First Things First

I took my sons to a fast food (in name only) restaurant for fried chicken on Wednesday after soccer practice. The wait was long and we had to remind the people we were waiting for our food, but there was a silver lining.

My younger son’s meal came packaged in a box with puzzles and games on it. One had three panels of cartoon scenes that we had to put in the right order. His older brother and I got to show him how to decide what comes first—cause and effect. We helped him see that some things can’t happen on their own or without a set-up. You can’t trip over the roller skate until someone has left it carelessly on the floor. You can’t walk into a surprise party until people have shown up. First things first.

I had a similar experience this week when I was checking out some web sites for Coaches and career change consultants. I found at least three sites that had a sidebar button for newsletter archives and there were only two or three issues of the newsletter, stopping several months ago. But there was still a “Sign up for my newsletter” box on the site.

One guy I know, Ken Robert, started a newsletter based on helping people with creative ideas for career change. He refocused and started posting on creative thinking, brainstorming, and mind mapping for all sorts of problem solving. But he told his list he was making the change in focus and format and invited us along. These others just left people hanging.

Or did they? That’s probably the problem. They heard the normal mantra: “You have to have a newsletter.” They started one. They asked people to sign up. Maybe three or four did, but after three months of writing content and sending it out there didn’t seem to be a point.

This week I’ve heard and been reminded of about a dozen ideas for getting my message out to people. All these ideas have started with the presumed list. I heard ideas on what to tell my list and how to use creative new ways to package the information or make special offers. But I don’t have a big list yet.

First things first. I’m building a list, very slowly. I have all sorts of plans I can put into place once I have a larger list, but we’re not to that panel yet. I have to build my list or I’ll be wasting my time implementing to no audience.

I’ve had to remind myself that in the meantime I can still be working on things to have ready when the list starts growing. I can plan time-limited groups that combine training and coaching for parents. I can plan telecourses on creative career change ideas. I can put together workbooks to complement someone else’s book and sell them together in a package. But I can’t roll out any of these things without a list.

So I’m feeling a little bit like Noah—yes, delusions of grandeur and all! Noah built that danged boat for decades, with everyone asking him when it was going to rain. I’m not getting teased and no more people think I’m crazy than thought it before, but it’s causing a lot of self-questioning. I don’t have a history of designing programs or products that brought in money and satisfied customers to motivate me. I have to work completely on faith that what I’m doing now will bring revenue in the future. It leaves me feeling like I’m drifting sometimes. I’m pretty sure that’s what happens to a lot of Coaches when they try to get their story in front of potential clients but don’t get many nibbles.

And there’s a problem to be solved that can become a great business model. Hmmm…..

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

Virtual Hiccups

Technology “dead-legged” me again this week. For those of you who didn’t go to junior high, “dead-leg” is one of the many phrases for the trick of coming up behind someone and pushing—okay, kicking—the back of their leg as they take a step. If you hit the right spot (Hey, come one! Like I would even know where that is? ;-) the person stumbles. It’s similar to, but not as elegant as, gently tapping the ankle as it’s moving forward, just before it moves in front of the other leg, so it winds up crossed behind the other leg. You can get someone to trip nearly every time with that one (from comments I’ve heard).

I had my three final articles for November loaded into my Blog-Zine site and ready to be published. My plan was to go click-click-click and have everything finished in a couple of minutes. But I posted the first one and noticed it looked odd. The formatting was mixed up. Same for numbers two and three.

I went into the edit mode of WordPress and the appearance of my article was different. It wasn’t simple font with some HTML code saying “strong” for bold or “em” for italics or things like that. It looked just like a Word document in Times New Roman with bolded letters and italicized letters. But the spacing was completely messed up, as in gone. It was one long paragraph.

I had to find the originals, copy and paste, and then re-format them so they would look right.

I’m pretty sure WordPress didn’t change, because I have to ask my site to upgrade or it won’t get a new version. My browser updated recently, but it was before I posted the new articles. I have NO CLUE what happened between me uploading the articles and being ready to post them. But they look fine now. Check it out.

I realized a while back that I need a little more technological savvy to get comfortable building a Coaching business. Now I post to this blog and occasionally my Evil Twin Blog in Blogger, I participate in a group blog in TypePad, and my Blog-Zine is in WordPress. I’m gonna’ be so confused!

I even volunteered to be part of the small committee for the Parenting Coaches’ group that will focus on marketing in general and blogging and web sites specifically. Who am I fooling? Apparently, that group! Actually, I’ve learned a few things that put me a step or two ahead of the crowd so they think I’m knowledgeable. Poor things. See how we’re doing so far. The blog is called Parenting By Strengths.

I added a little more confusion this week. I finally chose a theme for my own TypePad blog. I’m going to post about the struggles and finds of doing personal professional service marketing. I know! I can hardly wait, too!

Check out my Anything But Marketing! Blog. Post taunting or commiserating comments as you see fit. There are a lot of us who want to work with people but get completely stuck by the idea of having to market ourselves, which feels insincere and even cheap. Hopefully we’ll come up with some approaches we can at least tolerate and maybe even some we can enjoy.

Onward! Into the technological void! (no bathroom humor intended)

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

The Graduate

This past Wednesday was the final class for the eleven students in the Coaching Foundations course titled MCP 103. We had our final hour-long tele-class where we focused on planning our future Coaching businesses. This included a demonstration by our instructor, Dr. Kevyn Malloy, of a visualization exercise to help create a vision for the future.

We each also brought a “virtual dish” to share in the feast. Coaches use a lot of imagination, creativity, analogies, and metaphors. Our dishes were in that spirit. Some class members compared the comfortable feeling and the warmth of the seven-month experience to a favorite comfort food. Others talked about ingredients representing the way individual class members had touched and changed their lives. Others talked about a special beverage that was festive and celebratory to focus on our shared accomplishments.

If you’ve been Coached, if you’re a writer or into other creative arts, or if you have a background in psychology that includes imagery or the use of symbols, you can probably appreciate the experience we had. If not, it might sound totally bonkers!

The language of Coaching is forward moving, action-oriented, and positively slanted. As a result it can sound falsely optimistic or insincere at times. But having been trained, and having Coached people, I understand better now that the experiences of Coaching can touch the core of a person. The images and thoughts resonate with your strongest feelings and deepest sense of identity. That’s is surprisingly energizing and exciting. The words are festive and upbeat. But often the experience can be profound, bringing awareness that seems like it “should” be uncomfortable or unsettling to realize, but which is actually very comforting.

Living our lives with the general notion of “fitting in” we tend to downplay our passions and strong interests and deep values. We think it can cause conflict to express them so we don’t speak them often, and when we do we try to be moderate. Coaching turns that around. Coaching celebrates the uniqueness of each person. It helps you find long-forgotten interests and claim important values—out loud! That brings power and clarity that are missing in most of our daily lives.

You’ll get a chance to meet some of my classmates in the future. I’ll keep up with them and share stories of their successes and let you know about tele-courses and e-books and other things they will do.

Right now you can start with one of them. Sarah Sharp wrote an article for my Chasing Wisdom Blog-Zine about using your personal mission to focus and simplify your schedule. I think you’ll enjoy it.

I’m a complete fan of MentorCoach because of the courses, the student support, and the close and supportive community. Our instructor, Kevyn Malloy, is warm and thoughtful and very wise. Gayle Scroggs who runs the weekly student resource group is shade on a sunny day. With all the extras MentorCoach offers alumni, they create exceptional value. These include free interviews with leading researchers and pioneers in Positive Psychology and Coaching demonstration calls. I can listen live and also download them afterwards to my iPod.

If you’re even toying with the idea of learning to be a Coach, check out MentorCoach.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

Autoresponders and HTML

This past week I signed up for an autoresponder. For those of you who don’t know or haven’t even heard of autoresponders, it’s an online software program that lets me capture e-mail addresses and names when people sign up to receive my newsletter. When I send out my newsletter (at least once a month) it will go to everyone on the list.

Autoresponders have other uses, too. For example, you can set up a brief e-mail training course on a particular topic. When a person signs up the autoresponder sends out the e-mails in a sequence. You can set it up to send the first one right away, a second one two days later, a third after two more days, and so forth. This would be great if you wrote a “5 Tips” or “5 Steps” kind of article. Each e-mail could contain one of your tips or steps and explain how to apply it.

Autoresponders can send out weekly e-mails for a year-long series, like steps to gaining freedom from consumer debt or motivational ideas or a series of spiritual devotionals. They can send out daily tips or quotes. You can set them up to send out as many things as you want in a series, at any interval you decide. They’re pretty cool.

They can also be set up as a follow-up to an online order. The first in a series might be “thank you” for ordering. The next, a few days later, might be to remind the person a package is coming and point out some extra features and benefits of the product. The third might be meant to arrive after the package to ask for feedback. The fourth might contain an unexpected extra bonus or further uses for the product. After that, maybe the customer gets an e-mail every two or three weeks for a short while, letting him or her know about other products available. Then the interval might go up to every four to six weeks, just to keep you in their thoughts.

Since I integrated my autoresponder with my Blog-Zine, I got to learn a little more about HTML. At least, I think that’s what I was doing. I had to go into the template for the blog site and add the code that put the sign-up form on my site. Then I had to configure the sign-up form and set up web pages on the blog to thank people for signing up. So far, it seems to be working. Check it out at Chasing Wisdom.

It’s meant I spent a lot of time on technical and specific skills and less on creative and long-term vision skills. It was a nice break, and I enjoy learning about some computer things—some. I hope to be able to make minor changes to my site by myself over time. But I don’t want to have to spend a lot of my time every week learning the programming stuff. I’m glad to learn a little and move on.

And I’m glad to ask for help when I need it. My webmaster will be helping me update my main site over the next few weeks. I’ll let you know when it’s up and ready to debut.

Do not fear web sites. Do not fear blog sites. Start with something simple, get comfortable with it, and then keep learning. You will enjoy the ability a web site gives you to get your message to people, and the creative energy that starts flowing when you get your own blog.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

On The Twisting Road

Last week I was grousing about marketing—complaining that it’s unpleasant. And then I had an idea.

In My Discovery Day, a post on my Blog-Zine, I wrote about a long bike ride with a friend when I was not in shape for it. My friend rode his bike for exercise regularly. I rode mine for fun occasionally.

Marketing can be a large, involved task. You can’t hop on your bike and take on the hills and the many miles without some preparation. The best preparation is to ride on a regular basis for a comfortable amount of time, then go further and add more hills. If you’re regularly riding four miles on level roads and occasionally taking paths with hills, it’s not that big a step to take on seven miles with hills along the way.

I realized I am already marketing. I set up a Blog-Zine and completed a month of posts. I need to keep that pace and add a hill—setting up an auto-responder for people to sign up and be notified when my Blog-Zine is posted.

I have my business cards ready and people in my social network know I’m starting a coaching business. It’s time to talk more openly about it. That’s not a huge change or a big step, just a small one.

The owner of my son’s Tae Kwon Do studio asked me to do training on managing children’s behavior for the instructors. I can build on that experience and train other instructors or seek out similar opportunities at child care centers and private schools. With free or low-free training, I’ll give people a chance to get to know me and understand how I can be of help.

Coaches help people set goals then break them down into manageable steps. With help and guidance from friends training to be coaches, I had planned comfortable steps to start marketing my business. I hadn’t talked with anyone about marketing in a while, so I forgot my next step is—well, just a step, not a leap. I don’t need to build a comprehensive marketing system in a month. I need to keep doing the steps I’ve started and add the next one.

One step is choosing a focus for this blog. I started it when Barbara Sher challenged her list to begin a blog tracking the steps we’re making on changing careers. I used it along the way to try out some ideas for articles about coaching topics as preparation for writing my Blog-Zine. Going forward, I want to keep the focus on creative career choices and career change.

This will be a blog about discovering a career path and how that is revealed little by little over time. I’ll track my own steps and things I’ve learned, and I’ll write about other people’s struggles and discoveries.

Since I titled my Blog-Zine Chasing Wisdom, I am going to change the name of this blog. My friend Stella helped me see that rambling along unexplored roads takes you to new towns and more new roads. She helped me see that the journey is often the point, because you have to create your future instead of driving straight to it.

With many thanks to Stella, I am re-naming this blog Twisting Road. Pack your bags and come along.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey