Writing Often, Writing Relevant for Your Coaching Business

To be able to “coach the game” you have to “play the game“. In fact, you must “master the game“. You must be on the playing field with your players. That doesn’t mean you’re always “in the game” but your on the sidelines watching, and guiding the plays.

Writing Often (feel free to substitute writing with communicating)

The tools available in a profitable Internet marketing plan give you the opportunity to make your “Coaching Playbook” available in some format so that potential players at least know what game you coach. Like it or not you need to see your self in the publishing business because it is important to create multiple opportunities to connect, engage and make your offer. The tools for connecting, engaging and making your offer, to give your potential players the opportunity to discover you and your method for coaching the big games of life will most likely be:

• books – printed & ebook
• audio recordings – digital download or on CD
• video – online & DVD
• special reports – free & premium
• blog posts
• email – newsletters & auto-responders

Not only does creating these tools help potential players decide if you are the coach for them, but,  depending on your frequency, can give the feeling that you’re right along side them as they play the game.

All of these tools can give you the opportunity to create and maintain relevancy for your relationship with your players.

In 2010 I will be moving to a very prolific content creation and distribution schedule.  I have already moved to a daily email format which have caused many of my subscribers to unsubscribe. That’s a good thing. These readers were not my market and I applaud them for managing their intake of information. At the same time my subscriber number are growing daily because of the feedback I get on Twitter about the content in the emails as well as the fact that the emails are being forwarded to their colleagues. I am enjoying many personal responses with comments like, “I needed this message today…”, “This was so on target, it’s right where I’m at in building my business…”. or this one is the best, “When can I get started working with you?”.

Writing Relevant

In preparation for the massive amounts of content that I am creating for next year I have intentionally engaged with my potential players more frequently and more strategically. Here are some of the things that I am doing to keep me relevant and how I use the information to help me identify & attract my perfect paying client – and develop future products as well:

Client Calls: With permission I record nearly all of my coaching sessions. I have a high level of trust with my clients since most come from word of mouth. I am very clear that the purpose of the recording is so that my client can listen to the call as often as he or she wants to take notes and learn from, as well as be able to hear themselves outside of the moment for their own observations.  I also let them know that I will be listening to the call again and it will help me coach them better being able to listen out of the moment of the call. It’s kinda like how sports coaches use video tapes of practice and game to correct or learn new plays.

From these recordings I am also able to pick up on patterns and common threads of questions or mind sets that show up not in just one client but in many of my clients.  When I write emails, articles, or posts for my blog I’ve got lots of juicey content stirring inside because of real live stories that I am connecting with.

My famous “No Strings, No Cost Laser Coaching” calls that I offer on Twitter & Facebook. I usually do about two of these calls a week if my schedule permits. This gives a prospective player the opportunity to have another perspective of the business side of their coaching. I have mastered the ability to take a look at the overall picture of their business and point out possible gaps in their client path. They leave the call with a recording that they can listen to over & over – not just about some obscure strategy they could be implementing but a very specific personalized assessment they can take immediate action on.

When I offer these sessions, often an sense of imbalance is created. The prospective client wants to know what they can do for me. First of all this tells me they have already made the decision that this was a valuable session. If there is enough value in what I offer on the call to the point of making them want to do something in return – I know I’ve done my job. This helps me hone my skills and know that I am right on target with the issues that coaches building their business are facing right now. And, I always let my clients know that from my perspective the call is R & D. It keeps me in touch with my market. When they realize that they’ve helped me by keeping me in touch with my market they can see the value in that for me and it balances the scale.

I also get new clients this way. After a No Strings, No Cost Laser Coaching session it frequently leads to a perfect paying client relationship. And since I said “no strings” I do not attempt to sell them on anything in the future, but because I hold nothing back, giving them whatever I can in the way of guidance or perspective in a single 60 minute session – they almost always want to take it to the next step which would be to work with me on going as a paying client.

Response to my daily email: Since I now send out daily emails 5 – 6 days a week I get lots of replies. I reply to as many as I can. I get questions for more information about a topic or get positive feedback when my message struck a cord.  Quite often my reply will inspire a new writing project. In fact this blog post is an inspiration from on of my readers comments.

Finally…

I get the best response to the content I deliver – email, articles, blog posts, etc – when I am “in state“. For me “in state” is that energy I feel when I am perfectly connected with a client and together we’re perfecting the “plays” of the game. It is when I recognize what is needed by my client to move forward and I help them see it through the view of their current mindset and it moves them into a new mindset for growth. Many of the things I have described above either get me “in state” or move me back into state if I am listening to a recording of a previous session.

The creation of the Coaches Profit Wheel has come out of regular, relevant engagement with my perfect paying prospects & clients. I’ve been told that my emails seem as if I am reading their minds. I think that means I am “in tune” and writing relevant.

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“I already know that!” said the Coach…

The simple formula to building your coaching business online is to create a reputation of trust and credibility so that your ideal prospect will hire you and become your client. Great…but I bet you already knew that.

Your ideal on line activities are

• blogging
• publishing articles
• email marketing
• social networking
• Internet radio and podcasting
• video

My current clients range in their Internet marketing practices from

• not yet doing any of the above
• dabbling in most of the activities above,
• or they are actively doing all of the above.

The client that is not yet doing any of the above sometimes is not really sure they should be doing any of the above and wonders what should they be doing and how to get started. On the first consultation, these clients truly believe that I am pure genius. Yeah! I love working with these clients and helping them catch the vision early for building their on line presence.

Then there are the clients who are a bit more Internet marketing savvy. The already know about the above activities, might be dabbling or actually active in most of the activities…but they still come to me and say, “It’s not working! Tell me what you can do to help.”

Upon closer inspection of their Internet activities what we usually discover is that in spite of all his or her doing,

• the coach doesn’t really have a cohesive plan of delivery of their coaching message using all of the tools to gain momentum in spreading their message
• there are usually weaknesses in his or her sales message that’s all about what the coach has to offer, i.e. the coaches credibility, training, etc, instead of a sales message aimed at the problem this particular coaches method solves
• and, there is often no call to action, too many choices or an unclear call to action - because most coaches hate to sell themselves and services. I guess their hoping if they’ve presented their remarkable skills and training the prospect will know they’re supposed to pick up the phone or send an email and hire the coach. That rarely works.

Coaches that

• are actively & regularly involved in the above activities
• have a well thought out plan of delivery of their coaching message, method, & promise that demonstrates overwhelming value for their ideal prospect,
• present his or her coaching message with clear language that conveys not only the coaches credentials, but the promise your prospect will take away from the relationship – preferrably with testimonials that demonstrate others who have experienced the coaches promise,
• present clear, regular opportunities to experience the coaches message, method & promise with a product (e.g. book, audio, video, teleclass), or enroll in a one to one or group coaching experience,

are the coaches who enjoy a growing and expanding practice and business.

It is a productive practice to evaluate your business building activities on line to see what is productive and what might be missing something. Quite often small adjustments will make a surprisingly wonderful transformation to your bottom line.

Where do you fall in the above description?

• Just getting started with these activities?
• Dabbling?
• Doing it all but not really thrilled with the results?
• Doing it all and happily making a comfortable living and would like to grow your business more?

Hey, if you’re a regular subscriber to my email or the RSS feed – I love you! Thank you very much for honoring me with your readership. If you’re not yet a subscriber, you might be missing out on some great information… I’m just saying

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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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Do you Make this Mistake in Building Your Coaching Business Online?

You don’t make money on the phone (or in person) coaching.

Yeah – that’s collecting money.

You don’t actually make money unless you’re marketing your coaching business.

This was actually my second biggest mistake in building my coaching business -  not realizing:

• that my online activities – blogging, social networking, article publishing – were actually building my coaching business for me 24/7
• that I needed a daily/weekly plan for my activities to calculate and predict a response on my efforts – a Return on (time) Investment

We could probably argue about that all day long, but just think about this – Nobody knows who you are, or about your coaching message unless you’re publishing your coaching solution and making relationships. That’s where the real money is made.

If you don’t build brand awareness for you and your coaching business you probably won’t get hired – at least not often. Think about any client you’ve had until now. Did they know you on any level before they hired you? At the very least they knew you through a referral they trusted – but somehow your reputation preceded you. That’s what I am talking about.

You might be asking yourself – “What do I do to cultivate a business brand for my coaching business online?”

Here’s the short list with links to a few places that expand on the activity nicely:

• Post to your self-hosted blog daily
• Publish articles 3 – 5 times a week – daily if possible
• Build followers & friends on Twitter & Facebook
• Make connections on LinkedIn
• Selectively find other Social Networks to participate in depending on your nice
• Participate and read everything with in a specialty network where your ideal prospect

In fact, Chris Brogan put’s it this way:

If you’re looking to establish your online presence, and build relationships, it’s not the kind of project where you show up, build your profiles, friend a few people, and call it good. It’s a lot like tending the farm. Here are seven particular “chores” you could do every day that should prove beneficial to your online interests.

You can read his post “19 Presence Management Chores You COULD Do Every Day”

Here are a few more basics to make sure your social networking profiles are set up for the best “farming” experience in cultivating relationships:

Personal Branding Tips for LinkedIn

Get More Business Show with LinkedIn Expert – Viveka von Rosen

6 Tips for Using Your Twitter Profile to Get New Followers

10 Ways to Use Facebook for Business

I cannot emphasize this enough – You must have a daily / weekly plan of these business building activities with a particular focused action of what you want to happen to establish a following and an internet presence so that you will have clients coming to you for coaching and your products.

Don’t make the mistake of not taking your online presence seriously enough – and not serioiusly enought to craft a plan to deliver results.  And if you don’t know how – hire a coach to walk you through the process.

I’d love to talk about it with you.

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Blogging Software Comparison

I have already addressed the question of website vs. blog, but is any blog suitable for building your coaching business? I’m going to explain here what the basic differences of the major blog software options available and give you my perspective on what I believe to be the best option and why.

LiveJournal: This is where I posted my first blog which was more like an online journal for me. There is a cost to use and host at LiveJournal. Customization is limited and complicated for the average user. The addition of simple programming for implementing marketing strategies is also limited and complicated. I suppose it serves a purpose in the social networking but I don’t consider it a strong choice for business use.

Typepad: This was my next stop as I learned the benefits of blogging for my business. I actually liked this blogging software, but there are some of the same limitations with Typepad as with LiveJournal. There is a monthly fee for hosting and using the Typepad blog. Customization is a little easier with Typepad but still very limited. They make nice use of widgets that the blogger can add to enhance what the blog “does” in terms of marketability and monetization.

Blogger: this is easy blog software to use.  While I have an account / profile there I don’t actively post in a blog there. Apparently Google, who owns Blogger, does allow user to post advertising (which is important to the monetization of your blog). But Blogger, which is hosted and operated by Google, has a frequent planned & unplanned outages – downtime, which is extremely inconvenient if you’re trying to run a business. I am also told that it doesn’t take much to “exceed the bandwidth” and have too many visitors to your blog.

There are probably several more less popular options that because they are less well known there are limited resources for customization and upgraded programming to make your blog more “powerful” in terms of what it can do for your business.

In my opinion, and in the opinion of some of the most popular bloggers on the Internet – Wordpress is by far the most developed plateform for blogging for business.

Wordpress – Wordpress is  software that can be operated for a community hosted site at Wordpresss.com, or you can self-host on your own domain with hosting account at sites like My Small Business Website.

Here’s the biggest differences between the community / Wordpress hosted blog software. At Wordpress.com there is no software to install – just pick a free theme and start writing posts.

• does not allow ads – such as Google Adsense for the blogger’s account
• does not allow programming for lead capture forms
• adds links to other peoples blogs at the end of your posts instead of other relevant posts within your blog
• limited customization available – many free themes but no truly custom premium themes can be used.

IMHO – Self-hosted WordPress Blogs are the ONLY way to go if your blog is a serious part of your overall marketing plan. At sites like My Small Business Website the blog installation is done for you, however you do need to customize it…but more on that in another post.

• the blogger has full control over customization of blog – much of it is simple for the average user to control with minimal explanation
• hundreds or possibly thousands of widgets and plug-ins have been and are being developed that are completely free to add to your blog
• tools are available for attracting traffic to the blog, capturing leads and engage in with visitors to your blog.
• the blogger can place ads on the blog with out worry of being shut down like other community hosted blog software.

In a future post we’ll discuss widgets & plugins – what are they, what to use and why.

Do you have a question about blogging, blogging software. Leave me a comment and I’ll add it the the questions I’m answering this week about all things blogging this next week.

Come join me over at Coaches Community. More informatin by click on the link in the tab above.

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Website or Blog?

“I don’t get it, Melody, should I get a blog from Wordpress.com or Wordpress.org. What is the difference? And don’t I need a website first? How do I add my blog to my website?”

I heard this rush of questions come at me over the phone from a coach anxious to get rolling with her online business as a coach. I started rattling off answers about why she needed a “self-hosted WordPress blog” and she stopped me, “Whoa, Whoa, What the heck did you just say? Remember, I am a coach, not a geek!”

Okay, Okay, I know I talk “geek-ese”, but I promise I will try to make this easy to follow. And let me start by saying that you CAN do this and exercise some creative control over your Internet presence without turning into a geek!

Let’s start with

“Website or blog, do I need both? or which one is better to build my coaching business?”

From what I’ve read from other individuals that are thought leaders in the Web 2.0 world, the Internet is much more about engaging and communicating with the people who come to your “site”.  A traditional website of the ’90’s and early 2000 is more of an online brochure. It’s not very interactive though it does create a place for all the basic information about you to be found all in one place.

However, the same thing can be achieved with blog softare while offering you the ability to add fresh, changing content which is what the search engines love to match you with relevant search terms. A static (or unchanging) website gives the search engines very little information to use to match up with the terms that are being searched, especially when compared with any of the blogs in your niche. A blog will rank higher than a static webpage or website.

Your goal with your Internet presence is to share your expertise with your ideal prospect. Rajesh Setty of Life Beyond Quote, and The Fulcrum Effect
says that the more you share will cause a small percentage of your audience to pre-qualify themselves as your best clients setting above the “lowest price for hire” because they’re aligned with your message.

In what ways do you share your message so that you are able to establish yourself as an expert coach in your niche? Do you post in your blog frequently enough to engage your audience? How often should you post? What do you think?

In another post we’ll discuss the basic difference between blogging software and give you some information you can make a decision with.

Oh, and by the way, I covered this and 10 other questions about promoting your coaching business and establishing your Internet presence on a 60 minute teleclass. I host live events each week and cover the most frequently asked questions about how to Build Your Coaching Business Online. If you want to know more about the live teleclasses and the recordings, check out the page “Coaches Community“

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Top 10 Reasons to Use a Blog to Build an Online Presence & Establish Yourself as an Expert in your Niche

The very first thing a new coach or a coach new to online marketing needs to do is to

Build an Online Presence & Establish Yourself as an Expert in your Niche

There are many tools available that assist in this process of building an online presence, in my opinion and the opinion of many other business people online – a self-hosted blog is the best ‘hub’ for establishing yourself as an expert. The other tools such as social media play a part in your overall marketing plan and work well with your blog as “home base”.

Here are the top 10 reasons for a coach to use a blog to build their practice:

1. Your blog is a “hub” for all your other activities online. All marketing /networking efforts you do should point back to “home base” where your friends and fans can discover everything else (all your other publicized marketing / networking efforts) about you in one location.  Add links to your social media / social networking profiles where you can be found. If you produce audio or video to share your coaching message with your market – also list it on your blog.
2. Establish yourself as an expert with regular posting on your coaching method / solution.  Your posting frequency will increase your popularity two ways.
   • Face Value – the more you get your coaching message in front of your ideal prospect the more you build your credibility. Not a post that is a sales pitch – though it’s not bad to ask for the business – post something that is truly of value.
   • Google Juice – Google loves fresh, relevant, updated content with lots of internal linking – exactly what your blog is designed to provide as long as YOU post with regularity.
3. Engage your ideal prospect in conversation – the whole purpose for having comments available with every post is to open up the other side of the conversation. You will learn so much from you readers. The more feedback you get from you ideal prospect and readers the better your posts will be. Your readers will think you are reading their mind! So, write provocative posts, ask questions, encourage your readers to comment. Don’t worry though according to Jacob Nielson, 90% of online community users are lurkers (read or observe without contributing) with only 9% of users contributing “a little” and 1% actively contributing.
4. Help people – after all isn’t that why you became a coach in the first place? As you build up your readership and get feedback in the comments you will begin to see comments how helpful your post was or you might see it on a social networking site. Even better is when your readers love your post enough to re-tweet and share it with their friends & fans.
5. Market your own product and services, as well as selectively promote affiliate partners. Your blog is your online place of doing business so don’t feel awkward “selling” something from your blog. This is the place to talk about your coaching services. This is the place to announce your newest product launch. Bad idea to make every post a strong push for business, but you can “season” every post with a small dose of soft sell.
6. Connect with Your Ideal Prospect. Your ideal prospect is online searching for products and services to relieve pain or improve the quality of their lives. Every post is an opportunity to connect and engage. Your readers will discover and connect with your energy as you share your information. And as far as search engines go – the relevance of your posts is how the searcher is matched up with your blog. The more you post the more often that is likely to happen.
7. Make a difference. Your blog gives you the tools to use words to make a difference in individual lives as well as in your community of readers / followers as a whole. This is very powerful. You’ve heard the saying, “The Pen is mightier than the sword.” You power to influence your niche is limited most often by you. Be a bold idea person! Make a difference!
8. Stay active and knowledgeable in your niche. If it is credibility in your area of expertise is what you are after – then count on putting time into research for your topic. Or as Guy Kawasaki put it “eat like a bird and poop like an elephant.” Birds consume 50% of their body weight in nourishment & food – and elephants…well you can imagine how they poop. What Guy was communicating in that statement is to consume voraciously on your topic of expertise and share your knowledge generously.
9. Create product. Yes, you read that right to create product - everything you post in your blog could be put together in an organized fashion to become an ebook or a printed book. This is a great thing to keep in mind as you’re laying out your blog categories & topics. In 30 – 60 days you could have enough material for a book (depending on how frequently and at what length you post.)
10. Attract clients – Isn’t this why you’re reading my blog? It is time to start making money. Your blog will attract and then develop the interest of your ideal client, but the more he or she reads desire will develop for closer access. If you are doing your job and making the offer in a variety of ways – you will attract your ideal client with your blog.

Here’s a question for you – How often would you be willing to post, if the more frequently you posted, the faster you could be considered the expert in your niche? 3 times a week, 2 times a week? Would you make time to post more frequently?

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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?

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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.

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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

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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.

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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!

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10 Steps to Getting Paid for Your Marketing Materials

If you’re a parenting coach, imagine creating a booklet of your top 100 tips that is distributed by a large corporation of learning toys or diapers in order to promote their product. Your information for your coaching solution, contact information and website for thousands to see will go out to thousands of parents – and you’ll get paid for your booklet!

Pay attention to this information! Paulette will be my guest on the Get More Business Show on May 15, 2009 at 9 am Pacific. Plan to listen live and join the chat or call to ask questions.

by Paulette Ensign

How many times have you heard the same sound bites come out of your mouth to your clients, prospects, and audiences, almost boring yourself to tears in the process? Imagine generating money directly from those sound bites, from those pearls of wisdom that effortlessly trip off your tongue. Yes, it is completely possible, and here’s how to do it.

1. Capture those tidbits of information as soon as they come to mind. Jot them down in a notebook or get them into a Word document. They can be in a raw format, with just enough information to jog your thinking about what you mean. There will be time to refine them later.
2. Let a couple weeks go by, allowing most of the information to surface in your thoughts. It rarely happens by declaring two hours on a Thursday afternoon to sit at your computer to think of it all.
3. Refine and organize the tips. Divide them into categories and edit the text. Use a writing style similar to what you are reading here.
4. Be sure to include your contact details so readers can easily reach you. Add a brief section about your background so people will know your qualifications for presenting the information.
5. Hire a graphic designer to make the words look good on the page. Your completed product will be a tips booklet measuring about 3 ½ inches by 8 ½ inches when printed. The designer will create their part of the finished product as a PDF file.
6. Send the PDF file from your graphic designer to a printing company. Do an initial print run of 1,000 copies.
7. Think about who can benefit from using your booklet to promote their own product, service, or cause. Send them a sample of your booklet and a cover letter describing some of the ways they can increase their sales or further their cause by using your booklet as a promotional tool.
8. Consider corporations, associations, publications, and any other group that seems appropriate for the topic of your booklet. Reach out to as many of them as you can, on whatever budget of time and money you have available to you.
9. Realize that every time one of the large-quantity buyers sends out your booklet to promote their own product, service, or cause, they are also marketing your business. Your contact information in the booklet allows the reader to reach you directly.
10. Enjoy the expansion of your customer base and your checking account. You are now reaching a larger audience than you are likely to do single-handedly, thanks to the large-quantity buyers of your booklet. And you have been paid by your buyers to reach those new people.

Those sound bites you have been saying for years are now reaching far beyond your current clients, helping your buyers, their clients, and your own business. It doesn’t get a lot better than getting paid for your marketing materials.

© 2005, Paulette Ensign

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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.

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It’s Your Turn!

• What is stopping you from creating your first “tip booklet”?
• What questions do you have about creating, marketing and distributing a booklet with all of your best tips??

I really want to hear from you – please leave me a comment (there’s a link in it for ya, back to your site)

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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.

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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

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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?

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