Are you a Master Coach? Only 10,000 hours to Mastery…how ’bout it?

The story of success can be created in about 10,000 hours.

Yep, thats it. Just 10,000 hours to mastery of just about anything. That’s approximately 4 hours a day, only 5 days a week…every single one of the 52 weeks in the year…for the next 10 years! Wow!

In Malcome Gladwell’s book The Outliers - (outliers -  the people who lie on the outside of ordinary experiences. People who have achieved amazing results.) Gladwell talks about this in his book “The Outliers: The Story of Success”; he references a study done by scientists that discovered that violin students who practiced 3 to 4  hours a day, with increase in hours over 20 years, students who practiced an accumulation of 10,000 where the masterful players, with those students who only played an accumulation of 8,000 hours were merely “really good players”.

He defines failure as “not getting your 10,000 hours in” – doesn’t mean that your not good, but you just need to put more hours into perfecting your passion.

Gladwell talks about the Beatles. Early in their career they played eight hours a night, seven days a week – by the time they hit it big they had performed 1200 times – more than most bands play in their entire careers!

I read that Anthony Robbins wrote in his book Awaken the Giant, writes about how he booked himself 3 times a day to anyone would listen. When other speakers would speak maybe 48 times in a year – Tony would have spoken that many times in two weeks! With the 10,000 hour rule Tony gave him self a decades worth of growth as a motivational speaker in just one year – by comparison to his peers. This practiced catapulted him way ahead of other speakers.

One of my own personal practices is that I am always coaching. When I started my business, and no one was hiring me because I was new and my confidence was not greater than my clients need – I coached for free – in exchange for feedback. This is a powerful business building tool.

• Builds Mastery of your Coaching Method
• Gives you insight into the needs of your ideal prospect
• Exercises your creative problem solving skills
• Increases your intuitive skills
• Boosts your confidence
• Bonus – record and edit your sessions (depending on the nature of the content) and create books, classes, blog posts, articles, and more!

Don’t worry about clients not wanting to pay you – trust me the more you coach – the better you become and your clients will be begging to exchange value with you.

Even now I do what I call “tithe coaching”, that is I give away an hour of no cost, no strings coaching as a gift to my Creator on behalf of the gift He has given me in the passion for coaching. At the end of the session my clients always ask me, “what can I do for You?” Some want to continue and hire me on the spot – everyone turns in to raving evangelists for the value they’ve received.

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Coaches, What Do You Do? How do You Answer this Question?

I heard the most beautiful words from one of my clients. The words, “I think I understand who I’m marketing to much better.” When she did that my brain did a freeze frame. Yes! She is finally on the right track. She began to articulate who she discovered as her ideal client. But, that’s just the beginning. My next piece of advice to my client is really the most critical. Milana Leshinsky, of Coaching Millions, says it best (or at least I like it best) when she says in part one of her book:

“You can scream on the top of your lungs that you are a coach, but no one will care unless you can solve a problem.”

That line is underlined and highlighted in my copy of her book! This is absolutely THE most critical part of your coaching business. Leshinsky defines coaching with the following statements:

• Coaching is methodology
• A Coach inspires to take action and provides a “back-end” strategy that facilitates success
• Coaching is a tool or approach used to solve a problem

Let me ask you

• whose problem do you solve – this is your niche
• what problem do you solve – this is your message or solution
• how do YOU solve problems – this is your methodology

So, where do you start. First, after identifying your niche or your market, you start by listening, reading, watching the market to discover what they need. Jay Abraham says this well in this video on his “strategy of preeminence” – this is really important – it’s about identifying & articulating the needs, the pain, the anxiety of your market place.

Let me ask you again, Coach, what problem do you solve for your market place. That’s not the same as what is the benefit of coaching with you – tell me what is the “ouch” of your ideal client. Until you discover the problem, the pain, the frustration AND articulate it so well that your ideal prospect can identify with it – only then can you truely have a solution.

It’s like going to your doctor and have him pull out a box of bandaid, or bag of pills without ever taking the time to diagnose your need. Now, I know at coaches we don’t truly “diagnose” but you absolutely need to identify the need, problem, pain, whatever you want to call it – or you’re going to forever struggle as a coach trying to build a practice.

Here’s an example of what I mean by that. Scott Stratton created a movie to do exactly what I am talking about. I knew Scott on one of the early social networks before he was the go to expert that he is today. This movie went on to build his list to a quarter of a million subscribers. Watch this movie and tell me how this ‘moves you’ – we’ll talk more about this in another post – but see if you don’t agree that this movie not only articulated the anxiety that stirs in the soul of human-kind, but Scott never “spoke” a word in how he conveyed that he understood the viewers pain, questions, longing for more in a powerful way. Click here to watch Scott’s Movie – come back and tell me what you learned.

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Are you being “googled”? What are your prospects finding about you online?

Your audience may know more about you than you think they do – or they may know nothing about you at all – both could be bad news!

A couple of weeks ago I was seeking affiliate partners for another project for offline business owners. I connected with a man who was well connected within the community and new that if I could have his help I would be more productive in reaching my ideal clients. He listened graciously to my presentation, asked a few questions and told me he would look over my proposal and get back to me.

Two weeks passed and I received an email from him. The statement that stood out to me was,

I have been doing research to make sure you are legit.
You have a pretty good web presence.
It is nice to also see you have Christian websites linked in with your business sites.

He basically “googled” me to find out what “foot prints” I have left all over the Internet. He read my blog, my articles, my Twitter stream and very likely posts that I’ve made in various discussion groups. I have been online since the late ’90’s so there’s probably lots of “tracks”.

His decision to my proposal was an enthusiastic yes! All of my previous Internet activity influenced his decision to work with me.

More and more your prospects and clients are checking you out to see if you are “legit” as a coach.

Let me ask you this, Is there enough evidence on line that your prospects can easily find online that would help your prospect to choose YOU as a coach?

Start with your blog, publish articles, participate in social networks & discusssion groups. Start TODAY.

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Blueprint to Building Your Coaching Business

Recently one of my clients came to me to help her launch her book as well as a remake of her website. She asked me if there was a way to make everything work together to promote her & her book. Here is a rough draft of what I laid out for her.

“Website” aka “Home Base” for Establishing Yourself as an Expert

I recommend that we start by building (or re-building) your website or what I call your “home-base” on a Wordpress Blog platform. The software itself is free and it is pretty simple to customize. Many of the WP themes are free and if they are customized correctly, they can be a work of art. Even better than the design being simple, it will be very easy for you or your virtual assistant to change elements of the information on the site / blog related to marketing yourself & your products.

• You can have all the static pages (unchanging – information stays the same over the long term rather than change daily) of a website prominently displayed in the navigation of this blog site for easy visitor navigation.
• Showcase regular posted content, which is great for search engine optimization and organic traffic. In addition a content rich site is a key component for you to build your brand image and develop a “know, like & trust” relationship with your visitors & clients.

There are also several plugins and widgets that I will recommend (in another post) that will help you promote your site, as well as be promoted by other bloggers and visitors. These plug ins are simple to install without messing things up.

This is where most coaches stop. If you add the following elements you will see an increase in subscribers, and followers – which, if you’ve researched your market and understand how to communicate with your audience, you will being to sell products & coaching services.

Lead Capture at main web/ blog site:

There must be a lead capture available in the upper right side bar with an offer to visitors and a form for capturing Name & email address.

Landing Page:

• Invitation to download a “sample” of your coaching method / message
• Promote your book / teleclass
• Promote a “free coaching” session – sample of what is possible with a paid package

Don’t promote all three of these thing on one landing page – only offer ONE along with invitation to visitor to subscribe by giving you their name and email address

In addition to the main web/blog site you should have a “single option landing page” that makes an offer for a free “something” related to your offer:

• ebook
• report
• mini-guide
• audio
• video
• e-course

This one page does not have links to anything else and only one choice – to sign up for your free download or not. Don’t send the visitor to your blog, to your social networking sites – just one single option – and that’s to sign up.

At the point when the visitor clicks the button to submit his or her name and email address, he or she is taken to a …

Thank you / Sales Page

Thank your visitor for requesting the free download (see list of possibilities). Remind the new subscriber to click on the confirmation link in their first email from you before they can get the download. On the same page make the offer for one or more of your products at a one time offered discount.  This offer is only good from this page the day the visitor lands on it, and will not be offered later. In place of a discount I actually recommend that you add additional bonus products – for example, if you offer a book for sale, add an audio of one of your classes that compliment the book.

The new subscriber will either buy or not with a “buy now” link on the page.

Follow up email

Don’t worry about losing your visitors, because once they sign up to get your free download you can follow up with a your auto responder series that gives them more information such as where to find your blog where you share your expertise.

I have tested this process, as have many other professionals, if you give your visitor many options to connect with you – lots of links all over your blog or to your social networking website profiles – you greatly reduce the amount of visitors that will subscribe to your email list.

Your number one goal should be to get your visitor on your email list, giving you a more intimate opportunity to communicate with your audience. This is the first step towards trust and prepares the visitor to take the next step of doing business with you.

When not to use this

This particular path of  landing page, to thank you/sales page, follow up email is not the link you want to put on your Twitter profile – that’s like asking for marriage on your first date. However, it is not such a drastic commitment when you visitor finds your landing page as a result of reading one of your published articles, because your article should set them up – develop interest and desire for more information which is what your download should offer once they get to your landing page. At the end of your articles you add an invitation to get more information by clicking on one single link that takes the visitor to your single option landing page.

Does this make sense? Have any questions? Leave me a comment and I will clarify.

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