Helping Hands For Coaches

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.

The ‘Pied Piper’ of Facebook joined us this Friday and gave our coaching communitee some great pointers on how to use Facebook, as well as FriendFeed, Ping.fm, Twitter, and even your website! If you were not able to join us for the call, you can listen to the podcast below, and download the PowerPoint Presentation to follow long.

If you feel a little left-out when we talked about RSS feeds, or using Twitter, don’t worry – we’ll be going over that very soon!

Enjoy!

Also available, the Facebook series by Mari Smith.

Mari Smith, the “Pied Piper of Facebook” (so-called by Fast Company Magazine), will be speaking at Helping Hands for Coaches next Friday!

Perhaps you’re:
=>Wondering how Facebook differs from other social networking platforms such as MySpace or LinkedIN?
=>Not sure how to market your business on Facebook?
=>Not sure what’s the right and a wrong way to use social networking sites for business purposes?
=>Not sure how to get started?

I’ve been on Facebook for a while, but I don’t get the results I’m looking for – especially considering the amount of time I’m on it! Do you feel the same way? Or are you just getting started, and are excited about all the games and applications – but don’t see how it all fits with your business? Then don’t miss the class: “Facebook Fortunes for Coaches: How To Attract Your Perfect Top Paying Clients Using the #1 Social Network” Click HERE to register!

From what I gather, all coaches go through this “What is my niche?” phase – and sometimes don’t come out! Wendi Liechty, our speaker on today’s class, helped our coaches come out of the niche fog and get clear on their target market!

“WOW Rachel! I don’t know how you ended up knowing Wendi, but you fell into a gem there!!!! Thank you for scheduling her today. She is awesome, knows her stuff, relaxed and we all liked her.” Deborah White, The Step Mom Coach

If you’re ready to take action and get clear on your niche, then listen to this interactive podcast on how life, business and executive coaches can define their niche!

To review the worksheet for Creating Your Coaching Niche, please click HERE.

I’m really looking forward to our class on Niching for Life and Business Coaches, with Wendi Liechty is a Business & Marketing Coach and founder of www.TheCasualEntrepreneur.com. She has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs including coaches, wellness professionals, designers and other service providers develop clear and compelling business and marketing concepts that are truly outside the box!

Participants always walk away with a renewed focus and enthusiasm for business and tangible steps that can be easily implemented right away. Wendi’s approach breaks through the limitations of traditional, outdated marketing strategies. She offers unconventional, highly personalized wisdom for modern day business goals and challenges so entrepreneurs can experience the success and freedom they crave. So be sure to sign-up for this interactive class! Remember – our teleclasses are always free and interactive – so get your questions on niching ready and I’ll see you on Friday! Register here: http://helpinghandsforcoaches.com/live-teleclasses/

We had a great class today, the launch of a new season of Helping Hands for Coaches! Today we discussed how life and business coaches can utilize an automated drip-campaign system to retain current clients, and have more past clients coming back. Be sure to listen to today’s class if you want to know how-to: “Increasing Your Relationship Quotient: an easy system to strengthen your coaching relationships”.

If you’ve answered “Yes” to any of these questions, you need to listen to this class!

=>Have you found that you’ve lost touch with some of your most treasured clients?
=>Are you remembering your friends, your family on those special occasions?
=>Or are you buried with too much work to do?

ICF-OC had it’s 4th annual “Accredited Coach Training Program” event last night, and what a great event it was. I met many wonderful coaches, as well as the representatives of 5 ICF Accredited Coaching Schools:

Coach for Life
Phyliss Francis, MA, CLC, PCC
www.coachforlife.com

Newfield Network
Carol Courcy, MCC
www.newfieldnetwork.com

iPEC (Institute for Professional Empowerment Coaching)
Keith Miller, CEC
www.iPECcoaching.com

David Darst, CPCC, PCC
Coaches Training Institute
www.thecoaches.com

Christopher McAuliffe
Accomplishment Coaching
www.accomplishmentcoaching.com

What I found interesting with some of the schools, was that they have started to offer business support – such as providing contracts, accounting, and even websites. This is great! I proves that websites are an important part of starting a new coaching business, but I would add to it the website: such as a blog so that prospects get to know you as a coach and a person (remember, people buy from people they know, like and trust), and an eNewsletter with their own brand so that coaches can market directly with prospects and current clients.

But remember, if you’re a new coach, don’t start off too big and become overwhelmed with the website project. Start small, with just a few pages. You can always add to what you’ve got – a website is not a printed product, so it can change and grow as you do. Just take our new launch, http://powerfulmindcoaching.com/ – she was making changes the day we launched – and she can do it easily with the online management software that we developed. She can quickly add pages, change content, and add PayPal buttons – all without contacting us. So, are you ready to get started quickly? Remember, Indra Successful Coach Marketing is here for you!

I had recently been coached on how my Helping Hands for Coaches classes were going. They’re going great – but they do take-up a lot of time to create the lesson plans. My coach was hoping that I could make some money out of all this time – and suggested that I start charging for it. It didn’t jive with me, but I thought I would give it a go. But, when I had set-up the SEO workshops to start in September, I found myself disliking the idea – charging lief and business coaches for the support and encouragement they need to keep using the Internet as a marketing tool. This didn’t feel good to me. So, I took it down, and as a compromise I have put-up the “Donate” button for those of you who have learned from my live teleclasses or listened to my podcasts, and would like to support me. I appreciate all of you who are on the calls on a regular basis. Look forward to new classes starting in September! Some of what we will be reviewing:
1. Knol
2. Facebook Advertising
3. Online Video
…and more!
Have a great rest of the summer – and see you soon at Helping Hands for Coaches!

What a fabulous class on search engine optimization and internet marketing! I hope all you life and business coaches found some of the SEO techniques I shared useful – and hopefully not overwhelming. I know I covered a lot in this class:

-The basics of SEO
-How to find good Keywords and Keyphrases relating to your coaching business
-8 SEO techniques you can use to increase your Internet exposure for your coaching practice
-and Black Hat techniques that can get your coaching website banned from search engines

At the end of the class, I mentioned that there is a 9 week course that all of you can take in order to help you understand SEO more extensively! To learn more about the class, which starts September 5th, please click here: http://helpinghandsforcoaches.com/workshops/ (**PS: There is only room for 10 students! So, if you want to learn more, make sure to click the link and sign-up today!)

To listen to the class, click the below audio:

Last week’s SEO Class was a fabulous hit – and I’ve had many emails and phone calls asking for the recording! For those of you that were on last week’s call, you know there was a bit of an issue with that – so I’m currently re-recording the SEO class and it will be available before the end of the week.

This week we have a wonderful class in store for you: The Basics of PayPal!
Did you know that it’s estimated that you could increase sales by 14% when you accept credit card payments?
Have you been wanting to accept credit card payments over the phone, but don’t know how?
Is it awkward to ask for your coach payment every month?
Then PayPal is your Answer! Click HERE to register today!