Small Business Success Strategies

Ten Handy No-Cost Online Tools for Your Coaching Business

A secret to enjoying your coaching business is staying organized. There are so many great tools available online to help you. Most are no cost and easy to use. Here are ten of my recent favorites.

Free Conferencing
Want to do your own teleclasses or meet with a client on a bridgeline so you can easily record the call? There are lots of free bridgelines now, but this one is the best because you can have up to 1000 people on your call without a reservation, and it shows you who dialed in!

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Rhonda Hess, our official Coaching Business Success Expert

5 Tips to Make More As A Coach

Last year, the coaching industry magazine choice featured an issue devoted to “The M Word” — too discreet to even print the word in large type. Money is perhaps the most taboo topic, yet it’s in the back of every coach’s mind – how to make more of it, more easily and consistently.

For me, it boils down to this question – why do some coaches make more than others? I’m studying this right now, not only for myself, but also for coaches who seem to only get pro bono or trade clients. And for the coaches who continuously over-deliver, under-fill their business, place a low value on their services, and haven’t yet realized how the power of coaching grows when clients fully invest in themselves.  It can be different for you, if you really want it to be.

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Rhonda Hess, our official Coaching Business Success Expert

Suspending Your Disbelief Opens Doors to What You Want

Every time you try something for the first time – launch a coaching business, start a blog, speak publicly — you enter into the great unknown. For adventure seekers, the unknown is a double dog dare. For innovators, it’s where the spark of brilliance always strikes. For the rest of us, it can be absolutely terrifying territory… but it doesn’t have to be.

Everyone has fear. Some “feel the fear and do it anyway”. They consciously suspend their disbelief that they can do it, long enough for the combination of their trust, persistence and subtle energies to coalesce dreams into reality. Our favorite stories are about regular people persevering to reach their destiny despite all odds. Without super powers, people do this every day.

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Rhonda Hess, our official Coaching Business Success Expert

Overwhelm: A Bad Habit You Want to Break

I’m tired of overwhelm. Aren’t you? Nothing sucks the joy out of your coaching business like that over-burdened feeling – a burgeoning to do list, an overflowing inbox, too many learning curves to traverse.

If we are truly committed to our own success, then surely success includes keeping our sanity while we get there! After all, the freedom of working for ourselves is part of why we’re doing this, right? So when are we going to start acting like we’re free?

The truth is, overwhelm is most often just a bad habit wanting to be broken. Whatever the reasons, we choose to feel overwhelmed. Like the boy who cried “wolf”, we’ve trained our brains and bodies to perceive challenges as emergencies. We’re actually OK, but don’t know that we are.

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Rhonda Hess, our official Coaching Business Expert

My Biggest Mistake as a Life Coach

Want to know? The single biggest mistake I made as a life coach was trying to sell coaching. I didn’t realize that few people seek out coaching as a solution. Add to that, I was trying to attract big groups of people that weren’t easy to reach — women in transition and later, midlife women.

Just thinking about it makes me tired.

I didn’t know any better. All my peers were picking a topic they felt passionate about as their coaching niche. I blindly followed them onto that rocky road and never stopped to question whether that was the way to make a good living as a coach. Turns out, it wasn’t.

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Rhonda Hess, our official Coaching Business Success Expert

Is Coaching Worth Paying For?

There are still people out there who don’t understand the value of coaching. Some define coaching the way Ambrose Bierce defined consulting: “To seek another’s approval of a course already decided on.” And some people think hiring a coach is like hiring a friend to listen to you.

But then there are people like Google CEO Eric Schmidt – the lead architect of the most successful business growth story in recent history. When asked to share the best business advice he ever received, he said “Everyone needs a coach.”

So, is coaching worth paying for? The answer seems to be: It depends on WHO you ask.

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Rhonda Hess, our official Coaching Business Success Expert

How to Be Influential in Your Coaching Niche

Influence is a new watchword in the world of client attraction. It turns out that being influential is not about knowing it all, having all the answers or being right. It starts with getting meaningful conversations going with the people you serve. Coaches are good at this, so I invite you to apply this with your niche market for 90 days and see what happens.

be influential with your coaching niche

Recently, a company called ThoughtLead offered “the shortest marketing conference ever”. The Influencer Project featured 60 thought leaders who offered sixty seconds worth of their best advice on how to increase your influence online. I’m impressed with the creative way that ThoughtLead offered value, started a meaningful conversation and built more influence with their market.

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Rhonda Hess, our official Coaching Business Success Expert

4 Steps to Create a High Demand for Your Coaching

If you’re honest with yourself, you know this. . .  When most people prioritize where to put their hard-earned money, coaching is not high on the list. So why are you trying to convince people to buy it?

There’s a better way to get clients. I’ll lay out the four steps below, but it all starts with finding out what people will put their money into. And in order to find out what people will pay a coach for, you have to know which people you are talking about.

Trust me, there are plenty of people out there who are eager to invest in professional services for a specific purpose. Finding them, and finding out what they are after, is the art of target marketing.

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Rhonda Hess, our official Coaching Business Success Expert

3 Wisdom Tips to Master Your Coaching Business

Have you ever had a revelation about your coaching business and then realized how much time and heartache it would have saved if you’d only known that earlier? Let’s share those flashes of wisdom so everyone benefits. Here are three of my favorites.

#1 You are Primed to Thrive on This Journey

Are you beating yourself up for not being who or where you wanted to be by now? Do you wonder if you have what it takes?

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Rhonda Hess, our official Coaching Business Success Expert

Easy Ways to Publicize Your Coaching Business Blog, Part 1

If you’re following my advice, you may have decided that the online home for your coaching business will be a blog. Perhaps you’ve already launched your new blog, or you’re getting ready to. Now the question is how to build your audience.

There are dozens of ways to drive traffic to your blog, including search engine optimization (SEO), affiliates and joint ventures, advertising, press releases and more. SEO is a must, but that’s for another post.

But to produce results, many traffic building techniques require long lead times and significant investments of time and money. Here I’m going to focus on the first of three ways to publicize your blog that you can easily do yourself and that may get you some quick traction. Two more ways coming.

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Rhonda Hess, our official Coaching Business Expert