Coaching Blog

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.

Best Coaching Blogs 2013 is under way and already the social butterflies are pollinating hundreds of admiring voters. (If you haven't entered yet, you still have time to win, but sign up now.)

I'm going to share some secrets of Online Social Butterflies and how they win Best Coaching Blogs, each year. You see, mastering social media cross pollinates with mastering coaching. That's my evil, um... divine plan!

First, what's a social contest, anyway? It's a win-win online contest that leverages everyone's social reach (friends, contacts and followers on sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+) to attract large audiences for popular voting. Ultimately, everybody wins because contest visitors discover more great coaching bloggers when they visit the site.

Wait! Does that mean coaching bloggers could lose potential clients to their competition? Nope! I'll explain, uno momento.

If you want to see Online Social Butterflies in action, follow the Best Coaching Blogs 2013 List on Twitter. You can pick out the front-runners without even visiting the contest, because they regularly tweet about the contest. Also, search for hashtag, #BestBlogs for related tweets.

Best Coaching Blogs invites coaches who blog on coaching topics to enter their blogs and each year, both new and established blogs win top honors. The winners actively 'play the game' by inviting their readers, colleagues, clients and social reach to come vote for them. People can vote as often as they like, so the contest measures more than just the number of people who like a blog, it also measures passion: both the voters' and the bloggers'.

Passion is a big deal in coaching. It's what ignites clients and creates success. But competition? Not so much. At least not for a lot of clients.

Cooperation, mutual support, acknowledgment, belief in others; that's the stuff of coaching. And it's also the stuff of social media mastery. Both realms, coaching and social media, require that we get our little egos (that part in each of us, that always wants to WIN!!) out of the way and make it all about other folks - without turning ourselves into robots or doormats.

Winning Best Coaching Blogs usually requires more than just a great blog, although great writing and content definitely help. Winning requires the right balance of competition and cooperation. I don't know an English word for that, so I made one up: coopetition.

Here are Some Winning Secrets to Coopetition:

1. Start early. Be the kind of person who supports and champions others, as a matter of course. The more history you have doing this, the more people will want to do the same for you. Wait until you need something from them (like a vote) and it could backfire.
2. Embrace your selfish reasons. Yes, it's totally okay to be for yourself. Just don't be that way, only. If you try to deny your agenda, people won't trust you. If you fail to express it, people will walk all over you. So go ahead and ask for people's votes. If you've been supporting them, they'll want to help. Even if you haven't, they'll respect your request.
3. If you're already supporting others and clear with them about what you want, you're ready to play a fun game. In Best Coaching Blogs, that could mean leaving comments on competitors' blog entries that acknowledge what's great about those blogs. It could also mean voting for your competitors (!), or even telling the world why they should vote for your competitors (!!). You could even ask your competitors to vote for you (!!!). This can get icky and manipulative fast, though, so take care.
4. Why is coopetition a winning strategy? Because being a model of coopetition is extraordinarily attractive. It seems like people who act that way should lose out, but they win, instead. The bloggers who do it best always attract more voters, readers and clients, rather than lose them. So it's about a lot more than winning a contest.
5. Trust the process. This is hard for high achievers, but you really can't control most of the moving parts in this process; you can only influence them. Resist the urge to pester people, or to obsess about whether or not all your votes get counted. Not even Zuckerberg has total control of Facebook.
6. Even in life, it's the folks you support who 'vote' for you and what you want. That's the coopetive advantage. In Best Coaching Blogs, it's the finalists who pick the top winners, so those who play the game well, immediately become the biggest influencers. But 'winning at any cost' is a losing strategy in this contest, as well as in life.
7. How does this relate to coaching? People who can let go of their need to win, to be right, to never fail, and who can support and champion others, make great coaches. Entering Best Coaching Blogs is a 'game theory' approach to coach development. If you're interested in becoming a great coach, be sure to participate. Vote here through August 31st. Enter here only through July 31st.

If 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:

Today one of my mentor coaching clients said something brilliant.

She said she realized that she'd been expecting to 'manifest' her successful coaching business with about 20% effort and she needed to go full out for it. That's one of the main reasons some coaches fail. Even if they're doing the right things and even if they aren't doing them the wrong way, often they just plain aren't doing enough. 

Owning your own business and making money doing what you love has so many benefits, that if it were as easy as getting and keeping a good job, everybody would be doing it. And yet, some coaches plod along doing about as much as they would have at that dead-head corporate job they escaped from and they wonder why they don't have enough clients!

If there's one thing I love about being a coach, it's that I'm passionate about it. That passion drives me forward to be, do and have everything I want by creating value for my clients. It's known as the power of full engagement and making money is just a byproduct.

If you love coaching, tap into that passion and let it drive/pull you forward. Show up fully everywhere you go and have faith that you're creating the life and business that you really want. 

However, if you're just playing it safe, not taking risks, not willing to be vulnerable, waiting until everything is perfect, setting intentions without changing behaviors, or just trying to do enough to get by, you're not ever going to get there.

That reminds me of something a member of our Free Coach Training Program asked me today. Is the Free Coach Training everything you need to start a coaching business? For some people it will be, but others will either want much more or need much more. That's why we have more!

Related posts:

• Become a Coach: Ten Ways to Succeed Quickly
• The Biology of Success
• This Prevents Coaching Success: Are You Suffering From the Kiss of Death?

Check out the Ultimate Coach Training Program Here.

I've written a lot lately about how to build a successful coaching business without complex marketing systems or pricing structures.

Here are a few high points on how to give successful complimentary coaching sessions:

• Focus on the client, not on yourself. Your nerves and even your desire to do a good job are all about you. Coaching is all about them.
• Focus on expanding the client's possibilities instead of solving the client's problems. Every great coach knows that problem solving is the least of your gifts.
• Focus on the relationship and the potential relationship. Help the client see what's possible with your coaching.
• Give the client an experience. Of themselves, the value of the coaching relationship and the potential outcomes of working with you.
• Notice all the information that your client and your intuition are sending you. This is how you recognize a good client fit.
• If you and the client are a great fit, invite them to work with you.

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.

"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.

Every week, I talk to people who want to choose the right coaching school for them...

And of course, money is always an important concern. Recently, the topic of money-back guarantees came up in a couple of conversations.

A few coaching schools offer money-back guarantees and they're a bad deal for several reasons.

For starters, they give new coaches the illusion that they have nothing to lose and boy, is that not true!

Reason 1: The Opportunity Cost is Far Higher Than the Tuition

Months ago, a coach contacted me who was attending a coaching school that I used to teach for, which offered a money-back guarantee when he joined in 2003. After years of taking zillions of classes, he still doesn't  have a coaching business.  Now he realizes he's in the wrong coaching school, wants his money back and thinks SCM may be the answer. He'd been contacting the other school for months to get his money and so far, has just gotten a run around. He told me he'd join SCM as soon as he has his money back. He's still waiting.

Result? Most coaches can put together a professional coaching business within a year or less, with the right support (Yes, even in this economy). And a moderately successful coaching business can easily earn $50,000 per year. (Some coaches earn six figures, some coaches, a lot less.) So if this coach had been coaching full-time since 2004, making $50,000 per year for five years, he'd have made $250,000 by now.

Not only that, he'd be spending his days doing what he loves instead of putting in thousands of hours at a job he can't stand.

So for a "no-risk" investment of a few thousand dollars, he's cost himself hundreds of thousands and years of his life.  

Reason 2: No Risk No Reward 

As I said, I used to teach at the afore-mentioned school. With low tuition and a money-back guarantee, it grew quickly. There were some highly-talented coaching students there - and there were a bunch who probably should never have gone into coaching. With a low entry barrier, many people who had heard you could make big bucks as a coach had joined. Still others had lost their jobs in the last recession and joined that school because they wanted out of the rat race and thought they had nothing to lose. If we make starting a coaching business sound too easy and coach training, no-risk, people join without being sure they really want to become coaches.

Result? Lack of commitment. And unfortunately, lack of commitment usually leads to lack of success. (Ask any successful coach. We're in the business of success.) In addition, the coaches who don't belong are unhappy and their lack of success becomes an energy drain for the whole community. 

Reason 3: The School May Not (Be Able to) Return Your Money

The man who started that school was good for it and he was extraordinarily talented and completely sincere. However, he passed away suddenly of a heart attack, leaving the school to one of his colleagues.  By the time the estate lawyers were finished with it, the school's resources were depleted. And many of the students were unhappy with the change of command. They wanted their money back.

Result? Student requests for refunds went unanswered for months. Some gave up; some took legal action. No fun for anyone. 

Reason 4: You Don't Really Want Your Money Back

Nobody joins a coaching school hoping it won't work out and then they'll have to ask for their money back. What they want is to become a successful coach. If you sincerely want to become a successful coach, look for something better than a money-back guarantee. Look for a school whose students are succeeding. Not just an exceptional few, but the vast majority. That school will require you to put your "butt on the line" as my coach would say. They won't accept just anybody with a credit card. They'll check you out, to make sure you're serious about coaching, even while you're checking them. And they will guarantee value: Effective class material, the best instructors, a proven path to success.

Result? You get what you really want: A successful career as a coach. 

Reason 5: Getting what you pay for is way better than getting your money back. 

You want to get it right the first time, don't you? So, look for a school that guarantees the value you really want. That's a Value-Back Guarantee. 

You've probably guessed that SCM doesn't offer a money-back guarantee. But we do have a Value-Back Guarantee. What does that mean? If you put your own butt on the line by taking advantage of all the resources we provide and do your best to follow our instructions - and it doesn't  work out for you (Ex: You don't pass certification or you can't find clients) we won't offer you a refund, we'll bust OUR butts to give you what's missing (like, individual attention, new course material), because our job's not done until until you have everything you need to be successful. 

Our coaching students are building successful businesses. And not after years and years of stuggling. They're building coaching success in their very first year - even in this recession! 

Copyright, Julia Stewart, 2009