I've got this special coaching blog going, and have been advertising in magazines and on craigslist. Where do I get all my clients from? Nearly all of them have been people who read this blog.

I would have never expected that, because, well, I'm not exactly professional when I write here. But I guess y'all love me anyway ;)

So in case there are any more of you lurking out there who are interested in the free month offer but too shy to write, I do have a few more spots left, and would be thrilled to fill them up. So even if you don't think you'd be a good client or can't afford to continue after a month or whatever, I encourage you to give it a try :)

While I would of course like paying clients, I could also just use the practice. Its really hard to keep a full roster in this economy.

As discussed, business is slow right now, so I'm putting out an offer of 1 month free coaching if any of you all are interested. Its free 45 minutes of personal attention every week to talk about whatever is on your mind, from someone who is trained in being helpful. A good deal, seriously! ;)

For some reason, I always procrastinate billing my clients. I guess it speaks for my love of coaching that I'm much happier about doing the work than charging for it ;) Anyway, I got a lot done today around the house while not doing that ;) And then Tovar really wanted me to hang out with him and Cristina, so I did so on the condition that I'd hang out in the room but work on my (loaner) computer, which lead to me actually finishing my billing after all, so the day was a big win!

Now that I'm studying up on business marketing, I'm really starting to a huge value in Linked In!

I never saw the value of making connections before, because I dismissed it as nepotism: why go with what someone I meets recommends when the best resource is probably not directly connected to my network?

I've learned that there are some things which that is true for: when someone is relating a perspective on diet, you can often find studies and facts on the internet which that person isn't knowledgeable enough to have taken into account.

But when it comes to the personal services industries, it really is all about recommendations. People can advertise all they want on the internet, but that doesn't tell you that much about how they actually conduct themselves as a life coach, for example. Friends, or people who know you, or have used your services, are the ones who can tell someone: "yes, this person really is good."

Also, personal trainers or life coaches can only take a small number of clients. So there's no go to person who can coach everyone. So its not like Amazon where you can read seventy reviews of a book. The best approximation is what the few people who you have worked with say about you, and someone has to clue them in about your existence to begin with.

The big thing I'm taking away from the business coaching I've gotten is that for small businesses like coaching, networking is a key to success.

Its happening naturally for me as I meet people when doing business related research. I'm learning how to do it in the blog world.

I've been busy over the past couple of days reaching out to friends on linkedIn, so that I can let my friends know when I go live with my coaching blog. In the process, I'm reviewing my friends' profiles, and making mental bookmarks of who I know that has specialties that other people I meet are likely to be interested in.

I've started collecting business cards, and have met people who I'd like to keep in my network -- a really cool personal trainer comes to mind -- but the one time when I was called from someone off of craigslist who I wanted to refer, I wasn't organized enough to pull up my resource in time.

With linkedIn its like having lots of business cards, except that I can't lose them, and there are actually descriptions of what people do and links that I can easily forward.

I've placed a couple of craigslist ads that are indirect, but I'm thinking that I might be best off just naming my niche.* I wasn't doing so because I don't want to get harassed by a bunch of customers -- I have a big problem of male clients hitting on me, but I figure naming that I'm married should hopefully be enough to avoid that crowd.

What do you think of my ad? Editing suggestions or suggestions for alternate ads? I figure it would be nice to have a few to put on rotation.

--

Personal Coaching for Strippers

Harness the possibility of the dancer way of life. There is so much potential. You're young, attractive, and you make a lot of money... and yet, there's often a lack of resources to help get that working for you. You need people who you can you really talk to who both understands where you're coming from, and also have a view of the bigger picture and how you really can make your dreams into a reality.

I'm a happily married ex-stripper who has built a career as a life coach. I want to reach out to the dancer community, because its really hard to find people to talk with openly about what you do, who really see you as creative, resourceful, and whole.

I'll be there for you whether you are looking at:

Growing in your life now.
Building a business or going back to school while dancing.
Building a support structure to prepare yourself for when you're ready to leave.
Something else that you'd like to work toward and/or explore.

Please contact me if you'd like to try a free sample coaching session.

Sincerely,
Shannon Friedman

--

Starry Night Life Coaching
http://starrynightcoaching.com
415.710.4402

*_{I have several niches, but I think that this is one that I can very successfully work with if I can figure out how to reach out to them.}

I'm really happy with how my schedule is right now. Its taken a long time, but I've finally created enough structure in my life to be comfortable with not having a regular daily schedule. Prior to this I often had a hard time figuring out what to do with myself and got depressed as a result.

My coaching client calls are condensed to Mon/Wed during the day and Tues evening, instead of being spread out with one call here and there over the week. I'm doing one practice triad with other coaches/week on Tues or Thurs, getting together with friends for computer work days for a few hours a week, watching Tovar during a lot of the time that isn't scheduled, and since I don't have firm commitments Fri/Sat/Sun,its easy for me to get away for things like the coaching and Sofia workshops occasionally.

My schedule will get fuller shortly. I'm doing my last bit of school work for Support Network on Friday, so I'll be allowed to start sitting in on calls after that, preparing to take over a phone line on my own as soon as I feel comfortable to do so. My intent is to take two three hour shifts/week: one on Tuesday and one on Thursday.

My exercise schedule is filling out too. I'm seeing a personal trainer once/week, going to start weekly yoga classes, going swimming once/week with laughingstone, and I'm checking out a belly dancing class next week: At the yoga retreat we were all dancing around at the end of it, and Sofia thought that I had a natural gift for belly dancing and that it would make a great yoga for me.

I've been putting more time and energy into coaching lately, and feeling more confident about it, and all of a sudden things are happening!

I made a couple of contacts at the blogging business class I took on Tuesday. I'm doing a sample session with someone who has shown a lot of interest in coaching tomorrow. I'm going to take my oral exam to get my official CTI certification on June 16th. I will be doing sample sessions at Craigslist Boot Camp on June 20th.

As noted prior, it occurred to me a few weeks ago that I'd initially been thinking of confidence as something I just had to embody: learning to be confident. I recently realized that I'm way more confident now than when I started coaching. I'm confident, because I've been practicing.

In short, I've stopped trying to be confident, and just am confident. And now I'm back to trying to project confidence again.

At the workshop last weekend, we gave each other funny names to represent the aspects that people in the class "would like to see more of" in each other's coaching. I was given the title CEO.

So I've been walking around all week reminding myself to embody what I imagine as the confident style of a good CEO. Standing solidly, but not stiffly.

I imagine that I'm going to go through this cycle of growing and then adjusting my image to match that growth many many times. Coaching is a profession where there's no end to potential for improvement. I think I'm ahead of the curve since I think these skills fall right into the area that I'm best at. At least that's what I tell myself to try to justify to myself the rates that I charge now. So on the whole, I'm happy with where I'm at now, and looking forward to continued growth in skill, and in the confidence that the skill will lead to.

There's that book Spiral Dynamics. I haven't read it, but I've done a lot of similar work, and talked with xleste about those sorts of things. This is a similar dynamic if a different aspect. Learning is a spiral. Back when I first started a business course around a year ago, the first chapter was on visioning. Imagine how great it will be once you achieve what you want to achieve.

Now I'm getting other pieces together, and optimistic about getting clients, but when one of my cohort coaches coached me and we got to talking about my vision, I realized that I didn't have one. I have a vision that I want to have 20 clients (moved up from the goal of 15 last week), but I don't have the image of how great I will feel upon achieving this goal.

Vision is important for motivation, appreciation, happiness... So, I'm starting again. Luckily I still have the materials from the last time I did it.

The visualization I started with at the beginning of the coaching call was swimming. I'm in motion, but the water is turbulent, so I can't really see anything, and I'm focused entirely on pulling one arm after the other and kicking.

I've made a lot of progress. Being in motion is big progress. So this is the start of another loop of the spiral.

I'm assisting a CTI training course on May 29th. I'm excited to get into one so soon. It'll even be before my exam.

The main thing I'm worried about is the whole ADD thing. Will I be able to take care of the needs of the room with all of the distraction around? Luckily there are three of us assistants, and from the sound of it, not really that much that needs to be done, so I'm sure everything will be fine, but I still am a bit nervous.

All this time I'd been envisioning confidence as something I just needed to figure out, or set my mind to. Just do it.

Having been coaching for awhile, I'm finding that I'm having more confidence. And its not just something I pumped myself up for. I have confidence because I've been practicing, and because I've built a support network for myself. I'm getting better at marketing because each round I've learned more, and I've refined more.

The confidence is a natural thing. In a nurturing environment.

At coaching school, one of the leaders advised against using video chat, and I've found that I haven't really liked it for coaching either.

I realized why the other day. You're not making eye contact. I think without the connection of eye contact, watching the other person's face is often more distracting than anything else. Analytic mode rather than empathizing.

I just woke up from a very inspiring dream. Amidst the weird dream details, I was observing (as a neighbor) a group of people, say around 30 of them, from down the hall. They were always driving each other crazy, and had very obvious dysfunctions in group dynamics.

I eventually pulled one of them aside, acknowledged what I'd been listening to with him, and offered to help. I told him that I could point out individual dysfunctions as I heard them, and give the group a list of 5 different things they could do to significantly improve that dysfunction.

While the wording and point of view in my dream is not ideal, I *think* that I'm essentially describing at least an aspect of the field of Organizational Development. Done typically with business companies.

A lot of people in my field are into it. I've historically been too timid to touch it, but having actually worked through a model of it, I'm thinking *I could do that.* I'm a long way off from it. I see myself as needing more experience working with people, and leadership training, to get to a point where I could just walk into an organization and significantly improve its functionality, but I can actually see myself doing that given some time. I think I'd like that work.

Since my business is phone based, I'm not tied to a physical location. Because I'm limited in the number of ads I can place, I stick to the west coast, because its easiest to deal in PST, and I know the culture.

I can't put an ad in every city, because craigslist won't let you post the same ad twice, and its even smart enough to pick up variations. However, with all of the different materials I have written, I was able to come up with three that are distinct enough that craigslist will accept them at the same time.


Here they are:( ads )

My knees are healing. They're not done yet though. The way I can tell is that it still feels funny to kneel. It hurt last week. It doesn't hurt anymore this week, but they're still tender, and they also hurt if I poke where the scars are. I don't do that very often ;)

( more on knees )

I've officially decided to keep Lucy the chinchilla. Its just nice having a living creature in the living room. While she's not the pet of my dreams, she actually is friendly when no one is attempting to pick her up.

I took a class on blogging as marketing last night. We were talking more about things like elevator statements and brainstorming what we offer as entrepreneurs, and very little about blogging, but what we went over was very valuable. I wasn't going to take the full series of classes, because the third one conflicts with the improv class that I'm signed up for, but having seen how good the first of the series is, I think I'm going to forgo a night of fun and personal growth in favor if career growth.

In general I'm pretty happy with how things are going coaching wise. I have my pie chart up on the wall reminding me that I want to be spending a large chunk of time on coaching related work, and I've been doing that. I also got back my results yesterday that I passed my written exam for certification, and my oral is coming up in a month. I will then be a CPCC from my school.

I've been doing practice triads with two groups. I'm feeling better about coaching since starting this up. Practicing and talking with other coaches provides a lot of support, and I missed it while I was on my own.

I finished my series of classes with Support Network, although I still need to make up the one that I missed. I hadn't realized it when I signed up, but I learned that I'm going to get a certification from them too, which will look nice on my resume. I'm still overwhelmed by the amount of material that we were given, but Lorraine has enthusiastically assured us that this is how most people feel when completing the training, and that we're all going to do just fine.

( more on support network class experience )

I seem to have stopped losing weight. ( more about weight )

I was talking with a friend today about email v.s. calling when inquiring about getting into college programs.

Actually, she told me she'd emailed some places, and I advised her to call them as well. My experience is that I'm much more likely to get help and advance my goals when I make a phone or in person connection than over email.

As an example, last week I was looking into that coaching assistant position. I called first, the guy talked me through options and what to do, and sent me to the website. The website had me pick my top 3 weekend programs. The response it gave me was that they were all full, but that I'd be put on the wait list.

I knew from talking to the guy on the phone that there were slots that weren't all full. Info that the website didn't give. So I called the guy back, and he went through dates with me to find an actual slot.

In short, its only because I made a personal contact, and then followed up on it, that I got my assistant spot.

And I did that because I've had similar experiences in the past. It just makes such a big difference to people to have the type of connection voice gives, in addition to the information that text gives. Plus the feedback loop is shorter, and there is the rapid feedback and dialogue firing over voice that email just doesn't lend to.

Perhaps the ease of email has something to do with it too. I bet the ratio of emails to calls that a recipient gets from a website is easily 10 to 1.

With the crazy traveling over and the surrogacy moving along at a snails pace, coaching has finally moved back to the forefront of my focus. ( Read more... )

I do a good job, and I know the clients are out there, how the f* am I supposed to connect up with them?

One of the things we did at the Ways of Women conference was to draw a pie chart of how we spend our time now, and then after a couple of days, we drew a second chart of how we want to spend our time in an ideal now.

The biggest change I made to mine was sleep. I changed it from sleeping almost half the day to 1/4th. That probably ain't gonna happen, but its nice to dream, so to speak ;) When we reviewed the charts someone pointed out to me that I didn't include time for life coaching in my revised chart. This bothered me a lot, so I redrew my chart, with 1/4th of the day going to life coaching.

After a couple of months of build up, I finally sorted out the paperwork on my desk yesterday, and came across my pie charts.

What I'm taking away from all of this is that I really want to spend more time on coaching! I can't pull clients out of thin air, but I'm going to try to find some, and there are other things I can do to keep up my learning and motivation.

I don't feel too bad about having let things slip, given how insane the last couple of months have been, so now seems like a good time to start putting coaching back at the forefront.

It occurred to me the other day that when I try to feel compassion, what I've been going for has been pity. I was doing it with Tovar the other night. I started with feeling sorry for him, then feeling guilty about not being a better parent, then resentful about the burden.

That is the pattern I identified: Pity -> Self Blame -> Guilt -> Resentment. No compassion in that. No wonder people hate pity.

So, compassion. I was listening to Ken Wilber's Kosmic Consciousness recently.* Wilber referred to his model as signposts. As with the color red, you can't describe the things he was talking about. The words are simply sign posts that point in the direction of what he's trying to get across. I believe that compassion is one of these puzzles. Something that can be felt but cannot be conveyed through description.

I know I feel compassion. There are two areas that I can identify readily. One is as a life coach. I think part of what makes it so easy is that my ego is not very involved. I did not cause whatever ails my clients, or whatever they're happy about. I'm along for the journey as a witness, sounding board, and source of wisdom.

The other area is watching movies. Again, ego is out on the sidelines. I'm totally captivated by the characters. Witnessing, identifying with how they feel in various scenarios (empathizing), and caring about what happens to them.

My guess as to the best description of compassion is empathy + caring for the person - ego investment.

Perhaps that is why it doesn't seem to be working for me to try to feel compassion. Ego is involved in trying.

Now how do I try without trying? My best guess is to immerse myself in more situations where it comes naturally. Or perhaps, just continue immersing myself in situations where it comes naturally. The active as opposed to passive of personal interaction v.s. movie watching seems very important.

* _{Wilber's mapping stimulated a lot of interesting thought for me, but I wasn't able to suspend disbelief once he started talking about reincarnation. I'm at a point where he's finished laying out his map and has just gotten into reincarnation, so I might try it again skipping to the next chapter: I'd like to hear more about his mapping in action.}