What does it really take to fill a coaching group, retreat, program, or workshop?

I discovered that some strategies work better than others. It usually has to do with “marketing intimacy,” a term I learned from Alex Mandossian a few years ago.

The more expensive your program is, the higher intimacy you’ll need to use in your marketing.

Here are my top 5 tools for filling a group or selling a program in the order of effectiveness (also, in the order of increasing marketing intimacy):

==> #5: Emails - can be very effective, especially if you can write good copy, but not enough to fill a high-ticket coaching group.

==> #4: Videos – can be effective if you’re comfortable on camera, and works even better in combination with a sales letter approach.

==> #3: Teleseminars – extremely effective when you combine education with promotion, and build enough value on the call that people can’t wait to get more of you!

==> #2: Webinars - this is like a teleseminar on steroids because you engage your participants both, in audio and video format.

==> #1: Live speaking - the most effective tool I found that allows you to connect with your audience like nothing else, and enroll more people into your program.

So how many of these strategies do you currently use? What if you use all 5 to enroll clients – would that make a difference to your bottom line?

Most importantly, what if you had a FORMULA for designing your teleseminars, webinars, and live talks so that you enroll 20%-40% of your participants every single time?

This year I discovered a woman whose formula works for me every time I use it. Her formula allows me me to do what I love doing – teach (what some people believe kills sales) and still get clients!

Her name is Lisa Sasevich, and I am forever grateful to her for sharing her tactics with me. If you’ve tried it all – teleclasses, workshops, classes – and still struggling for cash and clients, here’s your chance to learn Lisa’s formula:

http://www.TeleclassMarketingSecrets.com

She designed a BRAND-NEW complimentary teleclass where she’s going to share exactly how she created FIVE 6-figure-plus launches in the last 18 months PLUS built a 7-figure home based business in less than 3 years…all without being “salesy!”

Summer brings relaxing days spent with family and friends, yummy barbecues and trips to new or favorite places.  It is a time when, for many people, work takes a back seat for a while to more playful and enjoyable pursuits, whether that includes, from gardening and yard work to lazing on the beach, and everything in between.  We’re definitely called to spend more time outdoors and less chained to our computer screens and telephones.

You may have found that summer can also mean a drop in coaching clients, as people in general turn to  summer sunshine and activities for their motivation, gratification or solace.  This might place a strain on your finances and leave pockets of empty hours in your work schedule.

Fortunately, with a little planning and preparation, the summer months can be particularly fruitful for the enterprising life or business coach.  Here are some ways to either boost your flagging income or fill those empty hours with business-building activity:

• Have a summer sale. Do you have ebooks or products that you’ve been selling for a while?  Why not offer them at a substantial summer discount?  Better yet, run a different special every couple of weeks, so that you bring in income at a steadier pace.  Or consider offering a summer group coaching program at a very attractive rate; perhaps you can lure clients with a six-, eight- or ten-week program that will help them make major strides or changes in some aspect of their lives by September.

• Go through your articles, blog entries and other written works to see if they can be recycled. Can you turn old blog entries you’ve written into a new book?   Go deeper on topics you’ve covered in articles and turn them into short, inexpensive, downloadable reports?  Record a book you’ve written in the past and now offer it as an audio program?  The summer months can be an ideal time to mine your past work for future gold.

• Use the coaching downtime to create a new product or program. Sure, you have every right to enjoy your summertime, too, and free space in your coaching schedule can help you restore your own energy.  But why not devote at least some of that downtime on a regular basis to creating a new high-end product or program that you’ll release in the fall?  There’s no better time to get the creative juices flowing than when they are not being sapped by your coaching clients or a too-full, hectic schedule.

• Develop a six-month marketing plan to get your business back on track for the second half of the year. This is an excellent time to study new marketing strategies and tools, research the costs of using different media for your marketing efforts, and set up a marketing game plan that will bring you phenomenal results come late summer or autumn.  If you create the plan now, you’ll be ready, willing and able to promote your products and services consistently and effectively by the time September rolls around.

As you can see, you can continue to grow your business and still have time to enjoy picnics, travelling and poolside parties.  If you use this time wisely, the “lazy” months of summer can end up being among your most productive of the year.

It’s ready, it’s here, and I’m excited to release my brand new site on multiple income streams for life and business coaches, consultants, authors, speakers, and service professionals!

This site has been 6 months in the making – no, not the design or the content or writing the free guide. All of these were put together in less than a week! What took the longest was thinking about how to communicate my ideas in the most compelling and way. There’s so much noise about information marketing, I wanted to keep it very focused and demystify what it truly takes not to just create an info product after info product, but a sustainable profitable multiple income streams business.

1. I first started with having a logo designed – this is the first time I invested some serious money into researching, conceptualizing, and designing a graphic to capture my brand. I took a course on branding and as a result was able to communicate to the graphic design company exactly what I want. This one actually allowed me to select a design from multiple designers!

2. I then hired the same company to create the web site look for the home page and the blog. I wanted the home page to look exciting, inviting, and different from the rest of the site. The blog needed to be simple and clean. You can see the difference. Once the look was designed, I had to hire a blog developer to turn it into an actual blog, not just a graphic.

3. The rest of the site was created on a Wordpress blog platform to make it easy for me to create and maintain all the pages without programming or coding of any kind. You can see that I decided to deviate from original colors as it started to look way too pink for me and for my male fan base

What do you think?

Are you ready to turn your passion, topic, or experience into a highly profitable multiple-income-stream information business?

Then I invite you to check out my brand new web site Milana.com, where I offer free tips, articles, and videos about turning what you know into a series of lifetime income streams! Plus, grab a copy of my FREE 25-page guide, “7 Secrets to Creating a Profitable Multiple-Income-Streams Business!”.

Would LOVE your comments and feedback!

Milana

Do you do group coaching?

Then these 2 great tools will make your life much easier and your programs – more profitable!

1. Group Coaching Calculator

This is a FREE tool that allows you determine how much to charge for your program. Just enter a few numbers, and it tells you how much you’ll be making an hour, a week, a month, and a year running your group programs – easy!

2. Group Coaching Manager

This tool allows you to organize your group programs, members, and all related information in one convenient place. It also lets you easily track the progress of your group participants and create an amazing experience for them. I am using it with ALL of my group coaching programs, and people are LOVING it!

*****On June 2nd Group Coaching Manager is going up from $27 to $47 a month, so be sure to sign up now and lock in your low monthly fee.

Do you ever get a “writer’s block” when it comes to writing your coaching articles, newsletters, or blog posts?  No matter how passionate you might be about your topic, you may find yourself stuck once in a while. So how do you keep your writing fresh over time?

I have 9 ideas to share with you.

1. See how other writers deal with the dreaded writer’s block syndrome. You have to love the Internet for this; do a quick Google search and you’ll come across millions of articles with tips from a wide spectrum of writers on how they cope with blocks to their creativity.  You’re bound to come across many ways to fuel your writing fire again.
2. Next, see what other coaches in your specialty are doing these days. Of course I’m not advocating pirating or plagiarizing anyone else’s work.  Just read what they’re sharing and see if you find seeds of inspiration that you can cultivate into your own articles or blog posts.
3. Pull article ideas from every coaching session with a client. Jot down words they use to describe their fears and frustration.  Perhaps even doodle around those words.  Somewhere between the words and the pictures, ideas for topics to write about will begin to emerge.
4. Keep a notebook and a small recording device with you at all times. The other day while I was on the phone with a colleague, she said something that gave me terrific idea for an article.  I quickly jotted it down and turned into an article later.  Keep that notebook handy.  For times when you are not able to write, like when you’re driving, recording your thoughts works equally well.
5. Read, read, read—but do so in an active search for things that you can use as a springboard for your writing. Newspapers and magazines, especially women’s and news magazines, contain a treasure trove of information on what people worry about, what they find important, what trends they follow and statistics they fall into.
6. Look through your past articles, newsletters, and blog posts – you may uncover some gems and write a “part 2” on the topic you already wrote about. Perhaps include your new discoveries, observations, lessons learned, or any other updates to the topic.
7. Survey your mailing list to find out what they need help with. I always have a treasure trove of ideas from running surveys – enough to last me for years of article writing! If you see a question repeated over and over again, that might be your clue to create a class or an information product about it.
8. Turn your teleclass transcripts into articles! If you’ve been consistently recording and transcribing your teleclasses and interviews, this might be a great time to turn them into new articles or blog posts. Over the last 9 years I easily have 5,000 pages of transcript material. I can either look through these to pull out an idea for an article, or hire someone to extract several articles from them.
9. When all else fails, just step away from writing for a while and do something totally different. Clean a closet, go for a walk (don’t forget that recorder!), play with your children, listen to music, or anything else that will relieve the stress that an encounter with writer’s block can cause.  Often simply letting that tension flow out of you is enough to get your creative juices flowing once more.

Keeping your blog fresh, sending your newsletter regularly and creating new products for your clients are critical components of a successful, lucrative coaching practice.  I hope these tips I’ve shared will help you do just that.

Want to get on a roller coaster of success?

If you’re relatively new to coaching, you probably realize how time-consuming and labor intensive it can be to get your name and message “out there.”  Coaching has become increasingly competitive, with a handful of well-known people in the field seemingly grabbing a lion’s share of the publicity (and business).  What’s a new coach to do?

One extremely effective way to get noticed is to hold a virtual event, or telesummit.  It consists of coordinating a handful of speakers, including you, in order to provide free or low-cost lectures or interviews on related topics via webinars or telephone conference calls over the course of a few days.  How does this get you tons of free publicity?  It works because all participants in the telesummit promote the event to their clients, on their blogs and/or in their newsletters, just as you will to yours.  It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved.

First, you need to decide on a broad topic for your telesummit, one that would appeal to your particular client niche.  For example, let’s say that you mainly work with women over age 50 who want to pursue age-old dreams.  Your topic could be “Yes, Virginia: There is Life After 50–How to Create the Life You’ve Always Dreamed Of.”  Then you can select the topic that you’ll cover during your portion of the virtual event.

Next, look for other entrepreneurs who might want to target the same niche as you, but have non-competing specialties.  If you’re a life coach, for example, you might find a book coach who’s willing to do a presentation on writing a book after fifty, a health coach who can speak to midlife wellness issues,  a relationship coach to talk about one of the many family or work relationship issues women from that age group face—you get the picture.  Look for speakers whose talks will complement yours and add value to the event as a whole.

As you seek partners for your telesummit, try to find business people who already have their own strong followings on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, appear to have good-sized e-mail newsletter lists and/or a number of loyal blog readers or radio listeners.  Why?  Doing so will maximize your event’s exposure, as all of the telesummit’s participants will be expected to promote it to their clients, readers and followers, just as you’ll be doing.

Other aspects to consider as you plan your telesummit include:

• Scheduling: You’ll need to coordinate times that work for all of your co-presenters as well as attract the most listeners over a period of a few days.  A good thing to keep in mind is that holding the event during the peak summer months or around major holidays might negatively impact the number of people who register for the event. You’ll also need to consider that both your speakers and those who interested in registering for the event might reside in a wide range of time zones.

• Recording and Resale Rights: Decide on how you will monetize the event.  Will you charge for it up front or package the calls into an infoproduct that you can sell?  Will the other participants be able to resell the package as well, or can they use their particular presentation as a giveaway or a bonus on their Web site?  To make sure everyone who participates is clear on what they can and cannot do with the recording, it’s a good idea to provide them with a written agreement that they need to read and sign in order to be a part of your event.

• Promotional Strategy: Where and how frequently will you promote the event?  What promotional expectations will you have of the other participants, and how will you gauge the success of their efforts?  Be clear on both so that, in the end, the telesummit will indeed provide sufficient exposure for you and the other speakers that you line up to make it worth everyone’s while.

If hosting a telesummit sounds like a lot of work, well, it is.  In terms of costs, logistics and reach, however, holding a well planned virtual event can generate a tremendous surge of new business for you. In other words, the potential benefits of a telesummit far outweigh the time and effort you’ll put into organizing it.  Your name and business get a major visibility boost, you get to broaden your professional network through joint venturing with other speakers and you end up with a product that you can sell for years to come.  Plus, you get the added feel good bonus of helping the other participants grow their businesses as well.

If you are excited about the possibilities and want to start planning your very own telesummit now, be sure to check out Leesa Barnes’  Virtual Events Boom telesummit, where she’s teaching the step-by-step process of creating, marketing, and dominating your niche with your very own telesummit!

If your idea of giving yourself a raise looks like hitting all the local networking events in the hope of getting new clients, I can certainly understand it. I’ve been there… I remember joining my local Chamber of Commerce, then attending weekly events hoping to make even a a single connection that would lead to a client.

What I didn’t know is that it’s not about networking or making a connection – it’s about building relationships, and that took time, a lot of time. As a mom of two small kids, I simply didn’t have the time to dedicate to this strategy, so I started looking for other ways to generate cash quickly to stay in business.

Since then, I discovered many new strategies, none of which required me to network, sell, or travel! Plus, they positioned me in such a great situation financially, that searching for clients became a thing of the past.

Let me share 7 of these really great income strategies I personally used over the last few years, which can help you stabilize your monthly cash flow, create peace of mind, and make you feel confident about your business growth.

==> Income Strategy #1: Start a 12-month coaching club

Coaching club is a membership-based mentoring program. Decide on the focus of your program, create an outline of the content you’ll teach and coach around, set up a web page describing the benefits of enrolling, and announce it to your list of prospects. Don’t have a list? Partner with people who do.

==> Income Strategy #2: Hold a live workshop

Teaching a one-day hands-on interactive workshop is a great way to give people that personal attention they want. You can charge a low fee, then enroll people into a high-ticket coaching program with you. Or, you can charge more and have a big payday.

==> Income Strategy #3: Teach a teleclass

Survey your prospects and find out what their biggest problem is, then teach your solution as a paid teleclass or webinar. I recommend doing this at least 4 times a year as a way of “cash injection”, and for being seen as an expert and a resource in your niche.

==> Income Strategy #4: Launch a mastermind group

If you work with business owners, this is a great way to bring people together and facilitate idea exchange, hot seats, makeovers, resource sharing, and growth strategies within the group, with you as the leader.

==> Income Strategy #5: Create a telesummit

Ah…One of my favorites, of course. Having done six telesummits over the last few years, I can tell you there are very few strategies that can generate the results a multi-day niche-specific teleconference can do for you. The key here is to feature *topics*, not experts like I see many people do.

==> Income Strategy #6: Start a membership site

Gather all your existing content, tools, resources, forms, templates, audios, and videos, and turn them into a membership site. Charge a small monthly payment, or combine it with group coaching and turn it into a coaching club. Being topic-specific pays off here, as well.

==> Income Strategy #7: Promote subscription tools

Everyone subscribes to something – business owner or individual – and you can easily get paid affiliate commissions for recommending tools. I recommend tools such as shopping cart, autoresponder, newsletter publishing, survey creation, practice management, and many other tools that my target market can use.

There you have it – seven strategies that, if put in place, can keep you and your family thriving all year long. I also highly recommend that you plan your income streams 12 months ahead. There’s nothing more fulfilling than knowing exactly what’s going to bring revenue every month

Pricing your products and setting up your life coaching fees seems to be a stumbling block for a lot of people. Most coaches under-charge.

The best thing about selling your expertise is that you can include many items that don’t cost you anything, while increasing the perceived and real value of your products and programs.

Here’s what one of my favorite mentors, Terry Dean, offers on this topic:

“Adding additional value to your products or services allows you to increase the price if you choose OR it allows you to increase your conversion rates and customer satisfaction (add enough value and you can do both).

It’s a personal choice of mine that I like to give as much value as possible whenever I can. Remember – people aren’t really buying your book, your ebook, or your CD. They’re buying the end result. What is it they’re trying to achieve through the product? Is it to have more money, more time, lose weight, look sexy, etc.? What do they want that causes them to buy your product?

Your next question is how can you make it easier for them to follow your plan. For example, I love “Quick Start Guides” that help people get started quickly. They don’t have to read the whole course or listen to all the CDs before they get started. They can take action today (daily action plans fit here as well). You could add a “21 Day Plan to…” as one of your bonuses. Or you could include the 10 Step Quick Start Guide.

You could add worksheets that ask them questions…or as I like to call them self-coaching assessments (people hate the term work). You could hire a programmer to design you a simple program that does the job (or find if there is a software program with reprint rights or private label rights available). Whatever it is that helps them get the job done…you provide it to them.

Here are 20 Ways to Add Value (from Terry’s internet business blog)

• Relevant and (at least somewhat) exclusive software.
• Proprietary data.
• Bundled services that relate to the product.
• Expanded info on related techniques.
• Audio files to add depth to the process of learning.
• Video, for clarity in learning.
• Worksheets and checklists
• Phone or email consultation.
• Exclusive follow-up info or free subscriptions.
• Case studies. (Separate, for illustration purposes.)
• Sample text, scripts, ads, and anything else that will help the customer to better use the product.
• Free or discounted updates.
• Spreadsheets.
• Easily imported “Bookmarks” or “Favorites” collections.
• Access to membership areas.
• Contact lists for vendors, potential partners, or other relevant companies or individuals.
• Separate package of reviews of related products.
• “Quick start” guide.
• Interactive tutorials or self-assessments.
• Hard copy material mailed separately.”

One important thing to remember is that sometimes less is more.  Especially if your program is focused on implementation. Coaching clients may want less information and “stuff” and more access to you.

Yesterday I talked about passive marketing strategies: create value, put it out there, and clients will come without any direct selling or asking for business.

Things like Articles & FAQs, Books, Ebooks, & Special Reports, Audios & Videos, Podcasts & Radio Shows, Press Releases & Ezines, Interviews & Quotes, and other materials to position yourself as an expert on your topic.

But how you do you GET IT OUT THERE? How do you get people to read your articles, watch your videos, quote you in magazines, invite you for interviews, link to your blog, and listen to your audios?
I discovered a service that does all of this for you, and we coaches LOVE “done-for-you” marketing!

• This services will get you fast and powerful exposure on search engines, social networks, media sites, video sites, article and podcast sites, and visibility all over the web.

• They’ll get media opportunities for you, market your events, teleclasses, promotions, products, services, and ideas.

http://www.MarketMeAllYearLong.com

Here’s how it works:

1. Choose your topic, niche, or specialty
2. Send them all your materials
3. They’ll market you all year long!

For example, I chose to be their “Multiple Streams of Income” expert. You can become their life design, relationship, divorce, parenting, wellness, financial, or any other type of expert.

There is only ONE expert per topic, and once someone claims it, it’s gone. The good news is that you can specialize in a more narrow category (e.g. “Relationships After 50″ or “Careers for Women in Technology”, etc.)

Their team will work with you personally to help you narrow down and select a topic you can easily position yourself in.

Everything you get anxious about – SEO, link building, traffic, and social networking – is taken care of with this ONE service, truly incredible. Go ahead and claim your category now… before someone else does.

http://www.MarketMeAllYearLong.com

If marketing has not been your favorite thing to do in business, most likely you’re just going about it the wrong way. Let me show you how reframing your thinking about it can explode your business.

For example… What if it marketing wasn’t about prospecting, cold calling, asking for referrals, or any other type of selling tactics?

What if marketing was really about creating value?

I call it “passive marketing” (sometimes known as “attraction marketing”) here’s why this approach is absolutely awesome:

• Passive marketing tactics don’t require you to keep asking for business;
• You can leverage them – do it once, use it over and over again;
• They allow you to generate revenue even when you’re not working with clients;
• Most importantly, using these strategies make you absolutely irresistible to clients.

So what does “passive marketing” looks like in practical terms? Here are some of the strategies that I consider passive (as in “not having to ask for business directly):

• Creating an audio product
• Developing a live program
• Putting together a toolkit
• Speaking in front of large audiences
• Publishing a newsletter
• Creating a community subscription web site
• Writing a book
• Creating a network of vendors and partners
• Conducting monthly tele-seminars
• Starting an online school or university in your niche
• Organizing live events for your target audience
• Developing a workshop and licensing it to others
• Starting your own radio show

…among many others. THAT’S what will attract clients to you like bees to honey!

I encourage you to create a “passive marketing strategy” for your business this year, experience tremendous results, and fall in LOVE with marketing the way many successful coaches and entrepreneurs have!