by Comm, Joel
What Is Coaching?
One of the themes of this book is that your knowledge is valuable. Whether that’s professional knowledge built up through years of training and experience or information that you’ve managed to accumulate by doing what you love, you have an asset that people will pay to own themselves. Blogs, information products, and membership sites are just different channels through which you can deliver that expertise online and receive a fee for it.
Once you’ve built a successful Internet business, you even create an additional asset that you can market: expertise in creating an Internet business in your field.
Coaching is another way of delivering that information, and it’s a particularly intensive and valuable way. For the client, it can bring targeted results, and it embeds the information deeper and faster than any other method.
When people listen to a recording of you explaining how to earn money by uploading video clips to YouTube, some of that information will be missed. If they listen to it while driving to work in the morning, they’ll lose concentration every time they have to look at the road. If they’ve bought your e-book, they’ll dip in and out, picking up the information that they think will be the most useful—and leaving plenty of other goodies behind. If they’re reading your blog, it’s inevitable that they’ll miss some of your posts, and besides, blogs aren’t the best platform to teach a course. They provide nuggets of information rather than a clear guide from start to success.
Coaching allows people who want to pick up your knowledge direct access to the source. It’s the most powerful way of helping people achieve their goals using the knowledge that you’ve managed to accumulate.
The coaching itself can be done in all sorts of different ways. We’ve already seen how it’s possible to deliver online coaching, either by using specialized software or by creating videos that can be accessed behind a pay wall or delivered on DVD. But coaching is always at its best in person when it’s done individually, for a set period of time, or in workshops to a group of people.
Just as the effect of coaching is particularly strong, so the importance of that four-step sales process—know me, like me, trust me, pay me—is concentrated, too.
You don’t have to know people very well to start reading their blogs. You need to like them to come back, but if they annoy you occasionally, you can live with it, provided they aren’t asking you to do more than browse their content, clicking occasionally on an ad.
You have to like and trust people before you’ll buy an affiliate product from them online, but everything has to be firmly in place before they’ll hire you as a coach.
You’re going to be telling people what they’re doing wrong. You’re going to be giving them advice related directly to their life, including, perhaps, their personal life, because that’s always an influence on professional success, too. They’re going to be trusting you with personal information—their doubts, their fears, their dreams for the future—and you’re going to have to persuade them that to achieve those dreams they’re going to have to do things that they might not want to do.
After all, if they had wanted to do them before now, they would have achieved their success already.
Before people even think about hiring you as a coach, they have to feel that they know you, like you, and absolutely trust you. It’s something that can happen only after you’ve already used your web sites to broadcast who you are.
That identity is presented as your brand.
Strategies for Branding
How would you describe yourself? If you had to choose three words that best describe your personality, what would they be?
You might say that you’re “loyal, fun-loving, and down-to-earth.” Or perhaps you’re “adventurous, creative, and caring.” Or maybe you’re “outgoing, bubbly, and thoughtful.”
It’s likely that you think you’re all of those things together, and if you were to describe yourself completely, you’d probably want to use all of those terms. The people who know you might agree with you, but they’d probably want to highlight one or two in particular. Your friends might find you very funny, for example. Or they might like you because they know you always listen or because you always have such smart advice.
When they think about you, they tend to associate you first with your most obvious characteristic. Whether it’s your wit, your big heart, or your giant intelligence, your prime feature helps you to stand out from the people around you.
You can think of that characteristic as your natural brand—and everyone has one. It might not be something you’ve worked hard to create. It might not be something you’ve worked at all to create. It’s just who are you, and it’s how other people have come to see you, and it’s how they distinguish you from everyone else they know.
When you’re building a coaching business, you’ll want to plan and build that brand deliberately. You won’t be the only person offering coaching services in your field, and you certainly won’t be the only person offering information about your field on your blog and in your products. Your brand will help you to stand out from your competitors. It will help to build a relationship of trust with your audience, and it will show them instantly what they can expect to receive when they join your community.
In the past, branding was mostly restricted to large corporations and specific products. Faced with a shelf full of unfamiliar fizzy drinks, all offering to quench thirst and supply bubbles, Coca-Cola’s branding power meant that customers knew what that product would do for them. It wouldn’t just refresh them. It wouldn’t just give them a sugar rush and a fizzy tongue. If “Coca-Cola is life,” then drinking it would give them an instant burst of happiness, energy, and excitement. When choosing between three products whose name you’re not familiar with and one you do recognize, you’ll choose the one you know. Because you’re familiar with it, you can trust it to deliver what it says on the bottle.
Branding helps customers confused by a giant range of choices to make smart buying decisions. Especially on the Internet, where the next option is just a click away, it’s an essential factor in turning leads into customers and creating a closely knit community that not only returns, but even evangelizes on your behalf.
In the past few years branding has changed. It’s become individualized. Now it’s possible—even essential—for people to have brands of their own. It’s something that’s come about through a number of factors. A better understanding of the way branding works is likely to have had much to do with it. We recognize the importance of brands in our own lives, whether it’s the Apple logo on our mobile phones, the Nike swoosh on our shoes, or the giant signs that follow each other down the highway. Brands have not only become more commonplace, they’ve also become recognized. We know what they’re doing. We know why they’re doing it. And we wonder if the power of branding can do something for us, too.
But the importance of personal branding also has a lot to do with the changes in the job market. Once, it was possible to join a company and know that you would be there until the day you retired. You’d get regular pay raises, earn the odd bonus, and leave with a gold watch and a gold-plated pension. Those days are gone. Companies no longer think twice about cutting employees loose—and the employees think nothing of quitting for another company... or setting up shop on their own.
That means we are all responsible for how we appear to buyers, whether those buyers are employers or customers. It means we have to recognize those positive characteristics that help us to stand out and project them so that we’re instantly recognizable and never forgotten.
There are two steps to building your brand: (1) understanding the elements your brand should contain and (2) creating the structure that will broadcast that brand.
IDENTIFYING YOUR BRAND
In his book Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success, branding expert Dan Schawbel talks about the importance of basing a personal brand on authenticity. Brands need to be real, he argues, and should be bas
ed on an individual’s true character, personality, and outlook. “Why do you need to be real?” he asks. “Because everyone else is taken and replicas don’t sell for as much!”
Those are two good reasons, but there’s a third that’s just as persuasive.
Basing a brand on who you really are is the easiest option available. You won’t have to pretend to be someone you’re not. You won’t risk getting caught out when you talk to people at conferences and workshops. And you won’t have to wrack your brain wondering how the person you’re trying to project would behave on Twitter, on Facebook, or in your e-books.
You can just relax, be you... and make money.
Nor should you have to look too hard to find a unique characteristic that sums up your attitude. It could be your sense of adventure. It could be your head for statistics. It could be nothing more than your winning smile and your positive attitude.
You don’t need more than one characteristic to build your brand, and chances are, the first one that comes into your head should be the one you choose.
Psychologists always ask people to say the first thing that comes into their head when they look at a picture. They don’t ask for the second thing, and they don’t give their subjects time to have a good long think. They want their most immediate reaction—because that’s the one that’s likely to be the most honest. Ask yourself what you think is the single most outstanding characteristic of your attitude, your personality, or the way you do business, and your first reaction is likely to be the core of your brand.
Obviously, it has to be positive and inspirational. It has to be something that other people would want to have, too. But as long as it’s upbeat, fun, and exciting, you should find that it will help you to stand out in the marketplace.
BROADCASTING YOUR BRAND
Much trickier will be broadcasting that brand. This is what giant corporations pay advertising companies suitcase loads of money to do on their behalf. If you have a suitcase or two filled with money that you don’t know what to do with, you can save yourself a small headache and do the same thing. There are now plenty of small marketing and branding companies around that will be happy to help make your brand recognizable.
But you don’t need a suitcase stuffed with cash to broadcast your brand. One of the advantages of choosing a personal brand that’s closely linked to who you really are is that it then becomes very easy to broadcast it yourself. As you’ll see, social media has made it easier still.
That’s because your brand will consist of two elements: (1) a visual image that is immediately communicated and (2) a style that allows people to feel they’re getting close to you and that they know you.
To create the visual image, you’ll probably need the help of a professional. A photographer can shoot portraits to use in your marketing material that communicate the characteristic that you most want to put across. You’ll have to tell your photographer what you want the image to say. Find someone with the right amount of talent, and you should end up with a selection of photos that you can use for your branding.
Figure 7.1 “Barefoot Executive” Carrie Wilkerson is an expert on all sorts of marketing topics, but her knowledge of branding comes naturally and serves her well.
Carrie Wilkerson, for example, is a consultant and strategist who helps entrepreneurs who work at home to build their businesses (Figure 7.1). Just look at the main image she uses on her web site BlogBarefoot.com. She’s shown sitting on the floor, smiling and relaxed ... and barefoot.
That’s her brand. That’s what she’s offering to people who hire her as a coach or a consultant. She’ll help them to be professional, but in a way that’s easy, relaxed, and stress-free. It’s a message she communicates through the pictures she uses. It’s a feeling that’s summarized in the title she uses to describe herself: “The Barefoot Executive.” And it’s also something that comes across clearly in her Twitter stream (Figure 7.2).
Carrie’s tweets are inspiring, positive, and professional, but they’re also personal. They help her to communicate her brand and her personality directly to her target market, building a close relationship with people she may well be working with in the future.
Figure 7.2 Carrie Wilkerson’s brand name and image help to place her in people’s minds. Her tweets help her to build that brand.
Twitter is particularly strong at doing this, and it’s another good reason to choose a brand that reflects your true personality. It’s very difficult to create a successful timeline that doesn’t show who you are. But when your brand is a positive aspect of your personality—your sense of fun, your love of knowledge, your thoroughness—then that will come across naturally in your tweets.
Every time you open your timeline and tell people what you’re doing or thinking, you’ll be giving your brand another little push and burying it a little deeper in people’s minds.
Your personal brand will make you known to your target market. It will help to build trust, and it should lead people to like you. Communicating that brand is a process. It takes time, but as you do it, you should find that it creates a very powerful connection with your audience, encouraging them to return to you... and to hire you as a coach, too.
Sometimes you need a tool that will communicate your brand in a way that’s much faster, much broader, and much more powerful.
How to Do PR for Mass Impact
Coaching relies on your image as an expert. Students will hire you, sign up for your classes, and buy your coaching videos because they’re certain that you know more than they do and more than most people do—and that you can share your knowledge. That expertise will form part of your brand.
Usually, it takes time to build a sense of the depth and value of your expertise. It happens after your blog has been online for a long time and has consistently posted good content. It happens when your information products are bought, shared, passed around, and most important of all, respected.
It happens when you really do know your stuff, and the content that you produce shows that you know your stuff.
But you can take a shortcut to build your brand as an expert: You can get your name in the press.
When reporters are assigned a story, they start looking for sources. They’ll want to speak to people who are directly involved in the story. That will give the article a human touch and show the reader that what they’re describing does have an impact on people’s lives. But they’ll also want to speak to an expert. That will explain to the reader what’s happening, why it’s happening, and why it’s important.
Reporters themselves can’t do that. They’re not the experts. They’re just the ones who ask the questions and pass the information on to the reader. They don’t create that information themselves. The reader assumes that the experts interviewed by reporters are leaders in their field. The reader assumes that if there were a higher authority on that subject, the reporter would have found and interviewed that person instead.
If you get your name in the press, you’ll not only be seen by a huge number of people, those people will also regard you as a leading expert on your topic. When they’re thinking about learning how to build a web site, earn money from their illustrations, or create their own babysitting business, you’ll be the person they turn to.
Writing press releases is very simple. They’re short—about a page in length—and they follow a strict formula: • Headline
• Introductory paragraph
• Quote
• Two or three informational paragraphs or a series of bullet points
• Final quote
• Blurb about the expert
That’s very simple. More difficult is writing the kind of press release that actually wins attention. Reporters receive dozens of press releases every day. Many of them come from companies and PR agencies they know. Others will be sent to them in the vague hope that they’ll attract the reporter’s attention. Most of them fail.
The reason they fail is usually clear. When business owners write p
ress releases, they tend to think about what the reporter can do for them. They think about how they’ll be seen in the report and what effect the publicity will have on their business. What they should be thinking about is what they’re going to do for the reporter. They should be producing press releases that contain the kind of story ideas that solve a problem for the journalist: what to write and how to write it. The solution to that problem is a good story idea that entertains the audience and comes complete with expert, contact number, and quotes.
At least, that’s the way things used to be. When winning publicity meant picking up a spot in a print newspaper, it was vital to create press releases that were exciting and that stood out. They had to grab reporters’ eyes and promise them a solid story that would inform their audiences.