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).

Happy June 1st! What do you want to focus on this month? What are the key projects and practices which are going to get you moving in a way you want to move your business forward? What's going to keep you most productive this month?

Each month I provide you with a series of daily prompts, geared to get you moving in daily action steps of 15 minutes each.

This month's focus is on PROJECTS, PRACTICES and PRODUCTIVITY.

My guess is that this month you have a number of different projects you are working on to get complete prior to the end of the quarter.
Practices are things we do consistently. THey might include meetings, journaling, outreach to our clients. Practices are important in terms of forming routines and habits.
One of the core themes this year has been to GET THINGS DONE. Productivity is essential in keeping things moving, and in developing the MOMENTUM that is created with the DAILY STEPS and CONSISTENT ACTION we can take every day.

What is going to keep you moving on a daily basis?

Enjoy your daily action steps, and be sure to download the June 2020 1BizStepADay here.

Let us know what you are focusing on using the comment links below or join the conversation over at the MightyNetworks zone.

Best wishes,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
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 productivity, teamwork and business issues.
​Contact her by phone at (416)996-8326
Check out upcoming programs on our calendar!

Are you a remote professional? Listen into the Remote Pathways Podcast on your favorite podcast player!

The first iteration of the Coaching Business Builder planner section several years ago was called Get { } Done. I eventually renamed my process to PLAN DO TRACK (hence the name of the sister planner for virtual and remote professionals).
Getting things done in business today is critical. With things changing daily in each of our locations, the context in which we operate is rapidly changing as well.

This month's 1 Biz Step a Day is geared to getting you into taking 15 minutes of action a day around your most important projects so you can GET THINGS DONE.

Be sure to download a copy of it here, and let others know where they can find it. I think most of us can benefit from this right now, whether we are a business owner or not!

Enjoy the start to your month!

Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
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 productivity, teamwork and business issues.
​Contact her by phone at (416)996-8326
Check out upcoming programs on our calendar!

Are you a remote professional? Listen into the Remote Pathways Podcast on your favorite podcast player!

Over the last few weeks I've been hosting a number of calls to support coaches in getting up to speed with, or accelerating their virtual work. Rather than create any new content this week, I wanted to direct you to what's available to tap into. I hope that you'll take a few minutes to check out these recordings of live calls I hosted a few weeks ago:

Monday March 16 – Trust and Connection in the Virtual and Remote Space. 
Tuesday – Resources to tap into with remote work
Wednesday – "Keep it simple" When working Virtually and In Complexity
Thursday – Visual Anchors
Friday – Remote Enablers - What helps remote work, work

Monday March 23 -Monday – Virtual Facilitation
Tuesday March 24 – Connection in the Virtual Space
Wednesday - no call as I was leading the Virtual Facilitation Essentials program
Thursday  - Virtual and Small Business/Coaching Business focus
Friday - Walk through and Effective Virtual Conversations

These calls were anywhere from 20-30 minutes in length. In some you'll notice community members who joined me and in others it's just me.

Enjoy and please pass on the link to my YouTube Channel so other coaches can also benefit from the series. 

I'll be continuing to offer complimentary support through the twice a month community calls which are open to anyone who would like to drop in. Save the dates (all calls are on Mondays from 11 - 1130 am ET):
Today - April 6 - In Focus: Strengths (for you, your team, your business)
April 13 - Design Hack - Join me for a 45 minute hands on session to breathe life into your next program
April 20 - Myths around Virtual and Remote Work and Teams

I look forward to continuing to serve you,
Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
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 productivity, teamwork and business issues.
​Contact her by phone at (416)996-8326

Instagram : @coachingbizbuilder & @remotepathways
Check out upcoming programs on our calendar - Virtual Facilitation, Group Coaching Training
Working remote? Listen into the Remote Pathways Podcast on your favorite podcast player!

 Each month I publish a short daily action guide called the 1BizStepADay. It's a daily prompt geared to support you in action around your business. With this being the 16th month of publication, I continue to enjoy hearing about how readers are using the prompts. Here's a link to this month's 1BizStep a Day for April 2020.
This month I've opted to continue our focus on remote work. As most of you know, we are living in an unprecedented time of billions of people needing to work remotely. I hope that you, and your colleagues, will find that this provides a little creative spurt in your day.
The Coaching Business Builder, and PlanDoTrack (a workbook planner geared for remote professionals) were originally intended to be an analog workbook and planner. With printer capabilities being impacted by the current health context. I'm pleased to announce that you can now purchase a PDF copy of both workbook planners at the Potentials Realized online store. Print them off at home! You can pick up a copy of PlanDoTrack here.  Pick up a PDF copy of Coaching Business Builder here.

A reminder that I will be continuing to host my regular Monday Community Calls throughout April virtually. We meet on Mondays from 11 - 1130 am ET. The topic for April 6th is In Focus: Strengths - for you, your team, your business. Hope you will join me in my zoom room.

Enjoy your conversations!

Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton - GroupCoachingEssentials | Potentials Realized 
Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder
Join us for an upcoming ICF-CCE approved program including Group Coaching Essentials (8.75 CCEs), Advanced Group and Team Coaching Practicum (10 CCEs), or the PlanDoTrack Facilitator Training (24 CCEs). 
What's possible if you take daily steps on your business for 60 Days? Join our 60 Day Coaching Business Builder Accelerator program here!
Author of Effective Group Coaching (2010), Coaching Business Builder (2018), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013). Check out my author page on Amazon for all publications.
Email: info@potentialsrealized.com

This time last year I hosted a Q1 reflective stock taking session that became very popular. Given how valuable people found it, I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. Here is a link to that webinar so you can follow along. 
 
Quarterly reviews are an invaluable tool to see how things are going with your business. It’s an opportunity to take stock of:

• Your accomplishments
• Your learning
• Your focus
• Your relationships
• Your goals
• Your projects

​And also your numbers - - what have you been tracking? What do your Monthly Daily Trackers say?

If you are using the Coaching Business Builder there are 4 quarterly planners built into the guide. You will want to make sure that you review the monthly stock taking pages and carry your major learning over so you have a cumulative summary in one place.

Quarterly reviews are also an opportunity to look ahead. What do you notice about:

• Your annual goals and milestones for this quarter?
• The key activities you have earmarked?
• The one-off activities and tasks you have – i.e. renewals etc?
• Relationships which need attention?

The activities you want to do on a consistent basis (Note: One of my favorite quarterly events which got me into the flow of posting on Instagram was a 90-day commitment around daily posts). What are the tasks and activities you want to focus on, on a daily basis this quarter? Have you got your trackers ready? Now’s the time to pull them out.

I hope that you’ll take 10 – 15 minutes today to get yourself organized for the new quarter. Is there anything you want to keep visible -i.e. writing out your goals and commitments in a place that is visible so you can review it. Perhaps you put it on your phone or on a whiteboard or on a list by your computer. Remember the old project management adage: 15 minutes of planning saves up to 60 minutes of unfocused effort.

Enjoy your reflection and planning!
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton - GroupCoachingEssentials | Potentials Realized 
Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder
Join us for an upcoming ICF-CCE approved program including Group Coaching Essentials (8.75 CCEs), Advanced Group and Team Coaching Practicum (10 CCEs), or the PlanDoTrack Facilitator Training (24 CCEs). 
What's possible if you take daily steps on your business for 60 Days? Join our 60 Day Coaching Business Builder Accelerator program here!
Author of Effective Group Coaching (2010), Coaching Business Builder (2018), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013). Check out my author page on Amazon for all publications.
Email: info@potentialsrealized.com
​

My hope is that for all of you reading this, that you and your loved ones are remaining healthy. As we step into the end of Q1, I think many of us have been struck that the new decade has been full of surprises and pivots for business.

Over the last few weeks as COVID-19 has impacted North America after sweeping the rest of the world, I've been hosting regular virtual lunchtime calls, bringing together coaches from all backgrounds for some connection, discussion around what it means to go virtual, support for clients as they go virtual, virtual facilitation skills, and also business pivot topics.

If you weren't able to join me for those calls, I hope you will take a look at some of the recordings here at the Virtual Lunchtime Playlist, including Thursday March 26ths  call geared to virtual small business.

It's an unprecedented time, which is encouraging all of us to step up and lead in our own way.

I will continue to take a lead in our work here at Potentials Realized around support for coaches as well as the larger cross section of virtual and remote professionals which continues to focus on support for virtual teams and leaders.  My 2017 book, Effective Virtual Conversations, has been embraced by many organizations who are using it internally to guide their virtual meeting practices, virtual leadership, and also 
As some of you know, over the last year I've been training up a number of professionals who are also able to lead work around PlanDoTrack, which is a workbook and planner geared for virtual and remote professionals. I'll be doing another facilitator training for this whole body of work starting in a few weeks - it's a 24 hour course. Email me if you want to learn more.
Our focus at the Learning Lab and Design Studio in the last couple of months has been on virtual work and designing and leading programming that has the greatest impact. We meet on the 1st and 3rd Fridays of each month from 8 - 845 am ET or 845 - 930 am ET.
Another area of growth I've seen in recently months with programming has been attendance at the Virtual Facilitation Essentials program, which I call a virtual train-the-trainer. It's geared for those who want hands-on practice and learning about how to lead and design INTERACTIVE, VIRTUAL CONVERSATIONS, based on my 2017 book, Effective Virtual Conversations. Upcoming dates include a five week session starting on Monday March 30th, and one day offerings on Wednesday April 1 and 8, 2020. Click here to learn more and reserve your spot.
Business at the heart of any coaching business. With that in mind, I want to remind you of the regular community calls open to everyone and complimentary which  I will continue to hold on Mondays from 11 - 1130 am ET several times a month. Please drop in and see us. 
Join us tomorrow, Monday March 3oth, from 11-1130 am ET for a hands-on Quarterly Planning Hack, taking stock of where you want to go for Q2 and where you've been in Q1. Join us in my zoom room tomorrow.

I look forward to continuing to serve you.

Best
Jennifer

This year I’ve been having a lot of fun working with coaches on going a bit deeper into what they know about their clients. For several years, I’ve shared the Sweetspot Exercise of exploring what your strengths are, what your clients want and what you are great at. I first published this back in 2013 in From One to Many (download a copy of that marketing chapter here. (Use code 4411 and access the Marketing Chapter on Coaching Many).

This year I’ve been going deeper than this in the Coaching Biz Growth Lab and Learning Lab and Design Studio. We’ve turned to a number of tools from the Design Thinking Toolbox, including empathy maps, as well as thinking about how focus groups can help to broaden your understanding of what your clients want.

Having led focus groups in most of my roles over the last 3 decades – whether it was with government officials, community groups, leaders, HR teams, or executive committees – there can be a great cross section of generic questions you may want to tap into including questions along the lines of:

1. What’s important for you?
2. As you consider your industry/role/focus, what are the current trends?
3. What are the current opportunities you see in your role/focus/industry?
4. What do you see as some of the challenges in your role/focus/industry?
5. What do you need in order to do your best work (or thrive/excel etc)?
6. What supports are of greatest benefit to you – (explore things like on-demand vs. live, coaching vs learning)
7. How much time do you have to dedicate to learning?
8. What’s the most important goal you have for the next year

What else is important to explore within the time you have?

Enjoy the conversations!
​Jennifer

Here at the Coaching Business Builder, during the mid part of 2019 I did a series of marketing posts around the nine promotional vehicles I touch on in Section 3 of Coaching Business Builder. They include: Speaking, Blogging, Podcasting, Networking, Article Writing, Product Development, Lunch and Learns, Associations, Trade Shows and Conferences

Given that marketing is usually an ongoing effort for businesses of all ages (yes, even if you’ve been around for a while, marketing is still important – there’s always a next inflection point), it can be useful to build in time on a regular basis to be putting attention around marketing campaigns.

Just like the tagline of Daily Steps + Consistent Action = Momentum asserts, in marketing it often about the consistency which is important. A one-off email or one-off tweet may not capture the attention of who you want to connect with.

Some of the marketing approaches I’ve been experimenting with this year include my focus on podcasting, as well as my continued focus on Instagram, articles and also blogging.

What are the approaches you are experimenting with at the moment?

What are you noticing you are enjoying?

What’s feeling like it needs a boost?
 
Regardless of marketing vehicle, it can be useful to have a variety of ideas to pull from. Whether you are focusing on Instagram and need a list of post ideas, or you are focusing on podcasting and want to focus in on your exploration.

Enjoy!
​Jennifer

Jennifer Britton - GroupCoachingEssentials | Potentials Realized 
Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder
Join us for an upcoming ICF-CCE approved program including Group Coaching Essentials (8.75 CCEs), Advanced Group and Team Coaching Practicum (10 CCEs), or the PlanDoTrack Facilitator Training (24 CCEs). 
What's possible if you take daily steps on your business for 60 Days? Join our 60 Day Coaching Business Builder Accelerator program here!
Author of Effective Group Coaching (2010), Coaching Business Builder (2018), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013). Check out my author page on Amazon for all publications.
Email: info@potentialsrealized.com
​

One of the terms that stands out for me in terms of last year’s focus in the business development world was that of the marketing funnel. The marketing funnel is a term that describes the ways you invite prospective clients and customers into your orbit.
The funnel simply looks like an inverted pyramid or a funnel. The top is wide, scaling down to the bottom. If you have a copy of the Coaching Business Builder you can work through your own funnel on page 8.  I've also included one here to the side bar.
 
We can explore the funnel on two levels –

1. What’s our mix of products and services at each layer of the funnel? 
2. What are we doing at every level to bring people into the different layers of the funnel – building deepening layers of awareness, relationship, purchase and advocacy?

We will look at each level from the perspective of what you are offering in terms of your products or services. Then we’ll look at it in terms of how you are building relationships.

At the top of the funnel we have those items which are free or no fee. This is the widest part of the funnel and it is geared to attract the most amount of people.  It’s also the place where we want to build brand awareness around our different products and services. The focus at this top end of the funnel is to ATTRACT new people and to share with them what you have to offer at a FREE or LOW FEE way. It’s an opportunity to spotlight snippets of what you offer.
​
At this level we might include things like:

• A downloadable checklist or template to support our clients
• Blog posts or Instagram feeds
• A daily challenge (5 days) to support clients in taking action towards their goals
• Facebook Live calls or Community Calls where we discuss some of the more common questions opportunities, challenges and resources for our focus of work
• Delivering a webinar for a larger association or group

The goal here is to start building a connection and conversation with people.

What do you have at the widest part of the funnel - FREE or VERY LOW FEE, focused on ATTRACT?

At the next level of the funnel, you will have low priced offerings. Again, the purpose is to continue the conversation, and strengthen relationships and start generating money. It is often to help people consider your services at a lower price point and start the conversation with you. They will get more than a taster and probably get an experience of what your services can provide for them.

At this second level, which is geared to get people to CONVERT to a higher level or next product, this might include:

• A book
• A short e-book bringing together some of your blog posts in a compendium
• A short video-based course highlighting some of the tips or latest research around the topics you coach around
• A longer challenge (7 days for example)

At this layer you are starting to share more about your business, the philosophies which underpin it and who you are and what you offer.

At the third layer, ENGAGE, we have mid-priced programming. This is perhaps where your live offerings of retreats or group coaching might reside. At this point, people are making an investment into your offerings, and they are likely to become a fan of what you offer. They are the ones who are likely to move to even higher priced items, now or later.

There may be a next layer where people work with you on an ongoing basis on mainstream offerings. For some coaches this is where your regular one-on-one coaching will reside, or retreat day with a team.

Finally, at the top end of the funnel (the smallest part), where it is likely at the highest rate, and most intensive (or highest touch) work – you have the CONNECT phase where these people are likely to become the ADVOCATES of your work. They are the “RAVING fans” or people who will buy everything you have to offer.  This might include a face-to-face piece of Intensive work with you through a Weekend Program OR a VIP Day.

Exercise:
As you consider your business mix for your work, what would you put in each of these layers? Which programs could benefit from some attention and/or need to be developed?

All the best,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton - GroupCoachingEssentials | Potentials Realized 
Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder
Join us for an upcoming ICF-CCE approved program including Group Coaching Essentials (8.75 CCEs), Advanced Group and Team Coaching Practicum (10 CCEs), or the PlanDoTrack Facilitator Training (24 CCEs). 
What's possible if you take daily steps on your business for 60 Days? Join our 60 Day Coaching Business Builder Accelerator program here!
Author of Effective Group Coaching (2010), Coaching Business Builder (2018), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013). Check out my author page on Amazon for all publications.
Email: info@potentialsrealized.com