Coaching Blog

New Coaches: Which of These Entrepreneur Types Should You Be?

Posted by Julia Stewart

Coaches are often confused when first designing their businesses - and sometimes they feel guilty too! Maybe they think they're spending too little time with the kids, or bringing in too little money. Or maybe the house isn't as clean as it used to be, or key members of family aren't fully on board.

Relax: you're normal!

This infographic from My Corporation will help you see how you compare with other small business owners:

What Kind of Entrepreneur Should You Be?

 

New to the business of coaching, but want to attract clients quickly? Coach 100 has been helping coaches fill their coaching practices for a decade:

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Topics: business coach, life coach, Coaching, become a coach, Coaches, Coach 100, coaching clients, coaching businesses, new coaches

Before You Become a Coach: Seven Serious Questions to Ask Yourself

Posted by Julia Stewart

Become a coachWritten by Julia Stewart

Are you wondering if you should become a coach? Or how to get started as a coach? Or whether you should get certified as a coach?

This time of year, I hear from folks all over the world who are thinking about becoming life, business, or executive coaches. Their questions inspired this post.

Although the questions vary, the subtext is always the same: Can I succeed, as a coach?

That one, I can't answer, but you can, after you've asked yourself the right questions.

Here are seven questions to help you determine if becoming a coach is right for you:

1. What's your reason for becoming a coach?

  • If you love to help people, or you got coached yourself and loved it, or personal and professional development are your passion (see #7); these are great reasons. If you're out of work and out of money, or you just got diagnosed with a serious illness; these are poor reasons. As with any business, you'll need time, energy, money, and passion to succeed as a coach.

2. Is now the right time for you to become a coach?

  • Speaking of time...timing is half the secret when it comes to succeeding at anything. Do you happen to have the time, energy and money to work on your new business, right now? Or did you just fall in love, are getting divorced, making a big move, or going back to grad school? Major life transitions take up huge amounts of energy, focus, and time (and usually money). Starting a new business is a major life transition. The more you pile on, the harder and slower it will be to succeed. I'm not saying it can't be done, but be prepared.

3. Do you have the skills you need to become a coach?

  • Virtually everyone underestimates the skill required to become an effective coach. Most think they learned what they needed in school or on the job. Probably you have some of the skills and that's good. But it's extremely rare to have all the skills needed, without substantial coach-specific training, or a decade of full-time professional coaching. Get training, rather than education. Education gives you context, history, theories, etc. What you need is skill. Get the skills you need to succeed more quickly.

4. Do you have the financial resources to become a coach?

  • Coaching is often cited as one of the easiest and cheapest businesses to set up. While that may be true, as with every business, "it takes money to make money". In the case of coaching, be sure you have an alternate income source until your coaching practice is full. You should have clients within your first three months, but a full practice can easily take a year, sometimes more.

5. Do you have the emotional resources you need to become a coach?

  • Great coaches believe in learning opportunities. There's no better learning opportunity than starting a new business, because it'll bring out all your insecurities. Capitalize on this opportunity by working with a mentor coach. S/he'll believe in you until you believe in yourself and will help you build a community of ardent supporters. 

6. Do you have the business know-how to become a coach?

  • People who already have experience running a small business, tend to hit the ground running, when they launch coaching businesses. If that's not you, work with a mentor coach who knows the business of coaching, inside out. Get advice also from a small-business attorney, accountant, financial adviser, and more.

7. Do you have the passion to become a coach?

  • This is the biggy. If your answers to the first six questions feel like too much work, maybe you just don't have the passion for coaching. On the other hand, if you feel curious, excited, but with a few butterflies (think: waiting inline for the ferris wheel), you've got that illusive IT, the passion needed to succeed. Passionate people dive in and do what others complain about, cut corners on, or procrastinate over. Passion will carry you forward. Add a great strategy to make it simple.
If you can say, YES, to #7 and can arrange for the other six, then coaching could be an awesome profession for you and, YES, you can succeed at it!

 

Ready to become a coach?

 

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Topics: executive coach, mentor coach, coach training, become a life coach, become a coach, Coach 100, become a business coach, becoming a certified coach

How to Plan This Year's Coaching Success in Just Fifteen Minutes

Posted by Julia Stewart

coaching success

Written by Julia Stewart

Here's a nifty tool for your annual coaching business plan. It harnesses the power of the 'top ten list', works for any type of small business, and it only takes fifteen minutes to create an effective plan for coaching success.

Follow these steps to plan for this year's coaching success:

  1. Make a list of the Top Ten things Your Business Did Right, last year. These could include a new strategy for attracting clients, raising your fees, upgrading your skills and credentials, hiring an assistant, increasing your sales, etc. This list should take 5 minutes to complete, tops, but spend at least ten seconds appreciating yourself for doing these things right.
  2. Now make a list of the Top Ten Things Your Business Did Wrong. Be honest, but don't wallow. Did you spend too much time on Facebook? Did you focus too much time or energy on a business strategy that just isn't working out? Did you spend too much money on tools, memberships, or trainings that didn't enhance your business? Did you fail to hire a mentor coach, even though you knew you needed one? Did you let your self care slide? Did you network, but didn't follow up on leads? If you suspect something you did or did not do is costing your business, you're probably right, so write it down and then move on.
  3. Prioritize your lists by numbering them in the order of best things you did and worst. You've probably noticed a pattern or two by now. That's good; it'll help you with your next list.
  4. Now write a top ten list on what you'll do this year for more success. With your last two numbered lists, this'll be pretty easy. And this is the list that'll help you succeed this year.
  5. Of course, lists like this one are useless unless you find a way to remind yourself to follow through on them. In this case, you need to follow through for 12 full months. You could post your Top Ten Things to Do This Year list on your wall or make it into a screen saver, but over time, it'll become invisible to your eyes. So here's what I do: I schedule it to be emailed to me once per month. I use a free service called, Yesware, to send this list in a reminder every 30 days, so I can check to see if I'm following through. It's already helping me prioritize what gets done.
There you have it: 15 minutes spent to create 365 days of coaching success.

 

Want more coaching clients in 2014? Try Coach 100 Business Success:

 

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Topics: coaching business, mentor coach, Coach 100, coaching clients, coaching success

How to Build a Flourishing Positive Coaching Business

Posted by Julia Stewart

Positive Psychology Coaching

Positive psychology coaching is on the rise, because it works. So have you ever wondered how positive psychology coaching can help your coaching business flourish? I'm talking about how actual positive psychology interventions can impact your thoughts and actions to bring you more success, happiness, and yes - more clients.

Curious?

Success occurs when you do the right things at the right times. Positive psychology interventions can help you do the right things at the right times with surprising effectiveness. And it's not precriptive (as in, 'You must do it my way to succeed.'), but rather points out what's worked for others, so you can customize it for your desires, strengths and values.

As a mentor coach who specializes in positive psychology coaching, I see this phenomenon, daily. Here are three recent examples:

  1. A new life coach who's building his business by leveraging his Primary Strengths. He's having a blast and his business is taking off like a rocket.
  2. Then there's the executive coach whose business has also taken off like a rocket, but she's not having a blast, even though she's living her dream life. She's still reliving negative thoughts and emotions about her past. In her case, we're using positive psychology and positive neuroscience interventions to help her mind catch up with her awesome life and business. This will help her sustain her success. Otherwise, she likely will burn out, or start repeating negative habits that could short-change her success. You're not flourishing if you're not having fun.
  3. Then there's the business coach who already thinks positively, but whose  business seemed to be stalled. What's up with that? We cracked through some blocks and limiting beliefs around making money and feeling ready for success, using Great Self Coaching (another positive intervention). You guessed it. Now his business is taking off like a rocket!

When I work with my one-to-one Elite Mentor Coach for High Achievers clients, their frame of mind is often the topic. At one end of the spectrum, the wrong frame of mind, for instance a limiting belief that it's too soon to expect success, can hold the coach back. At the other end, the coach may appreciate her incredible success, but still be stuck experiencing painful thoughts and feelings from the past. In my opinion, neither is experiencing a positive business, yet.

My definition of a positive coaching business is one that is both successful, as defined by the coach, and thoroughly enjoyed. My one-to-one mentor coaching may be financially out of reach for some coaches (although it's not expensive when you consider the training and certification that is included). However, this Fall, I'm putting together a new mentor group that uses the same positive coaching interventions to help coaches build flourishing businesses. It's quite reasonable and includes some training and certification, as well.

If you're a coach who is serious about building a flourishing life and business, click the link below to find out more and/or make an appointment to ask your questions.


Create Your Flourishing Positive Business Here

Topics: coaching business, group coaching, Coach 100, coaching success, Mentor Coaching, Positive Psychology, positive psychology coaching

ICF International Coaching Week: Top 10 Lessons from Thomas Leonard

Posted by Julia Stewart

 

Thomas LeonardIn honor of the ICF's International Coaching Week, I'm sharing the Top Ten Lessons I learned from Thomas Leonard, founder of the ICF (and IAC) and Father of Professional Coaching. Studying with Thomas in the years before his passing in 2003, changed my life in profound ways. Perhaps you'll share how Thomas shaped your life in the Comments section, below.

Top Ten Lessons Learned From Thomas Leonard:

1. When changing career paths, it's always nice to have a role model: Thomas, philosopher and entrepreneur, has been one of my favorites (I'll mention a few more in this post). One of my original realizations, upon joining his first coaching school and receiving the famous 16-pound-box-of written-materials, was: "This guy is a lot like me, only he's much better at it. I can really learn from him!" 

Today, Thomas is practically worshiped by his former clients and students, so I want to emphasize that he was a lot better at it than I, but in discovering his content creation strategies (finer points below), I was able to make the shift from, 'smart person with lots of potential', to massive content creator, myself.

Thomas, an incredibly prolific creative genius, was frequently asked, 'When do you sleep?'. No one believed him when he replied, 'Eight hours every night.' I knew I was hitting my stride when people started asking me when I slept and I replied, 'Eight hours every night,' and knew it was actually true.

2. How to handle 'Too Many Ideas' syndrome: Creative entrepreneurs commonly suffer from an overabundance of ideas. The classic advice on how to handle that is: finish one project before you start another. That's creative suicide for some of us. Thomas' advice? To paraphrase: If you have eleven ideas, start all eleven and see which ones people respond to. Then finish those. The result? You're there with the right idea at the right time for the right people. Instead of arbitrarily amputating your own creativity, you've collaborated with your clients to create what they really want. Magic!

3. To focus those 11 ideas even faster: crowdsource them. Ask your best customers what they most need from you now and how they'd like it delivered, even how much they want to pay for them (Remember t's R&D Team?). Result? You learn faster what your market wants and can develop those ideas beyond what everyone else is doing. Caveat: you need to be extremely good at asking the right questions to make full use of this one.

4. To get more done faster: do what you want, when you want to do it. Nobody believes this one, either...until they try it. The first time I experimented with it, I went back to a week-old to-do list after doing whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted to do it for several days. Funny thing: I discovered I'd finished most of the items on the list, without even thinking about it and I never felt 'busy'. How does that work? Instead of forcing myself to do stuff on schedule, I did it when the mood struck. Suddenly, TV time became business-building time (if I felt like it) and late-night downtime sometimes became creative inspiration sessions. So long as I got my 8 hours, I was able to crank out way more work without ever feeling overworked (See item #1 above).

5. To stop blaming people: Get that people are doing their very best even when they clearly aren't. This one hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. How could I have ever been unaware of this (paradoxical) fact? Once you get this, you're free of the the 'blame and be blamed' game. The challenge is to get it even when you're mad at someone. But that's the evolutionary part, as well as the secret to greatness.

6. To get that everything is perfect: Ask yourself, if everything is perfect, what's perfect about this? Spiritual teachers tell us it's all perfect. That's nice, but it sure doesn't seem that way sometimes. The trick is not to force yourself to believe this (or pretend that you do), but to stay curious. Okay. So what's perfect about this (crummy) situation? It's is not a Pollyanna exercise. If you look deeply enough, you'll find a perfection that heals the whole problem, if you allow it.

7. The ultimate coaching tool: is Values. Actually, Thomas never said this, that I know of, but he's the one who taught me about the value of Values. And it has become increasingly clear to me over the years. Tony Robbins has his Needs and Donald Clifton has his Strengths, but Values are what matter most to people and they are the key to what matters most in coaching. Apparently both the ICF and IAC agree, because their certifiers look for values-based coaching conversations in the coaches they certify.

8. The relationship between coaching clients and what they really want: is they've often never even met. That's why Thomas put so much emphasis on his Clarifiers, a list of 15 this-or-that questions that quickly uncover what matters most right now. Some coaches think the ICF violates this, because ICF certifiers look for evidence that the coach, not only asks what the client wants at the start of a coaching session, but that s/he checks in at least twice to see that they are on track, relying on the client to articulate what it. The IAC style is a bit different; they look for evidence that the coach is uncovering what the client really wants, even if that takes up most of the session. Contrary to popular belief, these two styles of coaching aren't mutually exclusive. When we take a both/and approach and integrate these two approaches, we upgrade coaching and enter the zone of master coaching.

9. What coaches really do during coaching: is design environments that empower success. It's not enough to foster insights in the client. It's also not enough to plan client actions. Our real job is to co-design the client's environment to evolve them into the person they need to be to reach their goals. That's a big difference.

10. What marketing is really for: helping people learn. No, it's not about squeezing your list through a funnel. When people learn from you, they become more. That's irresistably attractive. No more squeezing. Help your followers learn the next thing they need to know, or help them become the next iteration of themselves. People want to be more. Both your marketing and your sales should help them with that. Some of them will pay you for a highly personalized version of it.

BONUS: To write content that is easy, fast and fun: Write in Thomas' favorite format, the Top Ten List.

Got a favorite lesson learned from Thomas? I'd love to hear it.

Want to get to know Thomas better? Sign up for the FREE 28 Principles of Attraction ecourse, based on his own notes for his signature personal development program:

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Topics: Coach 100, coaching clients, ICF, Coach Certification, Thomas Leonard, Tony Robbins, ENVIRONMENT, curiosity, master coach, IAC

3 Reasons to Not Participate in Affiliate Marketing Programs

Posted by Julia Stewart

Affiliate marketing programs

This Spring I made a conscious choice not to participate in an affiliate marketing program that made School of Coaching Mastery some money last year. In fact, I've decided to avoid future telesummits and most marketing partnerships that come my way and...maybe it's none of my business, but I think you should, too. Here's why...

Actually first, let me answer the question, "What is an affiliate marketing program?" Affiliate marketing programs are strategic partnerships which "leverage the power of the list", meaning they leverage the combined power of mailing lists when two or more coaches/internet marketers/gurus team up to promote products. A key example of this is the coaching telesummit, which usually offers free teleclasses or webinars, that upsell to paid information products. 

Number 1 Reason to Avoid Affiliate Marketing Programs: The program may benefit you financially in the short run, but be a disservice to your clients and members of your mailing list...and that could be a financial disservice to you in the long run. 

Here's an example: Recently, a client of mine mentioned something that he could use that a coaching colleague of mine does very well, so I mentioned her to him, not for an affiliate fee, but because I know she could help in this area. My colleague happens to be involved in a lot of telesummits. My client was already familiar with her and said, "No thanks. I used to be on her list, but I got bombarded by email marketing messages from her and from a lot of other people, as well, so I unsubscribed from all of them." He was tired of getting several marketing come-ons everyday. They were confusing and annoying and turned him off from potentially working with this talented coach. Now, I've decided not to recommend her anymore. That's what I mean about affiliate marketing being a disservice to your potential clients and ultimately to you, as well.

Number 2 Reason to Avoid Affiliate Marketing Programs: Unless you know all the people involved in the program, you may inadvertently be recommending low-quality products and services that reflect poorly on you. In my case, if a fellow coach, who has a track record for only recommending the best, recommends someone to me, I follow up on that recommendation and if it turns out well, I think even more highly of them. But if a colleague recommends a coach who disappoints, I think a little less of both of them and I make a mental note to ignore future recommendations.

For example: Last year, I signed up School of Coaching Mastery as an affiliate of a large coaching summit, because some good people were involved. I emailed my list to try out the free teleclasses and I tried out some of them, myself. With only one exception, I thought the teleclasses were just the usual cr*p. Several of my students mentioned being disappointed by them, as well. 

Here's something you need to know: once you decide to become a professional coach, you are ripe for the picking by untold numbers of coaches, consultants, marketers, webmasters, trainers and more, who know you're going to need products and services to build your business. There are a handful of folks who do extraordinary work...and there are thousands of me-too folks who want a piece of the action, even if they have nothing of real value to offer. Too often, telesummits are larded with the latter.

The telesummit in my example was well designed and they paid promptly. It was just enough money for me to consider doing it again, but it didn't pass my personal test for whether I should market something: Does it offer genuine value to my clients and potential clients? Or will it likely confuse them, waste their time, or talk them into buying services that aren't useful?

Number 3 Reason to Avoid Affiliate Marketing Programs: You may waste your own time and never get paid. Last year I was contacted by a coach I knew via social networking who pitched a product to me that she said would help my students. Normally, I would have ignored an email like that, but a student of mine had just ask me if something of that sort was available, so I checked it out. It was business-management software for coaches that included a coaching website. It looked pretty slick, so I agreed to talk to her about it.

Long story short: she offered me a free membership and what seemed like a great affiliate opportunity and it really looked like it would be helpful to my students. I spent six months promo-ing what I called a coaching-business-in-a-box to my mailing list. Quite a few people signed up, although a few of them told me they didn't like it, because it was too clunky and they could do the same tasks more easily without it. I eventually dropped it for the same reasons and...the company never paid me. I emailed the owners about it a couple of times and they never even replied to my emails! In my book that is: Really. Bad. Business. So now they're on my sh*t list and maybe, just maybe, I'm on someone else's list because I recommended them. I can say I'm sorry, but it might be too late.

So there you have 3 reasons to think twice before participating in affiliate marketing programs. Because they may be a disservice to your clients, or reflect poorly on you, or simply give you a lot of unpaid work to do.

It may surprise you (or maybe it won't) that School of Coaching Mastery has its own affiliate marketing program. Why?

Well here's an example: recently, a former member asked me if he could join my affiliate marketing program for Coach 100, because, as he said in his message to me, “Coach 100 was the best thing I ever did to get off to a fast start in my coaching business!” He knows me, knows the program and has seen the results and wants to share it. That's the kind of referral that works well for everyone involved and I'm happy to pay a fee to members who recommend us.

But here's the thing: you can make more money and experience more fulfillment by coaching your own clients. Recommend others based on value and supplement your coaching income by serving instead of leveraging a marketing scheme.

If you'd like to know more about Coach 100...

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Topics: coaching business, School of Coaching Mastery, Coaches, Coach 100, coaching clients, webinar, testimonials, teleclass, Marketing for life coaches, marketing, internet

Can You Coach a Nazi?

Posted by David Papini

Coaching

Guest post by David Papini, CCC.

Coaching is about conversations and human beings.

Conversations happen in different contexts and human beings can be criminals. Coaching is powerful, but has limits. Can you coach psychotics? Can you coach evil clients? Can you coach a Nazi?


There is a scene from Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List where Oskar Schindler (actor Liam Neeson) is talking with Amon Goeth (actor Ralph Fiennes) and tries to convince him to change his evil criminal “behavior” toward the prisoners.

 

Here is the conversation from a coaching technique point of view where Amon is the client and Schindler the coach:

If you put aside the maybe weird and scary feeling of coaching someone seriously mentally ill, with criminal traits and in a position of real power (as Amon Goeth was, in reality and in the movie) you may recognize that it is possible to meet clients with at least one of these trait (hopefully with lower intensity). Among the three traits (mental illness, propensity to criminal acts, power in an organization) I think that mental illness is the one that “technically” excludes the possibility of coaching because a coach cannot address the real (neither the great) self of the client, because that self is seriously damaged: only therapy maybe can.


Propensity to criminal acts poses an ethical problem, because it is possible, technically, to coach a client while embracing his criminal or violent self, but this puts the coach in the position of supporting a criminal (which is a moral and legal issue, not a technical one). For the sake of the discussion, if you are a criminal and a coach, you can coach a criminal, if you do not share the same criminal background, you may want to coach a client that wants to change his criminal behaviors in the future, but even in this case you cannot have a hidden agenda (like “helping the client to become a good citizen”) only an agenda that is shared with him.


If agendas (yours or client’s) are illegal or unethical or hidden, you cannot coach.


Coaching a powerful person, of course, can be done and I think that when my client’s real power (or status) is higher than mine, what makes the coaching relationship a good one is establishing that “us” mindset.  Which is the only part that I would save of the otherwise poor Schindler’s coaching performance.

Coach David Papini, CCC

Visit David Papini's Coach 100 Page Here.

David was born in Florence in 1966 just a few months before the deluge, and that's a kind of destiny. As an executive is in charge for general management in a IT Firm, as a certified NLP counselor helps clients to explore their life experience, as a Coach helps clients getting what they really want, as a conflict mediator witnesses how tough and creative a relationship can be, as a trainer helps trainees in stretching their brain, growing and learning, as a public speaker enjoys co-creating experience on the fly, as a dad loves his two children. As a man he is grateful and worried that he’s got this wonderful life. And he’s fond of categorizing his professional roles :-). More about him at http://papini.typepad.com/lifehike/
Flicker Creative Commons photo by HistoryIn An Hour

Topics: Coaching, Coach 100, coaching clients, coach, coaching ethics

What is a Life Coach?

Posted by Julia Stewart

What is a Life Coach

Guest post by David Papini, CCC.

In a famous speech at Stanford University, on June 12th, 2005, Steve Jobs said: "Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it, no big deal, just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots".

At the time Steve Jobs was approaching his fifties, and in that speech he was looking back to his life from the viewpoint of a successful entrepreneur, also gone through many setbacks, including a though start as an adopted child and serious health issues.

What he does in front of the Stanford's graduates is looking back and making sense of his story, connecting the dots of his life. Of course he does it a posteriori, looking at the causes from an effect (who and where he is in 2005) viewpoint. And, second, he tells a story, which, as we know, it's always a partial view of the facts (or of reality, if you prefer).

A few weeks ago, while I was preparing a speech about my job as a life & executive coach, I was struggling with finding a short definition able to capture the essence of coaching (I mean, not just an advertising sentence, the "essence" ), and it occurred to me that what a coach helps a client with is to connect her/his life/career dots before her/his achievements. So, to me, a coach helps a client to connect the dots looking forward, instead of backward.

If you look back at your dots and connect them, what do you see?

Now, look, listen, feel ahead your doubts, question marks, uncertainties.

List them.

Look at them together.

Connect them.

What do you see?

Coaching is about this: helping you to create and or change that picture of you in the future.

 

Executive and Life Coach

Visit David Papini's Coach 100 Page Here.

David was born in Florence in 1966 just a few months before the deluge, and that's a kind of destiny. As an executive is in charge for general management in a IT Firm, as a certified NLP counselor helps clients to explore their life experience, as a Coach helps clients getting what they really want, as a conflict mediator witnesses how tough and creative a relationship can be, as a trainer helps trainees in stretching their brain, growing and learning, as a public speaker enjoys co-creating experience on the fly, as a dad loves his two children. As a man he is grateful and worried that he’s got this wonderful life. And he’s fond of categorizing his professional roles :-). More about him at http://papini.typepad.com/lifehike/


Topics: life coach, Coaching, executive coach, Coach 100, coaching clients, what is a life coach

How to Attract Coaching Clients Via Social Networking Sites

Posted by Julia Stewart

The Essential Guide to Social Media Marketing for Solo ProfessionalsIf you're a business of life coach, or any type of solo professional, then attracting coaching clients via social networking sites can be incredibly valuable.

If you're new to social networking and social media marketing, it can be pretty overwhelming. The great news is that you only need some essentials to get started. From there, it's pretty easy 'to learn as you go'.

The first step of course, is to join and build a following on social networking sites. From there, if you know how to do it, you can easily attracting paid coaching clients. I share two brief stories about how two coaches filled their coaching practices quickly with clients by leveraging their social networking relationships with Coach 100 in the new eBook, The Essential Guide to Social Media Marketing for Solo Professionals. To Get the free eBook, click the big button below. To learn more about how to attract coaching clients via social networking and many other approaches, join Coach 100. More info below. But first, here's one section from the new eBook.

How to Build Your Following on Social Sites

  1. Start by following others. Makes sense, doesn’t it? People like to connect and they’ll be more likely to connect with you, if you make the first move. Don’t be shy. This is a lot easier than asking somebody to dance at a high-school mixer. But here’s where it gets similar to school: the more popular you are, the more people will want to connect to you. Get the ball rolling and eventually momentum will start to help you out.
  2. Consistently Add Fresh Content to Your Social Profiles. Social networking doesn’t have to take more than a few minutes per day, but do be consistent. Try setting aside ten minutes per day to share something relevant. An easy way to do this is to share great blog posts from blog sites that are related to your specialty. Most blogs today have social sharing buttons built right into the interface (see ours above). You can amplify your shares across numerous social sites by taking advantage of their sharing options. LinkedIn has this built into posts. Just click a box to share something from LinkedIn to Twitter, for example.
  3. Self-Promote Minimally. Even on sites where self-promotion is well tolerated, such as Twitter, the rule of thumb is to post something promotional once out of every seven tweets. Exceptions are made for commercial accounts, such as Starbucks or Amazon, that people follow specifically to receive discount offers. If you’re running a high-end solo business, such as coaching, you want to primarily engage in conversations and add useful content, with an occasional offer to buy your book, attend your seminar, or try a sample session. Be even more judicious on Facebook, which is primarily social, unless you have a (free) Facebook Page for your business.
  4. Be Somebody People Want to Follow. That’s one reason why a head shot of you is so important to your social profile. People generally follow people, not companies. Let your personality come across. Are you philosophical? Share deep thoughts and/or quote other famous people (and share the thoughts of people you follow – which is a great way to get them to follow you back). Love humor? Make an occasional wisecrack or share the jokes of famous comedians you follow. Care about social issues? Update your accounts with links to important online petitions. All of this pays off when your clients like what you like. The better you know your market, the more you can hone your voice.
  5. Be conversational. Reply to people who message you. Retweet or share their comments. Join in the conversation. This can be as simple as ‘liking’ what somebody says on Facebook or as involved as participating in a lively conversation in a group on LinkedIn.
  6. Focus on the social networks that matter most to your clients. You can’t be everywhere, even on the internet. If you have a business-to-consumer service (as opposed to business-to-business), then LinkedIn may not be ideal for you. If your clientele are older, then maybe the latest hot new social site (currently, that’s Pinterest) isn’t important yet for your business.
  7. Invite your website visitors to join you online. Add ‘Follow Me’ buttons (you can get them free from Twitter, for instance, or Google to find 3rd-party buttons) to every page on your site (See our 'Follow Us' buttons to the right). This encourages your visitors to talk about you in a potentially viral venue. Likewise, be sure to add social sharing buttons to all of your blog posts (if you have one – recommended). All the major forms of blogging software (like Wordpress) have them available. Finally, you can add social conversations to your website by adding social streams from Facebook, Twitter, etc. (scroll down to the right to see one of ours) The more ways people can find you and talk about you online, the more people will find you and talk about you online. Trigger the viral nature of social networking and your customers will market for you!

To get indepth instructions on how to build your coaching business with social media, along with many other approaches, join Coach 100. There are three levels to choose from, depending on your experience and how much you want to spend. Each one provides a proven system for attracting paying coaching clients and filling your business.

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Topics: Coach 100, coaching clients, Free, Facebook, Business Coaches, Life Coaches, twitter, Attraction Principles, coach marketing, LinkedIn, Social Media Marketing, Free eBook Social Networking

Coaching Success: How to Build Your Marketing List

Posted by Julia Stewart

 

Coach 100 Business SuccessIf you've read blog posts on how to become a successful coach, you know that building your marketing list is a must.

As the saying goes, 'The money is in the list!' But things have changed. Now that inbound marketing is replacing traditional marketing for small business, the marketing list is a must for local face-to-face marketing, as well as for internet marketers.

Not only that, but social networks, like Facebook and Twitter, have permanently altered the definition of 'list', as well as how to manage a list and nurture more sales.

So if you think the size of your list is what matters or that email is your principal marketing tool, you're missing out on some huge opportunities to connect with your potential coaching clients and get hired by more people. In short, you're losing money.

What if you're a new coach who has no list at all, yet? You need a strategy for building one, right now. The good news is, you don't need a website to start building your list.

Learn the myths of list building for coaches and find out what really matters when it comes to marketing your coaching business with Coach 100.

Get started with the popular and FREE Coach 100 eBook.

Learn what Coach 100 is and where it comes from. Find out why it works and how you can put it to work for you.

The Coach 100 Business Success Program is highly effective even if you currently know nothing about marketing and sales. It is included for FREE when you join the Certified Positive Psychology Coach Program. Get certified by the IAPPC!

Get your FREE eBook now:

Download Your Free Coach 100 eBook Here

 

Topics: Coaching, blogs, become a coach, Coach 100, coaching clients, Coaching 100, coaching success, Facebook, twitter, Certified Positive Psychology Coach, free ebook, IAPPC

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