– How a book can build your business and how to create a successful book concept
Nancy Cleary has been an entrepreneur since 1992 when she relocated to Deadwood, Oregon, on the gorgeous Oregon coast.
With a background in graphic design, Nancy ran a design studio for six years before launching her publishing company in 1998. To date Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing, named for her son and daughter, has helped well over 100 women to enjoy an empowered publishing experience, and has taught thousands more through classes, licensing, and her book about the publishing experience, A Book is Born: 24 Authors Tell All.
Listen to the show and find out how to get a copy of this book for free.
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Just Get Up and Get Busy Communicating Your Message, Method & Promise
“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
— Stephen King
I read this quote over at Michael Hyatt blog. Of course this is aimed at aspiring authors – but it got me to thinking. If you are a coach doing business on the internet, some form of writing is a staple for communicating to attract your perfect client.
You may not think you’re a writer or an author. You may not think you are in the “publishing” business.
You ARE in the communication business.
The perfect recipe for building your coaching business is “just get up and get busy communicating” your message, method & promise.
Message: The foundational story that presents the solution to a problem your identified perfect client is looking for. When your perfect client here’s your message, your story, they say, “yeah, me too. I can so relate to that.”
Method: Your unique process for solving a particular problem or set of problems. Or your unique process for taking someone from satisfaction mixed with unrest to new heights of inspiration.
Promise: What do your clients get, or aspire to achieve because they have worked with you. How have you moved them farther, quicker or both because of their investment of time and finances with you and your method.
Your perfect customer may be attracted by reading your blog posts, your articles, listening to recorded audio or watching a video. If you are only doing one form of communication you might miss many ideal clients who are best reached with a different communication tool. What? Okay if you only write in your blog – you could be missing perfect clients that love to listen to an audio or watch a video.
Coaches are in the business of communication. Plan this into your daily activities so that your perfect client can be attracted to you.
How do you attract your perfect client?
Energize Growth Now: The Marketing Guide to a Wealthy Company
Implementation, not ideation, is the essence of entrepreneurship – Guy Kawasaki, Forward to Energize Growth Now: The Marketing Guide to a Wealthy Company.
Business is not built on ideas alone. In fact, many of us could be millionaires many times over just on our ideas. What separates the enthusiastic dreamer from the pack of successful entrepreneurs is acting on the initial idea and taking the idea successfully into the growth phase.
This is true even, especially for those of us that are a part of the inspiration economy as coaches. Once we get comfortable with the message, method and promise we bring to a very specific market and begin to get hired by our clients – both individual & groups – we need to see beyond this start up stage and see where we are going from there. It’s important to get clear on what wealth and market success really mean to you.
I have been reading the book Energize Growth Now: The Marketing Guide to a Wealthy Comany which is written for a broader market of small business owners, rather than the narrow micro-niche of a coaching business. However, there are several key perspectives that I really like and believe are absolutely relevant to building your coaching business.
The author, Lisa Nirell, has identified 11 planning steps that are key to keeping your business energized for growth in all phases. There are two key principles from the book identified in the foreword by Guy Kawasaki that really stood out to me as it relates to the coaching business:
- You cannot serve everyone. Don’t even try. Avoid distractions and use this field guide (Lisa’s book) to help you focus.
- You can only do so much to position your products and services, so come to grips with the fact that you are not in total control of your positioning. It’s okay to position what you offer in a certain way, but ultimately the customers (or clients) will do it for you. Use the practical positioning tools in this book to get you started and then see how the customer reacts.
I see these two principles as the most important principles as you develop your coaching message. Everything else will be much more successful when you get a handle on these.
This book just has so many good meaty parts to it. It’s not necessarily a book that a coach would pick up but it is filled with foundational principles that will start you out on the right path for growth and will keep you growing.
One of the things is that she asks her readers to look at marketing differently – rather than like a faucet to turn on every time your business needs a boost – make it an integral part of your over all business operation – part of your everyday routine. And I would add to this – get over your fear of marketing! Face it and create a marketing plan that you can do. That is the only way you will really stay in (a profitable) business.
At the end of each of the chapter that explains each of the 11 planning steps this Lisa Nirell’s method is based on she has an “Energy Booster” – Let me give you a peek into why I think this book is perfect for coaches building their business:
Energy Booster 1 – What market changes & internal limitations post the biggest threats to your growth plan?
Energy Booster 2 – What steps can we take now to minimize the top limiting beliefs in our company (or in your coaching career)?
Energy Booster 3 – What shiny pennies are distracting us from our potential?
Energy Booster 4 – How do we rate our company’s current Wealth Quotient, and which of the seven areas need the most improvement (Wealth Quotient – think socially responsible business – doing business for the greater good of our world)
Energy Booster 5 – What industry, competitive, market and client information are we lacking and how will we find it?
Energy Booster 6 – What percentage of our team can clearly explain our vision, values and elevator statement on the fly? (if you’re a solo coach – can you do this compelling and with clarity?)
Energy Booster 7 – What stage of growth are we experiencing, and what can we do to scale the next wall? (Do you know what the stages of growth are for the coaching industry and what stage you’re in? Maybe you’re attempting to leap over a wall you’re not ready to scale – but you’re succeeding in a growth are you haven’t recognized.)
Energy Booster 8 – What success measures really count, and how will we track them? (no, you cannot ignore this one, well not if you want to grow your business).
Energy Booster 9 – What is our brand promise – and how can we fulfill that promise even more consistently? (yes, even you, a coach – no especially you a coach, needs a brand promise.)
Energy Booster 10 – What can we do to immediately to expand our perception of our value and attract clients who will pay us commensurate with that value? (in other words, more revenues, fewer clients, less trading time for dollars.)
In my opinion this is one of the most difficult topics for many coaches to wrap their minds around. The whole package – that coaching is a business and businesses require integrated marketing, understanding of the marketplace, and what competes for their dollars (not necessarily other coaches); and developing an attractive brand image with a powerful promise that demands a premium price because of it’s extreme value.
Lisa Nirell’s book Energize Growth Now: The Marketing Guide to a Wealthy Company lays out a framework to build on for taking your coaching business through the appropriate stages of growth – setting you free to celebrate success at every stage, because you recognize each stage and have a plan to take you to the next.
- Hardcover: 212 pages
- Publisher: Wiley (June 22, 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0470413921
- ISBN-13: 978-0470413920
- Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1 inches
What do Martha Beck, Michael Niell and James Ray all have in Common that Sealed their Success as a Coach?
…a Book!
Watch this video – there will be a different video daily and discover how a book and what you do with it will change your coaching career forever.
Alex Mandossian is the creme de la creme of Internet Marketing, no make that Electronic Marketing Strategists. (includes, iPods, Voice Messaging, Fax, any electronic communication tool that can be used to market). You may know of him, but did you know he is responsible for the success of many of big name authors success? including self published authors. There will be a total of 8 videos. I highly recommend that you come back and view them all.
If you are unfamiliar with Alex and his marketing genius – let me tell you that you have never, ever heard anything like this before. He’s not your average “Internet Marketer”. My words here would seriously be inadequate to convince you how important I believe this information could be to you. I hope I’ve earned your trust enough to say – “this is worth your time to watch.”
To Open Page with Video Player Click here
Upbeat: Cultivating the Right Attitude to Thrive in Tough Times – by Rajesh Setty
One of my favorite lines from this book is in the beginning:
“…if you want to grow at breathtaking speed, and become someone you will be proud of, the market place and the world has provided you an opportunity again. Get off the wall and jump in!”
This book is a quick read only 96 compelling pages that will get you pumped! It’s worth a second (and third) read.
- Dump the negative talk- stop wasting time talking about the NEWS!
- Remain positive & productive – Identify positive practices and commit to yourself that you’re “in this for the long haul”
- Be Accountable to Yourself
- RAISE THE BAR! There is no standard for mediocre, until you’ve set the standard for excellence!
Product Details
- Paperback: 96 pages
- Publisher: Ashoka Books (May 1, 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1935073036
- ISBN-13: 978-1935073031
- Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.7 x 0.3 inches
Upbeat by Rajesh Setty is about cultivating the right attitude to thrive in tough times. He will tell you he originally thought to publish this book after he went through a recession with a new business, however, he waited. Until now. And it fits within the current times very well.
Take the journey of Rajesh’s virtual book tour and learn more about the book and the author through interviews and reader reviews. Here are the stops on the tour:
June 22nd – Started with Key Business Partners with a book review.
June 23rd – I of course did a video review The Small Business Guru,
June 24th – Karen Pierce Gonzalez at Karen Pierce Gonzalez Public Relations will display a book review.
June 25th – Murali Mullani at Inspions will share a interview with Rajesh.
June 26th – Jeff Hurt at Jeff Hurt Blog will continue the tour with his interview with Rajesh to discuss the book and why it is relevant now.
June 29th – Tim Bursh at Tim Bursch Blog conducts an interview with Rajesh.
June 30th- Mohanraj CP at Mohanraj’s blog will share an announcement about the book.
July 1st – Ramesh Sambasivan at iTradeFair.com will do an interview about the book, Upbeat.
July 2nd – Phil Gerbyshak at Make It Great shares a conversation with Rajesh about business, life and his book, Upbeat.
July 3rd – George Angus at Tumblemoose will display a book review of Upbeat
It’s time to take intelligent, bold action to empower your life and career…
How long have you wanted to, planned to, hoped for and even ached to write your own book?
In these competitive times, a book with your name on it increases your market value, your credibility, your opportunities and your professional profile in every way. Not to mention, the process of becoming an author is incredibly fun and fulfilling! And now, the popularity of ebooks is out-pacing traditional books!
Join me and Maritza Parra (the Product Creation Queen) on Get More Business Show as we discuss how to draw out your expertise and deliver it in various information products that connect with your ideal prospect – deliver your own special coaching process and offer compelling proof to your audience that makes them HAVE TO purchase your solution.
You simply must have a variety of “entry level” products
- for your ideal prospect to experience your coaching method and solution.
- to create a healthy cash flow to keep you in business
What do I mean by “entry level”?
It’s a big leap for some of your ideal prospects to go from knowing you, and liking you – to parting with $500 a month or $150+ per session (or whatever you happen to charge). As a coach it is important for both you and your ideal prospects that you give them different levels of entry into your coaching method. It is much easier to start your ideal prospects out at $9.97 or $27 on an ebook or an audio CD.
It’s good for your ideal prospect because it gives them temporary relief with your coaching solution and at the same time builds their appetite for more of your expertise. It also give him or her the opportunity to decide if you’re the right coach for them at a much smaller investment.
For you - by providing different low cost entry levels for your prospects you have the opportunity to let the individual qualify themselves. If they’ve experienced your coaching method and solution in a book or on CD – and still come back for more there’s an improved chance that coaching with them will be successful. And, here’s the biggie, you will have multiple streams of cash flow outside of your one on one or group coaching. This is important for sustainability of your business. You don’t want to quit before you get a full practice and you don’t want to have an overly full practice just to pay the bills and burn out.
Do I have your attention now? I hope so. Get your pen and notepad out; be prepared to take notes on today’s call with Maritza Parra. Here’s an outline of what we’re going to talk about on the show.
- Crafting your Story – How to Tap into Your Story to Help Others.. (& yes, YOU have a Story that can help other people)
- Why you’re qualified
- Connection with people or not – won’t make everybody happy
- Context for your content – How to Get Your Audience on the Same Page… (So they can actually use your stuff)
- Why your information works Creating your Free Stuff to Give Away
- How your Coaching Method works (this is where you deliver BIG VALUE for your prospect )
- processes
- recipe for success
- Show ‘em how it works
- examples
- case studies
- testimonials
- Edutainment (Educating + Entertainment)
Join in live and chat at http://www.GetMoreBusinessShow.com – I will have the archive up for one month from time of original live show and then this will be available as part of the Coaches Profit Wheel subscription
Booklet Tips on Hot Topics to Write About
Food, kids, pets, money, health, and sex. Yes, these are each topics with large audiences and interest, at least in North America and some other countries of the world. You may have personal or professional expertise in one or more of these topics. Seems like any of those would be a great place to start writing a booklet, wouldn’t it?
Join me and Paulette Ensign on Friday May 15th, 2009 at 9 am Pacific on the Get More Business Show as I interview her about how to use Tip Booklets for building a coaching business.
I would agree, to a point. That point is marketing. Successful, easy, cohesive marketing is based on your level of enthusiasm about the topic you choose topic, and how it all fits in with the rest of your life. If your business is focused on one of those topics mentioned at the beginning of this article, then by all means, write about it and begin as soon as you can. If your business is NOT focused on one of those topics, and you are writing about it because of the ready market you think you’ll find, then you will probably be setting yourself up for conflict, chaos, and collisions.
What excites you in your business or in any other part of your life where you spend a large portion of your time and effort? Notice how readily you talk about that interest of yours, probably to anyone who will listen and for as long as they’ll listen. And that interest may not have anything to do with food, kids, pets, money, health, and sex. You might be an expert on road safety, like one of my clients. Is that a real sexy topic? To many of us, no, not even close.
I’ll ask you a different question. How do you feel about the results that one of my clients has experienced, selling over a million copies of a booklet on road safety to agencies whose mission it is to educate the population about that topic? That’s exactly what this client did.
Or your interest could be about creating acoustically well-designed meeting rooms. A sexy topic? Not to most people. However, the meeting planners, architects, speakers, and many other related people and organizations have a huge interest in the topic and relish a tips booklet on the various aspects to consider.
So, like I said, you already have a magic bullet. You will find it by noticing what gets your juices going, what captures your attention, what prompts you to want to know more than you already know about the topic and how it relates to your everyday life. It’s what drew you to the business you’re in or the cause you support.
When writing a booklet about a topic near and dear to your heart, you will see ways to market the booklet popping up everywhere you look. There will be manufacturers, retailers, publications, and associations who will want thousands and hundreds of thousands of your booklet. Their universe could require literally millions of copies.
It will be easy to expand your product line because your clients and prospective clients will guide you with requests for different formats of your content and you will be excited about it. You will have so many choices on your plate that the challenge will then become what to do first from among all the possibilities. Will you create audio products or card decks or foreign language versions of the tips booklet you just wrote? What about an entire electronically-published product line on your topic?
So, what ARE the hot topics to write about? Food, kids, pets, money, health, and sex? Only if it’s already a passionate part of your everyday business activities. Otherwise, I think you may have found you’ve got the magic bullet for the best topics for YOU to write about.
Take your topic to the next level with a step-by-step system so you can add to those hot topics out in the world.
© 2008, Paulette Ensign
Paulette Ensign has sold over a million copies of her own tips booklet without spending a penny on advertising. For information on creating your own tips booklet and leveraging a booklet manuscript into other products, contact Paulette Ensign, Tips Products International 858-481-0890, San Diego, CA
Paulette has a complete home study course designed to provide overviews of writing, producing and marketing your booklets, and for in-depth marketing and delivery methods. We have another course focused on the advanced level of licensing. Choose one or both courses, depending on your comfort level, experiences, budget, and learning style.
It’s Your Turn!
If you’ve been attempting to write the post, articles and facilitate the teleseminars but it’s not working it could be that you’re missing some vital behind the scenes info. The Coaches Profit Wheel Online Business Audit could help you identify what’s missing.
Tell me, what are you working on now? Leave me a comment – I still can’t read your mind!
Why Booklets Are Valuable Marketing Tools
Booklets are one of the streams of income that I recommend in the Coaches Profit Wheel group coaching.
First let me say, “Someday” is not on the calendar. Now is time to launch products that demonstrate your coaching solution. It’s much more than writing the tip booklet. Paulette has simplified how to create the tip booklet AND market it for maximum exposure.
Why Booklets Are Valuable Marketing Tools – by Paulette Ensign
Does writing a booklet give you author status? Yes, it does. That is one of several key reasons to write a tips booklet – author status as an expert on your topic. Author status opens many other doors for you and for your business. It takes much less time, money, and stress to write a booklet than writing a full-length book, and can bring you as many or more benefits. Contributing to a collaborative tips booklet takes even less time, and gives you all the advantages.
Here’s a few of the doors this opens for you:
- Speaking engagements
- Sales of your other products
- Radio, television, airline, and print interviews
- Consulting services
- Training sessions
- Quantity sales of the booklet
- Leveraging of the booklet contents to other formats
- Joint sales/marketing ventures
A booklet is a profit center unto itself as well as a marketing tool. Every time you sell a copy of your booklet to anyone, that booklet serves both purposes. It brings in direct revenue while promoting you to a larger audience.
There are times it makes sense to give the booklet away free, especially to centers of influence that can send you high-quality referrals or open publicity doors for you. Based on your own goals, there will be times to sell the booklet and times to distribute it at no cost. Your own business requirements will dictate when to sell the booklet or when to give it away.
Booklets are best written in short action steps, giving the reader a jump-start within your topic, with some good concrete information. The best length of a booklet is also short, between 16 and 24 interior pages.
As your reader experiences any success from what they read in your booklet, your own credibility increases. They want more of you and more of what you are about. The booklet gives them an opportunity to test drive you.
Their next steps will need to match their budget, learning style, and overall requirements. Your next step is to help identify what it is they really need and want. When your business has a full menu of related products and services, you will jointly be able to unearth what that need is. The tips booklet is the ideal starting place.
Every person who reads your booklet can be a ready-made marketing representative for you and your company without your realizing it. As a single-copy buyer of either a hard copy or downloadable digital copy, they could, in fact, be a decision-maker for buying large quantities of your booklet to use for their company’s promotional purposes.
They may also be or know of a reporter or producer to schedule you for an interview. The reader might have contacts in another country or a community in your own country who have interest in licensing your booklet into another language or a different physical format. You may be just the person a group was looking for to consult or train on an issue they need to resolve. Any of that and much more can and does happen from a booklet.
The possibilities are endless when it comes to how a booklet can be a marketing tool, a profit center, or both for your business. Everyone has something they want the world to know about. A tips booklet can be a great way to do that, whether you do one by yourself or as a collaborative venture with others.
© 2008, Paulette Ensign
Paulette Ensign has sold over a million copies of her own tips booklet without spending a penny on advertising. For information on creating your own tips booklet and leveraging a booklet manuscript into other products, contact Paulette Ensign, Tips Products International 858-481-0890, San Diego, CA
Paulette has a complete home study course designed to provide overviews of writing, producing and marketing your booklets, and for in-depth marketing and delivery methods. We have another course focused on the advanced level of licensing. Choose one or both courses, depending on your comfort level, experiences, budget, and learning style.
It’s Your Turn!
If you’ve been attempting to write the post, articles and facilitate the teleseminars but it’s not working it could be that you’re missing some vital behind the scenes info. The Coaches Profit Wheel Online Business Audit could help you identify what’s missing.
Tell me, what are you working on now? Leave me a comment – I still can’t read your mind!
How Do I Become “Tech-savvy”?
Tina Forsythe, author of Becoming an Online Business Manager: Playing a Bigger Game with your Clients (and Yourself), will be my
guest on Get More Business Show this Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 9 am Pacific / 12 pm Eastern. Tina started out as a coach but now operates Multiple Streams Teams with her partner Cindy Greenway, author of Virtually Successful.
by Tina Forsyth
I had a coach ask me this a few weeks back…
“I want to build my website and manage my business online, so how do I become tech-savvy?”
My question back to her was…
“Why should you become tech savvy?”
It’s easy when working online to think that we need to do it all ourselves, which simply isn’t true…
As a coach or service professional, isn’t your time better spent elsewhere? With clients or building your business?
It is a pet peeve of mine to see people waste their time and effort learning skills that are not key to their business or talents, and in many cases that they don’t enjoy doing!
I highly recommend that you hire a VA or web designer to help you with any kind of online “stuff” – such as web design, newsletter broadcasting, autoresponders, shopping carts, audio recording, graphics, etc.
Depending on your needs, there are usually reasonably priced options available. I tend to lean towards working with a VA who has web design/HTML skills over a web designer, simply for the cost savings. I’ve found some great people at www.elance.com, where you can post your project and have people bid to work with you.
And hey, if you are like me and love the techie stuff then go for it… I actually started out as a coach in 2000 and when I started working for CoachVille in 2002 I found myself liking the operations/systems end of coaching more than the coaching itself. And so here I am today, go figure.

Purchase copies of Becoming an Online Business Manager: Playing a Bigger Game with your Clients (and Yourself) on Amazon. Contact Tina Forsyth or her partner Cindy Greenway to inquire about their Multiple Streams “Dream” Team. Don’t let techie stuff keep you from building your coaching business.
Imagine finding and working with a competent Online Busness Manager, start by requesting a Systems Operations Manual – create a system to quickly create new products.
- Turn collections of tips into booklets
- Combine a series of articles into a mini-guide, ebook or workbook
- Record every teleseminar, transcribe it and offer an audio and workbook for a home study course
It’s Your Turn!
What is keeping you from expanding your coaching business with multiple streams of coaching income?
Do you have a questions about how to get started?
Coach Training Course: Analyze a Top Blog in Your Niche [Day #4 - 31DBBB]
Remember – In this series I am writing follow up posts to Darren Rowse’s series on his website with my post taking off on his topic/task expounding on it for coaches who are building their coaching practice.
I am sitting here wondering how to do this – deciding on whether or not to actually post my analysis here in my blog.
Here are a few of the thoughts that stood out to me – with this disclaimer…I did NOT do an exhaustive search, and more research is probably needed. I welcome comments from my readers on any of these thoughts.
- I didn’t find any super hot – “high traffic – lots of conversation happening blogs ” on the topic of coaching. I went to both Technorati and Google Blog Search. First thought that came to mind is that there is lots of room for improvement if you’re a coach with a blog. There is virtually no competition when it comes to a standout blog about coaching – any kind of coaching.
- Many of the blogs that I did find totally missed the opportunity to engage deeper with their readers – there was either no email capture or it was below the fold (you had to scroll down to find it).
- The posts were very informative but one sided (in my opinion). We all need to get more creative in engaging our readers to comment on our blog so that there is an interaction between blogger (coach) and reader (ideal prospect).
- Missed opportunities to “make the offer”. I did visit one coaching blog that made the email sign up very prominent and when I clicked on the subscribe button I was immediately taken to a thank you page that made me a bonus offer of two books for a bundle price. That’s one of the opportunities that I’m talking about. This coach took the wonderful opportunity to make me an offer to purchase her life changing information during a time when she already had my attention. Once I clicked the subscribe button I was looking for instructions to get to the promised download.
A GREAT Blog by a coach who get’s it
One of my favorite blogs by a coach, Dawud Miracle who get’s it
- lots of traffic,
- a healthy amount of comments to his post
- and takes opportunity to make the offer right from the beginning
So what are some great blogs that are NOT on the topic of coaching to use as examples:
Problogger – www.problogger.net
What I like about this blog:
- Darren regularly posts on his topic and he has for years.
- He has covered the topic of blogging from every conceivable angle.
- His posts never sound like he’s bored with the topic – it’s always new, fresh and interesting – and very actionable. His readers go there to learn what to do.
CopyBlogger – www.copyblogger.net
What I like about this blog:
- Brian Clark, founder of Copyblogger, created a frame work for delivering a simple message that can be found on the About page – get traffic,gain subscribers, attract links, sell something – It’s all about write in a strategic, persuasive, compelling manner.
- Copyblogger takes many opportunities to make the offer for everything from their custom Thesis theme to the promotion of their blog post
What can you do?
- Make sure you have a call to action where it can easily be found – sign up on your email list AND subscribe to your RSS feed – these are two different levels of connection with your readers.
- Include a call to action - invite your reader to work with you as a their coach or purchase one of your many products with your coaching message (oh, you don’t have any? I can help.)
- Invite your readers to share their thoughts about a particular topic or post. Ask provocative questions of your readers. Write in such a way that it get’s inside their head-space.
- Ask for your readers help to promote your blog – “Stumble this – Digg this – Bookmark on Del.icio.us”
- Create an editorial content / posting schedule to keep your blog alive with your coaching message and keep your reader coming back for more.
It’s your turn – What blogs do you read that
- you learn from
- inspire you to action
- make you laugh
- make you cry
- helps you to build your coaching business
If you are a coach, speaker or author that would like some help building an Online Marketing plan for delivering content and attracting more clients, selling more products, booking more events and selling more books. Call me (406-278-6140) for a 1 hour Online Business Audit or to schedule monthly coaching either one on one or in a master mind group.







