With the relaunch of New Coach Business Network later this year, I am looking for coaches at all stages of their career to interview for 15 minutes on my new Blog Talk Radio show.  It doesn’t matter how much experience you have as a coach as long as you enjoy talking about yourself (one of our favourite subjects surely?).

What’s in it for you?  A chance of course to promote you, your coaching, your website.  Great SEO from Blog Talk Radio and your website will get a link from BTR – valuable external link.  And if you haven’t got a website yet, well just look at my latest offer.

I’m looking for an angle that will be of interest to listeners.  That might simply be your personal journey as a coach, It might be about your niche, a type of marketing that has worked well for you, a favourite case study, your take on goal-setting, limiting beliefs, eliciting values, accreditation… I don’t want to give you too many options and overwhelm you but as long as you would enjoy talking about some aspect of your coaching journey for just 15 minutes I’d be interested to hear from you.

Practically speaking it will involve calling a US phone number and talking over the phone, not too hard, is it.  Timing will be to suit the two of us though I have a regular Sunday slot scheduled in the months to come – 11am.

Please don’t be put off if you’re a new coach.  This is the new coach business network, remember, and there will plenty of other new coaches who would love to hear how it is for you and if you’re having the same challenges or finding breakthroughs they could benefit from.

Email me direct please at marion@marionryan.com with:

• A brief paragraph about yourself, your coaching and any angle you’re interested in talking about.

• An idea of your availability.  Not keen on evening interviews but if you can’t do daytimes, I can do some weekend calls.

If you’re up for it just not yet, let me know what month I could schedule in your 15 minutes of fame.

And the offer is currently open only to members of New Coach Business Network so if you’re not yet, you can do so by clicking on the link in the right hand sidebar.  It’s still completely free.

Dear Fellow Coach

Don’t you just love being a coach?  Nothing beats the exhilaration of coming off a coaching call knowing you’ve helped a client make a real difference to their life.  And nothing’s more disappointing and frustrating than trying to find enough of them.

Where are they all hiding?  It’s tempting to go round peering under cabbage leaves in the hope of locating the rare lesser spotted coachee because helping the people you were meant to serve feels so damn good you can’t get enough of it!

If you’ve experienced the frustration, scarcity or anxiety around filling your coaching business, you are far from alone.  Many wonderful coaches have given up the work they love because they learnt how to coach – and loved it – but never learnt how to attract their ideal clients to them.

People talk about the secret of a profitable coaching business or the key to your coaching prosperity but this is baloney. 

Honest, there’s no secret.  There’s only stuff you don’t know yet and – more infuriating – stuff you know but don’t do yet.

So read on and let me tell you how you can grow your business…

As well as being a successful coach for many years I now run The Abundant Coach which is a group coaching programme for new or somewhat experienced coaches who are always in a state of struggle about how to find more clients.

Find more clients?  We make it sound like they’re stuck in a dark cupboard or at the back of the garage under a pile of old newspapers.  The truth is we need to know how to attract clients and because so many coaches struggle with this, they don’t get enough experience and that in turn affects their confidence.

I used to have a particular client with a huge hairy business goal.  She was amazing.  She swung into action between coaching sessions and came back each week with a list of accomplishments as long as your arm.  When she wasn’t building that successful business she was a trainee coach struggling to keep up her skills and she often said to me – I wish you’d create some sort of programme for people like me.  I need to learn how to get some clients but my confidence is so wobbly now I’m getting in my own way.

In the end up the only way to keep her quiet was to create the programme.  Yes, persistance was one of her great strengths.  And though I felt sure she was echoing what many other newer coaches were feeling, I decided to survey a group of them anyway.

I guess that’s my first tip.  You have to find out what your potential clients are struggling with and give them what they want, rather than what you want.

How you survey them is up to you.  Sit down with a little focus group and let them talk.  Get on the phone to a handful.  Set up a simple online survey using SurveyMonkey.  You can do this for absolutely free as long as you keep your survey to fewer than 10 questions and no more than 100 people answering.

In my experience you start seeing patterns and similarities very quickly.

A note of caution though.  Just because you can identify a problem they have isn’t enough.  You have to be sure of two things:

• That they want to solve their problem
• That they are prepared to pay to have that problem solved

I’ll be sharing my second tip with you in a couple of days.  Remember, there are no secrets.  Just stuff you don’t know yet and stuff you know but don’t do yet.  While you’re waiting for my next tip feel free to visit TheAbundantCoach.com and see what my programme is all about.  In fact, you might also spot some other essential elements in the matter of attracting more clients to your coaching business.  See if you can see what I’m talking about!

Join us today, Tuesday 9th October at 6.45pm BST for this fab FREE teleclass!

• Are you ready to create coaching products to supplement your work with clients?
• Are you ready to build your income streams?
• Do you want to make money while you are away from the telephone and your computer?
• Do you know that you want to package your expertise into products but you don’t know how?

Join us Tuesday October 9th at 6.45pm BST when Sandra De Freitas, The Coach’s Tech Coach and the creator of The Coach’s Start-up Program will spill the beans about:

• The easy ways to take your knowledge, skills and expertise and turn them into passive revenue products
• How to satisfy your target market with the products they want in the format they want (so that they buy what you create!)
• How to fill your products with valuable content even when you think you have nothing to offer
• How to promote and sell your product before it is complete!

Sandra is the techie expert who speaks ‘coach’ so this is one call you can’t afford to miss.  There’s NO CHARGE for joining the call but you must register in order to receive the call-in details.  The call will be recorded and the recording made available to everyone who pre-registers.  Simply drop a blank email now to marion@marionryan.com with SANDRA in the subject line to receive the phone number.

Looking forward to a great turn-out from everyone who wants to start working smarter!

And don’t forget to check out more of Sandra’s offerings here.

Stop Chasing Abundance; Start Choosing It!

•  Are you a new or nearly-new coach feeling daunted at the prospect of finding her first paying clients?
• Or a coach with some experience
  but no clear plan for attracting new business to you?  Especially not
  if it means any of that dirty M word, marketing!
• Are you concerned you will start losing your coaching skills if you don’t get some practice fast?

Now discover a way to become
confident, professional and attractive to the people you are meant to
serve.  Choose to be an Abundant Coach with one of our two new courses starting this month, September!

Find full details of the programmes here.

Here’s what Lynne, one of our current delegates, has to say about it:

I am much clearer about where I am headed, have new clients, plans for products and coaching programmes and an explosion of confidence. I finally know exactly what my coaching practice looks like and I have a second niche that is absolutely me.

There have been some wonderful aha moments. People on the programme are getting things done and sounding much more confident and purposeful The triads are great – they provide an opportunity to coach and be coached. I thought I would hate them but they’re not the scary thing I imagined.

Lynne Lee – www.christianlifecoaching.co.uk

So if you are sick of struggling with techie challenges or don’t understand where to start with marketing your coaching (and are losing confidence in your coaching skills to boot!), we would just love to have you join us. 

Full programme and joining details here now.

On 17th July at 12.45pm GMT, we will be joined by Chantal Cornelius for her presentation entitled:

"How Not to Do a Newsletter"!

She says:

Did you know it costs far more to sell to a new client than it does to sell to an existing one?  This means that you need to build strong relationships with your clients, which keep them coming back for more, buying from you again and again.

But how do you do this when you’re busy running your business?  How do you find the time to keep in touch with dozens, if not hundreds of contacts every month?

An email newsletter is a very cost effective way of doing this.  You don’t need to be a graphic designer or a world class copywriter to produce something that keeps your company name in front of the people who matter.

Chantal Cornelius has been building businesses through newsletters for
a number of years.  She runs Just Add Content, an email newsletter
system that has been described as a “highly praised UK service”.  In
this session she will share with you some ideas on how to get started:

• Planning what to send and how to send it

• Deciding what to write and how to make writing easier

• Who to send your newsletter to

Chantal is a regular speaker at business events and network meetings and helps her clients produce newsletters that create a professional and authentic image of their business.  See a selection of those newsletters by going to the JAC Client page here

To register for this call, you must be a member of New Coach Business Network.  Join now by submitting your email address below:

Subscribe to New Coach Business Network

Email:

Visit this group

We welcome all coaches, experienced and new as long as you are prepared to play the game our way!

We keep the rules to a minimum but experience tells us we
need a few.  So while you’re here, please keep reading and familiarise
yourself with our Membership Charter.  If you can commit to this then
we welcome you with a heart and a half!

Just enter your email address here and you will receive our welcome email in your inbox within a few minutes:

Subscribe to New Coach Business Network

Email:              .ie

Visit this group

• Are you a new or nearly-new coach feeling daunted at the prospect of finding
  her first paying clients?

• Or a coach with some experience but no clear plan for attracting new business
  to you?  Especially not if it means any of that dirty M word,
  marketing!

• Are you concerned you will start losing your coaching skills if you don’t
  get some practice fast?

Now discover a way to become more confident, professional and attractive to the people you are meant to serve.  Choose to be an Abundant Coach!

Wouldn’t
it be wonderful if you could fast-track your coaching success, stop CHASING it,
start CHOOSING it!

Well
Now You Can.  Visit The Abundant Coach for details.

• Are you a new or nearly-new coach feeling daunted at the prospect of getting her first paying clients?
• Or a coach with some experience but no clear plan for attracting new business to you?
• Would you like an affordable, realistic and structured approach to creating a sustainable business, whether full- or part-time?
• And to help in developing a 5 star programme that you might very well one day be running yourself?

Let me be brief because what I’m doing here quite simply is looking for names of people who are interested in hearing more about The Abundant Coach programme which I’m launching later this month.  It’s a brand new programme I’m offering at a crazy introductory price because we’ll be polishing it as we go along!   

For this reason it’s important to me that it gets offered first to
those people who’ve indicated a possible interest in participating.
You’re not committing yourself to anything here, simply making sure you
get first bite of the cherry – if you want to take it.

So
what is The Abundant Coach programme all about?  It’s a 14 week plan
for new and somewhat experienced coaches who want to build their
coaching practice and improve their coaching skills.   

As
relatively inexperienced coaches I know that many of you need guidance
and support to create a sustainable business (even a part-time one) but
you also worry that you don’t really have the confidence in your
coaching skills to work with proper clients (ones who pay you!).  Or
perhaps you are losing the confidence you had because you simply aren’t
getting enough practice…

The Abundant Coach programme comprises:

• Group mastermind calls to support every individual to achieve a business and coaching goal

• 1-1 coaching sessions to focus your actions, hurdle your obstacles and celebrate your triumphs
• Optional audio downloads providing technical support for online marketing strategies
• A dedicated discussion group to share learning and create a community of 5 star coaches
• Weekly coaching triads to build skills in the safest of environments
• Optional group calls to share and learn coaching techniques, models and exercises
• Tips and worksheets

The
Abundant Coach is launching later this month, will run for 14 weeks and
this first programme only will be offered at less than £20 per week.   
Though I promise to deliver fabulous value and a unique programme, it’s
only fair to promote it at a no-brainer price in order to ensure I can
attract the perfect people to the team.  People who have already
invested their hard-earned money in their coach training and now want
to start or strengthen their business without paying out another small
fortune.  Coaches who are ready to put in some work, some effort, some
time.  Try something new.  Stretch their comfort zones.  Laugh at their
mistakes and try again.  People who can think a little outside the box,
give great feedback and help make The Abundant Coach the coach business
training programme for new and not-so-new coaches.

That’s
enough for now!  If your interest is piqued, a little or a lot, drop me
an email direct to my inbox at abundantcoach@marionryan.com.  If you
want to tell me something about yourself, your coaching dreams and what
interests you about the programme, cool.  If you don’t, just send a
blank email.  Over the course of the next 7 days I’ll be writing to
those of  you who contact me, to tell you more about the programme and
to invite some special new coaches to join me for a work-hard,
play-hard few weeks ahead!

Thanks for reading.

Marion

I well remember when I had not long been working as a coach, the excitement of the first time I was asked to make a presentation at my local women’s business network meeting.  Ok, perhaps I wasn’t asked.  Perhaps I begged, cajoled and offered bribes until they agreed I could be the speaker at our next meeting.

On my next session with my coach, Nicola Cairncross, when I shared my good news, she said, "Fantastic.  Now what’s your objective?"

"Well, I want to make a great presentation to the group".

"Yes, I know, but what’s your real objective?" she asked.

"Great question" I said, thinking what a daft question, "er, I want to get some clients".

"So you’re hoping you’ll give your talk and there’ll be a queue of people at the end clamouring for your services?"

Well, it was more ‘expectation’ than ‘hope’ actually but clearly Cairncross knew something I didn’t so I sat back and let her de-mystify a bit more of this marketing mullarkey for me.

What Nicola wanted to get across to me was that I should look at the talk as an opportunity to build my list.

Talking to groups, is of course, a great way – potentially – to get in front of our ideal clients.  I say potentially because if you’re not confident speaking in public or if you’re talking to the wrong group or if your talk doesn’t address the needs of that group then you can waste a lot of time trying to market yourself in this way.

But let’s assume that you know this is a group of people who are just the clients you believe you can help and you’ve prepared a great presentation based on a topic that’s close to their hearts, rather than just close to yours.  You’ve done your homework, you’ve rehearsed your talk in front of the dog and now here you are, at the front of the room and it all seems to be going very well.

If you’ve educated and entertained your audience and demonstrated you can help them, you may certainly get some interest at the end of your talk from people who want your brochure or your card and who say they’ll probably call you soon.  One or two you’ve particularly connected with might want to tell you all about themselves and bag some free on-the-spot coaching from you.  Others will be queuing up to try and sell you their products or services.

But you will be quite lucky if you walk away from the event with more than one or two free consultations in your diary.

However, there’s a reason for this and that’s that our clients don’t buy from us until they know, like and trust us (or feel they do) so all those ideal clients you’ve just spent an hour or two talking to, are just not yet ready to invest their hard-earned cash in you as their solution-provider.

The answer to your dilemma then is to get their permission for you to stay in touch in the future and the best way to do this is by getting their name and their email address. 

You might feel a handful of email addresses isn’t much to show for your night’s work, and they certainly won’t pay that overdue phone bill, but they are as valuable as gold dust because they allow you to start growing your list of contacts, building relationships that will enable you in future to promote your services and products to them – over and over again.  And all from the comfort of your laptop.

Not everyone will want to hand over their contact details and the best way to encourage them is by offering them something for free, an article you’ve written or your top tips etc.  Although I didn’t yet write a newsletter at the time of that first talk I knew that was my next step so I sent a form around the room asking them to tick any of my three articles they’d like me to send them (which incidentally, I hadn’t yet written) and giving me permission to send them the first issue of my forthcoming newsletter.

I got around 25 – 30 sign-ups who over a period of time either bought my e-course, or became a client or even simply forwarded my newsletter to someone else.  All opportunities I would have missed if I had been focussed only on bagging myself a new client straightaway.

So when you’re asked to speak at an event or doing your 1 minute introductions at the start of a network meeting, or even chatting informally, keep in mind that your objective might simply be to find a way you can get permission from them to keep in touch with them.

This will create that know, like and trust factor that will help your business grow.

On Tuesday Jake and I set off to the village closest to his school where we had heard there would be soccer training at 6pm.  Living so far away we inevitably arrived first at 5.55pm. (Murphy’s Law states the likelihoood of arriving late to your destination increases in inverse proportion to the proximity of your starting point).

Aside: In Ireland no-one, apart from me, ever gets anywhere when they’re supposed to, except of course on Communion and Confirmation days when the church resembles Wembley Stadium on cup final day.

There were two people there before us, who were clearly the soccer coaches and one of them, Eileen, came over to greet me, looking slightly anxious.  "We weren’t sure anyone would turn up" she said.

Within ten minutes the field was black with vehicles spewing forth pre-adolescent boys in technicoloured football shirts.  I spotted Rooney, Drogba, Owen, Ronaldo, Berbatov, Lehmann, Arbeloa, Keene… it was like the whole of the UK premiership had disembarked on our village playing field.

Eileen was speed-writing names and ages and getting writer’s cramp while Man Coach was herding them into teams, issuing instructions and sending them off with footballs to the four corners of the field.

As I stood and watched the whole operation, I thought about the lessons business and personal coaches could take – or at least remind themselves of – from this.  No, no, not to give away free footballs and premiership shirts to our clients.  Just read on…

Lessons I Learnt from a Soccer Coach

1. The marketing for this event appeared to have consisted of a short paragraph in the church leaflet and the jungle drums did the rest.  The fact is they didn’t have to promote it or sell the benefits because they were offering something not just that people needed, but that they wanted too – some local soccer training and the promise of a new football team for the junior league.

   As a coach yoursef, have you established:

   a) what your clients’ pain is
   b) that they want a solution for it
   c) that you have a great solution for them

2. The location and timing were right.  The pitch was in prime condition with plenty of room for parking.  It was a fantastic Spring-dressed-as-Summer evening, perfect factors for getting the kids and ourselves out in the fresh air. 

   How do you select the location and timing for your coaching programmes?  What research do you do?  Think about events – like sporting fixtures, holiday times, school pick-ups, even TV programmes – that might stop your clients joining up.  With enough motivation people will find a way to join you but make it as easy as possible for them in the first place.

3. When I asked Eileen what their plan was for the coming weeks, she said they would trial the training for about a month, no charge, while they gauged the response levels, then review and tweak as necessary before
   committing further time and energy to the programme.

   Setting up an R&D (research and development) team and running a pilot at no or low cost can be a great business decision.  This is nothing to do with not valuing your skills or programme enough but a way to test what works and to improve your product / service.  Once it’s the best it can possibly be – and with some stonking satisfied client testimonials  in your back pocket – you can go out and market it with integrity and belief to your ‘hungry’ punters.

4. The soccer coach had a
   day job, she told me; she had thrown on her tracksuit at work and rushed straight out to coach.

   Of course, I know at this level soccer coaches are not full-time professionals but people who work with kids because they love the game or want to do something for the community.  It did however remind me that there is nothing less attractive than a starving coach!  All my experience and that of other successful coaches I know is that it is likely to take at least two years, and often longer, to build a successful coaching business.

   Many have another business or job they work in part-time in combination with their coaching.  However much you love coaching and the energy and satisfaction you get at the end of a client session, if this is your only source of income you may struggle to survive.

   Chris Barrow, a former business coach of mine and one of the best, talks about ‘flipping burgers’ while you’re building your coaching income, anything to stop you wearing that desperate ‘please take me home and let me coach you’ puppy dog expression at business network meetings!  One of the many joys of coaching is that you can transition into it over a period of time.  Make your whopping business mistakes while you still have a salaried position to keep you afloat.  A few thoughts:

• Work out your living expenses and current income and don’t forget to factor in the value of any benefits that will disappear along with the day job. 
• Decide what type of financial safety net you will want to create for yourself – 3, 6 or 12 months living expenses?  There’s no right answer, it depends on how risk-averse you are and the extent of your business skills.
• Define your niche and target market and calculate how many clients / products you’ll need to enable you to sleep soundly at night. 
• Create a simple business plan and a marketing strategy.
• Get going!  That’s the key you know, nothing else matters if you don’t have the confidence or motivation to take action.

If you are ready to build your successful coaching business and want the support of a long-established business coach to help you, contact me by email at marion@marionryan.com<%2

How painful does it have to get before you stop procrastinating and take action?

Our new baby is now almost three weeks old.  Big brown eyes, long legs, funny little tail, born in a stable…  Gerry was just about to load the very pregnant mare into the horsebox and drive her to the foaling unit when he realised it was too late, she was already in labour.

There followed 40 minutes of tugging, a fair amount of blood, sweat and tears and finally they delivered the horse of a strong healthy colt.  Strange thing is, eleven years ago when I was pregnant, Gerry decided to forego the ‘ringside seat’ in the delivery suite on the grounds that "I’m no good at that sort of thing".

Did he think he’d have to deliver the baby, I wonder?

Proof though that there is a God (divine retribution for his past misdemeanours) and that when the chips are down – and the waters break – we can all do so much more than we would have believed possible.

My planned birth partner was my sister’s boyfriend.  An unusual arrangement but Sue couldn’t even wash out a chicken without feeling faint and sisterly love just didn’t stretch that far.  Besides, Brian was a plumber and I felt he’d probably be quite an asset to the midwife. As luck would have it, he was out on call when I went into labour, ten days early so I ended up with a newly-qualified midwife and a sister so hyper that in between contractions I had to negotiate a deal: she got the gas and air and I got the epidural.

But she was there for me when I needed her and she ended up actually enjoying the whole experience.  As I said, it’s quite surprising what we’re capable of when our escape route has been bricked up and plastered over.  And that’s got me thinking of the whole area of motivation and what it takes to get us into action.

Though there are many times in my life when I’ve failed (you
might remember my attempts to train for the marathon a couple of years
ago), I’ve also achieved the impossible on loads of occasions.  I’ve
designed the perfect job and talked employers into paying me to do it,
left a long-term co-dependent relationship I thought I’d never be free
of, bloody ‘eck, I even gave up chocolate once for an entire week.

We often berate ourselves for lacking the motivation and willpower to
change things for the better: to lose weight, let go of the
relationships that cause unhappiness, find work we love so much we’d do
it for nothing.  And yet, we’ve all at times managed to achieve stuff
that took great effort, courage and determination.

For me the starting point is pain, that’s the most powerful motivator
in my book.  If you hate your job but put up with it week in, week out,
then the pain of doing it is simply less than the pain you think you’ll
feel by leaving.  Maybe it pays well or it’s comfortingly familiar or
your evil boss gives you something great to moan about with your
friends. Whereas a new job would catapult you right out of your zone.

If you’re desperate to lose weight but continue to pile your shopping
trolley with high calorie goodies, then the pain of your middle-age
spread spreading is just not as bad as having to sort out the problems
that you stifle when you’re stuffing food in your mouth.

A few years ago I lost a lot of weight, about four stone in all.  Once
I started to hear people complimenting me on how great I looked and
felt the joy of loose waistbands and shopping for new clothes, I was
motivated by pleasure.  Eating healthily was immeasurably better than
big meals, constant snacks and trying every new chocolate bar that came
on the market – several times just to be sure.

But my initial motivation, what got me out of my over-sized rut in the
first place was a work colleague suggesting we should do it together
and for me, the pain of her succeeding and me failing would have been
more than I could bear.  No chocolate on the market tasted as sweet as
the sight of the scales going lower and lower.

So, if you’ve been talking forever about achieving a goal but doing
nothing about it, think about – and write down – the pain you are
causing yourself now and in the future by not tackling it.  Make your
list as long as possible!  Project forward five years:

If you had
still not achieved that goal, how painful would life be then?

Not painful enough?  What would have to happen to make it so?

Think about what Jamie Oliver did in his fantastic TV series, "School
Dinners".  He was battling to get the kids to stop eating junk food in
favour of wholesome fresh cooked meals and getting nowhere.  He gave
them a choice of chicken nuggets or ‘proper’ chicken.  They all wanted
the nuggets so he agreed they could have them – but that first they’d
have to make them.  He took a pile of chicken skins and other suspect
parts and asked them to feed it all into the food processor before
covering the mixture with breadcrumbs.  The kids were appalled when
they saw what they were really eating.  After weeks of resistance from
them, Jamie Oliver had finally discovered the pain big enough to get
them to rethink their eating habits.

Of course we often set goals because we are motivated by the pleasure
of the end result – our own business, a book we’ve written, a new home
etc – but when you just can’t get into action however much you think
you want to achieve that goal, it might simply be that you haven’t yet
reached your pain threshold.

I’d love to hear your own experiences of what has motivated you to get
up and take action on one of your goals.  Were you motivated by pain,
pleasure – or something else?  Feel free to comment.