Coaching Biz Tips

Why don't you have more coaching products?

Why don't you have more coaching products?

For some, the question might even be, "Why don't you have *ANY* coaching products?!"

C'mon now, tell the truth. How long have you been thinking about writing that ebook?

How often have you gazed with envy at someone else's long list of audio programs, complete with sparkling little CD jewel cases, and wondered, "How did they DO that?!"

How many times have you drooled over the product page at CoachingToys.com? (Who doesn't? It's like the FAO Schwartz for coaches.)

Well, I've got good news and bad news:

First, the bad news: No, that product isn't going to create itself.

Secondly, the good news: It's not as hard as it looks.

And lastly, a word from your fairy godcoach:

"(Insert your name here), if you really want to be able to enjoy being The Magnificent Coach That You Are (instead of feeling like grimy-faced Cinderella before the ball), then for goodness sakes, dearie, get yourself set up with some passive income!"

Here's the thing: A coaching product is just your signature coaching process, or a part of your process, packaged as a self-help product.

It gives the customer a 'taste' of what to expect when they work with you one-on-one, while giving you a source of passive income.

Create it once and sell it many times.

Coaching products help to bridge the gap between your lead generator (i.e., your freebie) and your premium offer (group or individual coaching). You know, so your customers don't split their britches jumping from one end of your product funnel to the other.

Examples of coaching products:

• A book, ebook or workbook ("How to...")
• An e-course
• An audio or video recording (digital or CD)
• The transcript from your latest seminar or teleclass
• A template, worksheet or checklist
• A collection of articles bundled together as a digest
• A software program (get someone to write it for you!)
• A resource directory
• A facilitation tool, such as a deck of affirmation or inquiry cards
• Membership to an online resource center
• Any combination of the above, perhaps packaged as a "Self-Coaching Kit"

If you're tired of pressing your nose up against the glass at the coaching toy store, be sure to listen to the audio replay from last week's tele-clinic on creating coaching products (it's free until 7/18/07).

(and, er...you have a tiny bit of drool hanging off your...no, the other side...yep, it's gone!)

Weekly Roundup

I found a great ebook the other day -- Write Your eBook or Other Short Book -- Fast!, by Judy Cullins, aka The Book Coach. (89 pgs; $24.95) The chapter on organizing your book before you write it is excellent -- I've already started using her system to organize my next ebook. She's also got some excellent content on her blog.

LogoMaker.com - a web-based tool for designing your own customized logo ($49). I had fun playing with it and created a pretty decent 'mock' logo in under 10 minutes. Lots of ways to customize it, and you can save up to six logos and ask friends for feedback before you have to pay.

Yaro Starak's Blog Profits Blueprint is the newest addition to my Top Ten list of excellent free ebooks (why are excellent free ebooks so hard to find?! I think I've got 7 on the 'good' list and about 174 on the 'other' list so far...). It's very professional and well-organized, and the content is high value without being hyped up.

Chris Barrow has an interesting blog post about creating a "black hole team" for yourself -- a small inner circle of people who can be counted on to pull you back from the edge when your business (or life!) is inching towards the pits.

Congratulations to Heather Mundell, who was honored as the Top Career Coach in the July issue of Seattle Metropolitan magazine! I met Heather when I was teaching at the Academy for Coach Training--it's always cool to see what ACT grads are up to these days. Way to go, Heather!

E-Zaadz!

Zaadz.com, one of my all-time favorite places to hang out, announced today that they're getting ready to launch a really cool new marketing platform called zPro later this summer.

In a nutshell:

zPro is a complete online marketing toolkit that packages newsletter 2.0 with social media and web 2.0 goodies (from micro-communities and member profiles to group discussion forums and blogs) to give you everything you need to grow your biz.

Here's the blurb from their blog:

To give a bit of a background, and to share a bit of our excitement about the launch, I'll just point out, again, that this whole community was founded on the notion of conscious capitalism. We're quite serious about the “making a living doing what it is you love” thing, and so, obviously, we're passionate about supporting those of you who have already set out to do that—or who are working at realizing those dreams.

Hence, zPro.

We're psyched about supporting small business owners and life coaches in growing their businesses by deepening their relationships to those they serve. By strengthening that sense of connection and community in the marketplace, we'll start circulating capital in ways that will make a difference. It's exciting. :)

This sounds like a terrific platform for professional coaches who are building a business with social networking tools like online forums, blogs and viral marketing. You can see exactly how this kind of 'micro-community' technology works just by exploring the Zaadz site itself.

Get this: The first 100 people who sign up get a free lifetime subscription to zPro, plus coaching, a potential spot in their print ads, a place in their rotating Featured Friends slot, and inclusion in the zPro directory; the next 1000 will get six months free.

And "signing up" means giving them an email address. That's all. I'm already on the list -- whatcha waiting for?! Go sign up now!

P.S. I forgot to mention that I originally stumbled upon Zaadz about 4 years ago while Googling for inspiring quotes. Well, technically I stumbled upon Thinkarete.com, which was created by Brian Johnson, the Founder and CEO of Zaadz. Thinkarete.com is still one of my favorite go-to resources for inspirational quotes.

Where do I get started building my coaching business?

The other day, one of my clients from the current Success Circle emailed me with this question: 

I'm realizing that what's in my way of getting started is trying to map it all out at once. What I need to do is to JUST GET STARTED. So I was wondering how much you started with and in a very general way how fast it grew from there.

Well, the first thing that came to mind was that I sure wouldn't want my client to do what I did -- because on the way to figuring out what works to build a sustainable business, I did all kinds of things wrong and made lots of silly (and expensive) mistakes!

Instead, I want her (and you) to have an easier and much less expensive journey.

Now, I happen to know that this particular client already has a pretty good idea of who her target market is and what problem she's helping them with.

That's actually the very first step -- get clear about your niche. After that:

First of all, keep in mind that your business must do these three things for you: 

1) Get new customers
2) Keep existing customers
3) Grow the life-time value of your customers

So here's where I recommend starting:

BUILD A SUBSCRIBER BASE
The widest end of the product funnel is where new customers typically enter, so the first thing to do is create a free info product that you offer in exchange for subscribing to your mailing list, like a newsletter or a special report (in my case, it's the coaching program Starter Kit, which includes the weekly tipzine that you're reading right now).

Your free offer should relate specifically to your target market--don't try to appeal to the masses by being too generic. (You can see why it was so important to do your homework on your niche.)

(By the way: It may seem counter-intuitive, but you don't want the whole world to subscribe. You only want qualified prospective customers on your mailing list.)

HAVE A STRATEGY FOR STAYING IN TOUCH
Ideally, your freebie should help you stay in touch with your subscribers on a regular, consistent basis. You need to offer value-driven content (i.e., don't just email them with promotional stuff). As a general rule of thumb, try for 90% content, 10% promotional offers in your emails.

A newsletter or ezine is ideal for this, but if you don't want to do a newsletter, a free ecourse would work, too. The idea is to build relationship and establish yourself as a credible expert over time.

WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T MAKE THIS MISTAKE
One mistake that I see many coaches making (and I made this one myself in the early days!) is to throw together a generic freebie and then start trying to fill teleclasses and in-person workshops right out of the gate.

That's like trying to run right up the side of a mountain without the proper gear. After trying to fill a couple of workshops with the same 100 subscribers, you realize it's a very steep mountain.

So the first step is to greet your customers at the door (the wide end of your product funnel) with a welcoming smile and offer them some refreshment (your freebie).

Be patient and stay in touch with them; earn their trust and confidence by providing good information that truly helps them with whatever they're struggling with.

Once your business is doing a pretty good job of getting new customers (which is what the wide end of the product funnel is about), then you can shift your focus to keeping and growing the lifetime value of your customers by creating products and packages deeper in the product funnel.

Incidentally, I've found that if you do the first part well, and if you're really paying attention, your customers will actually TELL you what to create for them next.

The same way my client from the Success Circle gave me the perfect topic for the tipzine (and this blog post) this week!

Weekly Roundup

Are your clients coachable?  For that matter, are YOU coachable? Read Seth Godin's take on "coachableness".

Are you wrestling with the fine art of blogging? Andy Wibbels (author of BlogWild!, one of my favorite books on the subject of blogging) has a great post on the Four Types of Blog Posts (it's really more like 7-8 types, if you count the extra one he threw in at the end plus the ideas posted in comments).

Sherrie St. Cyr had some very nice things to say about my Get With the Program Jump Start workbook on her life coach marketing product review lens at Squidoo. Thanks, Sherry!

Speaking of Squidoo -- Lori Chance's lens on How to Say "I Wrote the Book on That" and Mean It! has some great points and resources if you're a coach who wants to build your brand around a particular area of expertise (like a signature coaching program).