Helping Hands For Coaches

My husband, Nirzhar, is usually the photographer of the family, but when I recently opened a Flickr account to start promoting websites that we’ve recently launched – I came in contact with the little girl that used to hog the disposable camera during family vacations. I find myself spending hours going through the amazing images of professional and amature photographers alike – my own personal museum of life’s own beauty. Flickr is inspiring to my childhood dreams of being a photographer – and again I see the live action ‘snap shots’ of life that my memories are filled with.

I know Flickr isn’t new – I believe Nirzhar started his account when it started in 2004 – but it’s new to my heart – and thus I wanted to share my new love with all of you. To your inspiration!

PS- there is a flickr community, so it’s another great way to connect and network with people   Also, there is a Creative Commons area under “Explore” in which you can search for images that you can use in your eNewsletters and Blog articles, often for free, but check the licence before you use.

For all my peeps in SoCal: mark your calendars for December 9th! Entrepreneur Magazine’s “Growth 2.0 Conference” is a free full-day conference in Long Beach, California. There will be such workshops as low-cost marketing, sales secrets, and a keynote with the author of “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”, Robert Kiyosaki.

If you register, be sure to look for me during the networking sessions. As an entrepreneur, it’s an event that I won’t miss!

Wouldn’t you love a community full of people all over the world supporting your business, helping it grow, referring to it, all while building relationships with current and past clients?  In the past, this would have taken a lot of effort – putting on events, networking, in-person meetings. But, as a coach, you can have potential clients from all over the world – so building your community in your geographic area may not work for your business. To quoting Seth Godin: “Realize that one day soon, you’ll be spending much of your time working with people who you will probably never meet in person.” The good news about the Internet: you can easily build that community through  online social networks – especially with Ning.com.

Ning.com is a great service for coaches because it allows you to build your community, support your current clients, and potentially attract future ones – all with very little cost. You can customize it’s look and feel, control who can join, and control the content of the site. Members can have their own blog, upload video and audio, upload images, and participate in the online forums. This allows you to see what your clients, and prospects, are struggling with, interested in, and connect to them to build the strong relationship and brand that will help your coaching clients coming back for more. You can read a ‘how-to’ for coaches on Ning.com at the ICF-OC website.