Coaching Blog

If you're one of the many coaches who view coach certification as an critical goal in 2009, this will interest you.

We were planning one of our advanced coach certification weekends this October, but coaches told us they want something else. I invite you to tell us what you want, too, in the survey called, 'Certification in a Weekend?' The survey closes this Thursday. So far, over 50 coaches have told us what they want and how much they want to pay for it. We have every single bit of it, too!

We're offering a special preview recording of 'Master Coach Demos', a new product that we're producing, to everyone who participates in the survey. We'll also provide you with customized recommendations, so you get the certification support you need, not just a pre-packaged product that may not fit your unique requirements. 

Take the quick 2-page Certification survey right now

I spent last weekend in Denver at the Vast Sky Conference with Zen Master Genpo Roshi, Ken Wilber, Bill Harris and Bernie Glassman Roshi.

Mind blowing doesn't begin to describe it. For me, the two highlights were:

Everyone raves about coaching, but it's too expensive, right? Wrong!

Find out how to try it for free. And if you continue, it's only $19 - $39 per month to experience the transformitive effects of working with your own coach. Watch this preview video to get started. Visit www.LifeCoachCompass.com to learn more.

[UPDATE: Unfortunately, in June 2012, MyLifeCompass.com announced it would no longer be a multi-level marketing company for life coaching. It was unclear where the company wold head next. Read more about why I quit Compass Coaching.]

You'll never find success wandering down blind alleys.

That's what Urban Coaching Myths are: blind alleys for you and your coaching business. Coaches beware!

This particular coaching myth is so insidious and so routinely embraced, that it has probably hamstrung dozens (if not thousands) of coaching businesses. What a crime!

It's sourced in half-understood truths about marketing, a failure to make important distinctions, hearsay and just plain bad coaching. I may get hate mail for saying this, but somebody needs to tell the truth!

The myth, "You need to know your coaching niche before you can market your coaching business", is a lie!

How do I know this? I've experienced it myself and I've coaching zillions of coaches who have been stumped by this bad advice.

For example, Chris Barrow, "The Million Dollar Coach" built his million-dollar grossing coaching business by specializing in coaching dentists in the UK. He didn't know that dentists were his niche until he had coached a lot of them, realized that he had become an expert on building a thriving dental practice in the UK (previously he knew nothing about dentistry), and noticed that dentists were referring a lot of friends to him. Then he started making a million dollars a year. That's a real niche. Anything else is just play acting.

Trying to find your niche before you've coached a lot of people is really just putting the cart ahead of the horse. It's a waste of time and energy because the truth is...

1. You need to coach a lot of people, first, in order to find your niche.
2. You can build a successful coaching business even without knowing your niche. 

Which do you really want, a coaching niche or a successful coaching business?

• Internet marketing "gurus"
• Marketing courses
• Inexperienced mentor coaches
• Buddy coaches
• Coaching listserves
• Coaching chapters

It's the old "they say" circuit that's been a source of misinformation of all kinds since the dawning of human communication. None of the above is bad in and of itself. Used well, all are very good. However, ineffective advice never helped anybody.

And those distinctions I mentioned? I've placed a few them in a quick quiz to help you distinguish whether you really need a niche in order to coach, or whether you need to coach before you'll ever find your real niche.

Quick Quiz

1. Are you:

a) A professional coach

b) An internet marketer

2. Do you want to sell:

a) Your coaching services

b) "Widgets" and digital products

3. Do you want to focus on:

a) Building a long-term profitable coaching business

b) Making a quick killing selling a product

4. Are you:

a) Someone who is smart and sensible

b) Someone who believes everything you hear

 

Get a flashlight: Take Coach 100 courses to learn a lot more about what it really takes to build a successful coaching business.

Most of the coaches I talk to fit the following description:

Coaching, But Not Actually Open for Business

They think they're in business, but they're not. Confusion is holding them back. Confusion turns away coaching clients, just like the business in this picture turns away customers. 

The reason I know this is that unlike most coaching schools, I (or someone else at SCM) actually talk to the coaches who visit our site. We listen to what they are up to and help them find the resources they need. It's a labor-intensive process that average coach training schools skip. But we're not average.

Our Enrollment Advisor, Donna Miller, commented on this to me the other day. Most coaches are either coaching, but have no business, or they've started a business, but they're not sure how to coach. Those are bad combinations. They send the same mixed message as the business pictured above. The open sign is on, but the security gate is closed.

If your coaching business is struggling, ask yourself if you're actually open for business.

Here's My Stand:

There is (or should be) an enormous difference between amateurs who coach and professional coaches. If you want a successful coaching business, you need to  be coaching a whole lot better than your client's best friend, next door neighbor and office mate, because those folks are all "coaching" too (and a most of them are coaching for free).

A good coaching school will give you clarity and clarity creates success. It's not magic, but it feels like magic. Mixed signals will keep you stuck. If you are stuck, get the clarity you need. 

One place you can get clarity is in our "How to Become..." free mini-course series. The next one is on How to Become a Certified Coach.

Register for 'How to Become a Certified Coach' Here

There aren't many companies that I would write a love letter to or about

Here is just one that I thought I would share with you, because you'd probably love them, too. And even if you aren't in the market for their service, you might as well try it out, because it's free and trust me, you'll find cool ways to use it.

Here's my experience.

As the owner of a "cutting edge" coaching school, I went on a mission last year to find the perfect way to share coach training. Something that would combine the intense experience of live training with the convenience and cost-savings of teleclasses. I knew there had to be something better than teleclasses. I was right, but it took a long time to find it.

I explored every software out there from WebEx, to GoToMeeting, to InstantTeleseminar and a whole bunch you've never even heard of. You know what I found out? They are all expensive, clunky, sometimes hard to use and they almost always require participants to wait while the system downloads something to their computers, before they can even join the class.

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty leery about downloading anything that I don't already understand and I hate to wait.

My clients and students are the same way. I bet you are too. And I bet your friends, family, clients, customers and/or students are, too.

Somebody finally answered my prayers (Thank you, Seth Godin, for pointing the way). Less than a year ago, I discovered a brand new company that had set their sights on turning the business of webinars upside down.

You're not interested in doing webinars? Well, do you...

• Wish you could visit with family and friends, like they were in the room with you (smiling faces and all)?
• Do you wish you could watch your favorite videos with your faraway friends and chat and laugh like you were together?
• Do you ever have long-distance phone meetings where you're all trying to follow they same notes, contracts, reports, etc.?
• Do you ever wish you could stop driving/flying/training and spending time, money, fuel and what's left of the environment, just so you could do your work with others?

In other words, if you could use this service for nothing, then why on Earth wouldn't you? The only reason I can think of is that you just don't know about it, yet.

So I'm telling you: Get Dimdim.

It's as close to perfect as it comes. You can meet freely. And easily. And do lots of cool stuff with the people you love, no matter where they are.

Yes, you can do more if you pay something (An annual subscription is a fraction of what WebEx costs for one month), but for most people, the free account is all you'll ever need and it's not a free trial. It's free forever!

And yes, Dimdim has offered to expand my service if I tell my friends about it, so that's my selfish reason for writing, but I already brag about Dimdim to everyone I know. So.

Last week I wrote about how competitive the Best  Coaching Blogs 2009 contest had become.

Thousands of votes; lots of excitement. Well, we seem to have turned a corner with that. One blog recently got more votes in a period of a few hours than the number of visitors to our entire website! Hmm...if each person is supposed to vote once, then...

Today, I also received an email from someone who says she's been bombarded by bloggers who are asking her to vote multiple times for their blogs. Not cool. Not cool at all.

The voting software is designed to prevent anyone from voting more than once, but any system can be "gamed". How naive I must be to think that coaches would be above all that!

When I first caught wind of some cut-throat activity, I started watching my web analytics for irregularities and they revealed mostly positive behavior, plus some that I wasn't so sure about. I made some mental notes about how to change the contest for next year, but it meant that possibly I had missed some activities that should have disqualified a few blogs this year and it was too late to be sure. That's not good.

Now I'm thinking that I can't guarantee the fairness of this contest. That makes me really sad, but I'm not one to stand around sniffling. 

Clearly, some changes need to be made. And although I was hoping for a "People's Choice" award for coaching blogs, I think it would be much fairer to let all of the bloggers vote for each other, including those who didn't make the previous two cuts. The web "votes" will now be for "entertainment" purposes,only.

I'm asking myself what I've learned here. Should I have tested the software with a mock contest? I don't think a mock contest would have elicited this result. Maybe experience really is the best teacher.

Perhaps the real lesson is that temptation can get the better of even good people, so it's best not to tempt them. Or judge them.

My hero in all of this, though, is the coach who disqualified herself and withdrew from the contest. She said it was the negative vote option that was her downfall. She did the right stuff to bring people to the site to vote for her, but others kept voting her back down, so she started adding the votes back in. As she said,