Getting To Be The Decider

This week my main work was to make some decisions. Just writing that it doesn’t sound like much. But these were decisions that I had been considering for quite a while, so they were the culmination of a lot of mental work.

First, I decided I will use the current format of sections for my Chasing Wisdom Blog-Zine through June. Starting in July I will change the format to be more focused on creativity, personal growth, and authentic living. In my framework of Why? What? How? it’s going to be focused on Why?

Why? is about purpose, the reasons we want to change and try a different path. What? is the change we decide to make or the new path we decide to follow. How? is the way we make it happen, the detailed steps we follow and pieces of information we gather to make our What become real so we can honor our Why.

On The Twisting Road, my e-mail newsletter (e-zine), will be focused more on What? and How? The articles and tips will be more practical and more action-oriented than Chasing Wisdom.

I have been posting articles to my Anything But Marketing! blog on a weekly basis. I realized I don’t intend to do that long-term. I usually post ideas based on conversations with fellow coaches and service professionals. I will post weekly when I can, but eventually I will compile the articles into a larger information product and pull down the blog. It’s a useful way for me to gather a variety of ideas for the future. I will include the ABM! posts in the newsletter whenever I have a new one.

On The Twisting Road will be published weekly on a regular basis, with occasional extra issues for special events or product announcements as I develop them. I have gone back and forth, and forth and back, trying to balance my preference for a focused newsletter with my preference for not publishing it so often it becomes annoying. I am on newsletter lists where I receive multiple issues in a week. Too often I find myself getting annoyed by multiple newsletter issues per week. I am most pleased with newsletters that arrive on a weekly or semi-weekly basis. As a result of my completely unscientific research of a non-representative sample – me – I chose to have a weekly publishing format.

I will publish Chasing Wisdom monthly. I have been posting a section per week, for a total of four sections per month. That was a way to have weekly content for my newsletter: There’s a new section of my Blog-Zine posted! Since the newsletter has its own content and will be targeted a little differently, I can write Chasing Wisdom over the course of the month and publish it in a day or two.

Another decision I made was the format for my new business cards. I’ve been planning the new ones since I started passing out the current ones. I have streamlined my card to web address, e-mail address, and phone number. It’s applicable to my business as a writer, trainer, information publisher, and coach… because it doesn’t mention any specific job! I’m looking forward to learning what it’s like to pass them out, and to finding out how they will be received.

I clarified my decision not to focus on parent coaching. I realized I am passionate about healthy child development, especially psychological development, but not passionate about parents’ struggles. I think I will focus on training teachers and caregivers and coaching people who supervise them instead of coaching parents. I may offer parent training, if I find a market that will pay, but I will limit my coaching around promoting healthy child development to people who are also passionate about it and wanting to learn and grow in their abilities and understanding.

Whenever I take my sons to the bookstore, I’ve been reading Eckart Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61). It’s somewhat scholarly so I’m taking my time with it. I try to follow along as he writes about “awareness” that brings people out of “unconsciousness” and helps to overcome the “ego.” To understand him I have to use a different system – Carl Jung’s personality theory, which is also complex and esoteric.

Tolle’s book gives me hope in this way: if he can have a successful career writing such cumbersome books about profound philosophical and spiritual ideas, and even train groups and provide individual counseling on them, I can probably have a successful coaching and training business that includes excursions into deeper purposes along with practical steps to improvement.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

Is This Blog My New Weekly E-zine?

This week on Tuesday and Thursday I was listening to Alexandria Brown’s last free teleseminar on e-zines. It was kind of a big deal, because she’s the E-zine Queen.

The Tuesday night call was a free course on latest methods and techniques for getting the best results from an e-mail newsletter, or e-zine (electronic magazine). Thursday night there were five or six people (I left the call early so I’m not sure) who use Ali’s ideas and were talking about their results.

The recordings of the calls are available through her blog, the first link above. The Tuesday call is worth downloading and listening to. Thursday’s was more testimonial but there were some specific ideas I heard for people wanting better results from an e-mail newsletter.

I was listening Tuesday night and not hearing much new at first, but suddenly I grabbed a notebook and started taking lots of notes. Ali was giving a lot of “how-tos” and “why-tos” and that sort of thing – specific, useful information.

Then she told us one of the biggest mistakes people make when they decide to start an e-zine is to try to put too much content into each issue. It becomes such a big task they can only publish monthly. She said that’s a bad idea.

Ouch!

My goal has been to publish monthly issues of Chasing Wisdom. I wanted to have several sections and lots of content. Ali recommended taking that much content and breaking it down into one idea per week. That reminded me I initially planned to post one section per week until a month’s issue was fully posted. I haven’t followed that plan, focusing more on getting a month’s issue posted on time.

She was also talking about ways to get more people to opt-in to the e-mail list to get the e-zine. Now there’s where my plan seems to have a huge hole. You don’t have to sign up for my newsletter to get my information. The articles are posted on the web. My newsletter just basically says, “Hey, everybody! My articles are posted!”

On Wednesday I got The Wednesday Minute, which is actually several minutes these days. Alex Mandossian was talking about how he uses a “squeeze page” to get people to give their e-mail address when they navigate to his blog page. It’s a somewhat clever idea, though I’m not sure of the value of an e-mail address given in this way.

But these things got me thinking. (Yikes!) First, I need a weekly e-mail newsletter. Second, I like writing articles for Chasing Wisdom. Third, I don’t think a newsletter that goes out weekly to say, “Hey, another section of my blog-zine is posted” will be very valuable to my business long-term.

I haven’t figured this all out yet. However, I realized that I post here weekly, and I post to my Anything But Marketing! blog weekly. I chart my own journey here, so it’s a record of my discoveries, challenges, struggles, and successes transitioning to a new career. Since I want to work with people discovering and transitioning to creative careers, this information could be useful. The ideas for “telling your story” in Anything But Marketing! are simple and practical. Sounds like an e-mail newsletter to me!

I’m trying to figure out how to integrate or re-arrange or Frankenstein what I’m already doing into a weekly or twice-weekly e-mail newsletter. I really like the idea of having past issues archived on the web, so maybe I’ll post things to my newsletter and then a week or so later archive them. The advantage to signing up would be getting the information earlier.

I might consolidate my blogs to one site by making them sub-pages of a designated site. Haven’t figured that out yet. Obviously, if and when I do make that kind of change, I’ll put it in my newsletter and post it here!

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

Time For Discovery

It was a week of questions but not many answers for me.

I like advocating for parenting models and child behavior management models in general based on respect for children and their developmental needs and stages. But people who seek help with parenting either have children with severe behavior problems, so it’s actually a therapy issue, or they are court-ordered to get parent training because they are abusive or at-risk to abuse. I don’t see that translating into parent coaching. One question, then, is How do I incorporate a passion for helping people respect children and mentor them effectively into my business if the target group isn’t interested?

I like individual coaching but realized I don’t want to have a business model where I carve out blocks of my time and have to keep them booked with appointments to maximize my profits. It would keep me from having a business. I distinguish a business from straight self-employment this way: Am I trading my time for money as my only means of earning income, or do I have ways to create and produce something and then sell it again and again? If I’m coaching as much as possible there’s not time to create the products for the business. Another question this week is How much individual coaching do I want to do, and how much can I do and still have time to develop my business?

The biggie, the one I keep coming back to, comes up when I think about marketing. I keep going backwards. I think of ways to get groups of people to hear my message and sign up for a free or low-cost event or product. But that’s supposed to be a step leading towards recurring purchases or a higher-end purchase. I haven’t figured out what that will be yet. I keep stopping myself and reminding myself I need to figure out what I’m trying to market before I come up with a marketing plan. My big question is What are the continuity, or recurring purchase, products and big-ticket products I want to sell?

I looked at taking a group coaching course, a small business coaching course, and an advanced skills course. So far none of them have worked with my schedule. I do realize one of the answers to my questions is to get connected with people building their own coaching and training businesses. Since that’s not working out right now, I will look into joining a coaching support group.

The other answer to my group of questions is to start moving forward. I have to experience and learn and try things out in order to find what will work for me. So action will help me find my way. Lots of experimenting and risk-taking are in my future. It's time for discovery.

Which leads to the biggest question of all. When will I start? I can’t wait to find out!

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

Resistance???

Lately on the Fast Track Your Dream forum there have been discussions about the idea of resistance. We’re trying to figure out what it is and what it isn’t.

Here goes. Resistance refers to an internal inertia, that inner ball and chain that keeps you stuck in a rut and away from taking on risks. Risks can be too--risky. According to Barbara Sher, this rut-resisting urge is a very primitive form of fear. It keeps us from venturing into dangerous territory so we won’t be harmed. It’s a survival thing going back to primitive man. It’s also about as dumb as primitive man, and doesn’t distinguish between risks like dying and risks like being confused and embarrassed while learning to do something new.

I’m not sure myself if it’s a primitive man thing, but I do like to think of resistance as a primal response that keeps us afraid of change and comfortable with the known. But the known gets boring, so we decide we’re going to jump out of the rut and make some changes! Then resistance says things like, “It’s kind of cold. Wouldn’t you rather stay inside where it’s warm?” and “Who do you know at that group you want to visit? You’ll probably be lonely and you won’t fit in.” It also says, “You should probably organize those files before you try something wild and crazy like writing an article.”

The twist that we’re bouncing around in discussions at Fast Track is that sometimes we resist doing things for perfectly good reasons. We might resist taking a step because we know it’s something we’re not very good at it. The ideal solution would be to ask for help or pay someone to do it for us, but we don’t think that’s reasonable so we try to make ourselves do it. Sometimes we resist a step because it truly is too risky, such as quitting a job and then looking for something more interesting to do. The group also realized we might resist change because something about the direction isn’t right. Maybe it’s a little off course, maybe the timing’s not right, or maybe we sense we’re doing things out of order. It’s a gut feeling, our intuition holding us back without us understanding why.

That’s my theme this week. I finally bought Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port. Early in the book he talks about figuring out who your ideal client is. Pardon my mirth. This was a big stumbling block for me during my Coaching course. I don’t know who my ideal client is. I haven’t even believed it’s reasonable to think about it and to limit my business to those people. I’ve always believed I have to find a way to work with whoever is willing to pay for my services, with my only limits being highly offensive people and those who won’t pay or keep appointments.

I discovered I don’t have a lot of enthusiasm for getting clients. I worry I’ll have to work with people who drain my energy and frustrate me. I don’t want to “book myself solid” yet because I’m afraid I won’t enjoy it very much. So I’m finally going to define my ideal client. I’ve never given myself that freedom, never believed I could choose. It’s about time I figure out who I can do my best work for and get excited about meeting them.

I’ve also been worried I’ll have to spend so much time on individual Coaching that I won’t have time to explore lots of other ideas I have for my business. I had planned to focus first on getting Coaching clients and then on other ideas. I’ve decided to change my plan. I’m going to spend some time each day thinking about other, future areas of my business. And I’m going to dream big.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

Twisting Or Roundabouts?

This week I spent a little bit of time writing for my Blog-Zine, more time planning the rest of this month’s and next month’s Blog-Zine articles, a lot of time reading and watching training DVDs, and a whole lot more time doing things that have nothing to do with my business.

In the “Design your life first, then design your career” model, you start with the kind of life you want to have and the priorities you should honor. From there you find interesting and creative work that complements your life. High up on my list right now is time for my sons’ activities, since my wife is gone from dawn to dusk or later four or five days a week. This week, even though I don’t have my new business up and running at full speed, I was still able to make their activities my priority.

It’s a blessing to know I can give them the extra time once in a while. But I still get anxious when I realize that nothing I did specifically generated new money this week, and my “productive” hours were spent planning, learning, and contemplating.

I still haven’t figured out how to get paid for that. I need to focus on helping other people plan, learn, and contemplate. That’s a paid service!

It didn’t feel like much forward progress. It felt like a lot of waiting. I’m waiting for my web site to be updated when my web master has time. I’m waiting to have more content developed and written so I can offer something—anything—to entice people to sign up to my list and maybe buy a workbook from me.

One of my ideas, which involves packaging training and time-limited Coaching around specific goals and life areas, got me a little excited. When I have been thinking about ways to market Coaching and training to some target groups, it’s felt unclear and I have lacked direction. Having a specific, focused approach for a set amount of time helps me see how to present it. Training and Coaching packages may not produce any more results than offering open-ended Coaching, but it sure helps me “get” the way to start telling the story about what I do!

So maybe it just looked like I was going in circles. Maybe I was seeing a similar view from a slightly different perspective. Maybe there’s a little progress on this journey in there somewhere.

May You Know the Joy of Sharing Your Gifts,

Steve Coxsey

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

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