My coaching calendar is fully booked! What can I do?

Angie (: 00:00

John, I have to tell you, actually was, came across something in the last couple of weeks and I think it's a great topic for our recording today.

John Ball (: 00:02

Hey, Angie.

Alright, tell me what's going on.

Angie (: 00:17

You know, it's an interesting thing. think it's an area that we really haven't talked about yet, but it's really in alignment. As you know, I'm going through this major growth spurt and yeah, so there's this, mean, we all are right in our way, but there's something that hit and it's putting me in this space of I've reached capacity. Personally, I have reached capacity. We've never talked about that before.

John Ball (: 00:28

I do.

Which is not

a terrible problem to have is it?

Angie (: 00:45

It's not, but you and I know we've been talking about this. This is genuine problem. So I think it's worthwhile for our listeners to talk about what you and I have been talking about, right? How to navigate this and what a wonderful problem to have, but still a challenge nonetheless.

John Ball (: 00:52

it is.

I agree. Let's open the clinic.

Angie, I've seen coaches hit capacity and get pulled down because they haven't been ready for it. They haven't been prepared for it. And I don't think you're completely unprepared for it. You have a lot of industry experience. So for our listener, maybe you can share a little bit about what is going on with what you're

Angie (: 01:31

Mmm.

John Ball (: 01:44

what you can share, what's going on for you and how that's affecting how you move forward.

Angie (: 01:50

Yeah, and I think there's two points of reference that I that my experience has brought me to. So for our listeners, right, if you're a newer coach or are you a full time coach to be or are you a part time coach? Like this is who I only want to be. It's a side gig for me. Either way, you reach a point of capacity at some point. That's the goal. The goal is I want to reach my point of capacity. And it becomes this

John Ball (: 02:11

Yeah.

Angie (: 02:18

It can be a bit overwhelming because you say, well, this is great, but there's the but. What happens? How do you juggle your time? Are you overextending? And you said something earlier about burning the candle at both ends because we're we're business, right? We're talking small business here, everybody. We're not talking one of these big conglomerates that have 85 different coaches. I'm talking this is the

John Ball (: 02:35

Mm-hmm.

Angie (: 02:47

solopreneur space. ⁓

John Ball (: 02:50

Yeah.

Hello, when you when you hit capacity in a big organization, the clients could just get assigned to another coach. It's not a problem. ⁓ Good for you, your calendars full. Although, you know, you're probably super busy, which some people love some people don't. But when it is just you, I do think a lot of coaches do do become the almost a martyr to their business, I have to solve this, I have to work with the class.

Angie (: 02:58

Yeah.

John Ball (: 03:20

Like you can't say no to anything and you have to like, you have to solve your own, your own problem. Well, maybe, maybe speak to your coach about it. That would be a good start.

Angie (: 03:24

Why?

That's a great point though, right? It's like, so the thing about reaching capacity, here's the good news, you've reached capacity. So I think number one, for people who are coming into coaching, ⁓ because I've, okay, back up two seconds, two steps. I used to work as you all know, I worked for a coaching company several years ago. And my capacity at that time,

was a ridiculous number per week of one hour coaching sessions. So it became like a job. And I will say to you that from that experience, what I actually was able to recognize because they were feeding and I still had private clients, but there was an expectation of what's your capacity. All right. And they, you, you had that capacity. The minute you said yes, boom, your calendar was full and I was wiped out. I was doing so many sessions that

What I learned was, this is the important part, it's not a complaint, it was an opportunity to learn what I didn't already know about coaching. ⁓ By the way, if you can coach 40 people a week for one hour, I need to meet you because I could not do it. didn't have, forget the time available, it wasn't that. It was the mental and the emotional capacity, energy to do it in a very successful way. So I learned

what wasn't going to work, and that was, by the way, over 30 a week, I couldn't do it. I could not do it. I couldn't do it well. So I had to scale back. And then what I learned was my sweet spot. So that was my little backup there. So I know what my capacity is. I think first understanding your capacity is very important. And how do you decide that? Like when you've worked for other companies, so have you

John Ball (: 05:26

Yep.

Angie (: 05:28

Do you know what your capacity is? Like, do you know what your maximum is?

John Ball (: 05:33

I've I remember opening up I've worked at capacity for sure. And I remember opening up initially a 40 hour week, it was like the pretty standard pretty standard days. That's what I had available and they kind of needed more. So at the boutique that

Angie (: 05:49

Were those 60 out,

that means 60 minutes, those were one hour sessions or 30 minutes?

John Ball (: 05:53

No, no,

. So often they would be more: 4045

Angie (: 05:58

Okay.

Hmm.

Mm.

Sure.

John Ball (: 06:23

But you

know, I do, I'm very, I'm very cognizant of time and I get things finished. But yeah, so 30 minute sessions, it did mean that, you know, wasn't, whilst I wasn't getting back to back throughout the day, some of them, some of them would end up being back to back just by default. And yeah.

Angie (: 06:33

Mm-hmm.

my gosh, I could never, did that. don't first, it's just like, have to

interject here and say, this day and age, I cannot do that anymore. It is not good. I like to prepare for my sessions. I don't do a like, bup, bup, bup. But again, I've done it. That's how I know I shouldn't do it. I need a restroom break, by the way.

John Ball (: 06:48

No.

I think I think that

yeah, I think that might be something we talk about next week, but to be honest with you, the what we do the sort of preparation before before the sessions is actually a great topic. But yeah, I'm the same now I can't not just can't do it, I won't do it. Because it's not fair to me. And it's not fair to the clients because I'm not prepared. I haven't taken my notes. I'm scrambling to remember

Angie (: 07:07

Great. Yeah.

Right. Yeah.

John Ball (: 07:23

like if I'm doing all my notes at the end of the day, and I have tried it, I think a few years ago, I tried it. And at the end of the day, I couldn't remember enough of what I talked about with my first client to be able to make valuable notes on it. So I need to do the notes while it's fresh or whilst I'm whilst I'm on the call and and afterwards so that I do have the points of reference for next time. But look, I mean, yeah, working at capacity, I ended up opening up Saturday mornings.

Angie (: 07:33

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

John Ball (: 07:54

that was a bad idea. That was a bad idea. And because I actually ended up with clients who wouldn't shift from Saturday morning for a couple of years. So that locked me in. It locked me into doing Saturday mornings, which I wasn't grateful for. So, you know, I did start to experience that I can't take this much more. This is this is too much. I need to pull back. The money was nice and everything, but it wasn't really compensating me well enough.

Angie (: 07:56

you

Hello?

Yeah?

Yeah,

John Ball (: 08:23

for how

Angie (: 08:23

yeah.

John Ball (: 08:24

exhausted I felt and how little of a life I felt that I was getting because all I was doing was coaching.

Angie (: 08:28

No, we need to have that

correct. And you know what? I did that as well. Did you hear me moaning when John said he did Saturday mornings? I was like, because I when I worked for this company, they had global clients, which is fine. I make adjustments all the time in my schedule. So I ended up taking a 7am Sunday morning client. If you could see my face right now. I was not happy I did it because I was like, it's just an hour. It's fine.

But it was amazing how mentally that to me was like now the beginning of my work week. just shifted. So here's my other, like here's a boundary. I tried it. I did it. If you have nothing else going on and your weekends aren't a protected space for you, have at it. I'm not saying not to do that. And John's not saying that. Do what works for you. We did it and it didn't work for us. So guess what? There is a 10 foot flame boundary.

around my weekends now because I and it's not I've had people offer me like well would you do it for more money no I won't because it just puts me back into the bad habit of bending and flexing no I'm not doing that so just clear about that

John Ball (: 09:44

I would these days I would be open to the occasional weekend keynote or workshop, but opening up my opening up my calendar for coaching at the weekend is not going to happen. ⁓ but you know, I will say I was single at the time I wasn't married. This is, this is before I got married. So yeah, I had the time and the availability, but even with all that time and availability, coaching was coaching was all I was doing. And as much as I love it,

Angie (: 09:50

Yeah!

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

John Ball (: 10:14

So there's more to life. There is more to life than being on coaching calls with clients.

Angie (: 10:19

It's true, but there's also the decompression state. So John and I have talked about how it really is a drain. that's where that, again, learning, you have to learn your boundaries. You have to learn what your sweet spot is. I now know my sweet spot. And I do not commit to more than that. But here's the thing. So you've learned, you've experienced, you do weekends, you don't do weekends. Like yourself, I was single when I took on the Sunday.

morning thing. And then in the midst of it, I became on single. And I was like, this person, you know, that I'm now married to, by the way, was like, so what's the Sunday morning thing that you have to go run into the office and do a lot? Because it was crazy. But again, we worked through that. But again, I learned something else about myself as a business owner. So fast forward, right, you learn some things along the way and you say, okay,

what are some of the boundaries and I have to say privately not working for another company I have now experienced I have hit my mark I could not take on another client right now and nor should I because I've hit my sweet spot I've hit it I know what it is but here's the challenge right I can handle it

I'm at capacity, there's things that I do as a coach in preparation for each session, like John mentioned, right, like you mentioned earlier, there's buffers in between, there's certain little exercises that I do physically and mentally to keep me fresh. Because coaching is no joke, it's not, it's a deep conversation. It is mental acrobatics for us as coaches, emotional acrobatics all day. So we need to really put some, ⁓

practices in place when it's not one person a day anymore. It's a very different animal and maybe that's another conversation is what do do? Right? Just saying.

John Ball (: 12:22

keep

it added to the bank. Yeah, I'll say this. I have I have a pretty new program. And I have people coming into that. And that's great. It's not capacity. But I'm only coaching part time these days, and I will hit capacity very much quicker than I would have with any other of my coaching ventures. And that to me, I have thought ahead to this.

Angie (: 12:45

Hmm?

John Ball (: 12:50

that's going to be the signal to me that it's time to look at a group program. Because I'll start off, I'll start off with one to one, but then I'm going to have to move it into a group program. Now, that's not going to necessarily work for everyone for everyone's kind of coaching. And some people do coaching and that is has to stay one to one. Fine, I've got you, you can't make that group coaching. I understand. But for many coaches, probably the majority of coaches, especially in

Angie (: 12:57

yeah, certainly. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah?

Ahem.

John Ball (: 13:20

coaches in this business arena, you absolutely can, you can absolutely leverage into business coaching, because unless people are going to be sharing personal insights and life secrets in the call, where you wouldn't want to have your colleagues and your peers on there, then you're pretty good to go otherwise. Generally,

Angie (: 13:37

Mmm.

Correct, yeah.

John Ball (: 13:48

With those sorts of things, you lead the call, you run the call, people will do most of the work, they'll share what they're comfortable to share. And other stuff they may not share, they may not share openly on the call. And that's okay. I think you can still get great results. And there are benefits to group work that you won't get in one to one as much as there are benefits in one to one, harder to do in groups. yeah, so swings around about us. But I think that's a good sign that it might be time to leverage your time a bit more.

Angie (: 13:54

Yeah.

Yeah!

John Ball (: 14:15

and see how could you go about making the shift to group work instead of one to one.

Angie (: 14:16

Yes.

Yeah.

Listen, and I think it's great to do that. I love love group coaching. I mean, I call them workshops and yeah, it is a group call and maybe it's always on the same thing. But I love love doing that. And that is part of what I'm still doing. And it is a great way to expand ⁓ in a very intentional way. But here's the thing. So you're doing group coaching, you're doing one to one coaching, whatever you're doing, you reach capacity from a business perspective.

Now what do you do? Do you keep, this is some of the, John and I have been talking about this. Do you keep looking to fill the pipeline? How do you keep doing that? You don't, we talked, I know we talked very early on when we started the show. We talked about ⁓ like avoiding that cyclical business model that people get into. It's like, I'm making an effort, things are good. And then I get busy doing the thing.

And then what happens? I'm done doing that thing that I was doing and now I have to start almost over again. And it becomes this like very wavy roller coaster ride. The same thing happens here. So what do you do if you're very like early on in your year, right? Like your engagements and whatever it is you're doing, you're at capacity. How do you navigate going into, I still need to, I don't want cyclical. So what do I do to

Keep it flowing without having to wait until the last minute. You're gonna see John's face right now. He's like shaking his head like, I don't know.

John Ball (: 16:03

I know you think you think I have nothing to say on this. You'd be very mistaken. So this is this is the point where you have to take your coach head off to a degree and put your business head on. Because because it is a business problem. And this is one where you want to be making sure that you are managing consistent lead flow lead generationally flow into your business.

Angie (: 16:11

I love to hear it. I'm listening.

Yeah?

Yes.

John Ball (: 16:33

so

that you're always having your pipeline as full as as full as you can manage. You know that the thing of like airlines always overbook flights? Yeah, so

Angie (: 16:43

Yep. Yes, unfortunately,

go ahead.

John Ball (: 16:48

Yeah, many of us have had that experience of not quite getting on because of that. But it's a very common practice because they want to keep the flights full, you want to keep your business full. That might mean having some wait lists, it might mean having some lower end programs that people can do whilst they're waiting to come and work with you that you can keep them engaged or have other ways to keep them engaged with you whilst they whilst ultimately they're turning up their desire to come and work with you.

Angie (: 17:02

Huh?

John Ball (: 17:18

Because I think anything was another thing we don't like being told we can't have something right. We don't like having to wait for something, but we generally appreciate it a lot more when we've had to delay our gratification before we get the thing that we want to get. We value it a lot more because we've been wanting to do it for a lot longer. So if you can create that kind of feeling with your clients, I think you are setting yourself up to be even more valuable to them.

Angie (: 17:26

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

that placeholder engagement and I like that. mean that's similar. It's like what you know tomato tomato kind of a thing but yes you know the thing is the key to what John is saying is we don't want to say no and we don't want to lose the prospect. We don't want to lose them because of our inability timeline ⁓ to to engage. So ⁓ bum bum bum. What do we do in the meantime?

how do we keep them engaged at a high level? I mean, I know John said like at a low level, but meaning less engaged with them directly per se, but what do you do? How do you prepare for that? For me, it was a bit of a surprise. I didn't have a lot of time to prepare for this because it's the way it's structured for me. But at the end of the day, it is a great practice to have, I think, something in place that

or create something even if it's first because every client is different. Their necessity is different, whatever that is, but creating something that will prepare them for their engagement with you and get them started so they don't have to wait a year. Nobody's waiting, listen, nobody's waiting a year for you. Nobody's waiting three months for you even. So you have to at the key, John Sugar said like, well, maybe, maybe, but if it's, it depends.

John Ball (: 18:59

Yeah.

Maybe if they can't

afford to work with you right now, if it's because they can't afford to work with you, maybe they'll work with you, but they'll wait here and they'll work towards being able to afford to. That's a different situation. That means the blockage is on their side, not yours. But even with what you're doing, you said to me the other week that you were already nurturing some relationships that were going to help to ensure future contracts and future work for yourself. You are already thinking about

Angie (: 19:18

Hoorah!

Correct.

Yeah. Yeah.

John Ball (: 19:38

What's after this? What comes next? And I do think that maybe some people are thinking, well, you I probably know other coaches who could come and help me. Again, this is conversation. We've had these conversations. And great, if you do, it might be something seriously worth thinking about. That is one way in which you might be able to increase your capacity and scale things up. But there's going to be other things that will come with that, like

Angie (: 19:40

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

John Ball (: 20:08

Are they going to be able to deliver what are your clients going to get what you offer? Can you coach and train the other coaches that you do bring in to be able to deliver what you're promising in a way that you'll be happy with? think that there are a number of elements you might want to consider to make that actually work because you can't just say, all right, I know, I know this person, Sally's a coach, I'll bring her in. And then it might not work out.

Angie (: 20:22

Yeah.

Sure.

Listen, so that's something that you and I have talked about, right? Very specifically. I'm like, hey, John, have this I have this challenge right now. And I don't want to worry about what hasn't happened yet. But I need to make sure that I am not I don't want things to be cyclical. I don't want them to be. I don't want that to be the case. I want this. I want there to be that consistency, continuity. And honestly, here was my answer to you.

I haven't stopped. Let me deal with it when it actually happens that there's more people. But what did I do? You and I had a conversation and I said, you know, I'm not looking to be more than the one man band, but is there a way for me to engage with other coaches that I know that I trust? And this is not for everybody. Everybody doesn't have that luxury, but it is an option if there are people that you know that are even an expert in a field, you know.

⁓ But John and I talked about it. He is definitely a wingman person for me Hey, if I need X Y or Z based on your availability, would you be willing to take on why? Because I do trust him. I know how he coaches I know how he talks to clients

John Ball (: 21:55

But this this is absolutely this actually is important. I think is something where it's one you want to figure out in advance because when you're in it when the problems there it's going to become more urgent, more pressured and it's going to be harder to know where you want to go with it what you really want to do there. So have a think about what you really want to

what you want to achieve here. I think we've lost Miss Angie for a minute there. But we'll kind of wrap things up at this point. But I do think it is worth as a business owner, at least coming up with some sort of plan for yourself, are you looking to scale up your business? Do you have a system, something you can systemize and turn into a product where you might want to hire a team of coaches and maybe step more into running a business than actually doing the coaching yourself and move away from that and having a team doing it for you.

Angie (: 22:23

I lost you completely.

What is happening?

John Ball (: 22:41

These are all things you want to consider. This is like, how do you want your business to look? Where do you really want to go with this? And from now and into the future. But next week, we'll be back hopefully, as long as Angie can get her internet back. And we'll be, I think we'll be taking a look at the pregame, the work before the work, what makes your coaching sessions really fly? And

maybe just not showing up on the call and saying, all right, so what do you want to do today? That might not be the best way to begin your coaching sessions. We'll be back with that and more with future episodes. Thanks for listening. I hope you're enjoying the show. And do let us know. I'll tell you how in just a moment.