Hello and welcome to the Business of Executive Coaching podcast. I'm your host Ellie Scarf and today I want to share something that you just might need to hear as we approach the end of 2026 and that is that you get to decide to try again.
You get to decide to regroup and start again and you actually don't need anyone's permission to do that. So what do I mean by that? Well, I'm talking to a lot of coaches obviously and the chances are that you are having one of a few common experiences at this time of year and at this stage in your business.
For example, you might be here in October of 2026 which is where we are but really it applies at any time and you might be feeling disappointed. You might be disappointed about the revenue you've brought in so far or how hard you've worked or not worked.
You might have that critical voice giving you all of the shoulds, right? So you should have posted more on LinkedIn, or you should have gotten more clients, or you should have made more money, or God, doesn't this just, if you're in those shoulds, it feels really crappy, and so you might be in that place and look, honestly, my shoulds are often also shouldn'ts, right?
Oh, you shouldn't have avoided that task because you know it's going to make a difference. Same sort of thing, but if you are feeling that sense of guilt or disappointment or maybe a little bit of shame, I'm talking to you.
Another place you might be at is you might be at this place in the year and really kicking yourself for not having figured it all out, for letting yourself sit in not knowing what you don't know for maybe a little bit too long.
Like you might be saying, God, I should have done that learning on how to take a sales call before now or sheesh, if I'd done that LinkedIn workshop, I would have been so far ahead of where I am now.
So you might be in a place where there was knowledge you needed to acquire, and you just haven't done it yet, right? So you might be in that place, and you know obviously, the self-critical voice is a bit of a theme.
The other place you might be at is that perhaps you do know what to do, you know exactly what you need to do, but the gap isn't knowledge; the gap for you might be implementation.
It may be that there is a real gap in doing the work that you know you need to do but you are just blocked from getting it done for some reason, and perhaps you know exactly what that reason is or if not, chances are you're experiencing some combination of avoidance, of perfectionism, of procrastination, of fear that is stopping you from doing what you need to do, right?
A real sort of self-sabotage kind of situation, and that feels bad too, right? You know what you need to do, but you are getting in your own way. Or another scenario you might have and I have so many clients and people in my world in this bucket, and frankly myself, who have had some big hurdles in 2027.
Things like health setbacks, whether those are big or small. Things like challenges with family members, or you know, suddenly being entrusted with a position as a carer for an ageing parent or you might have even experienced grief, and that could be grief for the loss of a friend or a family member, or it could even be the loss of a pet and these I don't think we give enough credit for the impact that all of these things can have on our businesses.
Some other examples: you might have experienced burnout that has been harder to come back from after you left your role than you thought or you may have been laid off and found the emotional impact to be bigger than you anticipated, even when you knew it was coming.
And honestly, any one of those things could reasonably have gotten in the way of the progress you thought you were going to have in 2027. So whichever of those categories you're in, if you're in one of them, my message to you today is that no matter what time of year it is, no matter how far you are in, you get to start again.
You get to try again and the best part is that you might have been telling yourself but it is absolutely not true. You are not starting from scratch, right?
So you get to reset, you get to reboot, you get to build back up, you retry and it will be so much easier than what you might be thinking because you're probably thinking that you're starting from ground zero and you absolutely are not, right?
And recognising the reality of the situation you're in whether it is that you're being deeply self-critical or that you know, being clear that you're experiencing feelings of failure or an unexpected obstacle, the best thing you can do is to recognise where you're at, give yourself grace and simply choose what the next smaller step forward is.
And the good news is that you bring a lot with you from any one of these experiences, no matter how frustrating. You bring greater self-knowledge, and that can inform your next strategies.
You bring deeper empathy for the real human experience of your clients and coaches which fuels that connection even more. And you bring knowledge of what doesn't work, and please don't underestimate that.
And so now your task is figuring and sorry I would say, also you have a deeper knowledge of where your constraints are, where your boundaries are, where your limits are, and I think that's really important.
So now your task is figuring out what your next move is, and honestly, your timeline is yours. And I hate the clichés, but it is true that there is no failure here. There is winning and there is learning. And I guess the third option is there is stepping away, and none of those options are bad or wrong, right? All of them take you forward.
And look, probably the gap in terms of what you do in order to reset and reboot, probably the gap is a knowledge but the gap could well be implementation and taking action or perhaps there is a small tweak or a strategic gap that you need to plug or maybe what you really need when you think about it is to give yourself permission to truly rest.
It may be also that you just needed to hear this message and that is all you need to get yourself back into action. But if you think you need something more to help you get into back into action,
to reset, to reboot, here are a few things that you might need.
You might need external accountability. That is one of the things we do inside the accelerator because I know how powerful it is and I know how powerful it is for myself because I am always being coached.
External accountability can make a huge difference. You might also need some boundaries and some clarity and some constraints rather than feeling like you need to do all the things.
And so that might look like defining what a good week entails from a task perspective so that you can know when it's okay to stop and say, yes, I've had a good week. Right.
And that is not intuitive because a lot of us will continue to criticise ourselves. But if we've got something objective where we can say, yes, I did this, this, and this, therefore check good week, it's done.
You might need to map out what success looks like and build a plan to get there so that you can actually see your dreams as a possibility and not as an unattainable hope. Or you might need a coach yourself for this.
Right. I have one. I think as coaches, we should always be coached in some ways. And of course, I guess what I do is more mentoring than coaching. And what I have is more of a hybrid of mentoring and coaching from my business coach. But that might be something that you need in order to get into action.
Now, of course, I'd love to help you with these things inside the corporate coach accelerator. If now is the time to lean into getting support with action and strategy and mindset challenges, then it's definitely for you.
But no matter how you move forward, please know there are no limits on how many times you get to reset and try again. The only thing getting in the way is when you don't try again. Right. And what the classical saying would be is, the only failure is giving up.
I don't even believe that. I don't even believe that there is failure here.
There is winning. There is learning, and there is deciding to step away. And all of those are good options. Now, if you are interested in discussing further how I work with coaches through these experiences, please book a call, and we can discuss your next step in your biggest challenges.
And you can do that at https://elliescarf.com/bookacall. Catch you next week, where I'll have more about how you can grow your business with more corporate clients.
