As we continue in our journey around marketing, another vehicle to consider is that of networking. Building relationships is an important part of our work as service providers, particularly as coaches. I often say that coaching is a much deeper conversation than usual. In coaching, we are asking for people to be vulnerable, and to go into the exciting, and sometimes scary, areas of dreams and fears. As such, strong relationships, trust and connection are critical. Networking can be an important activity to undertaken regularly, as long as there is a focus and it doesn’t become all consuming. Questions to help with focused networking are:
Enjoy the conversations! Jennifer Jennifer Britton, PCC, CPCC
Author multiple books including the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner (2018), Effective Group Coaching (2010) Potentials Realized Phone: 416-996-8326 Check out the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series of daily prompts for your work and business over on Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder.
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The rate of podcast growth is astronomical. With the advent of Alexa and Google Home devices, audio can go anywhere. From the kitchen, to the car, to our walks. Whether you are hosting your own podcast, or showing up as a guest on others, podcasting is another important potential vehicle for getting the word out about what you do and what you have to offer. Given that coaching is a verbal modality, it’s also a great way to introduce yourself and let others get to know you. Some of the questions you might want to consider when exploring podcasting as a possible vehicle are:
There really is a range of possible podcasting options available. One great starting point to see what’s out there, and who is looking for guests, is to check out the PodcastGuest.com site. If you host a podcast, let us know what it is, so we can follow. If you need guests, let us know what type so guest you are looking for. I would be more than pleased to drop in for a conversation as well, to talk about leadership, teamwork or business development issues from a coaching or virtual lens. Enjoy! Jennifer Jennifer Britton, PCC, CPCC
Author multiple books including the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner (2018), Effective Group Coaching (2010) Potentials Realized Phone: 416-996-8326 Check out the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series of daily prompts for your work and business over on Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder. As a blogger for more than 14 years now, I am passionate about this as a vehicle for those who like to write and want to be a content creator. Blogging can be a great first step to creating a more regular writing practice. Blogging is often more informal than other writing approaches, and can be shorter in length, with many blog posts ranging from 300 – 500 worlds. Of course, posts can be longer than that, especially if you post less frequently. In addition to written blogs, vlogs - or video blogs – have also become a popular vehicle. Vlogs weave together video in delivery the blog message. From Wordpress, to blogs hosted on your own site, to the old school blogger platform, blogging is a powerful way to become a publisher. If you are considering blogging as one of your marketing vehicles, reflect on these questions:
Connect with others who can spread the word about your blog – There is a rich ecosystem of blogs in the blogosphere. In addition to publishing on your own blog, consider connecting with other bloggers in your community who might be interested in linking to your site and/or sharing your content. One of my favorite community vehicles I used to leverage (which still exist more than a decade later!) are blog Carnivals, where a group of bloggers come together to share content around a specific topic. This is a great way to connect in with new readers/followers and other community members in your niche. If you have a copy of the Coaching Business Builder, or PlanDoTrack, check out the activities in the blogging part of section 3. There are five or six useful questions for you to consider as you go to focus on blogging. What are the key steps you want to take this week around blogging? Writing and blogging are topics we are exploring at the Learning Lab and Design Studio this summer, and it’s exciting to hear about all the different areas people want to focus on. Best wishes, Jennifer Jennifer Britton, PCC, CPCC
Author multiple books including the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner (2018), Effective Group Coaching (2010) Potentials Realized Phone: 416-996-8326 Check out the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series of daily prompts for your work and business over on Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder. Speaking is a great way to get known, build your network, and show your work in action. As someone who speaks to groups and organizations more than 50 times a year (mostly virtually), here are five things to consider in creating a WOW presentation:
Speaking can be a great way to start the conversation with your clients. It can be as interactive and dialogue based, or one-way as you would like. Regardless of whether it’s in person or virtual, I hope that today’s post gets you thinking about some of the practicalities and considerations when speaking. There’s more for you to consider around the marketing strategy of speaking in Section 3 of the Coaching Business Builder. If you have a copy of the book, be sure to read through and work through the exercises on pages 77 and 78 of the Coaching Business Builder. Enjoy your conversations! Jennifer Jennifer Britton, PCC, CPCC
Author multiple books including the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner (2018), Effective Group Coaching (2010) Potentials Realized Phone: 416-996-8326 Check out the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series of daily prompts for your work and business over on Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder. A quick reminder that the Coaching Business Builder/PlanDoTrack Facilitator training begins on July 9th. This 18hour virtual train-the-trainer program will equip you to deliver your own training with clients. Grab a last minute spot! This month we start shifting our attention to marketing. It will take us through most of the summer. Section 3 of the Coaching Business Builder explores nine different marketing vehicles coaches may incorporate in terms of building relationships, and letting the world know about what they have to offer. While a lot of new business owners think that marketing is only something, they will do during their first few years in business, think again! Most businesses continue to move through growth plateaus as they mature. More importantly, as coaches, marketing goes hand in hand with relationships. A key part of marketing is about fostering support and services for your client (or prospective client) base. Coaching is a high touch service, and most people will want to get to know us (and like and trust us) before deciding to invest in coaching services. Over the next couple of months, we’ll take a look at some of the many different strategies coaches can consider utilizing in building relationships and marketing. As we get started with this topic, a number of things to keep in mind: What’s important for your clients? What do they want, need and prefer? For more than a decade I’ve shared what I term the Marketing Sweet Spot exercise with coaches who go through the Group Coaching Essentials program. You can read about it (and other marketing tips at the Digital chapter on Marketing Group and Team Coaching from my 2013 From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching Book. Click here to download and use code 4411 when prompted). What’s going to add value? Going hand in hand with what’s important for your clients (or prospective clients) is considering the question of “what’s going to add value?”. As you consider this question you might also explore:
What do you want to do, consistently? An old marketing adage is the 7 – 11 rule, which asserts that it may take 7 – 11 touch points before something registers and people even start to hear/notice something you are offering. Consistency can be as important as anything else, and many coaches stop at 2 - 3 messages about what they are offering. What can you do to seed your message in different ways? Maybe you do a newsletter announcement, a Facebook live, a tweet or speak about it. Many messages take time to take root. What do you want to do consistently over time? What’s going to leverage your strengths? What are the strategies you want to incorporate? Keeping in mind what your clients want, and what you want to do consistently, what are the strategies you want to incorporate? Starting next week we’ll explore 9 different promotional vehicles you might want to consider leveraging in your own marketing, messaging and relationship building. I include these nine strategies, along with further examples and questions for you to consider, in Section 3 of the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner. Over the next couple of months, we are going to explore nine different promotional vehicles I explore in the Coaching Business Builder – from speaking and blogging, to lunch and learns and partnering with associations. Stay tuned as we move through these areas in July and August. Best wishes, Jennifer Jennifer Britton, PCC, CPCC
Author multiple books including the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner (2018), Effective Group Coaching (2010) Potentials Realized Phone: 416-996-8326 Check out the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series of daily prompts for your work and business over on Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder. Want to offer this to your clients? Consider joining us for the PlanDoTrack/Coaching Business Builder Facilitator Training which starts virtually on July 9th. The tagline for the Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack is “Consistent Action + Daily Steps = Momentum. In other words, it’s the small daily, consistent actions that add up over time to create movement and/or momentum in our business. For many years throughout the 90 Days Success Program (2005 onwards), and more recently the Coaching Business Growth Lab, I have shared the One Percent Business Rule. This framework is grounded in the notion of taking daily steps towards your most important goals. In business today it is likely that we are working on important projects around the margins of our work and life. This is how each of my book publications has been birthed, and it’s how most of my presentations and program designs get built. As you engage with the notion of Consistent Action + Daily Steps = Momentum, consider these questions:
Check out other business philosophies grounded in the Coaching Business Builder here: Enjoy your week, Jennifer Jennifer Britton, PCC, CPCC
Author multiple books including the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner (2018), Effective Group Coaching (2010) Potentials Realized Phone: 416-996-8326 Check out the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series of daily prompts for your work and business over on Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder. One of my favorite activities over the last few years has been to create a summer project list of small, and larger tasks, to complete in what some find to be a quieter time. There always are lots of project possibilities in the summer months. Have you considered:
Best wishes, Jennifer Jennifer Britton, PCC, CPCC
Author multiple books including the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner (2018), Effective Group Coaching (2010) Potentials Realized Phone: 416-996-8326 Check out the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series of daily prompts for your work and business over on Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder. Building in regular pause points is invaluable in supporting focus, action and reflection. Kolb’s cycle of learning is commonly referred to as a four-step process known as ERGA – Experience, Reflection, Generalization and Application. Key to learning, according to this model, is that we take a “pause” to build in reflection after having an experience. It is this pause that allows us to cull learning and insights which we can then apply to other areas of our life and work. There are many different ways to reflect including:
Last month at the Learning Lab and Design Studio I was reminded of a great book called the Women’s Retreat Book by Jennifer Louden which is chock-full of great resources for creating and leading your own retreats. You’ll want to check it out. Other resources you might want to explore: Create a Pause Via Quarterly Retreats Using these questions (Coaching Tools Company Article) Undertake a quarterly review process with me (30 minutes - VIDEO). Be sure to grab your pen and journal for this one! Wishing you all the best, Jennifer PS - For those of you who want to bring some of this into your work, consider joining me on July 9th for the Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack Facilitator Training. I'll be leading a group of professionals through 6 x 3 hour facilitator virtual training sessions in July so you can lead this work with your own clients. More here. Jennifer Britton, PCC, CPCC
Author multiple books including the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner (2018), Effective Group Coaching (2010) Potentials Realized Phone: 416-996-8326 Check out the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series of daily prompts for your work and business over on Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder. The tagline at the PlanDoTrack and Coaching Business Builder is that Consistent Action + Daily Steps = Momentum. In other words, action creates action. This is key for business success today. What does momentum mean in your business? Like the metaphor of a rolling stone, more energy is required to get the stone rolling, and then it takes a life of its own. Practically: Make a list. Do things consistently. Figure out what the best rhythm for the project or task is going to be. In many creative projects it is easy to think that we don’t know where to go, when often it is more important to just get started and see where the creative process ensues. While starting new tasks may take a lot of effort, over time these actions become habits and “how we do things”. Resources: Momentum: How to Build It, Keep It or Get it Back – Michael McQueen Best, Jennifer Jennifer Britton, PCC, CPCC
Author multiple books including the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner (2018), Effective Group Coaching (2010) Potentials Realized Phone: 416-996-8326 Check out the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series of daily prompts for your work and business over on Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder. In today’s VUCA world, disruption is more the norm that the exception. This often means that what worked last time, will not work this time. Experimentation can therefore become a useful philosophy and habit. With the rapid pace of change, new industries, new jobs and new approaches are springing up on a regular basis. What have you tried lately? Are all your old approaches working as they used to? How to practice it: On a regular basis (i.e. each quarter), consider what would be useful to learn and/or experiment with (tools, processes, practices, skills etc). An experiment could involve trying something new out, tweaking an approach you have been using for a while (i.e. instead of doing a Facebook Live in the morning, what about trying it in the evening?). Why it can be valuable: There are many applications for experimentation in business. It can help us get into a pattern of trial and error, helping with diversification. Given that things are changing so quickly it may mean that we are better positioned for new, and unseen, options. A and B testing, where you pilot two approaches at once, has become a popular approach for many marketing initiatives, to see which one gets more engagement and traction. Questions to consider:
Carol Dweck: Growth Mindset (check out her concept of Not Yet) Best wishes, Jennifer Jennifer Britton, PCC, CPCC
Author multiple books including the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner (2018), Effective Group Coaching (2010) Potentials Realized Phone: 416-996-8326 Check out the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series of daily prompts for your work and business over on Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder. |
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Mentor Coaching Group for ACC/PCC -Mondays 1230 - 130 pm ET: June 7 - mid-September - Reserve your spot. ACC and PCC for ICF Credentialing Program Design Hack - 45 minutes - $97 - Sketch Out Your Next Program in this Facilitated Process! - Click here to Register Group Coaching Essentials (8.75 CCEs) - Next group will start Tuesdays on July 6th. Fridays 10 - 1135am ET: June 4, 11, 18, 25 (4 weeks) Virtual Facilitation Essentials (8.5 CCEs) - Join us for an upcoming one day program! Advanced Group and Team Coaching Practicum - starts - Tuesdays July 6th (5 weeks) (10 CCEs): Focused on providing you with virtual practice and feedback around your group coaching skills. Team Coaching Essentials for the Virtual, Remote and Hybrid World. Kicks off Monday June 14th 60 Day CBB Accelerator - Now as an On-demand Program.Bonus! This month's 1BizStepADayAuthorCoach Jennifer Britton has worked with entrepreneurs across a variety of sectors since the late 1990s, even before she was in business herself. From supporting micro-entreprise and eco-tourism businesses to working with service based entrepreneurs and coaches, her PRACTICAL and TACTICAL approach to business coaching is ACTION focused, with emphasis on AWARENESS as well. Jenn is the author of the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and planner, and 3 others books related to group and team coaching and virtual conversations. She also hosts the Coaching BIzGrowth Lab, an open-enrollment group coaching program for coaches. Jenn founded her business - Potentials Realized - in April 2004. Archives
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