Wendy McCallum (00:00.615)
Hi there, welcome to The Coaching Edge. I'm your host, Wendy McCallum, and I've got a really short and sweet one today for you. This is a bite -sized episode for sure. I just wanted to come in and talk about a resource that somebody shared with me recently that's been incredibly helpful in shifting my mindset and my perspective around a business matter, and I thought it might be super helpful to you too. Whether you're a new coach and you're in the throes of business building, which is...
really, really tough a lot of the time, or you're a more experienced seasoned coach, but you're launching something new, creating a new project, or you are maybe shifting your niche, just doing something big that you haven't done before, I think this is gonna resonate. So what happened is this, I have been shifting the focus of my own practice over the last year.
And there are so many different steps involved in that, including me starting this podcast, a brand new podcast. After having hosted a very successful podcast for over three and a half years, I shifted to something totally new, which in some ways felt a lot easier, obviously, because I wasn't starting from scratch. I was starting from experience, but also felt really hard because I didn't have any followers. I didn't have an audience. And I knew that was going to be a build like it was the last time.
I also was working on creating new marketing messaging and new copy and creating new pages on my website and moving things around. And I had to start a new Instagram account and start building that and so many other things. And I was in a small, intimate coaching group that I belong to with a bunch of other really kind of cool business women who are doing big things. And I was lamenting how hard it is. I was saying, oh, I'm just...
done with the whole grind of this. It's just so much work. And I'm second guessing my decision to do this because I was in this place of real ease and abundance before this. And somebody wisely asked me to just remind the group and myself why it was that I wanted to make this change and what it was that was on the other side of this change for me if I made it. And that was very, very helpful. But then one of the women said,
Wendy McCallum (02:20.487)
If you're open to it, I have a resource that I think might be really helpful to you. And of course I said yes. And so she sent me the name of this book that I read that I'm going to share with you. So it's called The Dip by Seth Godin, G -O -D -I -N, and that'll be in the show notes. And she said, look, it's a really quick read or you can listen to it on audio book in a few hours. I think you're gonna find it's like really applicable and resonant to where you are right now. So I happened to be on vacation.
that week and I downloaded it as an audio book and I went for a walk on the beach. I listened to it all the way up the beach, all the way down the beach and then I finished listening to it that afternoon and it really hit home with me. I found it really, really helpful and I thought this would be a great thing, this great concept and perspective to share with the coaches who listen to The Coaching Edge because you guys, many of you are in the dip right now. Some of you might be in ease and abundance.
That's amazing if you are, yay you, that always feels really great. But chances are at some point you're gonna go back into a dip, because that's part of being a small business owner. My guess is that many of you are feeling like you're in the dip right now. So you start fresh out of a certification and it's really exciting and it's kind of fun. You're doing all the cool sparkly things when it comes to starting a coaching business. You're getting new photos taken, you're...
developing a brand and a logo and deciding what you're going to call your business. And you're creating a website and you're, you know, making your first freebie and you're doing these things that actually feel kind of fun. And there's this big learning curve at the beginning. And so it feels like every day you're learning something new, right? And so it's kind of rewarding and, and pretty exciting, I think. And then it starts to get really hard.
because you realize, oh my gosh, there are all of these tedious administrative tasks and steps that I really need to take and put in place in order to protect myself as a business person and in order to create an efficient business and in order to serve my clients the way I want to serve them and probably most importantly, in order to actually get clients. And that part feels super hard. And you're in it for a long time. I get it, I have been there. This is not my first time in a dip.
Wendy McCallum (04:35.175)
which is what that's called. I've been there in the early years of my business and I've been there in the middle years of my business when I've created like one time I spent at least a year, probably 18 months building from scratch a membership site, a membership platform, because this was before platforms like Kajabi were doing all the things that they're doing now. And so I had a custom membership site built and that was so hard. That was absolutely a dip. And...
Now I'm back in the dip again. So here's the thing guys, if you're in the dip, I'm in it too. Let's do the dip together. I'm there with you. So what Godin says is that every hard thing has this learning curve at the beginning and it feels really exciting and fun for a period of time. And then it starts to feel not so fun. And 99 % of people quit when it feels not so fun. They leave. And that's actually not a bad thing. Good quitters quit early and they quit.
often. And so I'm not saying that you should do all the things and always stick with things through the dip. That's not the message at all. The message is you have to start to really get real and honest and critical around what is worth working through the dip and what is worth quitting. I've quit lots of things over the years and I can now see that all of those decisions to quit actually served the greater goal, which was to build a really successful, profitable, resonant coaching business.
So quitting in itself is not a bad thing, but if this thing that you're working on really matters to you and it's really, really important to you and you really want to succeed with it, then you are going to have to go through the dip. So the dip is the period of time that follows the fun part. And the dip does end at some point and it starts to get easier again and you start to feel more abundant and it starts to feel more fun. But there is inevitably this period of time.
whenever you are learning something new or doing something for the first time that is really, really hard. And here's what I said to myself, and I was listening to this, I thought, oh yeah, this is me, I'm fully in that dip right now, things are getting tough, the rubber is hitting the road.
Wendy McCallum (06:48.327)
I have two choices. I can quit right now, in which case there's a hundred percent chance that I will not achieve this thing I want to achieve. I will not build this piece of my business that's so important to me. Or I can stick with it. I can put my literal nose to the grindstone here. I can actually do, well, not literal. I don't have a grindstone and I wouldn't put my nose to it if I did, but I can do the work. I can.
do the things, I can lean into this dip, I can stop resisting it, which is what's creating this suffering and this feeling of like horribleness about this. Instead, I can just kind of embrace the dip, recognize this is where I am and do all of the things and maybe do some reframing around what success looks like for me in this period of my business life. So that's what I wanted to share with you today because I suspect you're also feeling dippy right now. And I also know...
Because you're listening to this podcast, that building a successful, resonant, sustainable coaching practice is really important to you. So this isn't the thing that you want to quit. And if that's the case, you're gonna have to ride out this dip. And I wanted to give you some strategies that are working for me around reframing the dip and enjoying the dip a whole lot more. Because I don't wanna hate my life for the next year while I do this. I want to really enjoy it.
And frankly, ever since listening to this book and doing a bit of a reframe, I've been enjoying it a whole lot more. So here are the two things that I've done that have made the biggest difference to me in the dip. One, I have, instead of looking at where I wanna be this week or what I wanna accomplish this week or even this month or even this quarter, I'm looking a lot further ahead when it comes to goals and success. And I'm saying,
How do I want to feel and where do I want to be in a year? Because this work that I'm doing right now is probably not going to pay off for a while. One of the coaches that I've worked with says, the work you're doing right now is going to bear fruit in six months. And I honestly think the work I'm doing right now might not bear that much fruit in six months, hopefully some, but it'll start bearing fruit in about a year. So where do I want to be in a year and how do I want to feel is a really helpful thing to spend some time thinking about.
Wendy McCallum (09:05.575)
You might want to journal on that. You might want to make some notes. I would really encourage you to focus in on the emotion of it, how you want to feel. So I want to feel in a year like I have a system in place that is automated. So it's basically running itself. That's my goal. I want to have all the pieces in place to create a really nice organic funnel so people can find me.
People can get all kinds of great free resources from me. And then if people want more from me, they can get that. And if they want even more from me, they can get that. And I have it all set up so that they know how to do that. And I'm reaching the people that I want to be reaching all of the time with all of the little pieces of this puzzle that I have put in place. And I want to feel ease and abundance again, like I was feeling, you know, a year ago, before I started making all of these changes, I was feeling that way with the other side of my business.
However, it wasn't feeling as fulfilling to me anymore. And I knew there were other things that I wanted to do, which is why I made the decision to shift over. I do want to say, full disclosure, I straddled that. I straddled this dip for a long time. I had one leg on either side of the canyon. I was doing all of the things in both of the sides of my business for a long time, which is obviously not sustainable. And at some point you have to take that leap. You have to choose. You got to choose your side. Right. And so.
you might be there too, you might be still like straddling the dip, but at some point you'll be there. And I am definitely there now, I've made that decision and it was a good decision. But thinking about the goals and where I wanna be and defining success based on that instead of what's happening right now has been really, really helpful. And the second thing is connected to that, which is letting go of the old metrics for success that I was using. So I used to get,
success indicators and feedback from what was happening on the daily with me. So I would, for example, with the old podcast that I had, which was very successful and I had loads and loads and loads and loads of downloads all the time, I'd get emails from people or I'd get DMs from people on Instagram saying, oh, I love that episode or can you talk more about this thing? Or, there was always feedback coming to me daily on that. I was also getting people joining programs. I had Evergreen program at -
Wendy McCallum (11:28.679)
programs in place. I was coaching all the time, so I was getting feedback all the time from clients and coaching. That's shifted for me now because I am in a different period. I'm in a building period right now. And so I have to change the metrics of success as well on a daily basis. I have to measure it differently. I need to redefine that success and I need to look for my feedback elsewhere. And so what I have decided is really focus in on
how I want to be showing up in the dip. What's important to me about how I go through this period? And when I look back on it from that place of ease and abundance in a year that I get to, how do I want to be able to say I went through it? And there are a few things that are important to me about this and you'll have to figure out for yourself what's important to you about getting through your dip, because it's gonna be very personal. But for me, it's really important to me that I show up. I have so many coaches that I support.
and I absolutely love coaching them. And so I'm trying to do the active coaching while I'm also working on the other thing on the side. And it's so important to me that I show up with the same level of energy and enthusiasm in my coaching practice as I always have. That's just critically important to me. So that's one way I measure success. I have a call and I say, oh, such a great call. I feel so great. And I know I showed up the way I want to show up in that call. So that's one way I measure it.
It's also really important to me that I experiment and I don't play small with this and not take risks. Because I know that taking calculated risks is what's helped me build my business the way I've been able to build it. And so I want to keep doing that during the dip with this new stuff that I'm trying. So staying in experiment mode, trying new things, really, really important to me. Also, after having listened to the dip, I decided that I want to get better at quitting.
earlier and faster. So I want to get better at at knowing when something is actually not the right path for me and getting off of that so that I can focus my efforts and energy on the paths that are the right paths in this because this is not about taking everything that I try and like taking it right to the end. I'm going to take this bigger
Wendy McCallum (13:49.479)
business move that I make, I'm gonna take that right to the end, but like all of the little pieces in this, some of them are not gonna be the right decisions. I'm gonna make mistakes like everybody does and like I always have. And I'm going to learn from those mistakes, but my goal is to learn from them sooner. And so you can see that I have redefined what success looks like. Now at the end of a day, if I've showed up in that way, I've been experimental, I've taken some risks, I haven't shied away, I've pushed myself a little bit and I've shown up in the way that I love to show up as a coach.
I've succeeded and it doesn't matter about the metrics. It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter how many people listen to the podcast download, it doesn't matter whether I got emails and feedback from anybody today, it doesn't matter how much money I made that day, none of those things matter anymore as metrics for success. So if you're in the dip right now, that's what I suggest you do. I suggest you lean into the dip and you focus on where you wanna be in six months, one year, maybe even two years.
Spend some time thinking about that and then that you change the way that you define success on a daily basis now and you think about what's important to you about how you go through this dip. So I hope you found that interesting. I really love this new way of thinking about it. There's so much more in this book too and again, I listened to it weeks ago when I was on vacation and I had forgotten large parts of it. So I really encourage you to read the book because it is, like I said, it's really short to the point.
easy to read or listen to. And for me, it was just really inspirational and motivational because when you know you're not interested in giving up on this thing, then you know that you will go through a dip because that is part of this process every single time for every single person. And then you can just kind of embrace that dip. You can lean into it and you can make the most of it, which is exactly what I'm doing right now. So if you're in the dip,
We're dipping together. I'm happy to be here with you. I'd love to hear about your experience. You can always DM me or send me an email. I'm happy to chat with anybody anytime. I love communicating with coaches. If you have a suggestion for a new podcast episode, feel free to send that my way. Also, you can find me on Instagram at Wendy McCallum Coach, or you can find me through my website, which is just wendymcallum .com. Really hope you enjoyed this episode and I'll see you next time on The Coaching Edge.
