Reflecting on the Last 12 Months (Part 1)
Better late than never: I meant to share my year reflection in a post at the beginning of the year, but my year review had ten pages, and a lot was going on in the last two months, so I postponed it. I finally distilled it and took parts out, so you have a lighter, more digestible version.
Hoping it’ll help someone in the online space to feel inspired and connected. Comment below to share your thoughts; this will make my day!
IN THIS POST in two parts, YOU’LL LEARN:
How my business is evolving and how I’m building my product staircase in 2023
How I’m shaping my environment to support my focus and goals
How I focused my collaborations to reflect my values of community
In Part 2:
My insights and reflections as a coach and business owner
My personal wins, the things I want to etch in my memory forever
My mantras; what I’d like to remember to support myself
How I’m showing up in 2023
How we can work together in 2023
How I’m building my product staircase in 2023
In the past 12 months, I facilitated 5 group workshops/trainings;
Digital Momentum,
MindMapping 101,
Intentional Business Immersion 5-Day Training,
2023 Intention Setting workshop for a French networking group,
and Social Media for Coaches for Erickson Coaching International alumni,
I also launched 3 self-guided courses:
Newsletter 101
Focus & Flow
Idea to Launch
And I plan to add more self-study courses at a a low-tier price point.
I stretched myself out of my comfort zone by “exposing” myself to new people and also launching new products to the world. It always comes with tension and anxiety, but every time turns out to bring so much JOY and FUN!
I supported amazing women in building their businesses in my one-on-one high-touch coaching program. You know the fox that tells the Little Prince, “You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose”?
I feel that way and will always keep on following my clients’ journey; they will always have a space in the corner of my mind. Thus, I will never want to grow my business to a point where I have 50 private clients and hire support coaches- that’s not my vision. I’m happy being a solopreneur, and running an agency doesn’t appeal to me.
I want to cultivate intimate relationships and be “hands-on,”-which is reflected in some changes explained below. Last year, at my peak, I worked with five clients at a time, and I felt that the sweet spot in my offer landscape would be less than that.
I’ve also finally launched a 12-month group program which I’ve been thinking about for three years and slowly conceptualized. This was my most successful launch to date, but also the most exhausting one, and it took me two weeks to recover (more on this in my next blog post).
Building this program stemmed from my desire to foster a positive community of like-minded entrepreneurs, scaling my business sustainably, experimenting with a different coaching model, and leveraging the trainings I’ve built with my learnings and experience.
Because I want to continue to have a lot of free time to travel, be with my family, and be a lifelong student, I’m shaping my business around programs with a strong curriculum, so they do the heavy lifting. I will also limit my high-touch private coaching program to 3 spots, possibly 4, for now.
How I curate my environment to support my goals
To prepare to scale in 2023, I dedicated 2022 to the groundwork of transitioning to appropriate tools and a simplified digital environment.
Course Platform
I migrated my course platform from Podia to ThriveCartLearn. It’s a lifetime one-time payment, user-friendly, and has many exciting features AND data (number of page views, student’s progress, conversion rate, etc.).
Email service provider
I migrated my email platform from Flodesk to Active Campaign and wrote about the reasons. But mainly, its ability to integrate with ThriveCart simplifies my creative processes. It was easy and quick to migrate a contact list, but rebuilding all my email workflows took me a while! I also did a contact cleaning and deleted 100 contacts (those that hadn’t opened my email for the last three months).
Client management system
I quit Dubsado, an all-integrative system to sign contracts, send automated emails, and book clients. I found it somehow clunky and tedious to use, and also, I don’t need all the bells and whistles for this number of private clients at a time; As long as I have streamlined processes in place, I can do most things manually and use Calendly for the online scheduling part.
My biggest takeaway from migrating everywhere is “don’t use an all-in-one” tool; pick one tool per specialty.
Client management
I’ve also decided to slowly take back client admin management (onboarding, rescheduling, client admin, and off-boarding) instead of letting my virtual assistant handle it. I want to provide a premium service and prefer complete control over every step. I also feel that rather than having a distance with a person between us, I now like to give a personal experience.
Physical environment
I moved from a co-working space to a private office. It was not efficient to do my coaching calls from home and get interrupted, and in the co-working space, other people’s conversations were distracting me.
The budget is a lot more than I have ever anticipated, but to me, focus and peace of mind has no price: If I compromise my peace of mind I’m no good as a coach or course creator. This is me, investing in Maika Endo Coaching!
What I struggled with the most
Overcoming my resistance to change
Last August, I signed up for Consciously Digital, “the only digital wellness coach training in the world approved by ICF.” To give you an idea, we study addiction and willpower, neural processes, addictive design, types of attention, humans in virtual reality, etc.
The amount of work overwhelmed me. The stretch for me is the cognitive effort of adopting an academic learning approach that I’m not used to: We’re given a lot of material to read (news, long articles, speeches, research reports), and we have essays to write AND review before every call.
I spent 5 hours weekly on the assignments (now I’ve streamlined it and reduced it to 3), on top of the 3-hour bi-weekly live calls and 2-hour bi-weekly peer coaching sessions.
After two months of grinding, I almost quit and overcame that stage after recognizing that this resistance was the growth pain that comes from the beginning of learning and mastering a new skill.
Finally, I rolled up my sleeves and convinced myself I would make the best of this. I’m learning so much and becoming a more empowered technology user; I’m glad I didn't give up.
“I recognized that my resistance was some growth pain that comes along the beginning of learning and mastering a new skill.”
Getting out of procrastination
I’m proud of achieving my Mastery Program Certification in 2022 at Erickson Coaching International. But I procrastinated and struggled at the finish line.
The final evaluation process is; Coaching a few clients and, with their permission, sharing the recordings with a chosen Erickson mentor to dissect my work and tell me what I did well and my “learning opportunities.” This I have done many times for my previous degrees with Erickson Coaching International.
What stressed me the most was the final “oral assessment,” where we coached someone LIVE while two evaluators listened and gave me feedback after.
I felt vulnerable, and there was always the thought of “I’m not ready yet,” or “I need more time, more practice,” which made me postpone for half a year.
I knew that coaching could be very effective in these situations, so I got coached by a peer from my group and finally reached the final line! Peer coaching empowered me and gave me accountability.
Collaborations are the pipeline to Community.
Community is one of my strong values; the pathway to this is nurturing collaborations. I followed serendipitous flow and inspiration rather than a rigid plan.
On Business Clarity, I interviewed:
One of my past private clients, Sara Naderi: Are coaches considering how ADHD brains think?
My peer coach inside the digital well-being course, Cassie Widders: How can we be more intentional with social media and make it a safe space for everyone?
On Instagram Live;
I interviewed certified health coach Olya Amelina on Prioritizing self-care and health when taking a back seat in our life.
She interviewed me on How to design a supportive environment and start acting, not relying on motivation.
Evernote
I became a Certified Evernote Expert, and they interviewed me on YouTube on how I use Evernote for “Reflective Journaling.” It already has 7.5 views! I’ve also created a dedicated Evernote page on my website.
Click here to read part 2 of this article:
My insights and reflections as a coach and business owner
My personal wins, the things I want to etch in my memory forever
My mantras; what I’d like to remember from 2022 to support myself in 2023
How I intend to show up in 2023
How we can work together in 2023
About Maika
Maika mentors heart-centered, impact-driven entrepreneurs to build the foundations of their business with her signature Intentional Business Building™ method. Her approach is holistic and integrates the entrepreneur mindset, marketing strategies, and systems to help create sustainable changes and long-lasting results. A lifelong passion for the human psyche, healing arts, and personal growth brought her to mentorship and coaching. She’s French-born in Japan and currently lives in Istanbul with her family. She’s an Epicurean and enjoys cooking Asian, dining out with curiosity, and sophisticated cocktails.
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