Hello and welcome to the Business of Executive Coaching podcast. I'm your host, Ellie Scarf, a senior executive coach with over 17 years experience coaching, which I now bring to my role as a mentor and business coach for other executive coaches.
Now, when it comes to coaching business, I have done most of it, right? I have grown coaching businesses solo and in partnership to six and seven figures. I've had teams of coaches work with me. I've been an in-house coach and I've been an associate coach. So when I talk about selling coaching to corporate clients, you know that I'm sharing from a place of experience and deep empathy, right?
I work with coaches now through my group coaching program, the Corporate to Coach Accelerator, where executive and leadership coaches grow their business with more corporate clients. I'm also a mum, a big reader and an even bigger fan of my miniature schnauzer, Yoshi. Keep listening in for tons of practical tips, inspiring stories and prompts to help you grow your business your way. So today...
What I want to talk about is this phenomenon I'm noticing about how people are feeling when they get back to work. Now, how about you? Are you excited to be back at work? I am actually. I'm really excited to be back. About 50% of the people I'm talking to are feeling a bit, I don't know, a bit blah, a bit, I don't know if this is it, a bit of, there's a bit of questioning whether I'm
This feeling coming back from a holiday is what they'd hoped. And I think that's tending to get a little bit amplified into a bigger picture, a little bit more existential angst about who I am and why am I in business? And is this right for me? So I'm
I don't want to dive in today into, well, should you be in business? Is it the right decision for you? I have a lot of trust that if you've made this decision, you are on the right path. And I want to normalize that there are going to be many moments in your business where you're going to question whether it's right for you.
So today, what I want to do is give you four quick ways that you can get re-inspired and reinvigorated if you have gotten back to your desk and you are thinking, okay,
No, this isn't it, right? If you're feeling like it doesn't, it's not ticking all of your boxes. I'm going to share four quick ways that you can get re-inspired and dive back into 2026 in your business, not just with a robust action plan, but also feeling great about it.
Okay, so the first way I wanted to share, the first thing I think you should do if you are struggling to feel that inspiration, feeling a bit blah, the first thing I wanted you to do is get out. You could either, if you're a journalist, get out your journal. If you're not, just get out a post-it note, piece of paper.
I want you to write down the reasons why you wanted to start a business. And there are three layers that I would like you to reflect on this and write it down. The first is business.
What is the work that you wanted to do? Like, why did you want to do the delivery piece of this work? And I mean the face-to-face or Zoom-to-Zoom part of it, right? So it might be that you just love one-on-one coaching and you wanted to be able to do that work that you like and
every week. It may be that you love facilitating workshops, you love working with people in groups, and you want to be able to do that every week or every month. But what was the work that you wanted to do? What was the work that you wanted to do when you were doing the work that you maybe didn't love as much? And you thought, yeah, I would rather my day to day look different to this. What was it that you wanted your day to day to look like?
The second thing is I want you to think about what is the difference that you wanted to make, right? What is the impact? Was it just that you wanted to help individuals? Did you want to make organizations in a particular sector better places to work?
Did you want to create a positive ripple effect that could change the world? Like for me, it was all of those things, right? I wanted to help people, but I also knew that we spend so much of our time in our workplaces. If we could make organizations better places to work, then we have a huge potential to change, not just the lives of the people, but also their families, also their communities. And therefore I think the world, right? So for me, there's a lot of coaching has a huge impact.
purpose component. And so I want you to reconnect to what your purpose was when you chose to start your coaching business. The third thing I want you to reflect on is why you wanted a business more from a personal perspective. And there's probably a few different categories that we can reflect on in this, right? So why
Or what type of flexibility did you want? Did you want the flexibility to spend more time with your family, to spend more time focused on your health, to have time to do hobbies, to contribute to your community or your spiritual organizations or any of those things? What was the flexibility that you wanted? What did that look like when you decided to start a business?
The second thing is maybe you didn't want to have to be reliant on another organization or a person or you didn't want to frankly, I'm going to be very honest here. I don't really like being told what to do. So part of going into business for me was that I didn't want to be reliant on anyone else's whims. I didn't want to have to do what someone else told me to do. I wanted to do things in my timelines and based on my own decisions. Now, of course, there are downsides of that, which is that I respond really well to external pressure. So you take the good with the bad.
But it was really I wanted a business because I didn't want to have to respond to anyone else's demands. You may also have wanted a business because of the potential to make significantly more money for less overall commitment. Now, it may not be that you wanted to make more money overall, but you wanted a lesser time commitment with a greater payoff for that business.
So there was probably a profit, a profit goal. And maybe it was like, maybe for you, it was to replace your corporate salary. Maybe for you, it was to just pay a certain, pay the bills. Maybe you wanted your business to pay for family holidays. Everybody is different and I've heard it all, but what was that? Why did you want a business as it related to profit revenue, money coming in the door?
If you haven't started your business yet and your version of this new year's sort of ennui is, I don't know if I can or I should even think about doing this, you should write this list also and think about what you want your business to be from those three perspectives, meaning what is the day-to-day work you want to do? What is the difference you want to make to your clients in the world? And from a personal perspective, why do you want to have a business rather than be an employee?
So that's number one. Number two, how to get re-inspired in 2026 as you come back to your desk and you're feeling a little bit out of sorts. Number two is that a lot of the reason why we have this sort of feeling of being drained or feel a bit blah or everything feels a bit, I guess, a bit dulled down compared to those times when we're super engaged and super inspired is
Often the reason for that is when we don't have a clear pathway for how we're going to go from these big hopes and goals to a really tactical plan, right? Because often we set these big goals. It's like, yes, I want to replace my corporate salary. And then you start your business and I'm like, oh, yes, it's not actually just happening, right? And I don't know what that plan could look like. And that is very disengaging. So you might be in that space.
So whether you're precisely like that or just feeling a little bit, the chances are you don't have a really clear plan and a really clear strategy in place. So what you need to do is you need to take time to do this, even if it feels like a step backwards, even if it feels, oh, crap, I should have done that in December or November, whatever.
Take some time and that might mean blocking out a day. It might mean blocking out two days. It might mean a couple of hours, whatever that is. Take some time to build your strategy and to build your implementation plan for how you're going to go from where you are now to the goals you have set and what are the steps along the way.
Now, I've got some insights for you in previous episodes that you can listen to. Check those out. In the Accelerator, the way we do that is we have a lot of recorded curriculum and resources on that. And every year we run our annual strategic planning session in mid-November. And that involves setting goals and then reverse engineering those goals into marketing activities
that we need to complete in order to get there and then build a plan that is going to bring it to life, complete with habits and rituals and all of the things that will help you make it real.
Now, this recording is available for our clients as soon as they join. You can come live in November or you can always watch the recording. You can always go back to it. We have also this year added quarterly planning sessions, which is very exciting and is a way to keep that energy alive and keep that plan adapted and fresh. And that is also a great source of accountability and it's quite...
It's quite fun as well. Like I find that sort of quarterly planning really inspiring and helps me when I'm feeling a little bit, a little bit blah, really having a really good clear strategy helps immensely. If you think this appeals, then you should definitely book a call with me. You can have a look in the show notes or go to elliescarf.com/bookacall And we can discuss whether the accelerator might be a good fit for your business so that you can get access to all of those resources.
Now, another reason I think having a good strategy is so important is because clarity is actually like the reason I think it's exciting because it allows us to see the pathway to the goal. Right. So when we have clarity on the plan, we can see how it can happen and
And I think then we can believe it, right? Then when we have this clear pathway, we can believe it in a way that we might not when it's just like a, it can feel like a hope, right? So our strategy and planning is what takes a hope into a plan that is something we can see. Now, I also encourage you to embrace pathways thinking. And as coaches, you may have come across this. Pathway thinking is part of hope theory, right?
But it's this idea that people who are high hopers, which is associated with greater levels of goal attainment, well-being and so on,
those people are more able to see different ways to achieve their goal. And of course, that means if obstacles get in their way, they're more likely to be able to adapt and continue regardless of that initial pathway to their goal being thwarted. While some people naturally do that, we can put in place obstacles
I guess, mechanisms that allow us to embrace pathways of thinking and display that deliberately. So it can either be natural or we can actually put it in place intentionally. And for us in the accelerator, that looks like
We map out all different ways that you might hit your revenue targets. We will help you review your strategy as and when things shift. Reviewing your strategy on a quarterly basis allows us to pivot and not get so fixed on one way if that way is not working.
So I would say get a really clear strategy, break it down into a very clear plan, reverse engineer it back from your revenue goals and make sure you embrace different ways to achieving that goal and find some different pathways. So what are all of the different ways you might get to that goal?
Okay, the third way we can get inspired again, if we are feeling a little bit blah, is to go from, I guess, go from lip service around what are these reasons we started our business and make it real. And so that means, let's say you had these flexibility goals. So you started your business thinking you wanted to have Fridays off so that you could either look after your kid, look after an aging parent, whatever.
focus on your health, do a hobby, whatever it is, then something that is going to be very motivating is to actually bring that to life. And that means scheduling in the things that were important to you when you started your business. So you have to go into your diary. I know this seems so simple, but it's something we often forget.
you have to go into your diary and you have to block out your schedulers as well, right? So go in there, put it in there as if it's an appointment so that you don't book anything over the top of it and you don't factor that time in when you are planning your business and your work. So that might mean going into your diary and blocking out your exercise time, school pickups that you want to do, holidays you want to take,
workshops you want to attend recreationally, days you want to spend with family, whatever that is, go into your diary and put it in and then make sure you've also blocked out your automatic scheduling tools, right? So that's your Calendly, security, tidy cows of the world. Make sure that you've got them blocked out as well. And the reason I say both of those things is that if you are anything like me, if someone asks me to be flexible with my boundaries, I often will be.
However, the scheduler won't do that. The scheduler will hold my boundaries firm until I tell it to stop. So I would just encourage you to do both of those things. Now, I have just been through this process for 2026 myself, and it feels fantastic. So I have gone through this process and I have mapped it out. I have put in orange post-it notes on some beautiful wall calendars that I have put up.
In orange, I have put every day I want to take off this year. And so that includes things like my daughter's midterm breaks where she gets a Friday and a Monday off every term. It is a school holiday. It is some retreat time. There's some long weekends with my husband. All of those things are now in the diary and that feels very good, right? So
do those things. Now, this has to be a pretty adaptive process because my daughter's starting high school this year, which is crazy. And so I don't fully know yet what I want to block out in terms of how I want to be engaged with her week to week life. So is it picking her up from sport commitments? Is it being able to go to assembly? Actually, I think in high school, you're not allowed to go to assembly, which is a real shift from primary school. And I'm not one I'm a hundred percent sure I'm ready to make, but that is part of it.
So we are just trying to, that's going to take a few weeks, maybe some months to figure out the lay of the land and of what that is. But we have to keep checking in with these things and we have to make sure that our schedules reflect our priorities. And if we don't prioritize those elements of flexibility and life, nobody else is going to do that for us. So make sure you do that. And I guarantee if you block out all your holidays for the year, you're going to feel just a bit better. It feels really awesome.
And I would say, I give you some extra points. If you are like me and you are a visual person, I got the biggest boost from mapping out my calendar on the wall. So I heard this idea from a wonderful business coach, Steph Crowder. She has a program that she runs called Year on the Wall. I think it's called Year on the Wall. And
And it's really great. And she teaches this model. But basically what it is, sticking your calendar up on your wall and using a series of colored post-its so that you can look at your calendar and see what you have going on at any moment and what you have coming up. And I have to say, going through this process has been amazing.
The single biggest, most inspiring thing I've done in a long time because I can see it. It feels very tangible. I know what I have coming up. I can see how my strategy is mapped out on my calendar.
And it also just feels very visually beautiful. So I bought these gorgeous calendar pages and it's just like, it's right up my alley. Now, funnily enough, I posted a photo that had my calendar pages in the background and it was a really great post on LinkedIn. And I was talking about things I might say to you, if you're my coaching client that you wouldn't expect. And I thought it was a great post. Everyone just wants to talk about the calendar pages. You can check it out and you'll see what these calendar pages look like on LinkedIn. You have to go back to LinkedIn
I think it was probably posted on, I don't know, the 8th or 9th of January. So 2026, depending on when you're listening to this. So I put it up there. Now it got so much traction, probably the most any post of mine has ever had on LinkedIn, which is saying quite a lot. I've posted a lot on LinkedIn. And so I decided that this was a good opportunity for me to experiment with boosting on LinkedIn. Now you might've all seen that's available. It's like a paid advertisement, but it's
Like boosting now on, on meta, I never recommend boosting because it doesn't really make a difference, but I thought I would throw $60 at this and see whether boosting on LinkedIn makes a significant difference to impressions or engagement. So if you'd like to hear the results of that experiment, drop me a note on LinkedIn and, and we'll see how it goes. Now, also please just connect with me on LinkedIn. If you're a podcast listener, there is nothing I like more than connecting with podcast listeners on LinkedIn. It's delightful. So please do that.
Okay, number four, the fourth reason, or sorry, the fourth way you can just get a bit of that spark back if you're feeling a bit blah at the start of the year is to tune into your inner radar of what you find inspiring. To say that nicely, you might say, what is it that lights you up? But also I would say lean a little bit into your flavor of inspiration.
weirdly exciting, right? This is going to be different for everyone. So for me, the things that inspire and excite me, some of them are normal. Some of them are a bit weirder, but it's things like, I always like to make sure I've got some travel booked in, right? Whether it doesn't have to be far, doesn't have to be big overseas trips. I just need to know that there's these places where I'll have inputs, where I'll be pouring into myself. I need to make sure that is on the cards in some way.
Or similarly, experiences that will fill me up. Like, do you need to make sure there's some of that? That lights me up. Things like not so reflective, reflection opportunities, introspection, journaling. I like to use oracle cards, which is like,
a bit woo-woo adjacent. It's not deep woo-woo because I'm not making any conclusions based on them, but they just give me a sense of, hey, here's something to think about and it's come up for a reason. And of course we interpret them through where we're at now. And so they always give me just something that helps me to reflect, to think about what I'm doing. And I find that inspiring because I view it through that lens.
I also find it inspiring to walk and listen to inspiring podcasts. I find it inspiring to just get myself in the ocean. I find the right amount of social connection, not too little, not too much, to be inspiring. And so if I'm feeling a bit blah, I go through that list and I say, what do I need to make space for? And so I might say, I need to make sure that I am engaging
going for a walk first thing in the morning with the dog, with a podcast. And if I do that, my cup is filled every day. And after I do that for a good amount of time, I feel great. And I feel like I'm reconnecting with myself. Similarly, if I need to go and just get in the ocean, even if it's cold, then I will do that. So I recommend thinking about your flavor and
of what lights you up. And this can be purely personal, just things that bring that positive emotional experience and you can associate it with your work. That's what we want to do there. Okay. So I hope out of those four suggestions, some of them help, even if you're already feeling inspired and excited for 2026, there might be some ideas that are like, yeah, okay, here's something I can do to sustain that inspiration over time.
If you want to feel more excited about 2026 and your business, this might be the right time to book a call with me to discuss how I support coaches through my program, the Corporate to Coach Accelerator. So the 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 five hours a week.
It is for coaches of all levels. So those who are about to start their business, those who are early in their business, or those who are more advanced in their business, but who want to do something different. So for example, do less associate work and more direct client generation or change the focus of their coaching work. In the program, you will create all of your foundational assets and processes and systems and strategies.
strategies that you need to promote and grow an executive and leadership coaching business with a corporate client focus. If that sounds like something you need, something you want to drive your best 2026, then let's chat. Book a time now over at elliescarf.com/bookacall I will see you next week.
