34 - 3 Questions to ask if you want a great Q4!
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[00:00:00] Welcome to the business of executive coaching. I'm Ellie Scarf, 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 more.
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 traveler, a reader, a mom, 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. [00:01:00] You can build a coaching business that is profitable, sustainable, and that supports your personal goals, whatever they are.
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Friends. It has been a big week over here. And especially because for myself and also inside the impact coach collective, it is Q4 planning time. Now, normally we do our quarterly planning a little closer to the quarterly start, but actually I'm loving having a few extra weeks to get everything ready after doing the planning so that when it hits Q4, It's the 1st of October, it is go time.
And so I think this is going to be our new normal today. I want to share a few prompts for you to think about as you do your [00:02:00] Q4 planning. Now I really recommend quarterly planning as one of the key check ins that you do in your business. I think annual planning is really, you know, generally accepted.
Most people do that and it's great, but there is something very tangible and doable about a quarter that I love. I think it's a really manageable sprint, right? So it's, it's an amount of time that you can push pretty hard. You can achieve something substantial, but it's not too much. It's not too big. So it feels just, you know, really doable.
And I think that when you stack the progress, you can make quarterly quarter on quarter, then that is when we can start to see really big outcomes. So I highly recommend that you add quarterly planning to your planning cadence If you don't already have it in there. So my hope with quarterly planning, whenever you do it, is that it feels really kind of inspiring, right?
It feels exciting. It feels inspiring. It feels like particularly in [00:03:00] Q4, That it is the capstone quarter of the year, that it is bringing your year together. It is tying everything in a bow and the planning should set you up to be really focused, to do all those things that you know are going to make the year a big win for you.
Now, when you are reviewing your strategy and when you are building your quarterly plan, you should be reviewing your key strategic pillars. Now, I have a process for the members of the Impact Coach Collective, and what we do is that we review our offers or services, we review pricing. We look at sales strategy and metrics.
We review marketing activities and build plans. We look at the overall blend of revenue sources that we have, you know, that's things like coaching versus facilitation. We look at financial metrics and we look at. Systems and support. Now, I'm not going to go into the details of those, but those are the sorts of things that when you're doing your substantive [00:04:00] planning, you will be considering, and that's a lot of what's included in our quarterly planning sessions.
Now, if you don't already have a good quarterly planning cadence, then I would love to have a chat with you. So I've got a link in the show notes where you can book a quick call with me, And I'd be really happy to help you triage your priorities for Q4 and just figure out if joining the impact coach collective might be a good step for you and your business.
If you want to be more plan for more strategic and more intentional. Okay. So let's dive into the questions. And this sort of questions, this sort of prompts, you, you, you know what I mean? The first thing I want you to think about when you are doing your quarterly plan Is what you learned from your wins and challenges in the last quarter.
So of course we start our quarterly planning with a bit of a review of the last quarter. I'm sure you do that. But I also, [00:05:00] as part of that reflection, I really like people to think not just what your wins were, not just what your challenges were, but what did you learn? And honestly, it feels a little bit like cheating to, to give you this clue.
This question, it's really three questions wrapped into one, because to figure out what you've learnt, you have to do those other reflections, right? So you need to reflect on what your wins were. And in that, you know, what were you proud of? What did you achieve? What went really well? You have to reflect on that.
You also have to reflect on the challenges you experienced. So what was tough? What didn't go well? But I really like the The so what question, which is, what did you learn from those wins and challenges? Because all of the reflection in the world is great, but it's not super helpful. If you don't do some processing and then take some action based on those learnings for, for example, if you learned.
That you can [00:06:00] actually cope when you are rejected in a sales call, for example, right? So you learn it's okay to put yourself out there and be rejected, right? Then the action to take is putting yourself in more positions where you might get rejected more and not because we want the rejection, but because those are the situations where you're going to get the acceptances and the wins.
And avoidance is the thing that we, we want to take off the table. Right? So if what you learned is is it's okay to be rejected, then we need to then take action. Right? So, so really my first prompt is what did you learn? And maybe it's also, what are you going to do as a result of that? Like, how is that going to inform your strategy for the quarter?
Right? So how could I. Putting myself in more positions, more situations where I can, you know, experience that learning, but also be open to you know, more positive outcomes. The second [00:07:00] question or prompt is, To project yourself to the end of the quarter, single achievement, accomplishment, or outcome will make you feel like it has been an amazing quarter.
Now this question is aimed at giving laser focus to your priorities. So when we plan, it is really common for us, and I include myself in this, to want to include You know, kitchen sink style wishlist of everything that we want to do, everything we want to achieve, everything we feel we should do. But we all know very well that if we have too many priorities, then we have no true priorities.
So asking yourself, ask yourself this question, right? What one thing. Will make me satisfied and happy and proud if that is the only thing I accomplish. This shows us our true priorities. So, you know, for example, while we might really like the [00:08:00] idea of a shiny new website or of, you know, submitting an article to a prominent magazine.
What we might really think about when we, we focus on just getting one priority is that if we increased the number of client leads we had, or if we converted a certain number of sales opportunities we were pitching for, then we would feel like we had won the lottery, right? We would feel like that was an absolute win.
And it doesn't have to be a financial outcome. I want to say like it could be. That if you manage to structure your work week so that you can take Fridays off to spend with your family, maybe that is the absolute win for you. So what one achievement accomplishment or outcome will make you feel like it has been an amazing quarter.
So think about what that is for you. The third question is kind of a little bit deeper, and that is who do I need to be to create the business that I'm dreaming of? [00:09:00] And this is one you know, if I think about a strategic planning process, I put this one towards the end and I put it in a section that I call momentum.
So how are we going to build momentum to actually, you know, get the most out of those? The, the processes that we're hoping to put in place because it's really about, it's almost about obstacle management and enabling, because I think that there is a big identity piece at play when we are creating a plan to bring our vision to life.
And for example, very often I see issues pop up for coaches around confidence, confidence to put themselves out there and be visible confidence to show their network what they are doing, confidence to share their pricing in a sales conversation confidence to, you know, feel good about having a sales conversation.
This is a very frequent topic in the coaching that we do inside the impact coach collective. And the way I link this to our planning processes is that often the obstacle [00:10:00] or the thing that is going to get in the way of achieving your objectives is not a practical thing. It is not a capability issue.
It is not a credibility issue. It is typically a mindset issue and it can be a mindset or a belief that manifests. So I encourage you to think very intentionally about what is the identity of what we know we need to do to achieve our goals. So I encourage you to think very intentionally about what is the identity Or what it is that you want to embody in order to be that business person that you want to be.
And I encourage you to think of it as a bit of an experiment that you are holding for a quarter, right? So we hold it lightly. It's an experiment. It's not something that we need to lock in until, you know, until we feel you know, more certain about it, but it is something that you are going to experiment with for the quarter.
So it's not precisely fake it till you make it, but it [00:11:00] definitely has shades of Amy. You think about Amy Cuddy who said fake it till you become it, right? So it is about trying on a new identity for size because. You know, as business owners, we're going through pretty big changes in, in how we see ourselves and what we believe about ourselves.
And so I encourage you to, you know, really embrace that, that experimentation you know, to, to give you something to hold onto and to say, okay, well. A person who is, who is very a business owner, who is comfortable growing their business, what they might do when faced with posting a photo on LinkedIn might be very different to someone who doesn't really feel comfortable with that identity of being a business owner who, who may avoid doing such a thing.
Okay. So you're likely heading into your Q4 planning process if you have a quarterly planning process. And I really [00:12:00] hope that those three questions are interesting thought starters for you as you go through the process. Now, one bonus question that I'll leave you with is that I also think it's really important for my high achieving and overcommitted coaches out there is to ask yourself, what am I going to let go of in order to achieve my hopes for this quarter?
So is there a commitment? That you need to let go of, is there an expectation you have of yourself or others? Is there a belief or a mindset that isn't serving you and that you need to let go? Because when we layer new things in, and usually our strategies include some new things, we need to make space for that to happen.
So ask yourself, what are you going to let go of also? Thank you so much for joining me today as always, and I'll be back with more next week.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the business of executive coaching. If you found it [00:13:00] 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 at elliescarf.com. Have a brilliant week, and I look forward to talking to you again soon.
