​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.
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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:

• Who do you want to connect with? Is it other business owners or a certain niche group?
• What’s the purpose of attending an event? Take a few minutes before attending an event to consider what you want to get out of the experience. Is it to find a resource, learn something or….?
• What do you want to contribute? Networking is about establishing and building a conversation. Conversations take two people. What is it that you want to contribute to the conversation of the group you are connecting in with?
• What do you want to get out of the conversation? To the dual nature of conversation, what are you hoping to walk away from the conversation with?
• What do you want to leave people with? Is it a business card, a brochure, a post card or other? Moo.com and Vistaprint.com both offer some creative marketing materials.

​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.

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:

• Do you want to start your own?
• Do you want to partner with others?
• How much time do you have to dedicate to this?
• What is your overall goal for podcasting? Raising visibility? Expanding your network? Enhancing brand presence? Offering another connection and relationship building opportunity with your community and prospective clients?

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

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?”. 
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As you consider this question you might also explore:

• What are they looking for?
• What are the issues that they are focused on?
• What approaches will add value – do they want more community and therefore a live program or something that will bring people together, or are they looking for something they can consume on their own time, at their own pace?

 
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.

In both the Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack, I include four business philosophies which are critical to all types of virtual and remote professionals, and business owners today – Focus, Experimentation, Momentum and Reflective Pause.

In my work with teams, and individuals, over the last fifteen years in my business I’ve seen that these make the difference between good and exceptional.

With this in mind, over the next few weeks I’ll be taking a deeper dive into the realm of these four areas looking at:

• What it means in today’s business context
• Why it’s important
• Ideas for putting it into practice
• And resources you may want to follow up around

​A reminder that if you like these topics you may want to check out my weekly Facebook Live, where I put into voice quick planning ideas and activities. You will find it over at the PlanDoTrack Facebook page.

Let’s turn our attention to the first topic of FOCUS.

We live and operate today in what is often considered an era of distraction. Our ability to focus and keep our eye on what is important to us, and to our work, is key.
Did you know that:

• The average worker receives 90 emails in the span of a day?
• It takes 22 minutes to get back on track after an interruption?

It’s not uncommon for workers (not just managers) to be spending 5-10 hours a week in meetings? I’ve met managers who wear the badge of
Focused work and attention are critical, and essential in order to create foundations, and grow a business.

How To- Creating Focus:

• Consider building in focused blocks of work – turn off email, move into a conference room, or take your work mobile. What will give you the space and time to do the focused work you need in your job/business?
• Leverage the circadian rhythm. Science continues to show that we have different times of day when we are at our best. What are those times for you? What can you do to ensure you have focused work times within those blocks.
• Create your to-do list of Top 5. With change being the norm for many workplaces, having a top five list each day is important. It’s interesting as the writing of James Clear has pointed to the early 1900s productivity hack from Ivy who asserted that a focus on a top 6 list every day would lead to productivity advances. Whether it’s five or six, being able to check core items off the list can help with efficiency and also motivation.
• Know your priorities – and your teams. Priorities also keep us grounded. They will help us shape our top five as well as discern where our time needs to go. What are your priorities for the week? The month? The quarter?

 
Refer To - Focus
When: The Science of Perfect Timing – Daniel Pink
Atomic Habits – James Clear
Outer Order and Inner Calm – Gretchen Rubin
Deep Work and Digital Minimalism – Cal Newport

Check out my April 3, 2019 Facebook Live 

Wishing you all the best,
Jennifer

This week it’s launch time! You’ve done it!

Over the last four weeks (or more) you have been working on your free offer or giveaway. This is key in terms of letting others know what you do and offering them something of value.
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Doing this regularly can help further develop your reputation and let people know what you have to offer.

This week as you go to launch, consider the varying ways you are going to continually let people know about this offering. Some possible ways might include:

• In your signature line
• On your blog
• In your newsletter
• Via your network
• Instagram post
• LinkedIn Status update

What are the ways you are going to let everyone know about this?

Have a great day!
​Jennifer

Over the last few weeks you have been busy working on your free giveaway. It’s now been drafted, and you have figured out where it’s going to go. It’s not quite ready yet!

Take some time this week to-do a last review and perhaps get some feedback. Maybe you have a routine of passing materials off to your loved ones for a quick second set of eyes. Maybe you have a community that supports you on this. Who can give the project a review?
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This week you will also want to focus in on how and where you are going to promote this. Don’t forget the 7 to 11 times rule. The landscape of free offerings is super-saturated at times.  You will want to make sure you are regularly talking about this and letting people know that it exists. If you haven’t done so, make a list of WHERE, WHEN and HOW you are going to let people know about it (Here’s a challenge - make sure you have at least 11 different touchpoints!).

Share with us what you have been working on – you can share it here in the comments, or over on the Effective Group Coaching Facebook page.

Best,
​Jennifer

​For the last few weeks we have been working on your giveaway or “free item”. In a coaching business these might include an audio or video, a checklist, an article or podcast. The item is designed to provide you with an opportunity to get the word out about what you have to offer as well as build relationships with prospective clients.

During week 1 of this series you were encouraged to consider what it was that you wanted to offer. You did some research and looked around.

Last week you drafted things out a bit more.

This week, take a look at what you have created and:

• Polish it – edit the document.
• Consider what graphics or resources would support this project.
• Draft a sales copy – what are the ways you are going to let others know about what you have to offer?

Consider things like:

• The brand – what elements do you want to incorporate.
• Consider where and when you are going to let people know about it’s availability.
• How, and when, it will need to be updated. (Ideally it will be an evergreen item that will stand the test of time.)

What else is going to move this project forward?

Best,
Jennifer

For many years in my former life and work within the global sector as a Program Manager, I was involved in recruitment and hiring people for projects large and small. At one point in my career I realized that I had undertaken several hundred interviews to fill roles on projects in one year alone!
A key part of finding good people for project and work, goes back to being clear on what the role is, and being excellent in communicating that.
In building your team, getting better at defining roles and even writing position descriptions is imperative. This holds true for project roles, sub-contracting roles, as well as full time roles.
Questions to consider as you go about creating position descriptions are:

1. What is the role? Outline what is required. What’s the job title?
2. What type of role is this? Supporting role, customer facing…
3. What are the job requirements? What is needed in order to be successful? Consider the skills, and experiences someone needs in order to be successful in this role.
4. Responsibilities – What will the person be required to do?
5. Tasks – What are the actual tasks people are required to complete?
6. Reporting – Who will they report to? How often? What is required around reporting?
7. Relationships – Who will they need to interface with? What relationship can they expect from you?
8. Support and Resourcing – What support and resourcing can they expect?
9. Feedback and Performance Measures – What are the metrics they are being measured on? What does successful job performance look like? What feedback loops can they expect?

In creating a position description, it can be useful to ask:

• Who else has a business model or team like you do? Do they have a job description you can start with?
• When is it important to revisit this?

Human Resource Management may not be part of every coaches wheel-house. If this is something new for you and you’d like more information, two good “go to resources” or starting points are:

1. The Balance Careers – Susan Heathfield has been writing in this area for many years now. Check out her post on How to Write a Job Description for a Job opening  here.
2. Paul Slezak’s Five Simple Steps to Writing a Concise Job Description at the RecruitLoop blog.

Note that job description/position descriptions may vary from location to location and can have different legal requirements. Be sure to reach out to your local Small Business Centers for more information on local level realities.

Best wishes,
Jennifer

PS – A reminder that this month’s 30 days focus in the 1BizStepaDay series is around Relationships. Download a copy of the 1BizStepaDay series here. What are the daily actions you are taking to build your relationships during this month of February?

As we step into the month of February, our focus is going to shift to the realm of relationships. Collaboration in all its forms is essential to a thriving coaching business.

On the client level, we are always partnering, and developing deep relationships with our clients. In fact, this partnership is the foundation for successful coaching. If trust and connection is not present, it’s unlikely that a client will be open to discussing their ideas.

While prospective clients may first find us on social media, the next step is usually a call to check for “fit” and that we are the best support for their needs.
Consider what you are doing to build trust and connection with your clients, and prospective clients.

We may also be partnering with others in our industry – with other coaches who we might work with in a variety of ways. This might entail designing and co-leading programs together or bringing others on board through a sub-contracting relationship.

Consider how you are partnering with others in our industry, or related industries this year. Make a list of this.

If we are a solopreneur coach, enlisting others to help us round out our skill set helps us accomplish tasks me may not have skills in – from accounting to graphic design.
Who are the service professionals you’d like to build relationships with to help you with your business?
​
As a solopreneur, relationships are critical for success. Consider these ways we may be working with, and through others:

• To complete projects
• In designing and developing products
• To serve clients
• To help others achieve their goals
• In marketing – having others refer us, partnering in joint ventures, coming together with other professionals to co-host an event like a trade show, a virtual giveaway

What else is important for you to note about relationships this month?
Enjoy!
Jennifer
 
PS – A reminder that this month’s 30 days focus in the 1BizStepaDay series is around Relationships. Download a copy of the 1BizStepaDay series here. What are the daily actions you are taking to build your relationships during this month of February?

The tagline for Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack is "Daily Steps + Consistent Action = Momentum". Over the last few decades I have seen as a coach, and in my former work as a program manager, how small steps every day, really add up for businesses of all sizes - micro-enterprise, solopreneurs, and larger businesses.

With this in mind, this year I'm hosting a new social challenge I'm calling 1 Biz Step a Day. Each month I'm offering daily prompts to support you to get into small steps around your business. Let's see what consistent actions it leads to and what momentum it creates!

I hope that you will follow along and share your progress, not only here at the blog, but also over on Instagram at @CoachingBizBuilder and the Effective Group Coaching Facebook Page.

Download a copy of the 1 Biz Step a Day for January here. The focus is on business fundamentals - communication, systems and other basics. Putting the foundations in order helps move things more quickly, later in the year.

ENJOY!
Jennifer

PS - Later this week I'll be kicking off another year-long project you will probably be interested in. It's a 52 Week planning series I'll be sharing over at my sibling "PlanDoTrack" Website. I'm calling it the 52 Weeks of Planning, Doing and Tracking.
Consider it a weekly compendium to the Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack Workbooks - structured activities and prompts to get you working through your workbook and planner. First prompt will be Friday at 6 am! Read more about it here.

Best wishes for 2019,
Jennifer Britton
Author of Coaching Business Builder (2018), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), 
Potentials Realized - Supporting Coaches, Businesses, Leaders and Teams 
Is 2019 your year to take it ahead? Join me for one of our two annual groups - The Learning Lab and Design Studio (focusing on program design) or the Coaching Biz Growth Lab (focusing on coaching business development)
Phone: 416-996-8326