This summer marks the two year anniversary since the release of the Coaching Business Builder. Part workbook, part planner, the CBB as I affectionately call it, grew out of more than a decades worth of coaching conversations with coaches growing their businesses.  
With us stepping into the month of September this week, it's an optimum time to start a new planner. Pick up a digital copy or $29 US you'll get an immediate download of right now.​

Over the last two years since the release of the book, some of the key highlights have been:

Hearing from readers and coaches about how they are using the Coaching Business Builder in clarifying their vision, building out their strategies, and tracking it with the planner. Over the last year I've heard from coaches in all continents (except Antarctica), who are using the book as a resource in growing their businesses.

Seeing my own clients get clarity and traction in their business development efforts. I am always amazed how the different planning resources connect in for different clients. Some love the Annual Planning, others the monthly planning, and others the content development tools. Just the other day my co-host at the Remote Pathways podcast was showing how she converted the daily planner into a dry-erasable resource! 

Connecting with groups of coaches through many presentations about coaching business development, and the importance of planning, doing and tracking while growing a business. I've enjoyed speaking to many ICF chapters, coaching conferences, and coach training schools. Please email me if you'd like to book me for a presentation virtually this fall or winter to your coaching group. 

Hosting the Coaching Biz Growth Lab twice a month on Friday afternoons. This bi-weekly group serves as a place to connect, pause and get coaching around your business. A monthly article and template, along with Quarterly Get Things Done afternoons make it a budget friendly coaching group. Join us for the next 6 months (to the end of January 2021) at a special rate of $695 US. Payable in 1 or 2 installments. Contact me to see if this program is a good fit for you.

Incorporating it into  Business Design VIP Days where I get to work one-on-one with a coach to help them build out their business plan or program plans. Whether it's a half day or a full day I've been enjoying these a lot in recent months as coaches have realized it's so important to dedicate chunks of time to their planning with another thinking partner. Contact me to see how this could benefit you in your work.

The spin-off of the CBB to PlanDoTrack for Virtual and Remote Professionals at the end of 2018. With the publication of this workbook and analog planner at the end of 2018/early 2019, little did I know what 2020 would bring!  IF you work with virtual and remote professionals, do pick up a copy of PlanDoTrack and gift it to them. You can get hardcopies via Amazon and PDF copies via our Potentials Realized store.

Over the last year I've also trained up a number of Certified Facilitators who lead PlanDoTRack and/or Coaching Business Builder in their businesses as well. If you need to scale programming to a larger intersection of coaches or remote professionals, please let me know. We've got large groups covered.

I'd love to hear your stories. How has the Coaching Business Builder or PlanDoTrack supported you with your business growth?

This month, in honor of the 2nd anniversary I'll be returning to Instagram for daily posts. If you don't follow the CBB feed, connect here.

Stay tuned as I resume regular blog posts around business development and building a coaching business! They'll be coming to you weekly.

Let's talk about what's possible in your business? Book a 15 minute call to explore what's going to move your business forward -- there's four months left in the year. What's possible for you?

Have a great week,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton, PCC, CPCC, CHRL
Author of PlanDoTrack (2019), Coaching Business Builder (2018), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013). Pick up a copy of any of her books at Amazon.

Book Jennifer for a coaching session to explore what's next for your coaching business, or group and team programming.

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Marketing is an on-going focus for business at all stages - whether we are new or established businesses, spending time consistently on marketing is key.

Here are five elements you may want to include in your marketing strategy for the rest of the year.

#1 – Outreach
What is on your plan to reach out to new people as well as your network. What are the touchpoints you have planned to keep people in the loop?

What are you doing on a consistent basis to be in conversation with your community?

If it’s not scheduled, put some outreach time in your schedule right now.

#2 - Content Creation and Repurposing
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the many reasons content creation is important. So is repurposing the materials. What are the 3 things you are excited about creating?

#3 – Digitization
2020 has been the year of the pivot to all things virtual and digital. I’ll be doing a series of blog posts this all on digitization. Let’s get you thinking of this already.

What products do you have that could be made into a digital version?

If you have a book, what could become an e-book?

If you have a card deck, how could that become digitized?

#4 – Tracking What You Are Doing
What do you notice about revenue flows? Time investments and what’s getting you traction?

With your metrics in mind, what do you want to say YES to? NO to?

#5 - Dedicated Time to Marketing and Moving Key Projects Forward – Regularly
A final piece of this is to ensure that you have time built in to dedicate to marketing and executing your programming on a regular basis. What time have you earmarked? What do you notice about your productivity during that time?
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Enjoy your focus!
Jennifer

How much silence do you encounter in the remote space every day? Many days can be a blur of back to back calls.

Incorporating what I call “The power of the pause” is an important element of remote work.

What can we do to make more of a pause during our calls?

• Provide people with a prompt they can explore during the call. If you are working on strengths it might be:  Take 2 minutes to reflect on the one strength you have been utilizing recently.
• Pick up a copy of the Digital Conversation Sparker Weekly Journaling Prompts – You’ll have immediate download to the more than 50 graphics. Use one for each call you have. I often give people 2-3 minutes of silence to write out what their insights are. Pick up a copy of them here - (currently $35 US with an immediate download)
• Provide a word prompt and have people write or draw whatever comes to mind
• Have group members mind map whatever comes to mind for them – 2 -3 minutes

These activities can often be more powerful when you then leave time for dialogue and conversation afterwards.

What do you want to do to leave some time for reflective pause?

What do you notice when you do leave time?

Best,
​Jennifer

Stand Out Virtually! I hope that you will join me next week, each day for the Stand Out Virtually! Challenge. This live 5-day challenge will run each day from 9 - 10 am ET in the new Facebook Group I am hosting – the Virtual and Remote Visionaries Hub. I hope that you will join us.

A little about the challenge - It’s geared to get you into action around your own virtual elements. Whether you are leading a virtual group coaching program, a virtual team meeting, or a virtual retreat, great virtual events are all about MEMORABILITY, ENGAGEMENT, and ACTION.

Join me as I share resources and tips to amplify your programming.

The 5 Day Challenge (which is free to join), will be hosted in the Virtual and Remote Visionaries Hub. Join us here – SIGN UP…

Each day I will be going live at 9 am ET for 30-45 minutes in a resource rich call. Each day will also have a daily prompt and assignment, geared to get YOU in to ACTION on your own programming.

Take a minute to sign up for the challenge here.

Also be sure to join the Facebook group here.

Daily prizes (of things you will find useful and can use in your own program) round out the challenge.

Can’t wait to have you join us!

Can’t make the live calls? The reply will be available each day for a 24-hour period, and you can also pick up a copy of the recordings for $47 US. These will be sent out at the end of program. 

Best wishes,
​Jennifer

I often get asked “Why would I need to create content as a coach? I thought I’m not supposed to be a content expert”. So true, AND, a business owner who is likely to be creating a podcast or blog posts, or also offering other services than coaching, it’s likely that making space and time to focus on content creation can be useful.

As someone who has sustained blogs for many years, I have learned how important it is to have a plan to go to, especially when writer’s block happens – and it does happen to all of us!

Today’s post gets you to think about your content planning for the rest of the year. I hope that you will take a few minutes to work through these questions, and short activities. They don’t all need to happen at once.

Step #1 - Take 10-15 minutes to get your ideas out of your head – what are possible post ideas? Think about what your clients have been asking for? What have been the themes you have been coaching around?

Step #2 – Go back and review any past posts you have done. What hasn’t been covered yet? What ideas does this spark for you? What’s a deeper dive into topics you might have touched on? What’s a synthesis of other topics?

Step #3 – Review the metrics you have around blogs. What have people enjoyed? What do the numbers say?

Step #4 – Once everything is down on paper in a Mindmap or list, now think about creating a consistent schedule for posting or creating. Are you committed to posting every week? Twice a week?

What about when you will schedule creating it? Most of my blog writing happens in an hour block I have on Tuesday morning, or sometimes in an hour block first thing on the weekend.

Step #5 – Consider whether you want to get some help on this. Having a VA create some graphics for you and/or schedule the drafts can be of benefit, and some accountability, for getting things done.

Step #6 – List it out, schedule it in, and start to execute!

BONUS – Consider what you can do to repurpose

A couple of the forms you may want to use from the Coaching Business Builder:

• One Line a Day – Use this to capture new content ideas on a daily basis
• 31 Day Challenge

Be sure to write out your content needs as part of your Monthly To Dos. Once you have a monthly content plan in place this is easy. It also means that you have that month’s content at the forefront of your mind at all times.

What tips do you have for others? Looking forward to your suggestions!
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Jennifer

Welcome to August! It's August 1st which means that it's time for another monthly edition of the daily prompts with the 1BizStepADay series. This month we're returning back to Getting things done. The Coaching Business Builder is built upon the philosophy that:
Daily Steps + Consistent Action = Momentum

For many of us, myself included, we don't have a lot of time to get huge projects completed in one swoop (think writing a book, hosting a podcast, launching a new product). It's the small steps taken every day that become successful big projects - I can attest to that with all 3 examples I've just provided.  I've been co-hosting the Remote Pathways podcast since last fall...we just released our 17th episode - Every Remote Professional Needs to Be a Leader. Listen in here (it runs for less than 30 minutes)

This month, an invitation to consider the most important project for you to get into daily action around. What do you want to make sure you take action on? What do you want to make sure you complete before the start of September?

You can download the Daily Business Building Prompts here for August 2020.

As always, thanks for joining us - Let us know about your successes using the comments below or share them over at the Effective Group Coaching Facebook page.

With best wishes,
Jennifer

Author of PlanDoTrack (2019), Coaching Business Builder (2018), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013). Pick up a copy of any of her books at Amazon.

Book Jennifer for a coaching session to explore what's next for your coaching business, or group and team programming.

​Contact her by phone at (416)996-8326

Check out upcoming programs on our calendar or head on over to GroupCoachingEssentials.ca to register for fall programs (Mentor Coaching Group for ICF Credentialing, Group Coaching Essentials and the Virtual Facilitation Essentials program).