Kathy Mallary | Coaching Biz Tips

Weekly Roundup

This week's items of interest:

• For coaches who do in-person planning -- turn those giant mindmaps and colorful newsprints into a visual reminder that your clients can frame! Check out Wallhogs.com

• Going through a dry spell with your blogging? Philip Liu's 101 Great Posting Ideas that Will Make Your Blog Sizzle should jolt you out of your rut and back on to the blogging super-highway.
• I recently discovered the magic of TiddlyWiki, "a free, open-source reusable non-linear personal web notebook." Now I know that's a baffling mouthful, but you have to understand, I've been searching for the Holy Grail of personal organizers for the last 30 years. If you're a PO crusader like me, you'll want to check this out. There are a whole bunch of related sites, including TiddlySpot.com, where you can get your TiddlyWiki hosted for free.
  NOTE: If you're a fan of David Allen's Getting Things Done system, be sure to try the MonkeyGTD 2.1 alpha template at TiddlySpot (when you set up your free account, click on "More Flavors" and select the very last one.)   
• Just for fun, check out Jessica Hagy's site, Indexed. Every one of her post-a-grams makes me laugh AND makes me think (well, ok, not necessarily in that order...).
• Even more fun: a (savage)chicken a day keeps the blues away!

Weekly Roundup

A collection of articles, blog posts and tasty tidbits that have caught my attention recently:

 

• I spend around an hour a day doing R&D for my niche, in search of successful coaching business models, products, websites and programs. This week's research lead me to The Integrated Mother eMentoring Club, a beautiful example of a membership business model in action. The website is really well-done, with a clear and compelling core marketing message written for a specific target audience.

• Mona Grayson (Question the Mind) forwarded a link to an article from Business 2.0 magazine, called "Why it pays to give away the store". I love the term, "Freemiums"! And the article is great, too. (Thanks, Mona!)

• I loved Adam Kayce's post, "One generation or two", about how helping your customer help THEIR customers leads to long term, loyal customers for everyone.

• Molly Gordon's post, "How to serve your customers by selling to them" is a powerful reminder that we are, after all, in business. And that being afraid to SELL what we're selling isn't just bad service -- it leads to "financial anorexia".

• This next one's not quite as fresh as it would have been 2 weeks ago, but anything by Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users has a long shelf life in my book. Kathy's one of my heros -- a woman blogger who is still standing (and blogging) after basically being mugged online by a couple of sick, anonymous misogynists. In spite of the upheaval and craziness this caused (and apparently, is still causing) in her personal life, she still manages to stay focused and write awesome articles. Here's one about creating a strong user community around your products (or, in the case of coaches, around your signature coaching program).