Wendy McCallum (01:29)
Hi there, welcome back to The Coaching Edge. I'm Wendy McCallum, your host, and it is as of today, March 24th, as I'm recording this, but this episode is gonna air at the beginning of May. And I am in the middle of moving houses right now, which means I am in the middle of a spring clean, although it's a little earlier than maybe I would normally do a spring clean. And that's why this episode felt like the right episode to be recording, is because
This idea of spring cleaning your business and how that can act as a reset for you in your second quarter is live for me right now, even though I'm recording this at the end of March. I've been going through this myself. If you've ever moved, you know what that means. You have to touch like everything that you own. And that includes like the stuff you shoved in a drawer two years ago and forgot about. And...
When I started cleaning out my office, which I have had to do over the last few days, I was genuinely shocked at what I had accumulated, like what I had kept and why I thought I needed to keep a lot of the things I kept is beyond me at this point. But let's just say that over the course of Saturday and Sunday of this weekend, I think I had six full bags of shredded documents created.
that went out to the curb today for recycling. So there was a lot, know, papers, notes, old workshop materials, slide presentations, like some client files even from back in the day when I still kept things in, you know, I kept written notes. And as I was sorting through, some cases, these files were like from the beginning of time. And I've been practicing as a coach now for well over 15 years.
So as I sorted through like 15 years of back records around my coaching business and I saw, you know, reminders and files around like some of the big group programs that I've launched and some of the big challenges that I had set up online. I mean, we had like a couple of massive challenges that we ran and sometimes had like 300 plus people sign up for them.
and all the one-on-one clients that I worked with in my busy private practice, I realized something really cool, which is that I've actually worked with thousands of people as a coach. I have helped thousands of people. And that was a really cool moment because that's why I went into this business. I didn't go into this business to make a million dollars. didn't go into this business to create my legacy. I went into this business because I love helping people. I love talking to people and helping people. So that was cool, but you know what felt even better?
guys getting this office space cleaned out. Shredding all the stuff I didn't need, archiving the stuff that I had to keep and just doing like a very deliberate and really careful purge that left me with this like sparkly shining clean desk that you can't see because it's below me. that has been...
so good for me. It's been really cathartic. It's like created all of this space. In fact, it's created space for me to come up with some really cool things just today. I've been sitting here noodling away at some things that I want to change and some things that I want to bring into my business model. And that's because my brain finally had some space because physical clutter equals mental clutter. And when you clear the physical clutter and the digital clutter, you actually create mental space. That's why I'm doing this episode today.
because I want to invite you to do the same. It's the beginning of May when this is airing. is time for, naturally time for spring cleaning. Why not do it in your business too? So what we're going to talk about today are I think four different areas of your business where you can do some cleaning up. So first of all, it's the obvious, like the physical cleanup of your space, your files, anything that's paper, but also digital cleanup. The second part is...
doing an offer suite audit, so a cleanup of your offers. The third thing is looking at your pricing and doing a bit of an audit around your pricing. So looking for places maybe where there's room to make changes there. And then also looking at the systems and the workflows that form the foundation or the underpinning of your business.
things like onboarding and onboarding clients, your booking system, your email sequences, those types of things. And then actually I think there's five. There's one more that I missed, which is a cleanup of your relationships and communities, if you have a community or communities. So we're gonna talk about all those things in turn, but let's start with why cleaning feels so hard and why it matters. I think the reason why it's so hard to get started on a clean.
The mindset piece of it is that adding more always feels more productive than taking away or simplifying. It just doesn't feel productive to take things away usually. Adding things feels productive. And so we're all inclined to be just adding new things, adding new products, creating new offers, but it's very unusual that we sit down and look at like, what might the benefit be or how might it increase my efficiency and product productivity to remove things. And that's really what we're talking about in this spring clean today. We're talking about
tearing it down, cleaning it up, saying goodbye to some things. We also often attach our identity to our offers and our content so it starts to feel like us and it can feel like a failure to retire something, but it's not. And so if you're someone who needs permission to do a real purge of your business because you're feeling attached to your offers, attached to your content,
or you just cannot get started on all the things. You're worried with the consequences of this cleaning or this audit might be of your business. I'm here to give you a permission slip. So it is okay you have permission to retire an offer that has flopped, something that did not go the way that you wanted it to go. It's okay to delete that freebie that four people downloaded that's been up on your website for four years. You can delete that. It's okay to admit.
that something maybe isn't working and to either tweak it and change it or to just retire it. That is okay. Cleaning up is about making room for new things. It's not about giving up. And like I said, it's amazing to me today just how much new stuff is on my mind as a result of the purge that happened this weekend. It's created so much space for me. One thing I really wanted to introduce at the beginning of this episode is the idea of having some...
seasonal rhythms to your business. I talk a lot about the seasons of coaching in terms of like good times to launch and all of that, but I want you to think about if we think about the calendar seasons, know, summer, fall, winter and spring. What about if we think of them this way? Spring is for cleaning and auditing, which is what I'm proposing that you do this month. Summer is for creating. And I've had episodes in the past where I've talked about how to max out your summer.
your summertime and I've talked about how summer is such a great time to create content, to rework programs and courses and create new content, newsletters, those types of things in advance, podcast episodes. It's just a really great time to create in the summer. So spring's time for cleaning and auditing, summer's time for creating, fall is such a good and natural time to be launching new offers and programs.
And winter for me has always been a time of sort of reflection and almost like a coasting. I don't usually offer like brand new things in the winter. I might, you know, open up an offer that was already launched in the fall for a second time, but I'm not doing a lot of creative brand new stuff in the winter. It's usually a time of sort of retreating, resting, reflecting, and just kind of getting through the winter months, to be honest. So let's talk about the spring, spring clean and the audit.
And let's start with the physical cleanup.
It's amazing what a clean desk will do. I have said this before, never underestimate the power of a clean desk. It's a tool, a little trick that I have used probably hundreds of times now in my 15 years plus of coaching, where when things start to feel heavy, when I start to feel overwhelmed or when things don't go well in a week, it's like a regular practice for me when I'm feeling that way to just take everything off my desk.
get out my spray bottle of cleaner and my rag, clean off the top of my desk and then put everything that was on my desk back where it's supposed to be so that I end up with a clean desk. It's my favorite thing to do really in my office when I'm feeling overwhelmed and it works every single time. It's like an instant reset when I do that. So never underestimate that, the power of physically decluttering.
It not only opens up space for creativity when you're not cluttered, it also allows you to focus in a way that's difficult to do when there's crap everywhere, right? So the first place to start is with your desk. Clear off the surfaces, look at what's there that needs to be there and what doesn't need to be there. Spend the time filing all the things that have just piled up and need to be put in their proper place. Shred the stuff you don't need anymore. Look at, if you're like me, I had
several filing cabinets basically full of old files. It was just easier to transport from the last place I was to here. But really when I looked at them, their programs I'm never gonna run again or their records that are for clients that I worked with so long ago that I do not need to keep the records. was like, was so much to shred, hence the six bags of stuff.
I also had notes from presentations and workshops and things that I put on that I have in a digital format on my computer. There's no need for me to have a paper copy. It's just taking up space and cluttering. So all that stuff got shredded. Old notebooks, notes from certifications and trainings that I've done as a coach got shredded. I don't need them anymore. I never looked at them once after the certification, you know, that type of thing. The digital clean up side of it is something that I'm just starting right now as I'm recording this episode. I'm to spend some time on that. That's really about cleaning up. I did clean up.
off my desktop so that on my laptop, there are very few things on my desktop when I log in. I find that to be a very calming exercise as well. I'm gonna go next to my downloads folder, probably gonna spend some time in Google Drive, because there's lots of stuff in there that is just obsolete, does not need to be there, can be deleted. I do have a good system for organizing my client digital files, which is that when I have my first call with a client, usually it's a discovery call situation.
I open up a document for them, label it by name, and then if they decide to continue on and work with me, they get moved into the active clients area, set up a file for them there, and then once I've completed a coaching engagement with them, they move back to archive. Now, a lot of my clients end up coming back and working with me again, sometimes on the same area of challenge, a lot of the time on a different area of challenge, and so they just move then from archived back into active if they come back.
And that system is all done on my electronic notepad that I use. And that's always current and up to date. So I don't need to do much around that. But if your client files are all over the place digitally, you might want to organize those. And then just like cleaning out your inbox, that would take me days to do, honestly, but it is something I need to do. And then, you know, if you haven't been doing this, look at areas like
places that you're getting emails from regularly and to start every time you get a new email, look at it with a critical eye and ask yourself if you want to stay on that list or if you want to unsubscribe. I've been doing that now for the last few months, that's been paying off. So that's the physical side of it. And that's the obvious place to start. Your physical office papers and all the rest of it. And then your digital office wherever your digital files live. Okay, the second thing that is a really great area to be thinking about during a spring clean,
is your offer suite. So you've talked a little bit about offer suites recently in podcast episodes. This is all about like your sort of options that are available to customers, to clients, to coaching clients. Usually we're working from like the lowest, smallest, most inexpensive offer up to the sort of most involved, most high touch, most expensive offer. We're talking about an offer suite.
And so doing a little audit of your offer suite is a great thing to do every spring. When was the last time you looked at everything that you sell? I know that for me, this usually does happen once a year. I'm doing it right now. I'm looking at all the things that I have, and I'm just looking at it more from the big picture and evaluating.
which of these offers are actually the offers that I want to be having live right now. Because one of the traps that I've fallen into and I think a lot of coaches do is that I never retire offers. It's unusual that I retire an offer. I'll add something new, but the other offer is still there. So for example, I have a lot of free lead magnets right now, a lot of them. Some of them perform so, so, so well and other ones maybe are less popular. Doing a little audit of those is a good idea for me. Scaling it back.
Sometimes it can be overwhelming for someone to hit a landing page and have there be like just a million options to choose from. So take a look at those things and look at all of your offers, your free offers, your low ticket, your medium ticket, your high ticket VIP stuff and ask yourself, is this particular offer still relevant to the clients I'm trying to attract right now? Does the messaging still work? Does it still reflect how I talk about this type of work or is it outdated?
Is the structure still working? Does this still work as, for example, a three-month coach-led program? Or does it need a refresh? Would it be better to stretch it out over six months and do bi-monthly calls, for example? These are all things to be thinking about. And then I think a really important question is, am I still excited to both sell and deliver and coach this program? Or is this something that I dread?
I dread launching it, I dread the sales process, I dread the coaching of the actual group. If so, that's a big red flag. Look at what offers might need some tweaking and then which offers might need to go in their entirety. And if I was to look at my offer speak critically, which I'm about to do, I feel very confident there are some things that are just going to go and there are other things that are going to get tweaked and changed. So in terms of tweaking, things to look at would be
Do I have bonuses associated with certain offers that don't make any sense anymore or inclusions? Like are there programs and offers out there that have outdated modules and lessons? This is something actually I did do this this morning. Went in and looked at the BBB, which is my biggest content library. That's my business building bootcamp. There's a module in there on tech.
and social media stuff. And there were several lessons in there that were, you know, bang on two years ago when they were offered as master classes. But the technology has just evolved so quickly with all of the AI and the changing social media platforms that those particular master classes are not relevant anymore. One because nobody's using that platform anymore. And the other one because AI is just taken over and it just runs completely differently. do you have things like that? Do you have lessons in your content or do you have
you know, resources that are out of date. Are your offer names still good? So do you have an offer name that now maybe is, you not the language that people are using regularly or wouldn't mean the same thing to people because times have changed. Also, look at your format. Maybe you've got a live program that would be better delivered as a self-paced, self-guided course or vice versa. That's always something to look at. And then, you know, look at
with really like get radically honest with yourself around whether there are offers there that might need to go entirely, right? So is there an offer that fits a niche that you don't serve anymore? If so, that's something to think about ditching because you're not speaking to that audience anymore. So you're not going to sell it. Are there things that you're keeping like just in case, but that you never sell? I have some of those. I will admit to that. I have some courses that are like they're not live. I'm not trying to sell them right now, but they're sitting in
platform like because I cannot bear to delete them even though I know I'm never gonna sell them again but I love them I'm attached to them so I might need to do some course what do we call it some execution of courses some course assassination might be in the future for me because those things don't need to live there anymore are there like some low ticket items that take more energy to sell than they're worth I probably have a few of those too
Give yourself permission to let those things go. That's what I'm planning on doing. I think there's a lot of relief in that and there's some space that gets created there and they're not serving you anyway. They're not generating revenue. They're more work than they are worth right now. The other thing to look at when you're doing this offer suite audit is what might be missing.
So are there some gaps in your audit, in your offer suite? I've talked about this before too,
Are you missing a low ticket item? You just have maybe a free lead magnet and then you jump right to your one-on-one coaching offer and there's nothing in between, for example. Take a look at that. Is there something that needs a gap that needs to be filled in and how could you do that? is there something to add on the front end or maybe is there something to add on the back end? I've talked about this in recent episodes as well, this idea of making sure that you have
an offer to sell your existing clientele, the people who you've already worked with, who you've already helped to solve a problem, who already love, trust you. Do you need to think about creating something there? Is there a gap there? So all of that is part of the offer audit and cleanup. And I think that that is a piece that honestly, if I was to sit down and just do that, it will probably take me a few days because I have so many offers. Now, for those of you who are newer, this might not take as long.
but just take a look. Is there any language or messaging that's outdated? Do you have modules or topics that could use a refresh or an addition maybe? Is there a way to beef up the program or just make it more valuable to people? Take a look at that. The next area in spring cleaning that's really important is your pricing. And I think this is the thing that we avoid the most. Certainly I do.
I rarely change my pricing. I should be better at this. I do try to review it in January of every year. My one-on-one pricing usually gets reviewed at least in January, but I am definitely guilty of leaving program pricing for too long. Take a look at your pricing. When was the last time you looked at it? Ask yourself that question. And if the answer is when I set that price, it's time to review. And if the answer is, like, I'm going to say more than 18 months ago, it's time to review.
Because your skills, your experience, the results that you get with your clients, the transformations that you help people affect, that's probably all grown and changed. And your pricing needs to keep up with that. I would say it's also a good idea to just take a look at what other people are doing in your market, in your industry, people who coach in the same niche, keep people around the same level of experience and skill set as you. What are they charging? Are you undercharging? This isn't to copy, this is to calibrate. The idea is that
you want to make sure you're not underpriced because underpricing not only makes it more difficult to make revenue and stay in business, obviously, but it also sometimes doesn't communicate value properly, right? And it can actually lead to people not exploring working with you because your prices are so low that they'll think to themselves like, is wrong? Why is this person pricing so low? Do they not have enough practice? Do they not?
have the skills to help me. I've certainly done that before. I have sort of assumed people are not the right coach for me because I've assumed a lack of skill based on their pricing. So take a look at what other people are doing. Make sure you're within market. Questions to ask yourself around your pricing. Do I feel resentful delivering this offer at this current price? If the answer is yes, I'm resentful, that's a big red flag. Big red flag. Listen to that.
Is my pricing attracting the right clients or repelling them? Like I said, sometimes your pricing is too low, can repel people. Also sometimes too high. So I've had coaches who have had like really premium offers for very specific subset of their niche. And they have realized like that type of pricing does not work with the current demographic that I'm trying to serve, either with the same offer or with a different offer. So you have to look at it both ways. But I think it's important to look for room to raise your prices.
Is there some room for me to raise here? Even if it's just a little bit, 10, 15%, what difference does that make for you in terms of the big picture of your business? I can tell you a huge difference. It can be the difference between being able to pay yourself and not being able to pay yourself, between being able to stay afloat and not staying afloat that year. So you've got to stay on top of your pricing. The other thing you can think about is, is there a way to bundle some offers and create like some real value for clients and a new stream of revenue or sort of reignite?
some existing offers with a new bundle and a new price. That's something that I have been looking at because I just have so much content out there, most of which people don't even know it's there. that's something I'm thinking about is a bundle. And then another thing that's important to look at, think, especially given where we are, we've talked a lot about the trust recession, the economic recession, where the buyer mindset is right now.
And because of all of those things, it can be really helpful to consider payment plan options. So is there just one way to opt into this offer? Does it require full payment upfront? Is there availability, space, room for me to create a payment plan with this? And how might that make this program more accessible? Again, like we were talking about around the offer suite audit, asking yourself if there are, you know,
certain offers that maybe could be structured a different way and lead to a different stream of revenue like a live version of a course being offered as self-paced, for example, or is there room for me to add like a VIP version of this or one of the things I always like to do is if I'm offering an evergreen course like you come in and you do, for example, the CCSI or the CCC course self-guided.
you have the option to work with me. to add on for private sessions with me so that I can help you, you know, one-on-one help you work through the material and organize and build your course, for example, if you're in the CCC program, or if you're working on building your confidence and your skills, your technical skills as a coach through the CCSI, you can also meet with me and I will do some private mentorship with you. So that's like a VIP add-on. Is there an opportunity for you to add?
something at the cart checkout that serves as kind of a cart bump for somebody if they're looking for more support. Okay, so that's pricing. So, so far we've talked about physically cleaning up your office. We've talked about looking at your offers and cleaning those up. We've talked about looking at your pricing and cleaning up your pricing. I want to talk now about the systems and workflows that form sort of the foundation of your business, taking a look at those. So this is the behind the scenes stuff.
that for a lot of us feels like it's held together by duct tape. It's very patchy. you know, we're, we're small business owners trying to do all the things. So it just kind of gets like built like patchwork really when we need the document or the email, we create the email or document, but there hasn't been a lot of thought about how all of these things connect together. So taking a look at these things, are your processes actually smooth or are they a bit choppy and chaotic?
So client onboarding, what does that look like when you bring a new client on? Is there room for you to streamline that? Could you create a little email sequence, for example? Could you automate some parts of it to make it run more smoothly? Email sequences, this is such a great thing to do a cleanup on.
Probably, if you're like me, most of your lead magnets in your offers have little emails that automatically send with them. Sometimes, depending on what the lead magnet is or the program is, it might be like a long series of emails. When was the last time you read those? Are they still relevant? Are there parts that are not actually even accurate anymore or obsolete? Are there links that are broken in there? Are there things that you could be?
talking about in there that you're not talking about. Like, for example, did you start a podcast two years ago, but you don't mention that in your general welcome sequence? Well, you're going to want to go back and revise that and add that in. Also taking a look at, you know, how does your calendar work and are there any automatic emails or messages that get sent when people book appointments, for example, are those still current and up to date? Look at all of those things. And if you're trying to identify a place
that might require some work when it comes to your systems and workflows, just ask yourself this general question, like what part of my business, when I'm like going through like the day-to-day business of coaching, what parts of the admin side of that feel sticky to me? Or do I often like get stuck or they just feel hard or I dread them? How can I make those easier? How can I automate those? How can I clean those up? That's a good thing to think about. The last part of a spring clean that I think is
something to think about when you're running a coaching business is take a look at the existing relationships and any community areas that you might have set up and do a little clean on those. So that might look like your newsletter community, right? The people that you send out your email to every week. When was the last time you cleaned your newsletter list? Trust me, this matters. And I know it's hard to say goodbye to people, but if there are people on your list who have not opened an email from you in a year,
They don't need to be on your list anymore. Cleaning up your email list, getting rid of those people who don't open ever is going to increase your open rates. Not only does that feel really good to you, but it gives you better information and data when it comes to having real understanding of like who's actually seeing and how many people are seeing and opening the things that you're sending to them. So clean that up, clean your email list up.
Also, take a look at the accounts that you're following on social media as a business, the accounts that your business is following. Are those things, those accounts all serving you? Are they still aligned? Do they still offer you good content? Have they just turned into a shameless self-promotion place? Like, get rid of and unfollow the accounts that don't work. Same thing goes, we were talking about newsletters, like unsubscribe.
just unsubscribe to whatever newsletters you subscribe to as a business owner that no longer serve you.
Look at all of the places where you have personal and professional relationships in relation to your business. Look at all of those things. So one area would be the professional relationships, the places where you're getting referrals or where you've done collaborations in the past or partnerships. Are there connections there that you need to kind of reignite or nurture? If so, send out an email or...
or or something and just say, I've been thinking about you. I'd love to know what's been going on in your business. Are you doing anything new? I love to be able to do cross referrals and I haven't talked to you for a while. So I'm sure some things have changed. Like just start the conversation like we've been talking about. And then also on the, guess this is not personal, this is also professional, but on the client side of things, ask yourself, when was the last time I checked in with my past clients?
because that's a really important thing to be doing. I actually have a coach inside the BBB who did this exercise a couple months ago, sent out emails to all of her past clients, which was an exercise that took her some time, but it started conversations with a lot of people she hadn't talked to for a long time, and she ended up selling a whole bunch of this new offer that she had created as a result of that. So that can really, really pay off. And then, do you have any communities or groups that have gotten really quiet or gone dormant? Those would be places to ask yourself,
first of all, does this community still need to exist? Is this actually serving me or the community members? Has everyone just forgotten they're in this Facebook group? If so, if it's not serving you and it's not serving them, is it time to close the, shut the group down, for example? Or if it's a community that was once a really robust, awesome community and it's just kind of gotten quiet, how can you reignite that? Can you start a...
challenge in there or can you get in there and do a live or you know is there some way for you to start re-engaging people ask some questions get people responding to posts fire it up again all part of a good spring clean okay that's it i just wanted to remind you of the power of spring cleaning and what a difference this can make for your business having just gone through this this weekend and i'm still in process here but if you are watching this video you can see my office behind me it is
very, very tidy. And that is, as I said, because I'm in the middle of moving houses, so this had to happen. But it's actually been really, really great. And I really want to encourage you to take the time to do a spring clean in each of these areas. And you might just want to do like one a week for the next five weeks or so. Start with the physical space, then move into your offers, then do an audit of your pricing and clean that up.
Then take a look at your workflows and systems in your business. And then lastly, look at all your relationships, both in group, community, with clients and other professional connections and make sure that those are being nurtured properly and, you know, clean up your lists and that kind of thing. Hope you found this helpful. If you get motivated to clean up your office,
send me a note and let me know. That would mean a lot to me actually to know that I inspired some cleaning up. Send me a note and as always, if you have any ideas for future episodes, share them with me. Send me an email at wendy at wendymichellem.com. I'm always so happy to hear from new people. I know there are thousands of you out there listening to this podcast and I don't know most of you and I would love to know more of you. So send me a note, let me know who you are, what your coaching niche is.
what you like about the podcast, what you wish I did more on the podcast, give me the feedback, I'm always happy to hear it. Have a wonderful rest of your week and I will be back next week with another episode of The Coaching Edge. Thanks for listening.