Archive for Biz Tips for Coaches
Explore A Wealth of Business Information
Posted by: | CommentsWhen you decided to become a coach perhaps you quickly signed up for a coach training school in order to learn the skills of coaching. Did you know when you made that decision to become a coach that you were probably also deciding to become a business owner? This requires another set of skills and knowledge that can be studied as well. Unfortunately, most coaching schools leave you to do independent study on becoming an entrepreneur.
How much have you been studying the world of business? The resources are vast and there for the learning. One of the most important attitudes of a good coach is that of curiosity and I would like to challenge you to turn your curiosity towards how to run a successful coaching business.
Think first about business resources in general. There are several important websites to know about – the US Small Business Administration and SCORE immediately come to mind. I also find lots of helpful information at smallbusiness.com and entrepreneur.com.
I also recommend reading business books and listening to some of the myriad of free teleseminars about business and marketing. It is easy to let yourself get overwhelmed by all that is out there – choose a person or two that makes sense to you and follow their advice and programs. What you don’t want to do is treat your business like the soup of the day – now this program, now that one. Don’t be seduced by the newest, hottest ideas. Find something that makes sense to you and apply it consistently and persistently over a six month period before you evaluate success or failure.
Running a coaching business is hard work and can be complicated. There are many sources of wisdom and here are some that I have found invaluable over the years. Today I am giving away the farm – I am naming names of the people that I value and have used as important resources. I don’t agree with everyone on the list, but I have learned from them all. I know not everyone will be a good fit for you, but here is a place to start in your quest for role models.
First, there are several people who have been around for years and produce consistently valuable business information for coaches. I have learned a great deal from Robert Middleton, Andrea J. Lee, Suzanne Falter Barnes and Ellen Britt. Although you may shy away from the idea of internet marketing as some coaches do, as an entrepreneur in the 2000s, you can not afford to do so. Learn from some internet geniuses such as Dan Kennedy, Alex Mandossian, Rich Schefren and Milana Lishensky (no, Milana is not a coach, but she is an internet marketer TO coaches!). And finally, I am hot lately about two people that have great new books out. Check out Mike R. Jay and Cameron Johnson for great ideas for you entrepreneurial coaches.
Now I have just given you far more people than you could possibly follow and they have far more info than you could possibly digest. What I hope you will do is mark some time on your calendar to do some exploring and reading on these websites. See who speaks to you. Get some great information and get to work on the business of becoming the entrepreneur that will make your business thrive.
Learning about RSS Feeds
Posted by: | CommentsI thought I understood RSS feeds until I started to write a newsletter about it. Come to find out I knew “RSS lite” which is also called Blog to Email. This is a relatively new feature that you can see on this blog (and sign up for!) right below the RSS feeds. Blog to email works by sending you an email every time there is new material posted to your favorite blog.
This contrasts with RSS feeds which function in a very different way. RSS Readers or Aggregators are actual software programs that install on your computer. They serve to find, retrieve and store the blog posts for you so you don’t have to revisit a blog everyday to get its new content. When you subscribe to a feed, you often have a toolbar at the top of the page with indicators for new and old content.
Here is a link to a 7.5 minute video about how to add RSS to your feed reader. My virtual assistant, Becki of Virtual Accuracy, made that video for me so I would understand how to get the info I wanted from blogs. You’ll have lots of your questions answered by her instructions.
There are a variety of readers to consider depending on your needs. Feed Demon is the name of a Newsgator feed that delivers RSS feeds to your desktop. You can also have the posts sent directly to your Outlook inbox with Newsgator or by using intraVnews. If you use Firefox as your internet browser, a great service is Wizz RSS which is an add-on. You can also use Google as your homepage and get your feeds delivered directly there. No matter which way to chose to get your blog contents sent to you, once your system is set-up, it is incredibly easy to stay on top of the information in your areas of interest.
Free 12 Week Marketing Intensive
Posted by: | CommentsYou are invited to attend an extraordinary free online/teleconference event that has the potential to make this year the best ever for your business…
Just by enrolling in the Marketing Qi (say *chee*) Business Teleseminar 12-week Intensive, featuring…LIVE in-depth interviews with twelve top marketing and business experts on the web today…
Register Now At:
http://www.biztipsforcoaches.com/marketing-qi
These expert speakers will be teaching you cutting edge business information such as:
*Six simple steps to creating passive income streams
*How to get great marketing results, even on a small budget
*How to get yourself to actually take action toward your business goals
*Find out if you have the personality to be a successful solopreneur
*How to use the entrepreneur’s Secret Weapon
*How to use a blog to gain expert status
*How to easily conquer Telephone Terror when cold-calling
*How to become the preferred solution to your clients’ most pressing problems
*Learn to use SEO to boost your website’s visibility and get more traffic
*How article marketing can get you more sales
*How to charge what you are worth…and get it…
…and much, much more!
Sign up now at:
http://www.biztipsforcoaches.com/marketing-qi
You will be learning from some of the most successful marketing and small business experts on the planet, plus… you’ll get an armload of bonus gifts from some great people, just for signing up…
Here is the speaker lineup:
Alicia Forest
Rory Cohen
Janis Pettit
Terri Z
Melanie Benson Strick
The BlogSquad
Wendy Weiss
Kathleen Gage
Karyn Greenstreet
Marnie Pehrson
Kendall Summerhawk
Larina Kase
The Marketing Qi Intensive begins Tuesday, April 1st at 8PM Eastern/NY so get this written into your calendar now!
Seats are limited so reserve your place early…
And did I mention that for a limited time…the Marketing Qi Intensive is…
Totally free! Sign up now at:
http://www.biztipsforcoaches.com/marketing-qi
Warmly,
Janet
Voices in the Financial Reports
Posted by: | CommentsI have had my meeting with my CPA friend, Sally, and what an interesting experience. You may remember my reporting that she was going to help me learn to hear what my financial reports had to say. Well, this gal should be a coach! We sat down with the balance sheet and the profit and loss statement for my business for February and she proceeded to have me get quiet and “listen to whatever the reports might say to me”. She was very cool with no agenda attached to it as though she had coached for years.
The first things the reports said to me were all emotional – they said “this is very complicated stuff” and “you’ll never really get all this” and “you don’t even know what some of this stuff means”. Slowly, by not letting me off the hook with that, Sally helped me hear other things as well. They also said – “this part of the business made more of the income than the other two parts last month.” They said – “the equity in the business (the stuff that I own) is much bigger than the liabilities (money that I owe)”. They said – “at this rate, the amount of gross income I am making this year is more than I realized”.
Then we talked about how to use the reports to track goals over time. You can make a decision based on the financial information and check at the end of the month for results. For example, the sales of my e-book were a “low hanging fruit” this month – meaning I could spend a little time to make a significant income return in that area. Next month, you can compare how much time you spent on the project to how much income was generated by the activity. Through this process, you will learn over time the key indicators of your business that help you decide how to most productively use your time to generate income. I know that doesn’t sound very coach-like, but it does sound like an entrepreneur. It is vital to tap into your inner entrepreneur in order to continue to do the coaching work that you love. Even if it means learning to hear the voices in the financial reports.
Glad you are here!
Posted by: | CommentsHey, glad you stopped in here. I’m Janet Slack and I’m a coach and a counselor. My coaching focuses on helping others build their coaching businesses and on helping people who want to have more of a sense of adventure in their lives.
I’m a latecomer to blogging – didn’t everyone else start 2 or 3 years ago? I’ve known I should do this for a long time, just somehow never got around to it. So this is the beginning. I’m excited about the new experience and know I will be learning a lot as I go. That’s the essence of being an entrepreneur.
Coaching is a wonderful way to make a difference in the world and to make a living. My goal is to help ensure that more and more coaches are able to do both. Too many coaches are struggling and need some ideas and advice about business matters.
This blog is dedicated to the business side of the coaching business. All the details of business, the systems that coaches need, the issues to be aware of, and the marketing that needs to be done will be fair game. I hope that you will join in the discussion by posting your comments.
