Season 7 Episode 5: Coaching Masters with Lindsay Dotzlaf, Part One

Who coaches coaches? In this episode Master Certified Coach Lindsay Dotzlaf interviews Melissa about all she learned in Lindsay’s Coaching Masters program. Whether you’re a coach or just a busy mummabear, there’s a lot to chew on in – the importance of intentionality, decision making and getting around mum guilt. Grab a cuppa and listen in to part one of their conversation.

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Lindsay: Hello, I'm so happy to have you here today. Can you introduce yourself? Tell them who you are and a little bit about what you do.

 Melissa:
Finally, I get to be on the podcast that I have listened to every episode, and have stopped you for so long. I'm like so excited. My name is Melissa Wiggins. But everybody calls me Mama bears specifically coach Mama Bear. Because I have so many children. I an entrepreneur who coaches mom, entrepreneurs to have balance and joy in their life today, not waiting for the weekend. And I'm an advocate for being a business woman who loves her business, but also loves to hang out with her kids.

Lindsay:  I love that one of my favorite things when I have people on, especially people that have been in my mastermind, and that I've seen do the work on this is when you can just confidently are like this is who I am. And this is exactly what I do. Because I know it was something that you kind of worked on for a little bit, which we'll get into. But first I want to ask you, I feel like this might be with you a loaded question. Because in my mind when I watch you and I watch your watch on Instagram, and your stories and all the things, and I know a little bit of your story, it feels like you've lived 20 lives, you have just so many stories. So I'm curious. I don't even know if this is going to be a simple answer. But I'm really curious how you got into coaching?

Melissa: Sure, it's a great question I have had maybe lives, I feel like I'm an old soul, you know, like, I'm the oldest of five kids. And I feel like when you're the oldest, like you tend to grow up maybe a little bit faster. And there was like a lot of things that happened in my childhood that sort of made me grow up really quickly. And I feel like I just got super responsible, super organized super quickly, which means that like my life looks like I'm like a 60 year old already. But I got into coaching because I have been coached mentored for about 13 years. And I was transitioning out of my last job, which was the executive director slash CEO of my nonprofit that I started. And I was like trying to figure out like, what I was going to do, and I was talking with my coach, because I've had a coach for a long time. 

Find the FULL Transcript here: Season 7 Episode 5: Coaching Masters with Lindsay Dotzlaf, Part One

Transcript

Lindsay: Hello, I'm so happy to have you here today. Can you introduce yourself? Tell them who you are and a little bit about what you do.

Melissa: Finally, I get to be on the podcast that I have listened to every episode, and have stopped you for so long. I'm like so excited. My name is Melissa Wiggins. But everybody calls me Mama bears specifically coach Mama Bear. Because I have so many children. I an entrepreneur who coaches mom, entrepreneurs to have balance and joy in their life today, not waiting for the weekend. And I'm an advocate for being a business woman who loves her business, but also loves to hang out with her kids.

Lindsay:

I love that one of my favorite things when I have people on, especially people that have been in my mastermind, and that I've seen do the work on this is when you can just confidently are like this is who I am. And this is exactly what I do. Because I know it was something that you kind of worked on for a little bit, which we'll get into. But first I want to ask you, I feel like this might be with you a loaded question. Because in my mind when I watch you and I watch your watch on Instagram, and your stories and all the things, and I know a little bit of your story, it feels like you've lived 20 lives, you have just so many stories. So I'm curious. I don't even know if this is going to be a simple answer. But I'm really curious how you got into coaching?

Melissa:

Sure, it's a great question I have had maybe lives, I feel like I'm an old soul, you know, like, I'm the oldest of five kids. And I feel like when you're the oldest, like you tend to grow up maybe a little bit faster. And there was like a lot of things that happened in my childhood that sort of made me grow up really quickly. And I feel like I just got super responsible, super organized super quickly, which means that like my life looks like I'm like a 60 year old already. But I got into coaching because I have been coached mentored for about 13 years. And I was transitioning out of my last job, which was the executive director slash CEO of my nonprofit that I started. And I was like trying to figure out like, what I was going to do, and I was talking with my coach, because I've had a coach for a long time. And she and I said, Okay, I've decided what I'm gonna do I know what it is, I'm ready, I'm going to be a therapist, I'm going to go back to school for about four to six years, and I'm going to become a therapist, and I already have lots of degrees, Lindsey, and my coach was like, um, we pause on that, and maybe look at some other options. Like if you ever thought about coaching, and I was like, Oh, I don't know me. I don't I don't know if that's for me. And she was like, can you just look at these things and she had me like a bunch of different things. And then I ended up going through certification and becoming master certified and I just keep became completely obsessed with coaching. Like, I love it. I will do it till the day I die like it is in my bones now and I feel like that's when you know, okay, like, I'm what I'm supposed to be. 

Lindsay:

We have a lot in common the story you told about like being the oldest, I'm also the oldest, just having some things happen when you're young that caused you to grow up really quickly. I feel like I resonate a lot with that. So no wonder we are in this space together. And I you have a law degree as well, right?

Melissa: Yeah, I was a lawyer in Scotland. I was a commercial litigator in Scotland before I moved to the States. So I you know, and I worked, you know, seven o'clock in the morning till seven o'clock at night, I was a single woman that was before kids and and then when I moved to the States, I started my own company. So but yeah, I was a lawyer.

Lindsay: And then you moved here. So give me like a brief timeline. What year did you move here? Or like around what year and what year? Did you have kids and change everything?

Melissa: So I um, I moved to the States when I was 26 and got married when I was 26. I had my first baby at 27 had twins at 29 and then adopted my daughter at 35. And I'm now 38.

Lindsay: Okay, and in between there you were a lawyer then you started a not for profit. And now you're a coach.

Melissa: So I when so my son Cannon was diagnosed with stage four neuroblastoma cancer when he was 20 months old. So I was like, like late 20s at the time. I I was taking days away from giving birth to twins. So it was like kind of an insane time. But at that time, I had my own company. And I actually worked with internationals who wanted to move to the US. And I worked with an immigration attorney helping them on the business side. But when Cannon got sick, you know, the toll does, you know, this is going to be three and a half years of treatment, and you know, it's going to be a really hard time for your family. So at that time, my husband and I decided that I would be the one to start working and be the primary caretaker for Cannon and our twins. And so then I shut down that company, and then about a year and a half into countenance treatment, that's when I started, my nonprofit cannonball gets cancer.

 Lindsay: And do you still have that nonprofit now?

Melissa: I do, we have an entire team that runs that. So I get to be a part of the board, I actually am going to innovate on Saturday. But um, yeah, we've raised like, close to $4 million, and giving it away to researchers all over the world now, and will continue to forever. So it's a very beautiful organization that funds clinical trials and has, you know, put several 100 children on clinical trials when they had no options. So I'm very, very proud of it.

 Lindsay:

That just gave me chills, just hearing, I knew that this was a thing I have heard you talk about it. But I didn't know all of the details. And I think that that just what an inspiration and I love seeing, of course, all of your kids but especially like knowing the story when I see Cannn on in your stories, and he shows like makes appearances sometimes. And I just love him.

 Melissa:

He's so cute. And you know, what a gift like he's 11. Now, you know, you just celebrated his 11th birthday, which, you know, makes me want to cry, because they told us, you know, you'd have 5050 chance of surviving five years, and, and he's just doing so well, and he wants to be a YouTuber. And you know, he's always picking up my phone and making these videos. And he's like, did you post that on your Instagram? Like, I'm like, oh, dear Lord, I've created a monster.

Lindsay:

He is a character, that's for sure.
Melissa: So I yeah, I just I really love him.

Lindsay: He is pretty funny. Okay, when you came into coaching masters, you one concern you had, which makes so much sense hearing all of this. And it's one reason I kind of wanted you to share this journey. And this whole story, one kind of concern you had was burnout. Right? And you were, you brought it up, and we kind of talked about it. And just very beginning, you kind of decided like, this is one of the things that I'm working through, not that I don't think you were feeling burnt out at the time, but you had a fear of going all in, I'm doing this coaching thing, and I'm really scared just from where I am right now that I could get burnt out. Let's just talk about that a little bit. Because I think that for some coaches as they I think coaches do have a fear of that, right? They watch other coaches, and they're like, How in the world could you possibly have X number of clients? Or do this and manage a family? Or, you know, how do you fit this into your life? So let's just start there, like, what did you What have you learned about it? And where are you now with it?

 Melissa: Yeah, so I actually burned out as the executive director of my nonprofit, I traveled probably to 2526 states and like the space of a year, I lived out of a suitcase. We I traveled all over the United States looking for the research, I would go to the hospitals and meet with all the clinical trial people and so I really, and I just I worked 24/7 on it. I was just so engrained, I think in the grief of cannon, but like it was somewhere to put my energy because I couldn't change his situation. And so when I really fell in love with coaching, I was like, Here I am, again falling in love with something right? Like I fell in love with pediatric cancer research. And I really don't want to burn out I don't want to make the same mistakes. And I think many entrepreneurs at least a lot of my clients you know, when you are the type of person who is all n, it really does require a lot of intentionality to figure out how to dial that down. I truly believe that it's like a skill. And that is actually what really attracted me to you. And I remember early on like voice messaging you on Instagram and saying you know like I'm so excited about this and I'm so like ready to go and I just like I fell in love with how calm you are about your business like how simplified you made things so that it worked for your life and I was attacked I wanted to coaching masters because I was like, I want that I want to stay in love with my business. But I need to be led by someone who's already there doing exactly what I want to do. And I think that's like, you know, biggest one of the biggest things as coaching masters taught me how to be very intentional, and like how to get my coaching to be something that didn't need to be hard. Like one of the questions that we would always say was like, when everyone was coaching each other, which was amazing was like, how can we make this easy? Like, how can we make it easy, right? And I think for me, that has also helped my clients too, because now I'm working with mom entrepreneurs who are trying to figure out how to balance a company they love and a business they love with a family that they love. And it does require us to learn skills to figure that stuff out.

 Lindsay:

Yes, I love that answer. And I completely agree with you that the the number one skill, I think that partially that I teach but also that just in general working through something like this requires is the intentionality of it right? That just like being intentional, making a plan and deciding what do I want? How much time do I want to be in my business? How much time? Do I want to spend coaching? And how much time and what time do I want to spend with my family? And I think one misconception that people have about me, especially people who have found me more recently, is like, that's just how I am and, and I teach people that from a place of like, that's just who I am. And I'm going to teach you to be that too. When really it's the complete opposite. Like that is not who I used to be. And I've had to learn that intentionality which is why I know how to teach it right because I used to be very similar to you. And I do think when you're a coaching you're so in love with what you do I see this so often with coaches that are very in love with their niche and in love with their people. There's a tendency to just give, give, give, give, give, and not stop and think like But where's my line? What have you found like, the more intentional you are about it, the more I'm sure this is something you teach to your clients because they are all balancing this very thing. But what have you found the more intentional you are like what effect does that have on your coaching on like both sides on you on your coaching and also just on your family?

Melissa:

I think like one of the things that really like shifted for me during coaching masters was this ability for the guilt piece to float away. I think I came into coaching masters with like, you know, am I doing enough for my family? Am I doing enough for my business like are both of these things sort of moving? And I think coaching masters like that one of the biggest thing was was just this ability to be like, Okay, I'm not going to feel guilty for like being all in in my business and being all in on my family. But what I am going to do is make some decisions about what that looks like. And I love, love, love like one of listen, if you're listening to this podcast, like one of the greatest gifts that coaching masters will give you as being decisive. I actually like ended up doing a whole group coaching on decision fatigue after doing our mastermind because it just became so apparent to me how important decision making is. If you want to be a Lenzy dot suave, if you want to be a Melissa Wiggins, if you want to be able to have both things, you better learn how to make decisions. And that's what coaching masters didn't like, you basically said less than Melissa not making a decision as a decision. And I was like, oh, like I mean, you can't see me but like make drop, right? Like boom, like I just like it. It's so simple, but unless you have someone explaining it to you in the way that you do, and making you say, Okay, now leave and your homework, Melissa and everybody else is gonna make decisions on these things. So that you don't spend your brain energy thinking about oh, well, what will I do if a client does this? Or what will I do if you know my kid has an emergency like, no, like I put all those things in place like I have coaches who will cover for me now in my mastermind like what? I never had that before coaching masters. I just thought I'll do it sick. You know what I mean? So good. Just changed Earth and Lindsey. It's amazing. It's just the best. Truly, I loved it so much. 

Lindsay: Well, onenthing I will say about you is that you came in and you did send me a bunch of messages. I love that you said that because now I can talk about it. You sent me a bunch of messages, maybe a few emails ELS, you were just very excited. And my thought was, one, she's very excited. And two, she is very intense. And I was a little afraid that you were going to come in and my energy was going to be almost like not enough for you, right? Like, not enough to like, keep up with that. But what I saw immediately, your energy inside the mastermind was very different. And you were there to learn, like you showed up, and we're like I am here, I'm going to absorb anything that you tell me. And that is one of the reasons I knew I had to have you on is you were just so intense, intentional, I guess I hadn't really thought about it that way until I was just saying this. But you were very intentional about exactly what you wanted to get out of the mastermind. And you showed up to get it. And that's always fun. Yeah, of course, as a coach. So I want to say that, like, thank you for what you said, but But truly, one reason that you got all of that out of it is because you showed up for it and expected nothing less of yourself. And you're willing to ask the questions and dive into the like, Oh, I'm not really sure what you're saying, Help me coach me on this, you know, here's where it comes up in my life coach me on this. And you were just very willing to always, you know, kind of put yourself out there and and say like, I'm not leaving here without figuring this out.

 Melissa:

Yeah, I, you know, I want to just say to people listening, like if you're nervous or thinking like, oh my gosh, just no. Like, I was that person. Like, I felt like a very small fish and a very big ponds. Like, I could feel the skills in the room. I mean, everyone there was just like a bear to learn. And I really like did I really went ahead with like, what am I going to? I mean, you can't the listener can't see this. But over on the corner of my room, I have like 100 posters of all the things I learned. And after every single session we did, I would do like a poster on what did I learn and put it up there to remind myself like I am doing the work. But I also like, whenever someone is asking me, Melissa, hey, I don't want to hire you as my coach because like you're my base sprained. I want to have someone else like I always say to them, like, if you're looking for a coach, make sure that your coach is being coached, right? Because like you're only as good as what you're doing yourself. Like I can't life coach people if I'm not like life coaching myself. And I feel like it's the same with coaching masters, like how can I be skillful in what I'm doing? If I'm not, you know, sharpening my trade, and that's what coaching Masters is, like, it's not saying you don't have any skills, it's just saying, come here and find a space to sharpen the tools.

Lindsay:

So good. I love it. i You're Hired, you can just tell everyone what coaching masters? You're better at it than I am. I love it not true. Oh, I do wish that everyone could see well, we'll have to take a picture and post it because I your we talked about this all the time how we're a little bit opposite. So every week you would show up to calls with your hot pink sweater on and your colorful earrings, and you hat and your leopard carpet, which I also have. But that's about where the similarities and I think and your wallpaper and like all your notes, and your flashing neon sign. Like all the things I'm looking at right now are all the reasons that I love you. And couldn't be more opposite than my background. So if anyone is in my programs, or they've coached with me or seen photos, it's first of all, it is going to change a little bit because this is like a temporary setup for now. But it couldn't be more opposite. What are your thoughts about that? When it comes to coaching? Like are all of your clients similar to you? Or are they kind of all over the board? Or how do you think about that?

 Melissa:

So for the most part, I would say like I kind of look at my clients as like earlier versions of me right? Like I have been like a them at one point. So maybe like they're starting a new business or They're young, they're in corporate, but they're thinking about leaving corporate and doing something for themselves. But most of them are mama bears, right? So they are really trying to figure out that balance piece. And I I think there's and you and I have talked about this and you've talked about it on your podcast and you obviously have niched into what you are niching in which is like, you know, teaching people how to be the best coach possible so that we can get the best results. But it's like for me it was when I was deciding what that was going to be. I feel like there's so many people out there who are so good at teaching people how to sail and how you market and all of those things. And I feel like sort of left behind is this part where we these are also humans running Business like they also have to figure out how not to people, please note, like perfectionism rule their life and create boundaries and all of a sudden that stuff isn't as important as sailing. And like for me, I'm like standing on my soapbox being like, no wait, like, don't let that part of your life disappear. Because, you know, when you get down to like defining like, what is success like for me it is like loving my life, right? It's not making a million dollars a year it's like loving it. And so often everyone, not everyone, but people can get consumed with like the dollar amounts and coaching and how much money you're making. And I'm making this in each quarter. And I understand why they tell people that and why they talk about it. But we, we tend to some things forget like we're humans living life, and we've got to be mamas and we've gotta like, deal with family crisis's. And how do we do that? And run a business. And so like, that's sort of where I'm helping most of my clients, and like they need it, like they truly need that part of their life taken care of.

 Lindsay:

I'm curious what your thoughts are on this, because I have seen I've seen this in my own life. And then I've also seen a lot of my clients, especially when I was a one on one, one on one coach, a lot of my clients would come to me with this thought that's like, it's a little some version of like, Yeah, but when I make X amount, then I'll figure that out. Right? Like, once I when I make $100,000 in my business, and and I know I know how to do that. And it's consistent, then I will figure like those things out. And my opinion on it is no, it's the opposite. Like if you don't figure it out before then like, if you don't learn it kind of along the way, it just gets worse, like you think it's gonna get better. But if you don't, if you're not like kind of learning that skill along the way, it can just get worse the more money you make, and the more you know, it can be exciting, right? Like I'm making a lot of money in my business. This is amazing. It it can turn into like a, either I have to make more, or I have to stay at this level of you know, kind of energy and hustled to sustain this. I'm curious, it's totally fine. If it's different than mine. I'm just curious what your opinions are about that and kind of what you see with

Melissa:

I think the exact same as coaching masters, like, why would you invest money in making more money, if you aren't a good coach, if you don't have the skills like sure, you know, market the hell out of your company. But then when you do if you get the clients and you can't coach them properly, guess what you'll ultimately feel in the end. And that's sort of how I feel with the life coaching, like, sure you can go get 17 business coaches if you really want and figure out how to make all the money. But then if you don't know how to create boundaries, or perfectionism comes in place, and people please in and there's a crisis in your family. And you don't know how to handle that. Well guess what happens? The business just goes poof, and it's gone anyway.

 Lindsay

Yes. I can think back to the time when I didn't have any of these things in place. Right? When I didn't have much balance. And it was all it felt the way I could describe it. Now, I wouldn't have been able to, I wouldn't have been able to describe it this way necessarily, I don't think when I was in it. But now looking back, the way I would describe it is like I was just holding on by this very fine line. It was like one domino fell. And like the fear of one domino falling, felt very big, because I knew if one fell, they all fall, right? One could get sick one, whatever, and I have nothing in place, I have no balance, then all of a sudden, my brain goes to like, oh, no, everything is terrible. And it starts like affecting all the places. And curious if that was probably something you help your clients with. But do you is that something you experienced as well or that you see with your clients?

 Melissa:

100% Like, I think that most people come in to my mastermind, like with, I want to figure out how to do both. And here's an area I'm specifically struggling in. And one of the things that I loved about coaching masters, and it really helped me with the transitioning from one on one to only the group coaching is when you ask the question, which I love so much like what is it that every single client has as a problem? Like, what are those things? And so when I was designing my program, I was like, Oh, well, here's the seven things that 100% Every single woman that I've ever spoken to who has children and a business deal with these things. So like, you know, in the beginning, we start with like, let's figure out what the heck our values are and how that works. That's going to help us make decisions that's going to help us with boundaries. That's going to help us feeling guilty to saying yes and no because if it's not in those values, we don't have to say yes. And it's just again, back to that intentionality but you asking questions like that, that like made me think in a different way. And I mean, that's just like one of the many questions, you know that you just sort of like, here's your homework and you're like, oh shit, let me talk about this for 10. Like, think about this for so long, and then come back the next week and be like, Oh my gosh, that was like the base timespan.

 Lindsay: That's so good.