Coaching Blog

'I don't want to market, I just want to coach.'

You too? I've heard this refrain from hundreds of coaches and I am soooo sympathetic. Building a coaching business from scratch can truly feel overwhelming. Of course, you don't know how to do it - yet.

But I'll let you in on a little secret.

THE best marketing strategy is to coach, coach and then go coach some more. Is there a problem here that I'm missing? I don't think so!  

Here are 10 ways to fill your coaching business by coaching:

1. To reach the moon, shoot for the stars. What's a way bigger goal than filling your coaching businesess? Shoot for that and fill your business in the process. One fantastic way to do this is to coach many more people than you think you need to.

2.  Get a system. All a business is, is a system for making money. Systemize your coaching and create a business out of it. Coach a lot of people in a systematic process that provides value to others and build your business abilities at the same time. Everything will get easier.

3. Experiment. Millions are made by 'gurus' who claim to have 'fool-proof' systems for making a killing. Usually it's only the gurus making the killing. To find your own best system, experiment and expect some failures. Every successful coach fails some of the time and then learns from each failure.

4. Track your progress. Set goals for yourself along the way (you can call them intentions, if you prefer). Watch how you're doing over time. You should be improving. If not, tweak your system. Make it fun by making a game out of it.

5. Remember it's not about you. Get your focus off yourself and your needs and focus on assisting your potential clents. If you need to get a side job, go for it! Most new coaches have a side income in the beginning.

6. Build relationships. You'd be surprised how many people will HELP you build your business if you give them a chance. Some of them may become your clients; some of them may just tell everyone they know about you. But remember to be assisting them, too.

7. Learn to cement relationships. Recognize when someone wants to work with you (they may be shy about showing it) and when they just need an invitation from you. In sales parlay this is known as 'closing the deal'. You do NOT need to be salesy to do it. In fact, salesy-ness can kill relationships.

8. Transform lives in minutes. Fantastic coaching practically sells itself. If you give a complimentary session to someone, solve their problem, and they don't buy your coaching package, you didn't give fantastic coaching. Get ongoing feedback on your coaching and you'll become a fantastic coach faster.

9. Collect outcomes, results, testimonials and referrals. The more great coaching you do, the more attractive your track record becomes. People need to see your track record, so don't be shy about sharing it.

10. Stop boo-hoo-ing. Crocky the Coach (above) gets to cry you-know-what-kind-of-tears, but you don't, because you're not a cartoon!

Isn't it marvelously perfect that the best way to build a successful coaching business is by doing a lot of coaching?

If you're not sure how to begin, the new free Coach 100 eBook will help you. We also have a system for filling your coaching business that makes it easy to shoot for the stars, experiment, track and tweak everything, so you can get your focus off you and onto building and cementing relationships, having transformative conversations and collecting great testimonials, referrals and clients. We even have a community of coaches who are going through the same process. They've become the experts on this and they're even sympathetic to the occasional crockodile tear. But start with the ebook.

Get the Coach 100 eBook here.

Remember the proverb about the butterfly that flapped its wings and caused a hurricane halfway around the world?

It's been attributed to many sources (An old Chinese proverb, maybe?), but this story often gets quoted as a simple way to explain Systems Theory.

In short, systems theory tells us that large systems (like planet Earth) appear chaotic to the human eye, but actually are mathematically perfect. They are just so complex, that we can't always see the patterns that are at play within them. Everything works together and because it all works together, sometimes tiny actions can catalyze exponential outcomes, like a butterfly's wings causing a hurricane thousands of miles a way.

Of course, a butterly can't actually cause a hurricane, all by itself. There's a huge differential in the amount of energy required, but tiny actions at the right time and place can be leveraged to create incredible outcomes. That's one of the great lessons of systems theory and every great coach has seen it happen again and again.

Computers have made it possible for humans to comprehend complex systems and how mysterious events actually occur. Before computers, systems theory was pretty much just a theory. It was difficult to measure the evidence.

So it is, that especially online, where a seemingly infinite amount of data can be tracked and measured, tiny actions can have been shown to create incredible outcomes, and things as silly as a social networks, like Twitter or Facebook, can be used to fight runaway forest fires or influence the outcome of a Presidential election.

 The Online Social Butterfly has been born and she is powerful, exponentially powerful.

Remember Susan Boyle, of Britain's Got Talent fame, and how she rocketed to stardom for hundreds of millions of YouTube visitors? Even compared to television, the internet is extraordinarily influential. Tiny events can be leveraged to incredible outcomes.

Coaches are in the business of leveraging 'flutterby' activities (a.k.a. baby steps) toward great successes, beautiful lives and even huge fortunes for our clients. And the business of coaching often turns on the tiniest of butterfly activities, like posting a comment on a blog, or tweeting about an event.

Add to that the permanent quality of the internet, which creates a public record of you and your activities for a lifetime and you can see how those activities create your identity, brand and reputation in ways that nothing else can. And it just keeps creating more and more momentum for you.

Your online 'reach' or following makes a difference, of course. But knowing what, where and when to leverage is even more influential. That's what distinguishes true Online Social Butterflies from everyone else.

Are you a true Online Social Butterfly? Or would you like to become one? At School  of Coaching Mastery, we have an actual job description for Online Social Butterflies. Currently, it is a volunteer position for coaches who want to learn how to leverage their actions and monitor their effects, so that they create an impact of tsunami proportions.

If you are interested, go here to apply for the Online Social Butterfly position and learn how to create small actions that change everything.

We've been working on a new digital product for coaches called, Master Coach Demos.

The idea is to let you listen in on coaching sessions with various certified coaches (probably all IAC Certified Coaches) and hear how they demonstrate masterful coaching skills. It could be priceless value for coaches who want to be the very best and have limited time or money to spend.

Here's my conundrum. The more I think about it, the more I want to do with this project. It started out as a CD or MP3 download product, but I'm not sure that would do it justice. I want it to be valuable to coaches and also  come in the format/s they need. It can't be all things to all people, but it can be optimal for most people.

I have a sample recording below that you can listen to, right now. It's uncut. As you listen, notice what you learn - and what you need to learn more from it.  Ask for what you need in the comments area, below. I'll be happy to answer your questions, so other coaches can learn from it, too.

Here are some potential ideas for Master Coach Demos:

• Include full-length masterful coaching sessions with commentary on what's working and why
• Include short coaching snippets of coaching that zero in on specific coaching skills and situations for fast, targeted learning
  
• Verbal and/or written explanation of what's working (and maybe what isn't)
  
• Interviews with the coaches, themselves, and maybe even with the clients, to hear what they experienced in the session, or as a result of it
• Monthly or weekly updates/installments
• Perhaps a membership site
• Video?
  
• Podcasts?
• Hmmm...
  

I could use your help...

Would this product be helpful to you? What would you use it for? (Prep for certification; use it to help you with specific client situations; 'on the fly' learning when you're at the gym or driving your car; etc...)

What format would you prefer? (Monthly membership; one-payment digital product; interactive membership for questions and support; etc...)

As a Thank-you, I'm including this one-hour coaching session for you to listen to right here. It's me coaching a celebrity client. Yes, I hesitate to call my own coaching session a 'Master Coach Demo', because it could always be improved. As I tell my students, 'Even if I screw up, it's a great learning opportunity for you to catch it and learn why something worked or didn't work.'

This recording is uncut. And I'm not offering commentary right here - yet. I'd love for you to listen and ask what you want/need to know in the 'Comments' section. That'll help me understand the precise way to deliver a session like this to you for faster/deeper learning.

Listen 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:

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,

The Best Coaching Blogs 2009 Contest is in full swing.

The Qualifying Round ended with 19 blogs being cut. Now the more competive blogs are jockeying for the first page and top positions. The option to vote a blog up or down, makes the competition particularly fluid. Not sure we'll keep that option for next year, since voting a blog down feels a little un-coach-like, but it makes the contest fun!

With 16,000 hits to the contest page in the last few weeks, votes and positions are changing rapidly, especially between the top five blogs. 

The most common question that I get from owners of the blogs is, "Why isn't my vote count changing when someone votes for my blog?" There are a couple of reasons for this:

1. A blog can actually have negative votes, but the lowest grade you will see for it is zero. When someone votes for it, the vote will be counted, but it won't change from zero until the net vote is one or higher.
2. The system remembers your computer, so you can't vote it up more than once. In this case, your second vote won't be tallied.
3. With 16,000 hits to the page, the odds that someone else is voting at the same time that you are, are pretty good. If they vote down, while you vote up, the net vote is zero. Sounds incredible, but I've seen votes go up and down dramatically in minutes and I've seen votes stay "stuck", as well. This contest is very active.
4. The position of a blog won't change unless you update the page.

For readers of blogs, this is a great time to read the best coaching blogs, because they are all in one place. Don't worry, here's a strategy for finding the time to read them all. It's also a great time to cast your vote and help determine who gets declared the Best Coaching Blog in 2009.

And for those of you who own coaching blogs and are regretting that you didn't enter the contest in time, there is always next year.

In the meantime, VOTE! 

What's the real reason School of Coaching Mastery is sponsoring the Best Coaching Blogs 2009 contest?

It's the same reason we started our own "Find a Coach" social networking site, Mastery Coach Exchange. 

We're doing it because it gives our students a real-world laboratory in which to learn how to leverage the Internet's most powerful marketing tools, so when they leave SCM, they don't flounder trying to find coaching clients, but have hands-on experience - and success - at finding their ideal clients and coaching them to transformation.

That doesn't mean that our students are the only ones benefiting, though. Everyone is winning. In the case of Best Coaching Blogs, the coaches who write the blogs are getting read much more than usual. They're creating new fans and new subscribers. Some of those new readers will become clients, and so on. And winning will give them distinction and bragging rights!

And of course, the readers get to learn great stuff from the bloggers, like how to set up a successful coaching business, how to transform your life, and a lot more. By putting the best of the coaching bloggosphere in one place, with votes and comments from the readers, we're making it easy for you to find the very best coaching blogs efficiently and you can help the bloggers out by reading, voting and commenting. Plus it's free. Great stuff!

But the benefits don't stop there. The bloggosphere is one of the most powerful tools for both learning and marketing, but that does not mean you need to be writing your own blog. Actually, unless you like to write and really have something to say, I would advise you NOT to start your own blog. That doesn't mean you can't leverage the bloggosphere to grow your coaching business, though. 

If you want to be more successful as a coach, start with other people's blogs.

1. Start reading several good blogs every week (Better yet: Everyday).
2. Start subscribing to the best ones.
3. Start commenting on the posts that really speak to you.
4. Start developing relationships with the writers and readers at your favorite blogs.
5. Those relationships can be nurtured into joint ventures, linking, opportunities and clients.
6. It's a way to learn and a way to market, all at the same time, and it's fre*e.

I'm teaching students at SCM a whole lot more about how to leverage the bloggosphere, but I've put together one very awesome tool for everyone, including you - gratis - and that's the Best Coaching Blogs 2009 Contest is going on, on our website, right now. Some of the best blogs in the coaching industry are already entered.

So you don't have to spend hours searching down the best blogs for you to read. You can pick the ones your friends are voting on and even read the comments they left, so you know which ones you want to try out.

Because they are all in one place, you can bookmark the page and return again and again, when it's convenient to you, while the contest continues, and read more blogs, cast your votes and add your comments (Be sure to add your website address to your comments).

Commenting on blogs is one of the smartest ways you can use Web 2.0 to market your business. Do you comment on blogs everyday?

While you're at it, don't just read the front runners. There are some real gems in this contest that not many people have heard of. You can help bring them to light by reading, commenting on and voting for them.

Approximately 1,000 people have already participated in this contest. Are you curious what brought them there?

Visit the Best Coaching Blogs 2009 Contest page now and bookmark it, so you can return, read, comment and vote at your leisure.

Winners will be determined by both votes and comments.

Oh and if you have a great blog that you want to enter, we're still accepting entries through Sunday, but the sooner you enter, the more votes you'll get.

Have fun and keep being great!

Group coaching is a wonderful way to create more value for clients, while making more money for the coach.

And those are two goals that all great coaches care about, especially with a recession on. With masterful group coaching there's a synergy between the group coaching members that takes each individual experience way beyond what the coach provides. At the same time, each group member pays less than they would if they spent the same amount of time in personal coaching. And their combined fees can add up nicely for the coach. Everybody wins.

For instance, the first time I was ever coached in a group, the coach, wisely, set up a system where in each group member connected with at least one other group member, at least once per week outside the group.

That very first week, I was paired with fellow group member, Michael Port (Yes, the bestselling author of Book Yourself Solid, and former actor who appeared in Season One of Sex in the City). Michael was a new coach back then, like me, but he was already a leader. He asked me what I was working on in the group and I said I needed to get my coaching website up. So he gave me the contact info for a great web master in India that he had used. And just like that! I had my first coaching website up in no time and (almost) no money!

And then there are the friendships and connections that group members make. The very first coaching group that I ever led was for coaches who were working on IAC Coach Certification. Many of those coaches are still close friends, having established themselves as top-level coaches, referring, inviting and recommending each other along the way. Some of them have even held high-level positions with the IAC. They are a force to reckon with!

All this might make group coaching seem like a no-brainer for the coach. However it is really an advanced skill set. Learning to give a client exactly what he or she needs within a personal coaching session can be a challenge. Doing that for several people simultaneously is quite a feat!

And then there are the administrative issues that arise when we work with groups, instead of individuals. Mastering group coaching is advanced business-building too.

Suffice it to say that School of Coaching Mastery couldn't be without a module on Group Coaching Mastery. And so our new Group Coaching Mastery module commences in one week!

And because this is the School of Coaching Mastery, we will explore the masterful skills needed for coaching groups from the perspective of the 9 IAC Coaching Masteries(tm) and how to take them to the next level by expanding them to include an entire group of people.

For instance, Mastery #1, Establishing and maintaining a relationship of trust, is a delicate set of multiple skills that helps to establish an open, safe relationship between the coach and a single coaching client.

How do you establish and maintain an relationship of trust between each the members of a group, as well as with yourself, so that each group member is completely open and trusting enough to fully benefit from the remarkable experience that is coaching?

That's one of the many puzzles that we'll solve together in next month's, Group Coaching Mastery module.

If you'd like to know more about it, go here to the module registration page.

You'll also get Group Coaching Mastery included if you join the Full Coach Training Program.

"People who are coaches will be the norm. Other people won't get promoted."- Jack Welch, CEO, General Electric

That's the story in a nutshell. People who work with people and know how to coach effectively will lead more productive teams and improve the company's bottom line. Their team members will report more job satisfaction and  fulfillment. Everybody wins.

However, you need to have a job before you can get promoted.

The current job market is one of the toughest that most of us have ever seen. If you're job has been automated or shipped overseas, or if you just don't fit the ideal employee profile that potential employers are searching for, you're probably wondering how you can reinvent yourself to succeed.

I won't tell you to become a coach.

Coaching as a profession really isn't for everyone, but coaching as a skill set is something everyone should consider, especially if you're looking for a way to make yourself more employable. And I'm guessing you might also prefer to have more fun, money, fulfillment, accomplishment, and job promotions, as well. Who wouldn't?

This article isn't for people who want to become professional coaches, unless you just like knowing that coaching skills will always make you more employable, in case you ever want to get a "regular" job again. I'm writing this for people who would benefit from upgrading their coaching skills, so they're more successful in other careers.

The numbers are impressive. 

At any given time, there are tens of thousands of job openings that require coaching skills.Yes, some of them are for sports coaches, but virtually every other type of position as well, from nurses, to chefs, to managers, to sales professionals, even to engineers! Go online and look for yourself. The problem is that most folks don't really know how to coach their people.

But what if you did? 

What if you used this time to invest in becoming an excellent coach? Not just by sitting in on a weekend course, but by practicing and working at becoming an effective coach? It's just a thought. 

• If you've ever wondered how you could inspire your people to do their very best
• Or how to get the information you need without interrogating people
• Or if you've ever wondered how leading a productive team could be fun, and at the same time help you finish projects on or ahead of schedule and still bring in more money for the company.
• Or maybe you've wondered if it's possible to wake up on Monday morning anticipating another great work week.
• Or maybe you've just wondered how to motivate twenty-somethings to show up for work looking and acting like professionals. A recent episode of 60 Minutes summed it up nicely:

Stop bossing and start coaching!

Coaching is still one of the professions that's growing, despite the economy and for good reason. When done well, it makes a huge difference. And you can do it well, if you learn what to do and practice it in the right environment. Again, it's just a thought.