always, we weren't the successful one or we weren't the smartest one or. We might have stories about other people in business, right? So, oh yeah, you know, Auntie Jean started a business and it all went to shit. So, you know, we don't start businesses, right? But there are so many stories about ourselves and about business, but the outcome, depending on your flavor, the outcome is likely the same, which is a holding back or a keeping yourself smaller than you could be, right? A limitation, something that blocks you from doing those things that we need to do. So I guess really when I see this pattern of consistent excuses and reasons why we can't do something, it's very clear to me that fear, which is understandable and real, is the cause, and that the symptom is this missing of commitments. And you know what that translates to as a playing small is that if we aren't doing these things, we know that we can never hit those big goals that we might have set for ourselves, but equally, we never have to really face a true failure when we put it all on the line, right? And I think that's part of playing small, right, is not putting it out there on the line, not really giving ourselves the chance to achieve all that we might, but also not having the risk of failing and living out those fears in real life. So that's one way I see playing small in coaching business play out. Another way is playing it very safe on LinkedIn. And that might mean not posting at all. It might mean not posting any real opinions, right? So sticking to the, you know, some AI gumpf or not telling stories where you expose anything about yourself, not showing who you are personally, not Not saying anything that might offend someone or put someone off or not be universally liked. Playing it safe on LinkedIn could also be not ever putting up photos of yourself. And, you know, often it's accompanied by a talk track about how much we think that people who do that are cringe or something like that, right? And so when I see that, either the playing it safe on LinkedIn or the absence on LinkedIn or a gap, the truth is that a lot of the same fears and the same stories are emerging, but there is an additional flavor that comes up here, which is this fear of what it means to be visible and to be public and to have opinions that others might disagree with and to be putting ourselves out there as an expert. So you will know if this is you if when I talked about those things— visibility, being public, Having strong opinions that people might disagree with, putting yourself out there as an expert. If you thought, oh my God, that's terrifying, then this might be you. And the truth is, I think for a lot of us who are drawn to coaching, we may have a fear around this, which is, will people still like me if they don't agree with me? Will I offend people? Will I lose this connection? And if relationship is our currency, which it is for a lot of those of us who are drawn to coaching, if relationship is our currency, then putting ourselves out there in some way and, you know, sticking our head above the parapet really is what we're doing. Or, you know, having an idea that might be different or doing something that is a little bit outside the norm is naturally going to feel very unsafe. Right? And so as a result, the playing small comes out as protecting ourselves and not doing it, right? So not holding back at the last minute, censoring your posts, not including that funny selfie. And that is definitely a sign of playing small when we are growing our business. Another way I see it is a reticence to ask for help from your warmest network or to connect with your warmest networks, right? And that could be your warmest professional networks. It could be your personal networks, your friends and family. It could be those people who told you, and I hear this all the time, that people, when they start their businesses, have a group of people who, when you make the decision, say, when you're ready, Let me know and I'll see what work we have. And those are the warmest people. They've said, they've given you an invitation. Please come and talk to me when you're ready. And yet we hold back. And this is a really good example of, you know, keeping ourselves small, playing small, playing it safe when it comes to growing our businesses. And I think that the fear with this one is a much closer to home fear than a fear of, you know, like a distant failure. But it's like, what if these people that I reach out to or ask for help or ask for a referral or share something with, what if they don't like me anymore, right? What if I embarrass myself? What if, you know, something I say is offensive and, you know, gets in the way? And if we have assumed that we are relational, then our brains put a very strong weighting on the consequence of any rupture in relationship, right? And so the consequence of this fear, these fears are not taking action. And unfortunately, this is not taking action in the area that might just be the biggest opportunity for your business. So in terms of playing it safe or playing small, what that looks like is there is an opportunity that we deliberately or unconsciously are not taking up. And so we are not giving ourselves the opportunity for that positive outcome to be the case. Another sign I see of someone playing small is people who use very negative language around sales and marketing and promotion, right? So they might be people who talk about awful salespeople, the constant flow of spam that they get, and they use a very negative language, right? Salesy. You know, manipulative, exploitative. They are rude when people try and sell something to them. And really where this comes from is a deep fear of being perceived that way because of the judgments we've developed about what it means to sell and market and promote growing up, right? And often when we start to interrogate that, we realize it's from, it's from fiction, right? Fictional characters. It's from stories and judgments, you know, maybe even our our grandparents had, right? Not conscious decisions that we have made ourselves. And so this active negativity, not even neutrality, that I see around talking about sales and marketing of others, let alone ourselves, that is associated with people keeping themselves small. Because ultimately there is this massive disconnect in this case between what it means to grow a business and every person growing a business is in sales. Disconnect between that ultimate truth and an internal judgment of what that means, right? So on the one hand, this needs to happen. I need to be a salesperson in order to grow my business. And on the other hand, I think I've got a deep disgust or disdain for that job, right? And so the conflict between the two, the sign that I see that is the negative language that people use around sales and marketing. But the consequence of that is that we don't do it because of course, like, if we are so negative about this, then what are our brains going to do? They're certainly not going to make it easy for us because we've associated it with so much negativity. The other, and another one that I see is overthinking of minutia, right? So if you are playing small, in all likelihood, one of the things you do is you focus on the details that don't matter in the scheme of things. So almost like a reverse 80/20, rather than focusing on the 20% of tasks that will bring the 80% of results. So things like outreach. Instead, what you do is you focus on the micro details, the alignment of a post, the wording of a sentence in a post, the shade of blue in your logo. And like, these things are important. Absolutely. But if we are doing those and the time we're spending doing those is time that we should be spending on other work, then this is a sign that we are playing small because consciously or unconsciously, we are pushing away the things that we know will make a difference and we're pushing them away with the things that don't really matter. And then the final one, I would say another sign that you're playing smaller than you might otherwise is that you are investing in the wrong things. And for example, that could be investing in, you know, the quick fix, for example, the too good to be true business funnel, right? The person who pops into your, into your chat and says, yeah, I'll build you a funnel and I'll get you 100 sales calls every week, right? And another example might be, you know, the additional assessment certification that you don't really need, right? And I hate saying that one because honestly, in my career, I have invested in many unnecessary assessment certifications and extra training, and I wouldn't change that for the world because it built my practice to where it is. But if you are doing that as a way of avoiding growing your business, if you do more training so you don't have to get out there and have conversations and really generate coaching clients, then that is a sign that you are playing small because you are putting things in the way of actual client generation. And they might be good things, right? They might be really good things to learn, but it's about the prioritization. That's the sign to me. So is this you? Like, how are you making yourself small when it comes to growing your businesses? Do you notice any of these? Pathways, I'd really encourage you to take some time and think about it. I'm going to talk about the cost in a minute, but I would take, would ask you to, you know, whether you pause now or just journal about it later on. What is your flavor of this? Is it visibility? Are you holding back from sharing your perspectives and opinions? Are you pushing away the idea that sales is part of the job consciously or unconsciously? Are you coming up with a lot of reasons not to do high-impact tasks like outreach? Or do you just have a sense that you are playing small, right? That you, you know, it is, it resonates with you when you think of the difference between playing small and being protective of yourself versus going for it and that expansive feeling that comes with pursuing your dreams. So you might just have that feeling, but of course the only reason it matters if you're playing small versus, versus really, you know, owning who you are and what you're doing in this space, the only reason it matters is because there is a cost. And so I want you, if you think that playing small is holding you back, I want to think about the cost of it because it may seem obvious, but in reality, the cost of playing small is more layered than you expect it is. Now, the most immediate cost that most of us would recognize is this direct cost of lost opportunity, right? And that is that you win none of the shots you don't take. So you are available for no referrals if people in your world don't know what you are doing. If you are the coaching world's best-kept secret, the outcome is the same as if you weren't in business. No one can hire you if they don't know who you are and what you do, if you don't tell them. So the first thing is there is a, obviously, a direct cost, and the direct cost is if I don't do the things I need to generate business opportunities, then business opportunities will not come to me. And so playing small is a very specific barrier, and it's either a barrier to all opportunities or it's a barrier to the volume of opportunity that you want. Another cost is that there is actually a huge energy drain when it comes to playing small because Your actions have an emotional cost. And so when you are in the place where these stories are, you know, really front and center for you. And so that's, you know, what if I fail? What if they hate me? What if they think I'm salesy? When you are in the space of those stories, you are fueling yourself, right? All when we know all our mindset is fuel, you're fueling yourself. And so if we think through the thought emotion behavior triad. If we're sitting in that space, right, I'm probably going to fail, they are probably going to hate me, they're probably going to think I'm salesy, then we think about what is the emotion that is being triggered here. And the emotions are probably a combination of fear, of shame, of sadness, of disgust. And therefore, like, if those— we've got the thoughts, we've got the emotions, and the behaviors are very naturally going to be avoidant, right? So if I'm sitting in that emotional state, that is not an action-oriented emotion. That is a protective emotion. That is an avoidant emotional set. That is a, you know, either a fight, flight, or freeze, right? I'm going to do nothing. I'm going to blow it all up, or I'm going to be paralyzed, right, with indecision. So yeah, and that's a significant cost, right? And we can see it's very linear from those thoughts we tell ourselves into the behavior that gets in the way of us reaching our big goals. Another cost, you know, if we think about that example of being very negative towards sales and salespeople and marketing, I think the cost of this isn't talked about enough, and I, but it is huge, right? So if you are in this persistent negative mental space about sales and selling and salespeople and people who sell to you and being very offended by that, then you can be sure that your brain is going to come up with infinite ways to keep you in a space of coherence and definitely not put you in the space where you might have that criticism leveled at you. Right? And so that means you're not going to do the things that you consider to be sales activity. You're going to not put yourself into conversations that could be perceived to be sales conversations. You're certainly not going to do any outreach. And so the cost of this type of playing small is really perpetuating, like, making yourself right, right? You make yourself right that sales and marketing is dreadful. And then of course, there will be no opportunities to sell, right? To transform that view you have. So really the mindset is the first thing that needs to shift if that is your flavor of derailing and playing small. Another cost of playing small is sort of a bit more existential, but it's a time cost, right? Which is that when we are playing small, often we do that by kicking the can down the road, right? So. We may not do it now, but we do have this view in our mind that, oh, we'll do it tomorrow, or I'll do it next week. Or, you know, we just, we may not even be that conscious. We might just sit there and before we know it, we have, you know, scrolled LinkedIn. We have fiddled with the colors of our website rather than actually doing what we intended to do, which might have been writing a post or doing some outreach. And So you have to ask yourself if you want to be having this same debate with yourself in 6 months, in 12 months, because time is going to pass regardless of how you choose to engage in your business growth. And so this time cost, I find for business owners, is very powerful because often we are doing this work because we really want more freedom of time. And yet often we put ourselves in a place where we either won't be able to sustain that freedom, or, you know, we continue to put obstacles of us in the way of us really truly enjoying that. But I think the biggest existential cost, if you like, of this disconnection This playing small is a disconnection with your dreams, right? And your hopes. And that occurs, you know, when your actions consistently undermine these dreams that have led you to start your business that you have expressed, right? And so the excitement that comes with starting a business and the faith in yourself that comes when we take steps towards these big dreams, right? And you can feel that, right? You know that feeling, that excitement. It's the best thing in the world. That can be compromised when we play small and we don't take the steps we need to towards those goals. We undermine ourselves. So yes, the cost is the outcome, right? We don't generate sales opportunities. But there is also this more insidious cost, which is, I guess it's a cost to our self-belief. And it's a cost to the magic that we have leaned into when we chose this dream of having our own coaching business. And so by not honoring that self-belief and that magic, by taking these tangible actions, that cost of playing small in this way is that real disconnection, I think, between, you know, the dreams that we hold and between that and the actions that we're taking. So my deep hope and my deep conviction that it's possible for everyone is that you step boldly into a place where you play a bigger game and own your brilliance as a coach and own your space in the coaching world and be bold and visible and brave and not perfectionistic, right? And not letting the discomfort stop you taking the action. And no doubt this requires us to do some reflection and no doubt it requires us to be uncomfortable more than we would like to be. But, you know, my knowledge, the thing I know deeply is that coaches have absolutely all of the skills, all of the innate talent, all of the ability to get uncomfortable and the ability to learn everything that is required to build a successful business. You have it. The question is, are you willing to learn what you need to learn? Are you willing to embrace your growth mindset? Not just when it comes to being a coach, but when it comes to building your business. So that is my recommendation is find a way that you are going to do that to allow you to step into this bigger vision that you have for yourself and that you've had for yourself when you started your business. Now, of course, if you want support to do this, and I think that support is possibly the thing that will make this much more doable because while you can overcome all of these things, it isn't easy to stop playing small. And for many people, support, structure, systems, and accountability are the things that are going to help you to go from where you are into, you know, really playing a bigger game. If you'd like support to do that, I would be delighted to share what we do inside the Corporate to Coach Accelerator. The Corporate to Coach Accelerator, if you haven't already heard about it, is a 12-month hands-on coaching program that supports you to add your next high-paying corporate clients to your client roster with a business development strategy that you can implement in under 5 hours a week. So in the program, you will create all of the foundational assets and foundational processes and systems that you need in order to promote and grow your business. You will sell to more of your ideal organizational clients, and you will build a business that lets you live the way you want to live and do work that matters to you. And so a lot of what we do is mindset. A lot of what we do is accountability to help you if you are feeling blocked about visibility, if you are feeling blocked about outreach, if there these things that are getting in the way of you playing a bigger game. This is what we focus on. And inside the Accelerator, we do that with a combination of curriculum as well as weekly coaching, as well as a very powerful community that supports each other and we hold each other accountable and celebrates all of our successes. So if you would like to learn more, I have actually opened my calendar up for the next few days. To get on a call and answer all of your questions about the Accelerator and whether it's for you. If you'd like to get in my calendar before the spaces fill up, I would recommend heading over now to elliescarf.com/bookacall to find one of those appointments. To learn a bit more about the program, you can head over to elliescarf.com/cca, but definitely the best way is to jump on a call with me if you can find a time that works. Shoot an email through if you can't, and we will have a no-obligation chat where we dive into your goals and the challenges you're facing, whether you are not yet in your business, but you want to start, or you're anticipating a redundancy being the tipping point to start your business, or if you've been in business for a few years and it's just turned out to be harder than you thought, or if you've been in business for for a while, but maybe you've mostly been associate coaching and you want to grow your own pool of corporate clients, let's talk and we'll talk about how the Accelerator can help. So on that note, thanks for tuning in and I'll be back next week with more practical advice.