How to Keep Coaching Calls On Track and On Time Without Feeling Rushed

Ever had a coaching call run way off track, leaving you pressed for time and struggling to bring things back to focus? For solopreneur coaches managing it all, this is a common challenge—and those overtime calls can quickly drain your energy and disrupt your schedule. In today’s episode of Own Your Calendar, Stephen Box shares practical strategies to help keep calls on time, focused, and productive, so you can serve your clients without sacrificing your day.

By the end of this episode, you’ll learn how to:

• Set clear expectations from the start for smoother, more efficient sessions
• Use simple redirection phrases to gently refocus conversations
• Apply time-check strategies to stay anchored and on track
• Wrap up calls with a confident close that reinforces action steps
• Create a structure that respects both your schedule and your client’s needs

Transcript

Stephen Box: 0:00

Have you ever had a client who just, for whatever reason, cannot stay on topic and it causes your coaching calls to constantly go overtime? Well, on today's episode, I'm going to give you some strategies to prevent that from happening so that your calls can stay focused and on time. And you can leave those calls feeling accomplished instead of exhausted. And that's coming up next right here on Own Your Calendar. Welcome to Own Your Calendar, the go to resource for online business owners, coaches, and course creators who want it all. A profitable business and the time and energy for yourself and the people and things you love most. I'm your host, Stephen Box, and I'm here to help you build the systems and habits that allow you to escape the chaos and start living life on your terms. Hey, welcome to another episode of Own Your Calendar brought to you by Unshakable Habits. I am your host, Stephen Box. And today we're talking about how do you keep coaching calls on time and focused. Now this is something I know a lot of new coaches in particular struggle with. And I did early on in my career as well, because you get these clients that as soon as they get on the phone with you, they just want to start talking. And it's rarely about the actual topic or focus of the call. It's usually about other stuff. And I know as coaches, it can feel very natural to just have these conversations, we feel like we're connecting with the client, that we're building a rapport with them, and it seems like a good thing, but there's a couple problems that happen here, so number one is, When these calls end up going over, which they normally will, it's maybe causing you to run late to your next call or leaving you less prep time, it's taking out time that you would have for other things like marketing your business, or maybe even your workout time, or it's causing you to Finish work later in the day, therefore cutting into family time. So it can be very problematic when this is happening, especially if you're having it happen multiple times in a day because you're having it happen with multiple clients. And I get that as coaches we feel like we need to be really flexible, that we need to allow the client the ability to express what they're trying to say and all that stuff. I get that. But I'm also going to tell you that. You don't have to necessarily just let things run wild. Now, I remember early in my career, I had a client, one person in particular, for the sake of immunity here, we'll just call them John. And John would get on every call, And start talking about everything except for what we're supposed to be focusing on that call. He's talking about Spores, he's talking about work, he's talking about just general things going on in the world, like if, you know, there's a big news story or something going on. And it would take me 5, 10, sometimes even 15 minutes just to get John on track to what we're supposed to be talking about that day. And as a result to that, our calls were always going over, Couple times I would have to end our call early so that I wouldn't be late getting to the next call and we would end the call without really any kind of recap, without any confirmation what our next call was going to be. Not only that, but as I was in the coaching calls, I didn't feel like I was delivering my best coaching because I'm trying to rush to do things. I'm trying to get us to a certain point in the call. And if John wasn't focused enough, a lot of times I found myself doing the one thing that I've tried not to do as a coach. Which is just give out the answers rather than helping him to discover the answers for himself. And so all these things were happening and it was really causing a lot of problems. And it was compounded by the fact that John was not the only client that I was running into this issue with. He was just the one that was always happening with and so I really had to take a step back and reflect on What is it that I need to do? And that's what I want to share with you today. Some of the strategies and tips that I came up with for how to make this happen. Now, I will just share with you, even outside of coaching calls, a lot of these are things that you can utilize in day to day life. Just anytime you have a meeting, anytime you have a conversation with somebody, if you need to set some certain parameters around it, some of these tips are going to be useful. for that as well. So let's dive into it. So number one is you need to set clear expectations. This was something that I started doing with John and immediately made a difference. I would honestly say this was the thing that made the biggest difference for me because what I started doing was I got on the call. And instead of saying, Hey, John, how are you doing today? The first thing I did was I went, Hey, John, thanks so much for taking the time out to join me today. I just wanted to real quickly set some expectations for the call before we jump in. And I would go forward and say, Hey, we have 30 minutes today. I saw on your form that you want to talk about this and this. Before we get to that, I do want to take a second to recap what we did last week. See how that's going, see where that's working for you. And now there's this clear excitation, right? 30 minute call, this is what we're going to talk about. And it took out that element of, Oh, let's just randomly talk about anything. Now, there were still times where maybe we had some of those conversations a little bit. Maybe sometimes I might allow a minute or two of just the casual conversation for that connection to happen. But it was after I had set that boundary. It was after I got really clear on what the expectations for that call were. And that was because, and this is actually the second tip I'm going to give you, is you need to have some kind of a redirection statement. And by setting that boundary up front, by setting those expectations of what the call was going to be, I gave myself an easy out. So when I felt the conversation was starting to get away from me, I would say something like, Hey John, you know, I would love to talk to you about this stuff all day long. But we only got like 27 minutes left or we've only got 25 minutes left or whatever we had left. So I really want to make sure that we have ample time to address the problem that you came to me today with. And when I did that, it was like, okay, instantaneously, we're ready to go. Now, is it possible that I could use that statement? Without needing to set the expectations up front? Yes. But, I will tell you, in my experience, when we set the expectations up front, it seems less blunt when we then turn around and say, Hey, we really need to wrap this up and get focused on the call here, right? Because the expectation was already set and it was already agreed to. Which, by the way, I didn't mention this before, but a very key point when you're setting these expectations, always finish by asking the client, Hey, John, does that work for you? And when they say yes, now you have an agreement in place. And that, that's a very important part. So, uh, apologize for leaving that out. Alright, so, we're going to set clear expectations. We're going to have some kind of phrase that we can use to re anchor the conversation. Now there's a couple of other things that we want to do. Uh, one is, I like to have time checks as we're going, so these don't necessarily have to be a set thing, like you don't have to tell somebody we have 20 minutes left, we have 15 minutes left, we have 10 minutes left, we have 5 minutes left, you don't have to do it that way, but it is good anytime that you feel like someone is getting a little off topic, they're rambling, so you don't always just have to use that line that's going to bring it back. Instead, you can use time markers to accomplish the same thing. So you can go, Hey, John, this is, this is great. We've got about 15 minutes left. Uh, and I still want to make sure we cover this and this. Uh, is it okay with you if we come back to this? Or if it seems like something is really important, then maybe I say, Hey, John, I just want to pause you for one second here. I know we had said that we were going to talk about this and this also. We've only got about 15 minutes left. So I just want to check in here and see, is what we're talking about right now something that is important enough that you want to spend the time to talk about this today and maybe not get to some of those other things? Or would you rather put a pin in this that we can come back to at a later time and talk about those other things? By doing that, I'm now giving him the choice, right? So I'm being client centered. I'm allowing John to have the choice. on which direction we went with the rest of the conversation. But by using the time to frame it, I was able to pause the conversation and help get that focus back in. Also, I've alluded to this, but let me be very clear about the way I'm going to say this. Get your client to come to the call with a focus RDMI. Empower them to do that. And the very simple way I actually do that is on my calendar. I use Calendly. And people can go on and they can schedule calls with me. I have time blocks already made where people can schedule in. And one of the questions that's on there is what is the top thing that you want to work on today's call? So that way they're coming to the call. I already know what it is. If that's something we've discussed before, maybe I have notes on it. I can review those notes and that helps to keep things on track as well. Not just from the client perspective, but it also helps me make sure that I'm staying on track for the thing that we're going to be talking about that day. One final one that I want to talk about, and I think this one is also very important, is to have an established close. And for me, this always was a way of, and I would do this with about five minutes left on the call. I would say, Hey, we've got about five minutes left. I just want to really briefly go over what we talked about today and get some clarity on what's going to happen next. So in those five minutes, I'm going to give a quick, brief recap of what we talked about that day. I'm going to ask the client, in this case, John to say, John. What, what are your action steps? What are you committing to doing this week? Now we've already talked about it. John's already given those steps, but I'm just having him repeating commit to those at this point. So it shouldn't really take very long. Cause he's just hit this point repeating. It's not actively thinking about it. It's going to say, Oh, I'm going to do X, Y, and Z. I'm going to say, okay, cool. When is that going to happen? Let's be really specific about what days that is, what time it is, all the good stuff that we get, all those details nailed down, we get that. in place, then I'm going to say, okay, scale of 1 to 10, 1 being not confident at all, 10, I can do this in my sleep. How confident are you that you can do each of these steps? He says, Oh, I'm a 10. And then I'm going to say, okay, cool. So I have our next call scheduled for X day and X time. Does that still work for you? Yes. Cool. By doing that, I'm giving a natural ending to the call. It's not awkward. I don't have to figure out a cool way to end it or anything else. It's like, he knows because I said this in the expectation upfront. It's about five minutes left. We're going to do a recap. And he walks away with a lot of clarity about what we talked about. I can make sure that I understood everything correctly because when I summarize it, if I said something wrong, John's going to correct me. Okay. And I also get clarity on what his action steps are going to be for the week. He gets clarity on what his action steps are going to be for the week. And we now have a plan for when we show up for the next call of what we're going to be able to talk about. That is how you keep your calls on time and on focus. So the question really for you at this point is, what do you want to do? Do you want to continue allowing your clients to completely leave the call for you to not be in control at all? Or do you want to learn how to meet clients where they are while still maintaining control of the call? Because if you continue to allow clients to just talk and just kind of go all over the place and there's no real structure to your coaching calls, then you're going to continue to have calls run over, you're going to continue to have those interrupt other things, and you're going to continue to not be able to deliver your best coaching. That's just the reality of the situation. Or you can make these small changes. You could start keeping clients more focused. You could start having more productive calls. I think it's a pretty obvious choice, but it's one that you do have to make for yourself. As we get ready to wrap up today, two quick things for you. Number one is if you are looking for some extra accountability and a community to be a part of, I want to invite you to join our new free podcast community. I will have the link down in the show notes for that. Also, if you're ready to take the next step and start to get clarity on The things you need to be working on every day to be the most productive version of yourself and not have work continue to spill over into your personal time, harming your health relationships and personal goals. Then I want to invite you to also book a habit breakthrough call with me. And you can also find the link to that down in the show notes as well, or on my website at unshakablehabits. com. Make sure you guys come back and join us next week. As we're approaching the holiday season here, I'm going to be doing an episode on how you can avoid burnout during the holiday season as an entrepreneur who works from home. But until then, this is Stephen Box reminding you, as always, that today is a great day to break free from the chaos and start living life on your terms.