Archive for July, 2010

Did you know there are at least 6 very different business models through which coaching is offered? In every case, when someone asks you what you do, coaching is not really the answer…but rather you will tell them the problem you solve. But you can use any of the models summarized below to deliver your services.

What is most important is that everything you do fits within your business model, sends prospects through your business model, and helps them move from a lower level of investment and services into the next higher level of investment and services. Most people, by contrast, do a teleclass here, a blog post there, an article next, and there is no clear relationship between them – nor do they tap into the power of leverage so that you are providing increasing value to the same customers, rather than always seeking out new customers.

Model #1: One-on-One Coaching Model

This is the model that most coaches have been taught: marketing to fill your practice with individual clients with whom you talk/work once a week, 3 or 4 weeks per month. You determine the number of clients you will serve based on how much time you want to be working each month.

Model #2: Coaching Gym

Either used as a standalone or in combination with some of the other models below, this is a model similar to a health club, believe it or not! You set coaching hours each week – e.g., 2-5 pm Eastern each Thursday. And your clients pay a monthly fee in order to get the call-in information and access you during those hours. If they call, great; if they don’t, they don’t – but they still pay. Some people are beginning to return calls if not everyone gets through, just to be sure all of them get their promised access.

Model #3: Membership Model

In this model, you create an online community for your target audience, with a membership platform, and invite them to become a member (at one or more levels) for a monthly fee. They can access downloadable pdf’s and audio mp3′s, perhaps a monthly group call with you, and whatever other benefits you wish to offer. This becomes a group of clients to whom you can provide special pricing for your higher-end programs.

Model #4: Mastermind/Group Coaching Model

Increasingly, people want to connect face to face with others that have similar concerns and interests to theirs. And the Mastermind group is the perfect way to do this. You invite people who attend an event or teleclass preview of the program, have a start date and end date, and request applications for the number of positions you have open in the group (typically 10 to 15 people). The coaching can include one or more two-day retreats with you and the group as well as monthly phone calls and, if you wish, individual coaching of 1, 2 or 3 sessions each. (Price point for this is significantly higher than the typical one-on-one coaching model above.)

Model #5: Training/Certification Model

This has been my primary coaching delivery model with Career Coach Institute and my other coaching companies. People register for a paid teleseries, a live event, e-learning, or other means of obtaining knowledge toward becoming certified in a specific area (e.g., Certified Career Coach or Certified Purposeful Marketing Coach). Either as an add-on or as part of the program, depending on your price point, you offer coaching with you directly or with another coach you have personally trained.

Model #6: Product-Based Coaching Model

 The final model is one where your first sale to a customer – and the way they primarily find out about you – is a book, an info product (workbook and audios or DVD and workbook), etc. You then offer up to three levels of coaching that help people implement the content of your product – so they already have some familiarity with your content and welcome the opportunity to have implementation support.

Want to learn which business model is best for you? Join Marcia for her brand new Marketing, Mindset and Manifesting Intensive Sept. 17-19, 2010! For full details and to reserve your space, just visit www.marketingmindsetandmanifesting.com.

You’ve heard of karma, right? The dictionary defines it as “the total effect of one’s conduct, believed to determine one’s destiny in a future life.” But have you ever stopped to wonder whether it might be a factor behind both your business successes and your “failures”?

Understanding these more subtle dimensions of why I get the results I do – whether desirable or less-than-desirable – has helped me tremendously over the past few years. So if you have not explored the “invisible resources” or worked with anyone that can help you explore past lives, your chakras, the Akashic Records, or other deep causes of your current life experiences, it’s worth doing!

Here are three ways these issues can affect your tangible business results and experience:

1. Your level of confidence in delivering your message: Do you find yourself unable to speak your truth, even though from your heart you know you want to build a successful business? In many cases your past life history will literally show that you were persecuted severely for speaking your beliefs…and that you paid a huge price (perhaps even gave your life) for them. If that imprint is still active in your subconscious, it may be holding you back from putting yourself in a similar situation again.

2. Your ability to generate income: Do you feel like you are committed – at a deep soul level – to serving and helping others, but don’t seem to be able to collect money for it? This can reflect a vow of poverty taken in a prior life that is still affecting you today. Oh, you are not aware of it – but your subconscious will continue to do everything in its power to keep you from attracting excess cash since that would be a violation of this vow.

3. Your level of harmony or conflict with certain people: Do you notice that you instantly connect with some people (husband, client, colleague) as though you have known them for decades…but that with others you have ongoing conflict? Sometimes this reflects the playing out of issues set up in a prior life that are now ripe for resolution.

This may seem a bit “woo-woo” or “out-there” for you, but let’s face it: if studying marketing, business basics and mindset haven’t resolved your challenges, what could it hurt to look deeper? Contact me for practitioners I recommend – and join me at our fall Marketing, Mindset and Manifesting Intensive to ponder these issues further too!

Wow, I feel so honored – I have just today been named #39 on Milana Leshinsky’s Top 100 Multiple Income Streams Women!!!  Here’s the post with the whole list: http://tinyurl.com/23435gy 

Milana is a friend and colleague I highly respect, and to have her acknowledgement among all the great women listed there is a deep honor.

And YOU are part of it too – here are the criteria:

**Content-rich blog
**High quality web site
**Clear strong personal brand
**Prominent free giveaway
**Book or signature product
**Information products
**Coaching programs
**Live events
**Membership programs
**Use of audio and video
**Active community (that’s YOU!)

I will be sharing soooo many of my secrets on how I have grown my businesses to this status in my upcoming Marketing, Mindset and Manifesting Intensive – if you haven’t yet reviewed the details, it’s at www.marketingmindsetandmanifesting.com

Enjoy your week!

Have you visited Youtube yet? No, it’s not just for high school and college kids any more…it’s for coaches and entrepreneurs too!

Increasingly, coaches, authors, speakers and consultants are using video (on Youtube or on their own site) to promote their services and products. Video gives the viewer a real-life, three-dimensional experience of you. And for coaches and other information professionals that do much of their work virtually, it can be the bridge to credibility – and therefore help the prospect build the confidence he/she needs to buy – in ways no other medium can.

Here are 5 ways you can easily and effortlessly start using video to improve your business and marketing results.

1. Put a short introductory video on your home page.

Whether you use an opt-in format like we do at www.careercoachinstitute.com or just sandwich the video in among other content, putting video on your home page has been shown to improve conversion and opt-in rates by as much as 50 percent! That’s nothing to sneeze at! The video we are using was filmed in a professional studio, but as you will see below, that is not necessary to get great results – even a webcam can produce the quality you need!

2. Use video to introduce yourself before an in-person appearance.

Frequently, part of an exhibitor package for a conference is obtaining the pre-conference list of attendees and having a one-time opportunity to introduce yourself to them and invite them to visit your booth. This has typically been done in an email or a pre-conference postcard mailing. But as I prepared to go to a recent conference this year, I thought, “why not use video as an introduction?” So I hooked up my $50 camcorder (a Logitech, if you’re curious about the brand), wrote out a script, and did an introduction! In just a few minutes, it was uploaded to Youtube and the link ready for the recipients of my email to view.

3. Create your own keyword-optimized YouTube channel.

If your clients typically find you online, as our students do, then you want to be accessible through a variety of means and channels. (Have you Googled yourself lately? See where you can be found that you may not have even known about!) You should be using LinkedIn, Facebook, your own name as a web site (e.g., www.marciabench.com) – and Youtube too! Rather than just having random access to your videos if people happen to put in the right keywords, you can customize your own “channel” in 10-15 minutes and have them all available in one place. (Check out mine here.)

4. Also place the Youtube videos you make on your own site or blog.

While it is great to upload videos to Youtube, taking people there doesn’t get them to your web site – and that’s where you can sell to them! So we like to also upload videos that are previewing an upcoming event onto our site for search engine optimization purposes.

(You might also consider the low-priced software Oovoo, which we are using for our ongoing series of Purposeful Entrepreneur Models Interviews – you can view 2, 3 or more people all at once on screen!)

5. Burn your video to DVD and send it out to prospects.

Recording a video of you talking about what you do best, and sending the physical DVD out to your prospects, can be one of the best ways to introduce yourself to them. Just as mailing a physical copy of your newsletter will be read more than an electronic version, video works the same way!

These are just 5 simple ideas, which you can implement with a webcam or an inexpensive camcorder almost immediately. What else can you do with video? The sky’s the limit! If you hit a “home run” with one of your video campaigns, be sure and let us know so that we can acknowledge you. Happy filming!

Copyright © 2010 Marcia Bench; All Rights Reserved

Did you catch the compelling article in this month’s Inc magazine entitled “Revitalizing the American Dream?”

Their premise is that business start-ups can revitalize not only our dreams but create thousands of new companies and millions of new jobs.  I have been saying for months now that the job market we used to have is NOT coming back…the entire foundation of how we make a living is changing with the Entrepreneurial Renaissance. That is why we need to focus on creating our own businesses – even those who are “temporarily” unemployed – rather than waiting passively by for another j.o.b.

The report points out that we need capital, interface with graduates, tax breaks for angel funding, and other legislative support from the Obama administration for the economy to be more financially friendly to entrepreneurs…and also suggests such radical measures as ceasing the enforcement of  noncompete agreements too.  I HIGHLY recommend that you buy this issue and read it – or go to the main article here:   http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100701/revitalizing-the-american-dream.html

What do you think of the authors’ ideas?  Submit your comments below and let’s start a discussion!

Why did you start your business?

Chances are that you were tired of being boxed in by your corporate job, or you wanted to travel more, have more time for yourself or your family, or just remove the cap on your income.

Are you experiencing more of these things – or less? The entrepreneurs I talk to every day are frustrated because it seems like they have LESS spare time now than they did before they became business owners.

There are 3 key principles that you MUST embrace if you are to experience TRUE freedom from your business:

1. Be clear on what you want to create, and calibrate your daily activities and results to that end.

You truly do have creative freedom in deciding what you will create in your business. So define it! What do you want your business to look like: by year’s end? by 2012? by 2020? Dream big!

Then, as you set your daily priorities and transition from one task to the next – as well as review your results at regular intervals – you will see definite progress toward your desired outcome. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself in the trap of doing a lot – but feeling like your dreams get further and further away.

2. Be sure technology serves you, not the other way around!

Have you ever tracked how much time you spend on email? It can consume you if you let it!

Successful entrepreneurs set specific times to handle their correspondence – whether snail mail, email or phone – and focus on revenue-generating activities the majority of the time.

If you spend too much time on email, ask yourself “why” do I do that? Is it a reflection of my insecurity, fear I will miss something, or just being a bit of a “control freak”? Left unresolved, these deeper issues can put you on an auto-pilot mode that keeps you from accomplishing your life’s work.

3. Establish clear boundaries between work and play – including time to replenish your creative stores!

Remember that ideal life you wanted when you started out? Chances are it didn’t involve working weekends or evenings, giving up vacations, or missing your kids’ school plays or camp, did it?

Yet it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking you are “indispensible” – that if you just get that one more client, that one new project, THEN you will take time off.

But it doesn’t work that way. You need to plan your work around your life, not the other way around. I first learned this from authors and speakers Ken and Marjorie Blanchard, who plan their annual calendar – and a full one it is – around their leisure time, travel and time with each other. The work commitments get scheduled around that.

If you don’t take care of yourself, no one else will – especially as an entrepreneur. Take a spa day every week or two, plan your vacations for the rest of 2010 now so you make sure to take them. This will renew you in ways no amount of work can – so you can be prepared for the new directions your work is taking you.

Want to learn more about how your beliefs and mental outlook affect your business? Join our Summer Training Series today.

It’s easy to be excited about your business when you start it – it’s like getting engaged: you have unlimited energy, you are full of anticipation for the future, and you feel unstoppable!

Then reality sets in (sometimes) and “the thrill is gone,” to quote the old country song.

If you were employed in a j.o.b., you would just slough off for a while and hope your motivation returns. But as a business owner, your business doesn’t move forward (or not very quickly) unless you do!

So here are some keys to reviving your motivation when it lags due to setbacks – of whatever kind:

1. Revisit your vision statement. (You have one, don’t you?)

When you “can’t see the forest for the trees,” it’s time to get some distance from the daily flow of emails, phone calls and tasks to do – and remember why you are in business in the first place. If you don’t already have a vision statement to use at such times, it’s time to write one! Tom Watson, Founder of IBM, talks frequently about how they used their vision of what the company would be like “when it was complete” to gauge their daily results. And it is also a great tool to bring your groove (or motivation) back too!

2. Take a break.

Seriously! We are human beings, not human doings…and as such we are designed to move in and out of concentrated work through the day. If you’re feeling stale – or that computer screen is getting out of focus (and it isn’t your glasses!) then it may be time to take a walk, pet the cat or dog, enjoy a cup of tea on the patio, or call a friend. Stand up, breathe, stretch, and change your environment. (Oh, and don’t forget to eat lunch too!) You’ll be amazed what a difference it will make.

3. Do a 3-minute brainstorming session.

Take out a clean piece of paper (NOT the computer screen – your creativity works best with pen to paper), set your timer, and “go!” Write down all the ideas you can think of that could possibly solve the problem you feel stuck on – or all the new ways you could approach your marketing – or all the possible new product or program ideas you could implement in the next 6 months.

Cash flow a problem? Brainstorm 25 ways you could raise money in the next 30 days. Then DO as many of the items on the list as you can – and STAY in action. This will create energetic momentum toward your desired goal. (And you’ll feel better too!)

For more tips on motivation, mindset and more, join us for our FREE teleseminar July 15.