Coaching Blog

This is the most insidious reason that some coaches don't have clients.

• If you think the economy is in the way
• If you're not sure you're giving enough value
• If you've tried every program and nothing works
• If you think of investing in your business as an 'expense'
• If you think you should be doing better
• If you're focused on you, instead of your clients
• If your coach is frustrated with you
• If Sales & Marketing feel more like S&M...

It's popular to use coaching as an upsell product with an upscale name like, platinum, diamond, gold, or elite.

This is usually based on a business model that starts with a big 'reach' (tens of thousands of email subscribers and followers on social networks), then moves to thousands of leads (people who signed up for something for free), then hundreds of customers (people who bought something in the $20 - $500 range) and finally moves to the small end of the marketing funnel with a few small-group or one-on-one coaching clients who pay you hundreds or thousands of dollars per month for your attention and time, a.k.a Coaching. This is called a marketing funnel, because it starts with a huge number of contacts and funnels down to a small number of clients who each pays you handsomely.

There are huge problems with using a marketing funnel when you're first building your coaching business.

The first problem is that it takes an incredible amount of time, effort and often expense to build a marketing funnel and during all that time, you're making little or no money. (Try supporting yourself with sales of a $19.95 ebook when you only have a 500-person mailing list. Even if you're marketing is extremely effective and you sell to 4% of your list, that's $399.)

The second and more insidious problem with using a marketing funnel to build your coaching business is that you're not spending your time coaching. You must coach a lot more than you may think to become masterful enough to succeed at coaching people in high-end programs. And if coaching is your true calling, then you need to do a lot of coaching just to be happy and fulfilled. Sadder still, is that coaching pays really well, but you're not coaching and probably not making the money you deserve to make.

Don't believe anyone who tells you that you can't fill your coaching business with one-to-one coaching clients from the very beginning.

People who say you can't make a living with one-to-one coaching fall into two groups:

1. Coaches who couldn't fill their own coaching businesses with one-to-one clients and therefore think you can't either. That's an assumption that can derail your coaching business. Don't fall for it.
2. People who aren't really coaches, but are either internet marketers, authors or speakers who use coaching as an upsell product and want to teach you their 'method'. Don't fall for that either; not if you're serious about spending your time helping people by coaching them one-to-one or in small groups. 

I love social media for my coaching business.

I've been attracting coaching clients and students with online social tools for the past five years. Some of my favorite clients, ever, have come from web 2.0. Many of my Coach 100 students have had extraordinary success building their businesses with online tools. School of Coaching Mastery has had a strong social presence since its launch in 2007. Heck, we even have our own social networking site!

So I'm not the coach you'd expect to say that social media could kill your business. And no, I don't mean that your Facebook addiction might keep you from working on your business as you should (although it could). And I don't mean that you should be out shaking hands at live networking events instead of using online social networking (although some coaches really should be networking live instead of online).

I mean that the actual tools of social networking, if used poorly, can cost you coaching clients. And given how time consuming a good marketing plan can be to implement, tools that actually work against you can indeed kill your business.

What kinds of social networking tools could hurt a coaching business? Anything (and I mean anything) that annoys people. And let's face it, that covers a lot of territory.

Most new (and some veteran) business and life coaches have poor marketing and sales skills to begin with, so opportunities to do it poorly are abundant. But if you screw up your elevator speech at a live networking event, you only risk annoying a few people (and if you can laugh at yourself, you'll probably make a few friends, instead). But tools that allow you to contact everybody in your network in ways or at times that they don't want, can help you annoy thousands of people with one innocent little click. Ouch!

Repeat that innocent action again and again and your coaching business will be dead in the water before you know it.

Why is annoying people such a big deal when it comes to marketing your coaching business? Well, remember that cliche: 'Long after people have forgotten what you said, they'll remember how you made them feel'? You don't want to be remembered as the annoying coach.

Question: If you were looking to hire a business or life coach and you had narrowed it down to two coaches who both seemed to meet your criteria perfectly, would you hire the one who annoyed you are the one who didn't?

Sales decisions come down to subtleties. Sometimes a client doesn't even know why they chose to hire one coach over another. You don't have to annoy someone very much to tip the scales away from you.

What do you need to avoid in order to not kill your business with social networking tools? 

Well here are a few items that will help you to not annoy me. But get feedback from your own networks to find out what really bugs them.

1. Social SPAM. Any social app that's designed to spread itself automatically at the expense of annoying your network is social SPAM. The inspiration for this post is an innocuous little tool called, Boxbe, that's spreading around School of Coaching Mastery. Everytime someone I know joins it, I automatically get an invitation to join, too. I don't want to join. And I don't want to get email invitations to it several times per day. It's social SPAM and it's annoying. Plaxo is also annoying. Some poorly designed Twitter apps do this sort of thing. (And don't get me started on SpamArrest. I consider SpamArrest SPAM.)

2. Social Temptation. How often do you get invitations from Facebook or any social networking site to invite or notify everyone in your Outlook,Yahoo, Google, or other address book? How often do you do it? In my book, you get to do it once. One time. Resist the temptation to tell everybody you know about something unless they followed you or joined your group or fan page. Otherwise social temptation becomes social SPAM.

3. Social Scams.  @UnMarketing just posted a link on Twitter to this blog post about scam apps on Facebook. It's easy to get tricked by these because they look like so many other apps on Facebook. Maybe you should avoid temptation and not allow every app out there to connect to your account. (While I was researching this, I came accross Scott Stratten's - A.K.A. UnMarketing - blog post on how to lose friends and tick people off on Facebook.)

4. Social Abbrev. There's nothing wrong with LOL, WTF, Ouch! and KEWL unless you use them constantly. Remember you annoying uncle, cousin, spouse who said the same things over and over until you wanted to stuff mashed potatoes in your ears? Don't be that coach.

5. Social Games. As well as gifts, etc., ad nauseum. You can have fun at work but please stay focused so the rest of us can. Sorority Life, Mafia Games, Farmville, etc., I tolerate these from my relatives (barely), but not from you (unless you find a way to combine all three, which might be interesting). Don't you feel silly posting your latest livestock aquisition on Facebook? I don't think this would persuade even Old MacDonald to hire you to be his coach.

6. Social Pics and Tags. Not all of them. Most are great. You probably don't need me to tell you not to post the pics of you throwing up at that college binge party (the real sorority life). If not, stop reading this post and get thee to a 12-step program, fast. But consider your headshot. If you coach kids, then a shot of you with your kids is appropriate, but if you coach Fortune 100 execs, maybe not. And if somebody else posts or tags you in an unflattering shot, quietly request that they take it down. If you haven't annoyed them, they probably will. If not, be prepared for radical transparency. You have no more secrets.

7. Social Compulsion. Please don't fill people's Twitter streams with constant inane tweets. They will unfollow you. Direct messages are even worse. And you're not kidding anybody by tweeting nothing but Twitter names in the hope of getting noticed. Don't tweet or post unless you have something to say and definitely don't tweet constantly.

Well that's it for now. I could annoy you with a bunch of links to friend/join/follow us, like the 'Find us on Facebook' link above, but probably more valuable to you will be for you to get some training on how to attract clients effectively, which we do in our Coach 100 classes. They start again in February and they teach what actually works.

WARNING: You'll have less time for social networking when your coaching practice is full.

 Check out Coach 100 classes here.

While prepping for my interview tomorrow with Coach Reporter, MarkJoyella, I came across some fascinating tidbits on coaching in the posts filed by Mark at Coaching Commons.

As a former TV journalist (and Emmy Award winner), Mark keeps his finger on the coaching pulse like the pro that he is. Who better to interview on current trends in coaching for the January teleconference meeting of the IAC North American Virtual Chapter?

Some of these trends ultimately will impact how you practice the profession of coaching. And if there is one trend in coaching that never seems to go away, it's that the coaches who succeed best are either the ones leading the way or those who keep up and adapt quickly to important trends. 

You need to be at this interview. 

We'll be talking about the latest research on coaching, business mergers, high tech developments and job opportunities and we'll even touch on the story that I think proves that coaching has already gone mainstream!

There'll be a quick Q&A at the end of the interview, followed by 30 minutes on some Mastery 1 coaching skills that you probably already have, but may not be using, which can simplify your coaching and lead to happier more successful clients. 

We meet Thursday, January 14th, 2 - 3:30 PM Eastern/NY Time. To join this call and receive notifications on upcoming calls, as well as a white paper on 'How to Become an IAC Certified Coach', a recorded interview with IAC Certifiers, Natalie Tucker Miller and Elizabeth Nofziger, plus the IAC Notes - all for free -

Join IAC NAC Here. 

 Mastery Coach Exchange (MCX) is School of Coaching Mastery's own find-a-coach/social networking site.

MCX is designed to give professional coaches and the people who want to hire them, a chance to interact before money exchanges hands. It's also a great place for people who are thinking about becoming coaches to interact with coaches who are already doing it. In other words, MCX is an interactive coach directory. 

Many of my first clients came to me through coach directories that I participated in. The process was frustrating though, because directories are/were completely passive. All you could do was list yourself and then pray that potential clients would see your listing and call you.

Web 2.0 rewards coaches for doing what they do best: communicating and relating. Trouble is, most folks on Facebook and elsewhere are there to socialize, so you need to market delicately, if at all. Otherwise, your marketing message will be about as well received as that FBI warning on your favorite DVD. Market poorly online and you risk turning off the very people you'd like to attract.

MCX is clearly designed for professional coaches and those who want to hire them and/or learn more about them. Potential clients want to hear your marketing message. In fact, they want to get to know you. What better place than in a safe online community?

Best of all, you can add your profile to MCX for free. However, to be approved for membership, you must add a head shot of yourself, your first and last name, and at least one website or blog  address and/or social networking profile, so we can determine if you are who you say you are.

MCX is undergoing some upgrades right now to make it even more effective. Adding social share app's will help to spread your message across the web. We're also adding a monthly newsletter, to keep you updated on what's happening and you'll receive cool opportunities and discounts on School of Coaching Mastery programs.

Join MCX Here. 

 If you're reading this article then, obviously, you spend time online reading about coaching.

And if that's the case, then you must have noticed all those ads  that promise that you'll be a master certified coach in two days or 16 hours, or whatever. Sometimes, they also advertise their tuition, which is cheap, cheap, cheap.

You can imagine how those schools are regarded by real professional coaches. Mark Joyella (@CoachReporter), who writes for the Coaching Commons, tweeted about them (I'm paraphrasing), 'Sure and next weekend you can become a brain surgeon!'

I'm thinking those ads mainly appeal three types of people. Those who:

1. Think they already know how to coach (a.k.a. arrogant)

2. Are only interested in coaching for the money (a.k.a. greedy)

3. Are clueless (a.k.a. gullible)

Those who're attracted to us don't fit those descriptions, so I never considered weekend coach training schools our competition. 

But I reconsidered that when I heard that one of my most respected competitors, Barbra Sundquist, is closing her 'Become a Certified Coach' school at the end of this year [12-11-09 Update: Barbra isn't going out of business, but simply closing the doors of this particular program. See Barbra's comments in the comments section, below.]. Barbra cited a number of reasons, including rising competition from cheap, highly advertised, schools. That got me thinking...

What if the proliferation of bogus coach training schools drives out most or all of the legitimate schools?  Where does that leave the profession of coaching? Will the majority of coaches then be unskilled or disreputable? Will the reputation of coaching drop to the point that real professional coaches quit?

I'm not trying to be an alarmist here. You can't prevent a potential problem if you're not willing to look at it. Coaching has enjoyed incredible freedom in the past 20 years. But the success and freedom of coaching has sometimes attracted people with the wrong motivations.

I admit, 2009 has been a challenging year for School of Coaching Mastery, as well. Several of our students didn't pay their bills. But that forced me to consider just how committed I am to coach training and I realized that if it came down to choosing between my home or my school, I'd give up the house!

So I'm in it for the long haul. But what about you? If you're committed to coaching, then you're probably just as disturbed as I am about the proliferation of schools and coaches who don't cast a good light on this profession.

What do you think needs to be done about it? Do coaching organizations like the IAC and ICF have a responsibility to do anything? Do they even have the authority to do anything? Or do coaches themselves need to take more responsibility for the image of the profession?

There's lots of hang-wringing going on in private forums, but coaching is about action. Do you need to take action?

Please post your views on this in the area below and if coaching is a really important issue for you, please also share this article with the social sharing tools, above. 

I am writing to you from Salt Lake City, where I'm attending the Kanzeon Western Zen Center's Fall Retreat with Genpo Roshi.

As someone who has never wanted to be a Buddhist, but who is powerfully drawn to to the Big Mind process, I'm having a few interesting and fun culture shocks.

Like Monday, 6:45 AM, when I entered the Zendo for morning meditation in time for a Hogwarts-ian vision of black robed monks floating down the dark staircase in dawn's half-light. I must admit, I was slightly creeped out until I reminded myself that I'd already met all those people at dinner the night before, in their jeans and sweatshirts. They were perfectly lovely.

Nobody had said anything about robes, though! ;-)

I'm here for Big Mind, but meditation and enlightenment are two deep interests of mine, as they are just about a must be for a good coach. We need to always be opening that space for our clients and we can't just manufacture it.

Roshi talks a lot about the teacher/student relationship and how masters never lose the need for teachers. Otherwise, we get stuck or arrogant (or both). Same goes for coaches.

I've been looking for my next teacher for some time and here he is. Roshi doesn't call Big Mind, coaching, although he recognizes the correlation. He's helping people experience enlightenment in a quintessentially American way, but with 40 years of experience and 2,500 years of teachings.

Speaking of which, the Dharma, or Way, was predicted to end at about this time. Roshi believes that 21st Century monasteries will go away and that enlightenment will converge with the market, to integrate life and business with awareness. 

One element of this will be the elimination of a huge shadow that has forced monks to 'beg, borrow or steal', instead of earn, to survive.  

So many coaches are plagued by the same shadow. They feel uncomfortable with asking for money, afraid of the 'sleeze factor'. Unless you are independently wealthy, the money shadow will prevent you from succeeding as a professional coach.  

Not sure if you have a money shadow? Just look at your coaching career and ask yourself how you have begged, borrowed or stolen in order to coach. If you're not earning your way back to integrity, yet, you probably have a financial shadow. 

What to do? Big Mind, of course. They are broadcasting live everyday this week. You may even see me on screen. No robes, though. http://www.BigMind.org/zen-eye

[UPDATE: On February 3rd, 2011, Genpo Merzel announced that he would disrobe as a Buddhist monk, after admitting to improper relationships with some students. He plans to continue teaching Big Mind on a secular basis and will no longer teach at Kanzeon Zen Center.]

  Most coaches would like to earn six figures or more with their coaching businesses.

But some coaches get caught up learning marketing strategies that have them do everything but coaching. The most popular strategies include building a big mailing list, creating a product funnel, creating free content and honestly, that's all a lot of hard work. And it might not be nearly as fun as coaching. And it can take months, if not years to make that great income.

If you're trying to do it this way, you may be wondering why you went into coaching, at all.

Well here's a little secret: You can start making a six-figure income even with a three-figure mailing list; probably with even a two-figure list. And you can do it all with the same skills you use as a coach.

Even top marketing experts, like Seth Godin, say this is the way to go.

I've been using this approach for twenty years. Adela Rubio is going to interview  me about it as part of her awesome Conscious Business Telesummit* series, which you can join for free.There are 9 other terrific Conscious Business Leaders(tm) who will also share their business secrets with you for free. Not too shabby.

The interview is Tuesday, November 17th, at  4-5 PM Eastern/NY Time. And the  topic is How to Earn a 6-Figure Income With a 3-Figure List.

Join the Conscious Business Telesummit for free and I tell you how to earn a six-figure income even with a three-figure list.*

Disclosure: I'm an affiliate of this program and I would recommend it anyway.

* Harvard is studying us.
* The CEO of Google is bragging about us.
* Even the Wall Street Journal has great things to say about coaching.

Guess what? The ‘wild west' days of coaching are over.

Cliches about coaching that held true ten years ago, like that  coaches really don't need to be certified, aren't holding up like they used to.

Our surveys show that about 70% of coaches want coach certification, not because they're insecure, but just because it feels right to them. And since other surveys find that untrained, uncertified coaches are less likely to succeed, that intuition is well founded.

But coaches are busy with their businesses, so actually getting certified gets shoved to the back burner. It's a Catch 22. 

So we're giving you a one-time-only reason to pay close attention and get certified, right now: Starting November 16th, three certifiers (Natalie Tucker Miller, IAC-CC, Elizabeth Nofziger, IAC-CC, and Julia Stewart, IAC-CC)* are getting together for an eight hour course to teach you in detail what you need to pass certification. We've rolled it into three packages, so if you need a refresher course, first, you'll get that, and if you're ready to record your coaching sessions, you can get that too and save money.

2010 could be the year that you put those coveted letters after your name. 

Click below to find out more and choose the package that fits your needs best. Or call 877-224-2780 to ask about further customization to help you get certified. 

*We'll be working with the IAC Coaching Masteries^TM. We were the first coach training company in the world to be licensed to teach them and collectively, we've taught mentored or certified most of today's IAC Certified Coaches. In fact, Natalie and Elizabeth are current IAC Certifiers. But we are representing School of Coaching Mastery in this course, not the IAC, itself. 

If you'd like to hear a recording that will give you a taste of the learning you'll get from this value-packed course, the three of us  just did a call for the IAC North American Virtual Chapter and you'll immediately get a copy of that recording for joining, which is free.  

Go here for more info about Certified Coach: Master What the Certifiers Are Looking For