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

Welcome back. Last week you did some research around what possible giveaways you could offer to your clients. It might be a video, podcast series, mini – e course, article, or even a checklist.

What are those things you wish you had?

This week, in part 2 of the series, you are invited to map out your giveaway, and start drafting it. What are the major elements of this project?

Consider these questions –

• What is the purpose of this item?
• What are the 3 main points?
• What question does it answer or solution does it offer for the client?
• What are the elements of the item?
• What other resources can the product direct the client to?
• What is your call to action?
• What are the discrete steps you need to complete in order to complete this project?

Once you have a good idea of what it can look like, spend some time drafting it out.

Be ready for a next step next week!

Best,
​Jennifer

There comes a time (or many times) when we are challenged to think about our business models. How is it working? What changes are needed?
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One of the inflection points you may see in your business is the need to build your own team.

I’d like you to return back to your vision for this year. What are the major projects you have planned? Who can help you get there – quicker, faster, better?
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Building your own team takes effort, especially while you are bringing people on board. You’ll want to consider things like:

• What’s important to communicate about the culture, and values of the business?
• What is important with customer service? Around quality? Around outcome? Around the philosophy of the business?
• What are the non-negotiables? i.e. THIS IS how we do things
• What are your expectations in terms of punctuality, quality, feedback, attention to detail, responsiveness, ability to work when you are needing them?
• What are the roles that are going to help you as a business grow, offer the programs and products you want and meet the challenges of the landscape you operate within?

Even before going to hire people, it will be important to consider what you want to communicate about your business, it’s culture and how you do things.

I’ll be sharing another few posts around the area of growing your own team in the next month. Next week we turn to creating job descriptions for team members.

Enjoy
Jennifer
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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?

“Tasks expand to the amount of time we give them” asserts the Parkinson’s Rule. I remember first reading about this in the Four-Hour Workweek from Tim Ferris. Think about it - what tasks have expanded to the amount of time you have given them?
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Whether you are a solopreneur or work with a VA or other freelance members, having a variety of tools to manage projects is key. These tools are likely to be virtual so you can share them with others, and you may have different tools for different purposes.
In selecting a tool consider:

• What’s going to work best?
• What are the requirements? I.e. How will we use the tool?
• What’s important to note about this?
• What is the Project Scope – Time, Budget and Effort?
• What is the progress?
• How much time is it really taking?
• What are the project requirements?

Two tools I like to use the capture and communicate projects can include:

1. Asana – Asana is another great project resource, and free of charge (at least at this stage for some functionality). Asana has the advantage of being able to segment what you share with whom, so if you work with a VA and also a graphic designer you can consider what you share with each one or both. Asana allows you to upload documents, set deadlines and also assign responsibilities.
2. Trello – While I use Trello more for program design, I love the visual interface of Trello. It visually breaks down more complex ideas, and tasks into smaller particles. Consider how Trello might support you with your programs or projects. If you are using Trello – please feel free to comment and share with us how you are using it.
3. Good old-fashioned tables – As a new project manager in the early 1990s, it was important to document, document, document. As Word Processors were coming into being, accessible capturing of information was becoming the norm and the priority. Almost three decades later I still return back to the basics and many of my team members say they love the simplicity and clarity of a one-page weekly project outline. It doesn’t have to be super complicated – I usually have 4 columns for:

• Task - What is required?
• Description – More detail about the task – project requirements, what will success look like with the end product? Get granular here and clarify your assumptions!
• Resources needed - highlighting any documents needed, or resources to use, or people to reach out to.
• Deadline – What is the deadline for the task? When it is required? Be realistic and also think about what happens if that deadline is not met. What ripple effect could it create?

What are the tools you want to start incorporating into your work this year, to make projects flow more smoothly?
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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
Looking for some daily focus around your work? Join me over on Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder for a daily question or prompt as part of the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series. 
Check out the November 2018 CBB Book Club Call entitled "2019 Planning. Already?". You can view it here.

This week our attention is going to shift to quickly explore 5 key skills in project management. Whether you are creating an e-book, designing a new program or deciding on new systems for your business, as solopreneurs we are regularly managing projects as a team of one.
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In project management, historically, the foundation has been that for any project there is a triple constraint – time, budget and scope. Like a triangle, it is said that these things are fixed (at least in traditional project management). So if my budget gets reduced, it might take a little longer to do things as we now need to do them in-house OR the scope of the project may change given that we no longer have resources to complete a six month project, so instead we may need to do a three month project.
 
With this in mind the first project management skill I think is important is getting good at identifying project requirements.

• What is the project?
• What are the deadlines?
• What are the milestones along the way? These are checkpoint activities where you can see progress?
• What resources are needed? Project manager of all kinds have operated in this framing of being aware of the triple constraint ….

Other key questions to be asking here are:

• What is the project scope?
• What’s involved with it?
• What is IN focus? What is outside of focus (or scope)?

 
Spending additional time making sure we have this first step of project requirements right, helps to make the rest of it flow more smoothly (usually!).
 
It was in this phase of project identification that I first became aware of the adage that “10 minutes of planning can save 2 hours of unfocused effort”. So true!
 
With this is in mind, let’s look at five key project management skills that solopreneurs will want to boost:

1. Knowledge of self and skills – Self- awareness is key to solopreneurial success. Knowing what we are good at, what we can learn, and when we need to reach out to others, can make the difference between a project that flows and one that gets deadlocked or becomes a source of frustration. In knowing ourselves, we want to be able to identify key skills which are important in the immediate term, as well as ones we will be using regularly. Creating a robust network to reach out to, to find others short term who can round out of skill needs, is critical for solopreneurial success. “No person is an island!”.
2. Time estimation – Estimating the amount of time required for a task is also critical. One part of this equation is getting better at knowing how long tasks really do take. Part of this is experience, and we may have peers and mentors that can advise us. It can be useful to build in some contingency time for our own learning curve, given that tasks will take longer to complete the first few times we do them, or if we do them infrequently. I’m thinking of a recent experience I had where I had to set up a welcome auto-responder for a give-away. I do this about once a year and while I should “retain it”, it was as if the task was totally new!
3. Clarifying what’s required - Given that most of us are working on our own, we will be needing to reach out to others to help us get work done. Whether it’s going to a site like Fiverr or Upwork, finding good experts (graphic designers, financial experts) that can work with us to make our projects happen, is crucial. In making this successful, we need to be good at clarifying what’s required (think – What will a successful end result for this project/task look like? – be specific, get granular), as well as finding people.
4. Relationship Building and Negotiation – At the end of the day, things need to get done and projects need to get completed. If we can’t complete projects, it may have a significant impact on the business. As solopreneurs, we can’t go to a boss to negotiate the triple constraint – i.e. give me more time to complete this or give me more money – we have that under our control. In some ways this makes project management that much easier. What is may mean is that we need to go out and enroll others to our projects – requiring both relationship-building and negotiation skills.

What do you see as essential project management skills for solopreneurs? Which ones have you been leaning into as a project team of one?

Share with us using the comments below.

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 November 2018 CBB Book Club Call entitled "2019 Planning. Already?". You can view it here.

Most coaches, solopreneurs, and business owners are going to be involved in a variety of projects during the coming year. What can make it challenging is the fact that you might be working alone on a project, moving it ahead in small increments OR working with an entire virtual team.

Many of the same principles apply from program design (a focus here this past fal) to project planning, and we’re going to widen our focus a bit. From Lean, to Agile, to Six Sigma, larger and smaller organizations of all kinds have been iterating the way they work.
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As coaches we may be involved in projects big and small – from creating a new digital product, to organizing a series of workshop. Honing our skills in project planning and project management is very important.
 As you step into your quarterly projects consider asking, reflecting and fostering discussion around these questions related to project planning:

10 Questions to ask:

1. What is the end result we are looking for?
2. What is important?
3. What are the non-negotiables?
4. What resources are going to help us get there?
5. What are the triple constraints? What are the timelines, the resources, and budget we have to operate within?
6. What milestones are we aiming towards? How clear is everyone in terms of what success will look like around these?
7. What could pull us off course?
8. What will help us stay focused?
9. What communication and feedback loops have we put into place?
10. What’s going to support that effort?

 
What other questions would you ask around the current projects you are working on?

Let us know what projects you have on the docket by sharing in the comments!
 
Best wishes,
Jennifer
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​One area coaches may find themselves spending a lot of time around, especially if they work with groups or teams, is the area of program design. Whether it’s designing a webinar, delivering a workshop or facilitating a group coaching program, the elements of program design are all similar.
Design is a critical skill set to have, and since I’ve stated tracking this as part of my own work cycle using the monthly tracker in the Coaching Business Builder, I’ve been surprised in noticing how many days of each month has some level of design effort.
In the next month here at the blog,  I’ll be looking at different layers of the program design process, given that this is one time of the year where many of us are looking to launch a new initiative for the 2019.

For those interested in taking a deeper dive into these topics, I go more into it all of my books – refer to:
Chapter 5 – Designing Your Group Coaching -  in Effective Group Coaching (link on amazon)
Chapter 4 – Design Principles and Practices - in From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching.
Chapter 5: Creating the Container in Effective Virtual Conversations where I share the PEBBLLES model for considerations for virtual program design

You will also want to check out the November 2018 article I wrote for the Coaching Tools Company on Signature Programs. You can read it here.
Question to Consider:
What are your 2019 program design plans? 
Use the trackers and monthly planners in the Coaching Business Builder to schedule in time to work on your designs.

Best,
Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton
Author of the Coaching Business Builder Workbook and Planner
Potentials Realized
Phone: 416-996-8326
Check out the  November 2018 CBB Book Club Call entitled "2019 Planning. Already?". You can view it here.

Welcome to the Coaching Business Builder blog! This site is geared to support coaches who are growing their businesses - taking them to the next plateau or starting from scratch. Whether you are working on it as a SIDE GIG or full-time livelihood, business development is ongoing.

The inaugural blog post for this site is my annual summer project ideas post. Each summer I like to share a variety of summer projects you might want to consider as you move into the new season. This year I've done it in video form, and you can also download the related handout. Enjoy!

As I reference in the video, the Coaching Business Builder (CBB) Workbook and Planner evolved out of my own interest and need to a space to capture my project ideas and tasks. The CBB Workbook and Planner is available for pre-order on Amazon and should be released on August 1st, just in time for fall planning and back to work/school.

Keep posted for special pre-launch bonus offers I'll be announcing in the coming weeks.

Download a copy of the 20 different project ideas I share in this 20 minute video here.

Listen into this year's summer project ideas. What do you want to put your attention around?

What is your 2018 summer project? Share it with us below in the comments!

Enjoy your start to summer,
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
GroupCoachingEssentials.com | CoachingBusinessBuilder.com
Author of Effective Virtual Conversations and the CBB Planner and Workbook