For Serious Players Only…

Ready to really BUMP your practice to the next level? Ready for advanced training on creating long-term marketing engines? Then listen in to this extensive collection of my most powerful mentoring sessions over the last three years, with your own copy of:- “EXPLODE YOUR COACHING PRACTICE™: Proven Practice Building Secrets to Give You More Clients Than You Can Handle.” Get your copy now: http://www.ExplodeYourPractice.com

About the ‘Mentor Monthly’ Newsletter

TO SUBSCRIBE, and for free information packs on coaching, visit: http://www.solutionbox.com/freedownload.htm.

Make Your Own Coaching Career with the CoachStart™ Manual

After years of hands-on research, including personally mentoring sixty coaches, I’ve compiled everything I know about starting a successful coaching practice in one easy-to-follow manual.

Learn how to set up your business and get clients

http://www.CoachStart.com

And I’m so excited to hear such great feedback:

“Let me start by saying I think this manual is fantastic. It is exactly what each person thinking about starting a coaching business needs to read! The biggest thing I got from this Manual was a new sense of confidence and competence. The simple exercises and role plays you’ve provided have made me eager to try some new methods.

- Daniel Midson Short www.lifestylerevolution.com.au

“David, I am really enjoying this Manual! It is clear, practical, comprehensive and inspirational, and it will be a great reference for me as I begin my coaching practice.”

-Carolyn Claiborne sacredgatherings@ earthlink.net

Visit http://www.CoachStart.com

Last Chance to Get Copyrighting Critique

Andy O’Bryan let me know he is retiring from copywriting for the coaching industry. This means you have only one more chance to have Andy look at your website and give you some valuable advice on how to bring in more clients.

He’s doing one final batch of complimentary website critiques, so book yours now:

http://www.andyobryan.com

So if you’re not bringing in enough clients with your website this is the perfect time to have Andy take a look. There’s no charge for this 30-minute one-on-one call, so get on his schedule at this link:

http://www.andyobryan.com

FEATURE: How to Give AND Grow Your Business

Taken from my book ‘Get Paid For Who You Are’

How to Give AND Grow Your Business

Typically, when people think of supporting a cause, they think of donating resources or volunteering time. Some companies let their staff spend half a day a week supporting any cause that they want on paid company time. That’s exciting. And it’s possible to go deeper. You can support a cause in a way that gets you more customers and revenue, by creating a two-way partnership, rather than a one-way relationship.

Ways You Can Help A Cause

1) Donate your product or service
The most basic way to support a cause is to donate your product or services. This product or service can be given to staff members, volunteers, beneficiaries, or even board members.

2) Offer your product or a service as a prize
You can offer your products or services as a prize for a sweepstakes or competition. In fact, why not reach out to 10 to 20 local nonprofit organizations in this way and start building relationships. For example, an accountant might donate 10 free tax returns to a charity raffle or auction.

3) Speak at their events
Is making public speaking appearances one of the things you can or will do? Many nonprofit organizations have conferences, training seminars and conventions. They need speakers to train, inspire, and entertain their members and donors. As Brendon Burchard says, “Who attends fundraisers – influential or non-influential people?” Speaking at fundraisers can put you in front of CEOs and other leaders who could hire you to speak, or buy your company’s product or service. 

4)  Give a percentage of profits
You could also donate a percentage of your annual profits to a cause. Again, try to do this as a partnership and create an agreement for what they will do in return. You may wish to tell them what your profits were last year and your projected earnings in the next year.

5) Invite your customers to donate
You could say to the nonprofit organization, “It’s not just what I’m going to be donating, but I’ll also be inviting my customers to donate.”

6) Microgiving call
Invite all your customers and newsletter subscribers to join on a conference call designed to raise money for charity. You might have a prominent member of the community or a local celebrity join you as co-host. Discuss an interesting topic, and every 10 minutes invite people to go to the website and donate. Of course, you can also do something like this in person and offer to host physical fundraisers.

How a Cause Can Support You

1) Website and Newsletter
A nonprofit organization can feature you on its website and describe their partnership with you, with a link to your website.

2) Press releases
They could issue press releases. You could tweak the same article that you wrote for their website, newsletter, or print magazine, into a press release for them to distribute. Who’s the media going to pay more attention to – a press release from you, or a press release from them?

3) Direct mail
They could give you exposure via direct mail. Suppose you are launching a CD and you’d like to use it as a fundraiser for them. They could put an ad for the CD in their electronic newsletter and on the home page of their website. And – they could mail out a little flier.

***

Take Action

1) Who would be a great fit for you to team with for a partnership? Share at the blog comments.

2) How large of a percentrage of sales would you share with your partnership? Share at the blog comments.

People love their stories!  They love their past, reasons, and complexities, perhaps because they validate who they think they are.

As a coach, I’m not interested in 90% of the past.  I don’t want to know why you spent 5 years in an unhappy marriage or the list of complaints you have about your boss.  I’m more interested in what you want, and – what you’re going to do about it.  It’s a conversation about the future, rather than the past.  Many people can describe exactly what they do not like about their lives.  However, when asked how they would like the situation to look, more energy is required.  Our job is to have them look in that direction.

Most coaches are willing to answer some of your questions, and even do a free trial session before you sign on.  Some good questions to ask are:

•  How long have you been coaching?
•  What training have you had?
•  How many coaches have you mentored or are you currently mentoring?
•  What kind of results have you had?
•  Can you provide email addresses of a couple of coaches you’ve worked with?
•  What is the most important thing you will provide to help me build a successful coaching practice?

Lastly, you want to feel comfortable with this person.  Interviewing, trialing or studying up on one to three coaches should be sufficient.  They no longer have to be in your country – just make sure if they’re overseas that they are willing to cover the cost of phone calls or factor this into your monthly fee.

If you’re concerned about the investment, consider what your return on that monthly investment might be.  In most cases, you only need two to three paying clients to cover the cost of your mentor coach.  And if your coach can’t help you increase your client list by MORE than two to three, something’s missing! Also consider the cost of NOT hiring a coach.

The most obvious point to remember is that coaching is not therapy, counseling, or psychology.  In addition, coaching should not be confused with consulting or mentoring — there are subtle differences between each of these interventions.  Whilst the coaching process may have originated in the field of psychology and intervention often follows some psychological models, the actual coaching process should not be mistaken for a therapeutic intervention. Some of the differences include:

• Mentoring:
  The passing on of knowledge, experiences, and skills usually by someone within the company who is older and wiser.  Usually more specifically career-oriented information.  A mentor has normally achieved the goal themselves, while a coach may not have any experience in the given coaching area.

• Consulting:
  Often using your own skills to improve a given situation, as opposed to developing the client’s skills to a level that can cope effectively with the situation.

• Therapy and counseling:
  Tends to focus on feelings related to past events and processing such feelings.  Coaching is oriented towards goal setting and encouraging the client to actively move forward.  Tony Grant from Sydney University has said: “Therapy is like helping someone with a broken leg to walk again.  Coaching is helping them to run the four minute mile”.

Ten years ago, no one had heard of life, business, or corporate coaching.  Today, it is featured in The New York Times, Fortune Magazine, Oprah, and CNN.  And still, most of the world’s population has not heard of it.  Demand for coaching is expected to continue to grow and may accelerate.  What will happen when the first major movie featuring a life coach hits the street?  Corporations are jumping on the band wagon: they want to hire corporate coaches, but even greater is their desire to have their managers trained in coaching techniques, and to develop a “coaching culture” within their organization.

There are an estimated 10,000 part-time and full-time coaches worldwide (ref: ICF).  The number of people entering the emerging field of personal and business coaching has doubled in size each of the past three years (ref: CoachVille™).  Several hundred articles, TV and radio shows have been done in the past three years.  Coaching has been written about in Newsweek, Business Week, Fortune, Money, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fast Company, New Age Journal, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, Bloomberg Personal, Newsday, etc.

The number of corporations using coaching is increasing.  Fortune magazine has referred to coaching as:  “one of the hottest things in human resources” and “a grassroots movement that is spreading in some of the unlikeliest corners of corporate America, including IBM, AT&T, and Kodak.”

Coaching is strongest in the US, followed by the UK, Japan, Canada, Australia, Singapore, and New Zealand.  Coaching is reaching more and more countries all the time; my newsletter subscribers now come from more than 90 countries.

Improvements in technology including teleconferences, cheap international phone calls, and the reach of the internet are making it even easier for coaches to build a successful practice with low overhead.

If you don’t enjoy seeing and being part of someone’s growing, then don’t become a coach.  If you don’t get a kick out of being part of someone learning something new, bursting through a barrier, having FAR more than they ever thought they could have then this is not the career for you.

Having said that, I don’t believe there is a human being on the planet who couldn’t learn to enjoy that!