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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What is the Biggest Mistake I’ve Made Building My Coaching Business?

The biggest mistake I have made in building my coaching business using online marketing is to not create enough content for my marketplace.

This year I committed to publishing more articles – every time I publish an article I get between 10 and 25 new subscribers to my email list.

Recently I decided to post to my blog daily and 2-3 times a day if possible. My RSS feed subscribers has increased SEVEN TIMES what it was two weeks ago.

I am not the only one who has noticed that consistent creation of content goes hand in hand with successful online marketing. Terry Dean, a  pioneer of many of the current Internet Marketing Strategies posted about what he has observed in his most successful clients. In his short video he says that his most successful clients produce regular content that is in some way unique in their market – Take a look at what Terry had to say about this here.

Perry Marshall, another pioneer of Internet Marketing Strategies, recently posted about the “constant drip” process of marketing via email.  He gives an excellent word picture of how over many years the tiny force of a drip of water could create the Grand Canyon, making the point that by regularly sharing content with your market place “carves deep grooves in your marketplace. It leaves permanent, indelible marks.” Perry further makes the point that well written email autoresponders over the long haul will turn prospects from cold to warm to hot. Take a look at what Perry had to say about this here.

Here’s another word picture that you might relate to…

This weekend I started working out (again) at a gym just across the field from my beautiful Montana home. My sister is a personal trainer and looks like a million bucks. She tells me that if I follow her simple plan for weights and cardio, that I too, will look like a million bucks – and – all of my friends will notice my results in just six short weeks. Since Friday I have run three miles, not once but twice a day, in additon to various weight lifting exercises. Yet when I look in the mirror 3 days later I don’t look any different.

If you know any thing about physical exercise and the human body, you know, like my sister does, that this is going to take a bit longer than three days of working out. And, if I work out for a few days and then take a week off, I’m not going to make much impact on my muscles and the shape of my body.

It is the same with establishing yourself as an expert on the Internet to build your coaching business. You must commit to creating regular installments of your expertise for your ideal prospect to discover the wealth of wisdom.

The more you share in articles, blog posts, Internet radio shows, teleclasses, etc the easier it will be to not only create but more importantly to sell your products and your coaching. Every article, every post, shared not only in your own blog or article account, but even as a guest post or article – your message is spread far and wide. Even better is when your prospect has accepted your invitation to accept your free report or audio, in exchange for permission to contact them by email. That is the beginning of trust in your marketing efforts.

Each piece of content you create works to create a place in your prospects heart and mind, moving them closer to becoming a life long customer, and client.

I can say honestly that any time I have seen a lull in my own business it has been because I have slowed down my content distribution. In my opinion, that is my number one mistake – and this mistake is one that I see is common to many other coaches.

Does your client have enough information available from your blog, your articles which hopefully can be found in various places online and in regular emails from you – to make an informed decision as to your level of expertise so they can hire you as a coach or purchase your products online? Have you given your prospects enough information to decide that they “know, like and trust” you?

I would love to read your feedback on this.

• Is there something that’s really working for you in attracting your ideal prospect and client?
• How often is too often to post?
• How often is too often to send your clients an email?
• Have you tested your own marketplace to see what amount of content and contact equals an increase (or decrease) in sales or new clients?

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Coaching Formula for Giving Yourself a Raise – Pain, Solution, Process, Mentor, & Action

I was in some serious pain. I lost all of my clients in one day. I received a  letter that told me the person who had given me access to the franchise owners of a large promotional products company was no longer employed in the corporate office. He had become a franchise owner himself. He was replaced by someone who wanted to take a different direction – and that included the decision not to use my services.

Identify the Pain

What was my pain?

Here I was a single mom with three kids, a mortgage to pay and I had just lost my source of income!

The real problem was that I had no idea how to get clients out side of the relationships that I had built in my former business as a promotional products distributor.

I had no income, and no idea how to get clients for my coaching busness – And it was just the beginning of the current “recession” that we’re in. All I could see was that NOBODY was spending money.

Identify the Solution

I realized that I needed to find customers that were already looking for a coach rather than trying to convince someone they should hire me when maybe they didn’t realize they needed a coach yet.

Before I could find the customers that were already looking for me (or at least already looking for life success solutions) & possibly a life success coach, I needed to define how to actually go about doing that on a bigger scale than in just my circle of influence – the people that I perceived as “not spending money”. What I needed is to have someone create a roadmap or a set of instructions for me to follow so that I could be found by my ideal prospect.

Identify the Block

The day that I sat there with the letter from corporate office in hand I was seized with fear. What if I couldn’t find any new clients? What if I couldn’t find the right instructions to help me understand what to do and how to reach the people that were already looking…someone – anyone…that was looking for life success training?

After I sold my promotional products business and took on clients from within that industry, I had never really left for uncharted territory, until the day that I received that letter, when I was forced to figure out what to do next.

Identify the Process

Here’s what I knew so far as I contemplated “What next?”:

• I needed to create an income for myself and my children, and fast!
• I needed to find prospects & clients with money to invest, that were looking for what I offered as a coach from a larger sphere of influence.
• I needed to overcome this fear of the unknown territory of how to find clients outside of the field in which I had just spent 16 years of my adult life.
• I needed a plan of action and a process I could follow from someone who successfully had found clients using the same plan.

In Discover of The Process

I had learned and implemented practices from several people on the Internet when building my promotional products business, so I had a really good place to start from. I went back to look up many of the individuals I had learned from who’s material had worked already for me.

I soon discovered that much had changed in online marketing in just a year or so. I needed to educate myself on many more tools that I had not used for my promotional products business. Things like blogs, social bookmarking, social networking, article marketing were all new to me. On my own I dabbled at each of them and wasn’t terribly impressed with the results.

I would post in my blog and watch my stats – but I wasn’t getting any visitors. I used the social bookmarking for my own personal benefit of finding and remembering the sites that were valuable to me. I didn’t understand the how and why of sharing links.

The one thing I did do that provided me with interesting results was start my own Internet Radio Show. I got brave enough to begin inviting guests from the group of people who’s material – email, telecourses, and blogs – that I learned from to join me as guests on my show. In fact, I started two shows – both of which started developing a following. In the beginning I didn’t realize that I could read the stats on TalkShoe.com to see how many people downloaded my show from the archives.  Sometimes I would record the show and no one but the guest and I would be on the call – but after the show was recorded, hundreds of people downloaded the show every week!

Even though I had discovered something that was finally getting attention and I even attracted clients from my radio show – it was hit or miss at best.

I needed a more cohesive process that would consistently work – and work whether or not I was working – 24/7 every day!

As a coach myself I knew the best use of my time would be to find a mentor, a coach, who had found a way to bring clients to them with a process that I could learn and duplicate.

Then one day I was invited to participate in a program that would change my life. It was a 60 day commitment that amounted to about two hours a day. I almost didn’t do it. I almost said I didn’t have the time because I was too busy trying to build my coaching business.

This program gave me the opportunity to look under the hood so to speak, to see the engine of thriving online marketing in practice and step by step put the practice to work for myself. This changed everything for me. Everything. I will always be grateful to the person that launched that program.

From Process to Action

What I see a lot of coaches doing is what I started out doing until I figured out what the step by step process is for running my business so that it attracts my ideal client – and that is dabbling in all the steps, never really understanding how they all work together.

Worse than that, I know many coaches, who know they should be doing certain things – but aren’t even doing what they know with any consistency. If every my business drops off I know it’s because I haven’t been consistently doing for myself what I know and teach my clients.

You must get started implementing what you know and discovering what you don’t know – and all the easier with a coach or mentor to guide on a path they have traveled.

This story describes a practice that can be used for many different situations to create successful outcome in the midst of change. These simple steps may help you in moving your coaching practice forward:

• Identify the pain
• Identify the solution
• Identify the block
• Identify the process
• Find a mentor to instruct you in the process
• Act on the process

This story is how these steps worked for me. Let me invite you download a report on “The Five Secrets to Making Change – Time Proven Questions to Ask Yourself Anytime You’re Starting a New Business Ventuere” from one of the most trusted names in online marketing (he has worked with T Harv Eker, Bob Proctor, Brian Tracy, Julie Andrews and many others) – Alex Mandossian.

Where are you at in this process? Are you dabbling at article marketing, random in your posting to your blog? Or does your audience here a clear strong consistent message and know where to find it?

Please share with me your questions, comments or thoughts on this. I love hearing from you.

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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

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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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7 Tips for a Successful 100 Day Challenge – or Create Steady Growth for your Coaching Business

Your coaching business will not be built in a day, but it will be built a little bit every day. Jeff Herring

The purpose of the 100 Day Challenge here on Coaches Community is to provide a strategy that will help you focus on tasks that will provide steady growth for your coaching business. If you haven’t started yet, it’s not too late.

I’ve done 100 Day Challenges before and gave up before it was over. No one gave me “a hard time” over backing out but I felt kinda bad because I hate to start something and not finish it. So, I started thinking about the things that have helped me be successful in a challenge.

Here are seven tips that I have found are critical to our success in this adventure:

1. Choose a challenge that
   • you can commit to
   • will stretch you just outside your comfort zone
   • has a “payoff” or measureable feedback
2. Schedule time in your day to do your challenge
3. Invite an accountability partner
4. Spend time planning how you will accomplish your goal.
5. Set and participate in a weekly Integrity Day
6. Multi-purpose your activities – work once with multiple uses
7. Get Started – don’t procrastinated – and get started everyday.

I’ll spend sometime in the next seven days elaborating on these seven tips.

I would love to hear how you are doing with your 100 Day Challenge. Let me know if you have any questions.

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Life Coaching Business: Join the 100 Day Challenge to Build Your Coaching Business

We are starting a new 100 Day Challenge on Monday, March 2, 2009 ending on May 9, 2009.

What is a 100 Day Challenge? It’s anything you want to challenge yourself to do for your business in 100 days. The important thing about this challenge is accountability! By doing this as a group and meeting once a week to discuss our progress you can inspire and be inspired to stay on track.

Here are some ideas:

• 100 articles in 100 days
• 100 blog posts in 100 days
• 15 Internet radio shows or podcasts (weekly) in 100 days
• 100 pieces of content with your coaching message – any combination of the above items.
• Whatever you feel you can commit to and grow by doing

Join us at Coaches Community for more information about the live teleconference every Thursday during the 100 Day Challenge at 9 am Pacific / Noon Eastern. The calls will be 60 minutes and will be recorded. You will get the most out of it if you join us live.

Create a member profile at no charge at Coaches Community. Visit the discussion forum for all the details.

I “triple dog dare ya” to join us!

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Developing a Stronger Coaching Message to Attract More Clients

The stronger your coaching message — the more focused your message is on the real live needs of your prospects – the more prospects you’ll convert to paying coaching clients.

I’ve said it myself, in the beginning when I first started coaching, “I can coach anyone about anything.” But you know what, that’s just not accurate. Because of my unique background and training there are clients that I am more suited for coaching.

I’ve discovered that the more I coach or deliver my coaching message in some fashion – such as writing blog posts, article marketing or interviewing brilliant guests on my Get More Business Radio Show – the stronger, more developed, and much more effective my coaching message is when it comes time to deliver during a coaching session.

Not only do all these strategies of blogging, writing articles and Internet radio help me to promote and broadcast my message, but refines and perfects my message; and my clients benefit from it.

Whenever I work with new coaches, I encourage them to just keep coaching – even if it is what I call “gratitude coaching”. Gratitude coaching is when the client does not pay for a session because the coach is “giving back” by assisting someone who is unable to pay them back. It’s a way of putting out good vibes  into the Universe by giving thanks – sometimes in advance of ever having received anything. Besides sowing good vibes the new coach is also developing a more accurate picture of their own coaching message.

The important message to the new life coach is to develop a strong coaching message by coaching within their area of expertise – and keep coaching – keep delivering the coaching message often.

• Write articles daily or weekly
• Post regularly on a blog
• Start your own Internet radio or video broadcast with a regular schedule

Establish a perspective that delivering your coaching message as often as you can is your business – don’t wait until you have “coaching clients”.  Even after you begin to build your coaching practice – create additional avenues where your coaching message continues to promote for you automatically and continuously – even while you sleep.  Everything you publish on the Internet remains to carry your message to your ideal prospect for as long as it’s published. The more messages you create and publish, the more your coaching message will be promoted -  and the stronger you delivery will become in the making of each post, or article.

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3 Common Mistakes New Life Coaches Make Using Internet Marketing to Build an Online Presence

When I first became a “licensed LifeSuccess Coach” I just couldn’t wait to tell everyone all about my new career, except nobody really understood what I did. They’d say “What do you mean a “life coach”? What do you do?” By the time I got done explaining all the wonderful things about life coaching, I could see their eyes glaze over because they had tuned me out. It was a real struggle in the beginning to find clients.

One day I sat down and finally decided that based on my previous business experience in promotional products, that I needed to identify and understand the following

• exactly who I wanted to be coaching
• what, specifically that they might need coaching for
• where to find them so that I could present my message and attract prospects that were ready to hire me.

Once I figured that out I had no problem whatsoever finding clients, in fact, my clients usually found me – I just chose the ones I wanted to coach and referred the rest. This was exactly the opposite of how most coaches are currently building their business.

Mistake #1 – Most new life coaches have not yet identified their coaching message

Your level of expertise in your topic will attract customers that have a need for what you know. The more generalized you are the least likely you will attract your ideal client – you probably won’t even know who your ideal client is until you identify you message.

Solution – How to discover your message

What do you bring to the table in the coaching experience?

• Take a look at your own business or work experience.
• What are you passionate about? What do you get a lot of enjoyment from?
• What life experience do you have?
• What people are naturally drawn to you?

The answers to these questions will get you started in discovering your coaching message.

Mistake #2 – Most new life coaches have not identified their ideal client

If you’re saying to yourself, “I can coach any body.” Just stop right now. No, you can’t – not every client would be ideal for you, even though your coaching skills may be unrivaled.

Mistake #3 – Inadequate training in developing their coaching business

I have looked at coaching certification courses that spend very little time, if at all, training coaches on building their business. One of the most important investments you can make as a new life coach, to properly complete your training is to hire a business mentor coach to teach you how to not only build a practice, but how to create a full menu of products and services that will provide you with multiple streams of income.

In my opinion, Internet marketing is the least expensive, most precise way to attract your idea client and provides the most opportunities to broadcast your message in a variety of ways to an International marketplace. This marketing tool – Internet marketing – will out do any thing else you’re currently doing to build your business.

Solution – Spend time studying how to properly apply the principles of Internet marketing to target your ideal client and broadcast your message. Learn to understand testing and tracking so that once you begin to attract new clients you’ll know how to keep a steady stream of prospects looking for you, and buying your products & services. Hire a good mentor coach to show you step by step how to implement simple strategies to build your business.

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Let me invite you to begin educating yourself with my 6-week e-course of only two emails a week that lays out a simple, yet powerful action plan to harness the power of Internet Marketing to build a lucrative coaching business, and create passive streams of income.

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How do you use Internet Marketing to build your coaching practice? Tell me how it’s working for you.

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