Wet People WANT to be Sold Dry Cleaning

Surprise! It’s me!

Yes. I realize that, as surprises go, my re-appearance on my own blog is not going to rival any of the really big ones, like Scary Spice making babies with Eddie Murphy or Ellen getting hitched to that bird from Ally McBeal, but I have been away a little while and I’ve missed you.

That’s why I brought you cake.

So what’s up? How’ve you been?

I see the talented and beautiful Coach Kalpna has been taking good care of you in my absence.

(And if you missed it, you’ll probably want to read her wonderfully-crafted article on how to screw up your personal branding. Then, after you’re suitably impressed with that then you’ll might want to read this article about dealing with worry on her blog.)

Now, in my absence, thousands of emails arrived in my email box in the past week.* And it has been the same question every time. Rabid fans, hungry for some JJ wisdom, have been asking this question in droves. It’s the same question I get every thursday night when chess club overruns and I return home at three in the morning in a drunken stupor with an octopus around my neck…**

Where on earth have you been, JJ?

I’ve been up a mountain.***

That’s right.

Sometimes a man needs to climb a mountain.

As it happens, that man was not me but a friend. Sometimes an unforeseen emotional and spiritual crisis strikes and the only logical course of action is to embark upon an ill-prepared camping trip up a mountain in the Lake District.

If this here blog were more literary in nature then I would wax poetic about the rugged landscapes, the waterfalls, the lakes, the mists encircling the mountain tops…

But I like to talk about learning here. So please allow me to describe…

Three lessons learned atop an English mountain in the rain

1. The only Zen you’ll find on the Top of the mountain is the Zen you bring up there

Okay. This isn’t exactly a learning of my own.

It’s a quote I lifted from Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. (Great book, by the way.)

Makes me sound wise though, I reckon.

Next…

2. When your Dad tells you “Look Son. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about hiking it’s to put all your belongings in a bin bag (refuse sack) inside your rucksack if it starts raining, otherwise all your stuff will get wet, and not having dry stuff to put on when you’re wet isn’t much fun” and you think “that’s a good idea, but I probably won’t do it because it sounds like a lot of effort and my stuff probably won’t get THAT wet” then you really should ignore that thought and just do what your Dad suggested anyway, otherwise you’ll end up with a load of wet stuff that makes you feel sad.

Which brings us onto…

3. When someone limps into your hotel, soaking wet, carrying a rucksack with tent attached, they probably won’t mind being sold to.

This is the bit in which I appear less than heroic. But also the bit in which I make a semi-relevant point about marketing.

As it turns out, you see, it wasn’t really camping weather. If the wind had abated awhile then we might have had a fighting chance of getting the tent up, but it wouldn’t have stayed attached to the ground for long.

At least that’s the story I told myself as I craved a nice warm bath and a beer in the hotel in the nearby village.

So, with tent on back, we headed back down the mountain in the pouring rain towards the village.

Now it also turns out that my left knee isn’t really a walking-down-mountains kind of knee. In fact, it’s more of a crunch-and-grind-and-make-me-grimace-and-scream-with-every-step kind of knee. (Yes, I am a true athlete.)

So when I arrived at the hotel in agony, cold and soaking wet, I would have gladly liquidated the children’s college  fund (if such a thing were to exist) to pay for a room in that hotel.

The receptionist was an angel. She reassured me that:

“Yes, I do indeed have rooms free. And here’s a room key. Why don’t you go have a nice warm bath and then we can check you in properly when you’re warm and relaxed? And if you leave your rucksack here we can get your clothes dried for you and up to your room within the hour. And would you like a table for dinner? You don’t look like you want to be walking very far.”

I happily said Yes to all of the above and gladly paid an extortionate amount of money for the service, but I would never have asked for it because my focus was simply on sliding into that lovely warm bath water.

Sometimes someone wants what you provide so much that they are thankful when you try to sell it to them. This is especially true when they haven’t yet realized that they would want it.

This might be worth thinking about next time you worry about “up-selling” or being “a pushy salesperson”.

Just sayin’.

JJ Jalopy.

* This might not, you know, actually be true.

** This entire paragraph may exist only because I think I’m funny and not, in fact, as a result of its resemblance to the truth.

*** This bit, and the rest of the post, really is true. Honest.

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How to Destroy Your Brand!

Hey! I’m on sabbatical up a mountain. I’ll be back in a couple of days. In the meantime, here’s a guest post from my beloved Mrs. Jalopy. It’s brilliant. Make sure you let her know!

Hi there, Kalpna here – you know, Coach Kalpna (if you don’t know, come and see me here!)

I’m a big fan of JJ Jalopy and when he asked if I would guest write a blog post I went through a flurry of emotions. First there was the flattery – little me being asked to write on such a cool blog? Yes please! Then there was that feeling that I just couldn’t do it. For one, what would I write about, what would people think, what if I didn’t add any value? Argh.

There’s a lot to tackle there, but today I’m not going to write about confidence boosters or how best to write a blog. That’s not really my job and in all fairness, I’d probably not be able to give the sort of constructive and loving advice that JJ provides in his oh-so-humorous style. Instead I’m going to share with you a story that gave me some learning.

I attend a fair few of these networking events and Coaching for Coaches days. I get to hang out with some people from my profession and we exchange stories and lessons and generally help each other out. I went to a full day seminar a few months ago. There were coaching professionals from all spheres of coaching. I met a lovely lady who helps people with their lives and their wardrobes – I think she probably has friends who are color therapists. I met a man who taught me that although men have more neurons in their brains than women but that women’s brains are able to make a larger amount of connections along nerve cells than men. Apparently this information could help change the face of coaching between the sexes. It was fascinating and mind boggling all at the same time!

What I was really looking forward to was hearing from a smartly dressed lady who was going to talk about brand identity. I’d been given a glossy brochure beforehand showing her immaculately dressed with a smiling, friendly face and a few perfectly scripted words about her, her company and her specialism. I couldn’t help but think, “Wow, what a great brand she is for herself!” I’m not ashamed to say that I was feeling like I was going to meet someone with a celebrity status.

So with a bounce in my step and with high expectations I entered the lecture theatre. Within minutes the lady within the pages of my brochure was stood in the auditorium talking about brand identity. She talked about the importance of a brand particularly when you are your own brand – which is the case for the majority of coaches. Everything that she said was spot on. I learnt the importance of nurturing your brand and being the brand and conducting yourself to support your brand in every single interaction. She was good. I liked it. I knew she was on to something. And in my eyes she had credibility. She was walking the walk and talking the talk.

Much like JJ’s friend Dave, the guy who doesn’t buy life coaching, I need convincing before buying into something – whether that be a physical purchase or just buying into a theory or idea. This lady was oozing credibility, she appeared trustworthy and was adding real value to me. What’s not to like? If she’d been selling something, I’d have bought it right then and there!

On my way out of the auditorium I couldn’t help but join the small group of people waiting to talk to her. I just wanted to give my thanks (and, OK, the celebrity stalker in me really wanted to meet her!). She engaged herself in a couple of brief conversations with the waiting people and finally turned to me, to look right through me whilst handing me her business card. Not one word, no eye contact, no acknowledgement. She just turned to talk to someone else.

In that moment the immaculate, friendly image I had of her disappeared with a poof. All the good feelings I had about her vanished. Her brand essence disintegrated in my mind. I felt cheated and a little bit stupid.

I walked away thinking that she was a bit of a fake.

OK, I admit, that’s a strong reaction to have to something that might have a really simple explanation (maybe she needed the loo, maybe she was hungry, maybe she was in a rush, maybe she didn’t like the look of me…) But rejection can hurt, and our opinions can only be built on the information we have available. Your customers are likely no more compassionate in this regard.

As JJ would say, her incongruence was the smelly carpet in her branding.

What is yours?

Marketing for Granola Eating Airy Fairy Woo Woo Hippie Types

A friend of mine is a color therapist.

What on earth is that? You’d be entitled to ask.

And, to be honest, I don’t really know.

It’s some kind of holistic therapy involving waving specifically colored silks over the patient’s body or directing colored light onto the body with the aid of a light box and some colored lenses.

So, yeah, its a bit out there.

An aside: For those of you willing to write this off as a total waste of time, remember that a very important part of the therapy process is the care and attention that the therapist pays the client. So yeah – the light stuff is obviously a load of hooey, but that doesn’t mean that the therapy as a whole has no merit.

Now, the main problem that a color therapist has with marketing her services is the same one that a Law of Attraction Coach or a more esoteric alternative Life Coach would have.

I call it…

The “What The $&@£ Is That?!” factor

If you own a business that makes people ask What The $&@£ is That? then you’re going to want to work a little harder to overcome the immediate objections a potential customer might have.

Remember Dave, the guy who doesn’t buy life coaching?

Dave’s main concerns are:

• He doesn’t want to look stupid
• He doesn’t want to other people to think he’s stupid
• He doesn’t want to waste money.

These concerns shout even louder in the mind of the person considering color therapy or anything involving past lives, aliens, wind chimes or touchy feely magical stuff  (The “Law” of Attraction.)

So what’s the antidote to all this doubt?

Bucket Loads of Social Proof

That’s right. Social Proof.

LOTS of it.

You want to overwhelm your potential customer with evidence that:

• lots of other people do it
• lots of other people have had great results with it
• other people are proud to talk about it
• other people were skeptical but took a chance and were happy with it
• their friends won’t think they’re weird if they do it
• it is acknowledged and accepted as okay by the mainstream.

So…

You want loads of testimonials from real, live people from different walks of life.

You want testimonials from people who were really skeptical but ended up getting a lot out of your service.

Ideally you’ll have been mentioned in the mainstream media and not just Granola Times. You want to make this obvious to your potential customer.

You want to a collect bucket load of evidence that your service is legitimate, accepted and valued by other people.

Got that?

Good. Now we’re at square one and we can start talking about the benefits…

See you soon!

JJ Jalopy.

Have you got a crazy woo woo business? Cool. Tell me all about it in the comments. You crazy hippie freak.

Why Dave Doesn’t Buy Life Coaching

How the devil are you?

It’s been a while, hasn’t it?!

I’ve been busy doing….you know, stuff. You still love me, don’t you?

Phew.

I must admit I was a little worried.

Right… so what are we going to talk about today?

We’re going to talk about Dave.

Who is Dave, you say.

Dave is This Dude. He’s in a bit of a rut.

Dave is married to a lovely girl named Judy. Dave loves Judy and Judy loves Dave. But they rarely keep the neighbors awake at night anymore.

Dave is an accountant. He’s a big important one and he wears a suit to work everyday. He’s handsomely paid. His wage easily pays the bills as well as satisfying his desires for shiny red sports cars, Judy’s expensive taste in shoes and bags, and the kids’ vodka habit.

Unfortunately, Dave’s job bores him to tears.

Dave reads self-development books, reads through the exercises, thinks it would be a good idea to do them…

…then opens a Bud and sits down in front the football.

He wonders why he feels so pulled towards the sofa.

And he decides he could do with a partner in his effort to improve his life. He decides he could do with a supportive kick-up the butt. His thinks about the life coaching sales letter you dropped through his door.

Life Coaching could be just thing I need to help me get out of this rut, Dave thinks.

So he pulls your sales letter out of the trash, brushes off the old banana skin, and re-reads your letter.

It’s a good letter.

Dave feels understood. He feels hopeful. He feels like you could be the one to help pull him out of his rut.

He grabs the phone and starts to dial your number…

…and then he stops.

Why does he stop?

What makes Dave, hungry for your life coaching expertise, put the phone down and switch on America’s Top Model.

Fear.

That’s what.

Fear of what, you say?

Many things, my fine friend. Let’s address a few of them.

Dave doesn’t want to feel dumb.

Dave bought a new cellphone last month.

It’s a great phone. He can order pizzas on it with one flick of the finger. He can read www.jjjalopy.com on it on the way into work. That’s how good it is.

The salesperson told Dave that he’d need insurance.

Dave didn’t want insurance. He had heard that cellphone provider insurance is a rip off.

I don’t want insurance, said Dave.

No, you’ll definitely need insurance, said the salesperson. It covers you for everything under the sun. And you never know, do you? Here, I’ve added it onto the contract. You’ll need it, but you can cancel it in a month if you change your mind.

Dave didn’t argue.

But when he got home he felt dumb. He felt betrayed. He felt like he’d been sold.

Every time Dave has an experience like this, his mistrust grows.

When Dave reaches for the phone he thinks about how dumb he’s going to feel when he falls for that trick again.

And we all like feeling dumb, don’t we?

Yep. That’s my point.

Dave doesn’t want other people to think he’s dumb

A couple of years ago Dave got involved in a get-rich-quick style multi level marketing scheme.

He was pretty excited about it all and eager to offer “investment opportunities” and packs of overpriced vitamins to his friends and family.

This is a scummy pyramid scheme, his friends said.

No, this is different, he replied. This is a genuine investment opportunity. Look at this glossy brochure. Look at these graphs. Look at these testimonials. Look at these income projections.

It was a scummy pyramid scheme.

Dave felt like an idiot again. His friends were happy to confirm this assessment.

When Dave reaches for the phone, he thinks about his friends at the pub telling him that life coaching is a waste of money. He thinks about his friends telling him that life coaching is for wimps and hippies.

Who cares what they think? Dave says to himself.

But the truth is that he does care. And he’d love to be able to trust his instincts on this, but he doesn’t. He puts down the phone.

Dave doesn’t want to waste money.

Dave has bought a lot of rubbish in the past.

It didn’t seem rubbish in the shop but it certainly did once he’d got it home.

Dave doubts his judgement a little bit more every time this happens.

When Dave reaches for the phone, he thinks about all the bad purchasing decisions he’s made in the past. He puts down the phone.

….

Oh dear.

It appears that Dave had been kicked around a fair bit by unscrupulous business folk in his time.

This means that you are going to have to work extra hard to gain his trust. If you give Dave any reason to mistrust you, however small it may be, then the game is over.

So how do you get Dave to buy?

Here’s how…

Address his concerns

At the very least, you’ll want to bring his attention to each of these concerns and provide reassurance on each point.

Prove your trustworthiness

Be human. Include a photo on your sales letter and/or website. Tell stories from your own personal experience. Tell Dave you share the same concerns that he might have. Make it clear that you treat your clients or customers with the utmost of respect.

Establish credibility

Include testimonials from real people with real names, real faces and real businesses. Tell him with whom you’ve worked previously. Show him any qualifications you might have, awards you’ve won, or relevant impressive achievements.

Provide value

Is there anything you could help Dave out with right now? Perhaps you could include some valuable self-development tips in your sales letter or website?

What can you do to demonstrate that you can help Dave without any financial commitment on his part?

Start a conversation

It’s likely that you’ve done all of the above but Dave still isn’t ready to splash out just yet. He wants your coaching, but he still has doubts and he needs more reassurance.

Make it easy for Dave to keep in touch with you.

Put your phone number, website URL, Facebook or Twitter details on all your communication, online and off.

Provide regular useful relevant helpful content on your website and other media. Demonstrate your brand identity, trustworthiness and credibility in everything you write. Make it easy for Dave to learn from you, and to learn what a fine trustworthy person you are.

Make it easy for Dave to give you a way to keep in touch with him

In ideal world you want to collect Dave’s contact details so you can keep in touch with him and ensure that this conversation happens.

So make it easy for Dave to give you his email address, home address or phone number. Make it easy for Dave to subscribe to your blog, follow you on Twitter or be your Facebook buddy. Maybe you could bribe him – in an ethical way, of course – by offering him some free stuff if he gives you his details?

Got that?

Good. Now it’s up to you to carry on the conversation and demonstrate your trustworthiness and credibility.

Dave is most of your customers. How are you going to reassure him?

JJ Jalopy.

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How to use Twitter for Marketing – Why should you care?

Twitter for Marketing

What is Twitter?

The press tell you it’s all the rage.

“The world is all a twitter”, they say.

All the cool young kids (MC Hammer? Mr. Demi Moore?) are doing it, they say.

But what actually is it? And why should you care?

Apparently it’s a microblogging platform.

I have no idea what that means, but it doesn’t seem very bloggy to me.

I see it as a really easy way for people to send messages to one another without any of the awkwardness of talking on the phone or the formality and structure of email.

It’s great for small talk. Great for networking. And as a business or a one-(wo)man-brand it’s great for building social proof and establishing your brand in the mind of your customers.

You send messages out into the ether and people can choose to listen to them, or not. Similarly, you get to choose whose messages you want to listen to.

Sounds a bit odd, but it makes sense. So why should I devote any of my time to it? I’ve got enough on right now thank you very much.

That’s a good question. I know your time is precious. I know you’ve got a to-do list longer than a really long piece of string.

And I don’t want to add to that list if it’s not going to make your life easier, your time more productive or your business more profitable.

The good thing is, used correctly, it should help you achieve all of the above.

How so?

Well let’s think about the journey that a stranger has to take to go from guy-on-the-street-you-wouldn’t-recognise-from-Adam to raving fanboy – the guy who buys everything you ever produce and tells all his friends how much you rock (heck, he probably has your face tattooed on his arm.)

Following our discussion the other week about permission marketing, let’s pretend your customer’s journey looks like this.

1. He notices you.

2. You ask for his permission to carry on a dialogue.

3. He gains trust in you.

4. You make him an offer. He buys some stuff.

5. You grow your relationship by carrying on doing what you agreed.

This is by no means the only marketing strategy you might use. In fact, many of your customers may well jump straight in at step 4. But let’s run with this for the sake of making our discussion nice and simple. Read this post for some background on this model.

So what I think you want to know, my beautiful small business owner, is..

How is Twitter going to help me do these things better?

I’ll tell you for how…

Step 1: Your customer notices you.

This first step is often the most difficult for new business owners.

You have a Really Cool Thing that You Do, but no-one seems to know about you or your Cool Thing.

How do you get our stranger to find out about you?

Well… you could find out where he hangs out and stick an advert in his face. You could run adverts in a local paper or a relevant trade magazine. You could buy a mailing list and send out letters. You could buy adverts for relevant keywords on Google Adwords, or buy advertising on a popular website.

These are all valid and relevant marketing techniques. Generally, however, they cost money. And it’s best to avoid spending too much money when you’re just starting up.

So what’s the alternative?

Well… if we can provide the content or information that our customers are already looking for then you can be sure that these people are going to tell others about it.

The best way to get the word out about Your Thing is to have other people get the word out about Your Thing.

It just so happens that Twitter is one of the quickest, easiest and most efficient ways to connect with a large number of people with similar interests or groups of people with similar problems that you can help solve.

You can connect with people, help them out with their thing and they will be more than happy to talk about you. It’s an excellent way of building social proof and getting Your Thing in front of more people’s eyes. (Yes, I know.)

So now the news of Your Thing is buzzing around the Twitterverse. Our stranger (let’s call him Adam) is no longer quite such a stranger. He’s heard all about you. And he’s paying attention. What’s the next step?

Step 2: You ask for his permission to carry on a dialogue with him.

You want Adam to agree to hang out with you some more.

Twitter facilitates this process in a number of ways.

Firstly, if he likes your stuff he might choose to follow you on Twitter. This means he has agreed to see the messages you write. You, in return, might choose to follow him back, and you might choose to communicate directly with him if you wish.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, Twitter makes it easy to direct interested people to relevant and targeted information on your blog or website, by sending messages with links to pre-selected content. This is free, helpful, totally non-creepy and it doesn’t look like marketing.

Even better, other people will happily share the links to all their followers if they like it. And guess what their followers are going to do if they like it?

If that doesn’t make you pee your marketing pants and squeal with joy, I’m not sure what will.

Of course, your web page is optimized to make it easy to collect Adam’s email address, isn’t it?

Good.

Adam now follows you on Twitter and is a subscriber to your email newsletter. Perhaps he’s even your Facebook friend now.

I think he’s made it clear that he won’t mind hearing from you again! ?

What’s next?

Step 3: He gains trust in you as you deliver on your promises

Adam followed you on Twitter because he wanted to hear your pearls of wisdom. Or maybe you told a dirty joke and he kind of liked it.

Either way, Adam expects you to act in a certain way and deliver a certain emotional experience to him.

Do this. Consistently.

You can use messages on Twitter to send links to interesting content on your blog, to videos on YouTube, to useful and relevant articles on other blogs. You can do this much more often and much more informally than you could via Email. Send someone an Email every day and it will piss them off. Send ten messages a day on Twitter and people will not bat an eyelid. (I don’t want to get into Twitter best practice in this post, but here’s a quick word of warning. Twitter is, above all, a sharing medium. People will respond badly if you appear only to be promoting yourself.)

If you’re useful, friendly and, above all, consistent Adam will grow to trust you.

Step 4: You make him an offer. You buy his stuff.

Twitter makes this easy, as it gives you the power to publicize your offers to a large group of interested people. It also makes it easy to bring Adam to your blog, website, or wherever you want him to go.

Step 5: You build the relationship by carrying on doing what you agreed.

This is where a lot of people get the wrong idea about relationship marketing.

Relationship marketing is all about “creating authentically meaningful connections”. It’s about sharing. It’s about personal attention, trust, feelings, rainbows and fluffy bunny rabbits. It’s about campfires, acoustic guitars and singing Kumbaya. Right?

Umm… No.

Sorry.

It’s about selling stuff.

(The clue is in the marketing bit.)

You don’t buy an iPod because you played online Boggle with Steve Jobs and he knows about your niece’s swimming medals. You buy it because makes you feel cool and it does what you want it to do.

Relationship marketing is about consistently satisfying the initial promise you made to the customer.

It doesn’t involve a huge amount of small talk. It doesn’t involve getting to know every one of your customers on a personal level. You don’t need to know their children’s names, their shoe size and the intimate details of their relationship with the pool boy. You might want to, but it’s not necessary. Probably a fantastic procrastination technique though!

Relationship marketing is about focussing on customer satisfaction and retention. It’s about delivering a consistent emotional experience to your customers.

Basically… Make your stuff cool and do what Adam wants you to do.

Twitter helps this process immensely as it provides you with an excellent way to get your name and your messages in front of your customers’ eyes on a regular basis.

Convinced?

Great. In this post we focussed on why you should care about twitter. If you want to know more about the basics of Twitter, how it works and how to get the best out of it then check out this excellent article from the Remarkablogger website.

Then, once you’re up to speed, we’ll talk strategy!

I can’t wait.

See you around!

JJ Jalopy.

How to follow me on Twitter

As Dave pointed out in the comments, I’ve been banging on about making it easy for your readers to give you permission to talk to you but then totally failed to tell you how to follow me on Twitter. D’uh.

I’m @jjjalopy. You can find read updates here. Go there and hit the follow button. Then send me a message and I’ll follow you back. Otherwise I won’t notice you and I’ll just assume that you want me to join a pyramid scheme or sell me viagra or something. And that would be a shame.

The 3 main reasons people don’t want to pay you for coaching.

A little ramble about food. (Scroll down for the useful bit!)

Hey there!

How are you today?

Mrs. Jalopy and I have just had pizza.

And chips.

And wine.

And chocolate.

It was wonderfully delicious.

I have a appointment with my friend and health coach Anthony Lemme tomorrow. We’re going to talk about my diet. I have a feeling that he’s going to tell me that pizza, chips, wine and chocolate are bad for me. And he’s probably going to recommend that I cut down.

So I’m indulging in a semi guilt-free binge beforehand.

Shhh… Don’t tell!

The useful bit starts here!

If you have a coaching service, then you may encounter objections when you offer your coaching services to prospective clients.

In fact, you’ll begin to hear similar objections again and again.

This is natural. Coach can be a large expense for many people.

Now, I know your coaching service totally rocks, but we can’t expect everyone else to know that straight away.

So here are some really simple strategies you can use to help your prospective client see past a few of these objections and open themselves up to the idea of coaching with you.

Objection 1 – I can’t afford it.

Strategy 1: What is the cost of NOT achieving the goal? What is most likely to happen if you don’t hire me.

Yes. It can be quite a lot of money for some people.

But let’s look at the cost of not hiring a coach. What do you think would most likely happen if you continue on as you have been?

How will you feel about this in 6 months’ time?

Strategy 2: What would make it worth it?

Perhaps we should create a bigger goal. What could you achieve that would make it worthwhile?

Objection 2 – I’ll have to think about it / I’ll have to ask my partner about it

Strategy 1: Identify underlying concern

Of course. I understand this is all new to you.

And I sense that there’s something your worried about that we haven’t discussed. Could you think what that might be?

Strategy 2: Talk them through the thought process or the conversation they will have with their partner

What questions will you ask yourself?

…or…

What questions will your partner ask?

Objection 3 – I could just do it by myself

Strategy 1: What you’ve been doing so far hasn’t been working

How long have you been thinking this way?

And what results have you been getting?

Strategy 2: Working as a team can be fun

How do you think working together with me on your goals might actually be a lot of fun?

Strategy 3: Cool sports dudes have coaches, you know…

Do you think Roger Federer/ Tiger Woods / Lewis Hamilton  would be as successful without their coaches?

Now you have some strategy, go out there and get some clients.

See ya tomorrow!

JJ Jalopy.

Small Business Therapy #2 – I Don’t Want to Blog!

This is the second article in our small business therapy series. Today’s session is about blogging.

Happy Fourth of July!

I had planned to write this post last weekend.

I had also planned to send out my awesome and much-hyped (by me) Jalopy Gang Newsletter to my beloved V.I.P. list.

Instead I sat on a beach in the South of France for about 12 hours in the blistering heat and drank enough premium French Lager to kill a horse. (And a burly, hard-drinking one at that.)

Predictable results ensued.

I am never going on another bachelor weekend again.

So… I’ve been away for a while. This post almost didn’t happen. Newsletter awesomeness didn’t manifest. And God wept.

But NOW I’m back….

And it’s time to talk about our issues. You and me. In a non-creepy, constructive way with no seedy old therapist bores in sight.

The introductory story about the man with no name.

An unnamed client recently came to me to ask for help in promoting his business on the internet.

(He’s doesn’t actually have no name. He has a very lovely name, in fact. It’s just that I’m not telling you what it is.)

He has a small but successful offline business, and he’s looking to expand his marketing efforts online. Good for him. This idea gets the Jalopy Seal of Approval. (You can have one too for a small donation into my Paypal account.)

He’s getting a website designed. It looks pretty flash. It’s even made of Flash.

That’s a cool looking website, I said. Do you have a blog?

No. I don’t want a blog, he replied.

We’ve spoken about blogs before, me and he. He knows that I believe that the blog is the pinnacle of awesomeness when it comes to non-pushy, value- and relationship-focused internet marketing. This is true for a million reasons I have bored him with previously, and a million reasons that I’ll explain to you in my forthcoming product How to Use the Internet as your Faithful Marketing Love Slave.

So I stared at him blankly until he elaborated.

I don’t have time to maintain a blog, he replied.

The reason you don’t do something is rarely because you don’t have enough time. If something is important enough to you, you’ll make time for it.

<<Blank stare>>

<<Silence>>

I don’t have anything original to say.

What I have to say is boring. People won’t be interested in that.

And I don’t write very well.

And I’d run out of things to talk about.

And I don’t like putting myself “out-there” so personally. What if everyone realizes I’m not as much of an expert as I’d like to pretend? What if everyone realizes I’m weird or thinks I’m a screw-up?

Great. Now we were actually getting somewhere

So let’s talk these through together, one by one…

Objection 1 – I don’t have anything original to say.

We started to address this in our first small business therapy session.

It’s not true that everything worth writing about has already been written about by someone.

But it nearly is.

So does that mean you can’t write about it too?

Must every point you make be completely and totally original? A unique and perfectly-formed gem of knowledge spawned from your mind only?

Of course not!

What’s important is that you say what you have to say, in your own voice, at the right time.

In doing that, you’ll change lives.

Don’t believe me?

Okay. Have you ever heard something that you’ve heard a hundred times before, but for some reason, this time you hear it, something really clicks?

Why is it that the same information, presented slightly differently, only sunk in when you heard it described in a certain way, by a certain person?

It’s because that person was able to describe it to you in a way that you could uniquely relate to.

There are people that need to hear what you have to say. From you.

And you owe it to them to be yourself, to tell your story, to spread your knowledge.

Next…

Objection 2 – What I have to say is boring. People won’t be interested in it.

There are many massively popular blogs that I find mind-numblingly tedious.

What does this tell us?

Well… it either means that I’m a poor judge of blog quality…

…or it tells us that different people like different stuff.

Have you ever done any random, un-targeted web browsing? (You should. It’s an excellent procrastination aid, if nothing else!)

If you have, then you’ll know that there’s a huge amount of unoriginal, pointless, yawn-inducing stuff out there. And it’s very very popular.

Which means that there must be a whole ton of people who like unoriginal, pointless, yawn-inducing stuff.

Or rather, a whole load of people who like the stuff that I think is unoriginal, pointless and yawn-inducing.

Someone will like your boring stuff. I promise!

Now, maybe you’re worried that no-one will show up to read your blog?

That’s a different issue. And a largely practical one.

Getting people to read your stuff is largely a function of how well you promote it. If you promote it well, people will come. And even if I might think it’s tedious, irrelevant and unoriginal, other people will not. They’ll visit and they will return.

There are more than enough weirdos on the internet for your weird blog to have a weird audience of its own.

There. Doesn’t that make you feel better?!

Next…

Objection 3 – I don’t write very well

I know how this can feel.

I love good writing. I’m attracted to some of my favorite blogs predominantly because of their unique and creative writing style.

Sometimes, when I’m reading a beautifully written blog such as www.copyblogger.com, a little voice appears in my head – the one that says:

JJ – you’ll never be this good. Why don’t you just give it up?

And part of that voice is correct. I probably will never be that good. I probably could be, were I to really work at it, but that’s not my focus.

Sometimes my ego and my desire to be the best at everything stops me from remembering why I am blogging in the first place.

I’m not blogging to become a great blogger. Or even a great writer.

I’m blogging to help people to succeed with their small home businesses. I’m blogging to help people leave their day jobs and do something that inspires and excites them. I’m blogging to promote my services and forthcoming awesome products.

The best writing style for a blog is a conversational tone. Imagine your average reader is in front of you and talk to them as a friend.

If you can write the way you talk when you’re having a coffee or a beer with a friend then you’ll be a great blogger.

Next…

Objection 4 – I’d run out of things to talk about

I strange and wonderful thing starts happening when you start writing.

Ideas seem to be born out of nowhere.

You’ll be writing a post and you’ll get ideas for five more. If you make it your intention to come up with ideas for blog posts and then go about your day, you’ll be surprised at how many great ideas pop into your head.

Give it a try.

Next…

Objection 5 – I don’t like putting myself “out there”. What if everyone realizes I’m not as much of an expert as I’d like to pretend? What if everyone realizes I’m weird or thinks I’m a screw-up?

Ah yes.

You’re going to be writing about yourself and you’re scared that people might find out that you’re not perfect.

Yeah. Makes sense. Because we love people who claim to be perfect, don’t we?

We really connect with them, don’t we?

We feel so appreciated and understood when we’re around someone who says they’ve never made any mistakes in their lives, don’t we?

You see where I’m going with this…

Good.

Your story will give someone hope. Your story is the reason people will finally understand what they haven’t been able to understand so far from anyone else.

Your story is the reason people are there, reading a blog and not an encyclopedia.

Be honest. Be yourself. Rock the world.

<<Deep breath>>

That was good. I enjoyed that.

It’s been lovely. See you tomorrow!

JJ Jalopy.

P.S. If you enjoyed that then you might want to sign-up to my V.I.P. list. You’ll get an email newsletter every week (except when I have heatstroke.) Sign-up now and get it tomorrow!

Life Coaching Math. Or an introduction to income planning for the rest of us.

Pocket protector at the ready?!

Today we’re going to do some coaching math. (Put an S on the end of that if you feel like being British for the day.)

Don’t worry. It’ll be nice and easy. And I’m going to hold your hand every step of the way and tell you that you’re doing great.

So… let’s pretend my star mentoring client and imaginary blog sycophant Life Coach Marjorie comes to me with the goal of making $100,000 a year from coaching next year.

That’s a good goal.

Marjorie’s a great coach. She’s the best, in fact.

But without a concrete plan showing how she’s going to make that money, it’s unlikely that Marjorie is going to wind up achieving her income goal simply by being brilliant.

Thankfully, Marjorie and I are a great team. She’s a life coaching superstar, and I’m an annoying guy who makes her write dates and numbers on piece of paper until it looks like some kind of plan.

And this is a good thing. Because the plan is going to show Marjorie how she can go from zero to $100,000 a year.

So we write $100,000 at the top of our piece of paper. This is our target. We brainstorm how we’re going to get there…

My regular coaching rates are $200 a month, explains Life Coach Marjorie.

Great.

I think I can probably maintain 10 clients a month on average over the year, she goes on to say,

So let’s write that down (pretending that taxes, expenses and other undesirables don’t exist…)

10 Coaching Clients per month @ $200 = $2000 per month = $24,000 per year.

Cool.

But it’s not quite $100,000 yet.

Marjorie could try to reach her goal, by doing on of the following:

• coaching 50 people a month
• increasing her rates to $1000 a month

Fortunately, Marjorie is smarter than that.

And she has been listening to me when I harp on about the value of producing information products to support her coaching service. She thinks it would be a good idea to write a small downloadable eBook on goal setting.

I do too.

This downloadable book will:

• provide a nice customer entry point for people who aren’t yet ready to stump up the $200 for Marjorie’s coaching
• increase her credibility and establish her as an authority in the personal development / coaching field
• make her money

Marjorie thinks she can write the 20 page book and get the design and distribution sorted out in a month.

She’ll sell it as a $19 download. She estimates that 40 people will buy it every month.

40 eBooks per month @ $19  profit = $760 per month = $9120 per year

That’s pretty good going for a month’s work.

Marjorie thinks she has another book in her. This one is going to be a larger, more comprehensive affair. It’s a manual for housewives who want to get back into work.

She thinks she’ll be able to write it and get it on the market in 3 months. She’ll sell it as a $69 download, with an option to pay extra postage for a printed version. She thinks she’ll sell 20 copies a month.

20 Printed Books per month @ $69 profit  = $1380 per month = $16,560 per year

As Marjorie is the greatest coach in the world, she thinks it’s only fair to impart some of this magic on other coaches. She decides to record a CD program with recordings of real coaching sessions. She takes on a few new coaching clients at reduced rates on the agreement that she may record the sessions. She asks her friend’s son to edit the sessions on his computer. She arranges for a fulfillment house to manufacture and distribute the CDs on her behalf.

This takes 2 months.

She sells the CD program for $150. Due to the small expected volumes it costs $15 to manufacture and ship the CD sets. She expects to sell 10 CD sets a month.

10 CD Programs per month @ 135 profit = $1350 per month = $16,200 per year

And if we add this up we come to:

Total projected, 6 months into plan:  $65,880 per year.

So far in our plan we’ve covered 6 months. Marjorie is well on her way to reaching her target next year.

We’ll stop here, but Marjorie might want to go on to write some new eBooks, start a subscription service, run tele-classes or produce another high-end physical product (or two.)

All of these will provide extra income. The introduction of new customers via an increased channels will result in more repeat business, and many of the numbers above can be expected to grow.

This is an interesting model to play with and think about and it’s a good basis upon which to build a plan…

…but don’t believe the numbers in this example. We’ve made some pretty huge assumptions here. All products have a limited shelf life and there are many other costs which have not been considered in the model.

I think the most interesting thing that comes out of this is the realization that the one-one-one coaching model is not very scalable. I’d advise everyone, coaches or otherwise to be on the lookout for ways to supplement their income. This is where the money lies…

Be creative. You rock!

JJ Jalopy.

P.S. If you’re interested in more thinking along these lines, you should check out Andrea J Lee’s awesome book Multiple Streams of Coaching Income.

If you get it using this link here, I’ll receive enough money to buy myself a lovely cold beer. And that would be nice, wouldn’t it? Especially on a summer day like this. Go on… I’m a happy drunk, I promise…

Be my filter, baby!

One thing we are not short of these days is information.

People are rarely looking for more information. In fact, often they feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information at their fingertips.

They are looking for exactly the right information at the right time. And they are looking to have it pre-approved by someone they trust.

Do you satisfy this need for your customers?

Have you established trust with your customers?

Do you keep your customers’ problems in mind at all times?

Do you filter relevant and helpful information, share it with your customers in a consistent way, and let your customer know you’re helping them out?

Good! Well done you.

See you in Monte Carlo, you lovely information filter, You.

JJ Jalopy.

10 Things You Can Do Right Now To Get More Leads!

Hey there!

It’s great to see you again.

This is going to be a quick one today, because I have to go and pack my suitcase.

Tomorrow I’m flying to Monaco for a long weekend. It’s (yet) another bachelor party….

I’ll be sure to bring a massive Toblerone back for Mrs. Jalopy!

Now… I’ve talked before about the power of making constant small incremental improvements in your business. (Kaizen, baby!)

The big consulting houses have made a living out of this for years.

If you can make 10 processes 10% more efficient then you’ll make 10 gazillion times more money.

Or something.

Now it’s rare that I set myself up as a positive role model on this blog… but today I took a small step towards increasing the number of people that turn up at my (virtual) door, and I’d like to encourage you to do the same.

So what did I do?

Simply, I introduced a new channel by which people can find me. I took out an advert.

So what could you do? How you could you increase your leads?

Why not pick one of the following:

• Put an advert on Craigslist
• Hand deliver sales letters in your local area, or mail them to a list relevant to your business.
• Start a blog!
• Write a new blog post. (It has been a while, hasn’t it?!)
• Start Pay Per Click Advertising on Google
• Make Google love you a little more (SEO) by:
  • creating a Squidoo lens or Hubpages space, linking to your website
  • highlighting some of your keyword phrases in your web pages or posts.
  • adding some internal links within your website to the pages you want people to visit the most.
• Buy a banner advert on a relevant website.
• Comment on relevant industry blogs. Or join the discussion on a relevant internet forum. Be unique and add value.
• Record a video and post it to YouTube.
• Go Viral! Create an awesome thing linking to your website. Give it away for free. Encourage others to do the same.

Go on. Pick one and do it today. Google will tell you how, if you’re not sure!

Or ask here. I love questions.

See you soon. Take care!

JJ Jalopy.

Sleazy salespeople and their sleazy salespeople ways.

Hey there!

It’s late here. But before I sneak off to bed, I want to catch up with you for a little chat.

Earlier today I was reading an excellent article by my friend, Aussie persuasion expert Duane Cunningham.

Go back, click on his name and read it if you want the rest of the post to make sense.

On the other hand, if you’re after a more psychedelic blog reading experience then go read something else, then come back and debate the appropriateness of your reading choice in the context of the remainder of the post.

Alice in Wonderland might be a good choice.

So you’ve just read Duane / Lewis Carroll make a pretty bold premise. I’ll paraphrase it thus:

“Strewth mate. If you’re gonna be prissy about sales and marketing, don’t “like” it, aren’t any bloody good at it, aren’t (wo)man enough to hunker down and get good at it then you’re bloody well not going to make any bloody money!”

Or something like that.

I’m exaggerating, of course. But not much. Duane understands the value of not sitting on the fence. His blog is pretty badass. You should check it out.

So… if Duane’s premise is correct, then that pretty much sucks for the majority of us who regard selling as a rather disagreeable pastime…

… unless we change some of our beliefs around sales and marketing.

Most of the people I work with don’t really like the idea of marketing or selling themselves, their product or their service.

They think of selling as that thing that salespeople do.

I am a consultant, they say.

I am a coach, they say.

I am a yoga-instructor.

I may be all these things, they say. But I am not a salesperson.

This is usually because they see the act of selling or marketing as an affront. Maybe they’ve been exposed to too many nasty pushy salesmen. Maybe their friends have tried to get them involved in some lame pyramid scheme. Whatever, they’ve come to see the whole selling stuff deal as A Bit Icky.

Which is a massive shame. Because Duane is right. You can’t make money if you’re not selling stuff.

You need to sell stuff to make money. But selling is not necessarily a dirty nasty sleazy thing, and you can do it without being a dirty nasty sleazy douchebag.

(I love the word douchebag. It’s sorely underused this side of the Atlantic.)

You don’t need to be a sleazy chain-smoking salesman from the seventies, banging on endlessly about his “leads”. You don’t need to write big long ugly internet sales pages that look like your son has swallowed a yellow highlighter and vomited it all over your monitor. You don’t need to send a million sales letters to a million ungrateful mailboxes. You don’t need to start spamming people’s inboxes.

You don’t need the used car salesmen approach to selling.

Not at all.

Selling your services or product is really about making sure that an awesome thing ends up in the hands of an awesome person who will benefit from it but who might not otherwise recognize the value it holds for them.

And for that…

You need something awesome that you believe in. And you deserve to feel proud about that thing and to promote it in a non-creepy way that you enjoy.

That, my good friend, is a part of what this blog is all about.

You know that the thing that you’re selling rocks. So go tell people about it. Spread the love. Spread the happy. Change lives. Change the bloody world!

For a quick intro, check out this post here http://www.jjjalopy.com/coaching-business-startup-202-beliefs-about-marketing/

If you’re worried about promoting your stuff then, to be successful and to start making the money you deserve, you’ll need to do one of two things:

• work on your beliefs about marketing (see above)
• get better stuff to sell.

Often, for coaches and consultants, the reluctance to promote your services enthusiastically actually stems from a lack of confidence in your services themselves.

And how do we deal with that?

Well… we come up with a plan to manage it. And we’ll do that together soon.

But for now… it’s time for bed!

Have a fun evening. Say Hi to Duane from me when you pop by!

JJ Jalopy.

Procrastination, Twitter and my Cartoon Nose Job

Hey there!

I hope you had a wonderful weekend.

Relax, put your feet up and pour yourself your favorite drink as I tell you a story.

 

It was Wednesday evening this week. I sat down at the lovely big glass desk in my man cave and turned on the computer.

I feel great about today, I said to myself as my mac sprung into action. I’m going to get loads of productive work done.

I fired up my web browser and logged onto Twitter.

 

A lengthy aside about Twitter

For the uninitiated, Twitter is a bit like an online bar (except that you have to bring your own alcohol and you don’t need to wear pants.) There’s a load of people, a load of noise, some cool fun interesting people to meet, and some terrible dullards.

There are people who want to convince you that hawking overpriced vitamins on your friends and family is a good idea, as well as people who just want to hang out, get to know some people and have some fun.

The key to using Twitter in a way that doesn’t suck, is to ignore the first lot and befriend and engage with the second lot. Just as you’d walk away from the drunk guy in the corner dribbling on his sweater, and go talk to fun looking lady on the unicycle making balloon animals.

For the small home business owner, Twitter is an excellent networking and marketing tool. Especially if you’re prepared to take the time to do your marketing in a personable, non-creepy way.

It can also be an excellent procrastination aid.

It really shouldn’t be. 

It takes a few seconds to say something funny that’s on your mind, check out what other people are up to, and then get back to work.

It should be a perfect-sized refreshing break…

…if you have well-defined work to be getting back to.

 

So, back to my story… What happened with me?

Well, I noticed a comment from an internet friend. (That’s a friend I know through the internet, not a friend who is an internet. There’s only one of those.)

And I replied to said comment with a hilarious comment about rolling a watermelon down a hill, turning a house upside down with a big stick and a rock as a lever, or some other such nonsense. I don’t remember what it was right now, but it was surely absolutely hilariously irreverent.

Gosh, I am terribly amusing sometimes, I thought to myself.

And then I checked my email.

I had a message from the illustrator I’ve been working with. (I found him using elance. You can find out how to do this effectively in this article here.)

He’s making a cartoon logo of me, for reasons that are much more to do with satisfying my own ego than any serious branding considerations.

He had sent me some sketches. It’s really cool to see a cartoon version of you. I sent it to Mrs. Jalopy and a few friends. I debated whether my nose looked too big and whether my hair was curly enough.

I shot an email back to my illustrator dude. If I’m going to be a cartoon, I’m going to be a bloody good looking one, that’s for sure.

I requested a cartoon nose job.

An hour had now passed since I first sat down to work.

I should finish that article on confidence that I’ve been writing on and off for the last week. Or I should finish the About Me page on my website, or that Squidoo lens, or those sketches I’ve been promising the web designer…

Yeah, but first… I bet someone has replied to that hilarious comment I made on Twitter. 

They hadn’t. Perhaps no-one had read it yet. Or maybe they thought it was so hilarious that they couldn’t think of a worthy reply. Yeah, that was probably it.

So I logged onto Facebook, made a few comments on some people’s photos, watched some videos of monkeys playing with firearms. Soon got tired of that.

 

The bit where I hurry the story a little because you’ve got the idea by now…

Looked at my cartoon again.

Thought about finishing that article.

Or the one for April which has now been festering even longer. (Sorry April, if you’re listening. It is like totally brilliant though.)

Thought about making that squidoo thingywotsit.

Emailed the web-designer dude with a link to a website that I think is prettier than the one we’re making…

Finally I sat down to finish the article.

But by now I was feeling really tired and Mrs. Jalopy has already gone to bed. I don’t like it when we go to bed separately. I miss my snuggletime.

So I turned off the computer and go to bed, feeling a little guilty about how long I had just spent doing pretty much nothing.

 

So what went wrong?

Gosh. Lots of things. Where do we start?

I had no goal.

To be successful at doing stuff you first have to know what it is that you want to do.

“I’m going to do some networking and hopefully finish that article, talk to the web-designer and illustrator” is not a goal.

So what would have looked better? How about this?

I’m going to finish my article on confidence and reply to any urgent emails. I’ll give myself a couple of breaks to make tea and to briefly connect with people on Twitter.

I had no deadlines or defined timescales.

I had blocked off a period of time in which I was going to “do work”. I had allowed myself to be okay with not finishing anything. I was happy simply to be doing work stuff.

So I flitted around, satisfying my little ego with cartoon nose jobs and flirting with imaginary friends on Twitter.

What would have looked better?

I’m going finish my article on confidence tonight, before I go to bed. 

I had no accountability.

I sometimes talk about making non-negotiable agreements with yourself. 

This is when you say, I’m going to finish this article before I go to bed because I’ve decided that I will. There is no other way. 

You’re being accountable to yourself. You’re coaching yourself.

You may also get a lot of value being accountable to a coach, or a mastermind group trying to achieve similar things together.

Either way, accountability is a big piece of the puzzle. 

 

The bit at the end where we wrap things up.

I’m sure the story I just confessed is totally unfamiliar to a productive and efficient business person like you!

Or maybe it’s not so much…

I find it interesting that the basics to working productively are so simple, straightforward and easily understood – but also difficult to act upon consistently.

There is a huge payoff in getting the basics right. Having a plan, putting timescales and deadlines against all your tasks and being accountable to yourself and others… these are the basics.

And we’d do well to set up a habit to remind ourselves of this every single day as we sit down to work. And make a non-negotiable agreement with ourselves to do these things – even if we don’t feel like it.

How do you manage this? What systems do you have in place to remind yourself of the basics to working effectively? What strategies to you have when procrastination rears its ugly head?

Let me know! You know you can talk to me below. And you know I love it when you do!

See you soon.

JJ Jalopy.

P.S. I believe that procrastination is actually a very complex issue. It is my belief that no-one self-sabotages. All of our decisions are, I believe, made with our best interests in mind, but with limited or “flawed” information. In this post, I don’t mean to make light of the issue of procrastination, simply to highlight the importance of getting the basics right.

Using Elance – How to hire outsourcers who kick ass rather than sucking it.

High Five!

Recently I have been evangelizing about the benefits of outsourcing tasks in your home business.

I know it can be hard to relinquish responsibility to other people, especially if you’re a control freak like me. And I understand that it can be especially difficult when you have to pay for the privilege…

But outsourcing tasks will free up time for you to work on the things that really make the difference.

It will pay off in spades.

So, having convinced you in three lazily-constructed half-sentences that outsourcing is A Really Good Thing, I’m now going to introduce you to a great resource called Elance. 

Elance is essentially a big market place that allows people who want stuff done to get together with people who want to get paid to do stuff.

Which is great. Because we’ve all got a lot of stuff.

So how does this work, Mr. JJ man?

Well, imaginary blog reader sycophant, the way I like to use Elance is to post details of my project or task and then watch as the people who want to get paid to do stuff flood me with bids for the work I’m offering.

This is nice and easy and simple and inflates my sense of self-importance.

I like that.

So, are you going to give us some awesome tips, as per usual Mr. Jalopy?

Sure thing m’lady…

 

How to post an awesome job description

Make your project description clear and specific. Say exactly what you want and when you want it. Have other people read it and then explain back to you what they have understood.

If there is any possible way that something can be misinterpreted, it probably will be. <<Insert your own amusing illustrative story here, if you like. Go wild>>

So yeah. Basically you want to remove any possibility of misinterpretation.

And add attachments or links to your website, if relevant, to illustrate what you want done. If you have sketches, brainstorms or notes then scan them and upload them. A picture is worth a thousand words and all that.

 

How to pick a bidder that kicks ass rather than sucking it

After a few hours, hungry providers will start to submit bids.

It can be pretty overwhelming sometimes. It might make you feel a little slutty the first time.

Some of these will be better than others.

This is me being polite. Most of the responses you get are going to suck ass. You don’t want an ass-sucking outsourcer. So, to sort the wheat from the chaff, ask yourself the following questions:

 

Have they actually, you know, read your job description?

Many bidders will bid on anything without really looking at the description. People that do this are usually doing this because they have to. They’re playing a nasty spammy, slutty numbers game. Because they suck.

 

How long have they been on Elance?

Ideally you want someone with some experience. Obviously.

 

What is their feedback like?

People who’ve had stuff done  can leave feedback on people who did stuff. Look through the bidder’s previous feedback and comments to figure out if they did a good job and if people were generally happy with them.

People are usually pretty honest and you can get some good insight here.

 

Do they address any of the specific issues you highlighted in your job description?

Do they give some indication of how exactly how they can help you?  

Have they looked at your website and the documentation you sent them? Have they taken the time to spell out the specific benefits that hiring them will give you?

Or are they sending you the same generic responses that they send out to everyone?

 

How to make sure the person you’ve chosen does what you want them to do?

Sometimes people misunderstand each other.

Most of the time people misunderstand each other. 

So don’t assume that your lovely new outsourcing chap actually understands what you want him to do. 

Before you let him get to work ask him to explain back to you exactly what he thinks are your requirements. Correct and clarify as necessary. Rinse and repeat. 

Now, once your outsourcer can explain to you what you need him to do, identify relevant milestones and set up a system by which he can provide regular updates so you can ensure everything stays on track, or you can identify problems early on.

I like to receive daily short email updates, in which my provider will list what they’ve achieved and any questions they might have.

Be specific with your feedback requirements. If you want him to spend no more than 5 minutes on a daily email update, then tell him that. Otherwise he’ll probably write an essay. Again, assume nothing. 

 

What do you do once it’s all done?

Give honest feedback and testimonials. 

Make sure you keep in touch with them if they did a great job, and refer them to your friends and colleagues. They’ll both love you for it.

 

Cool, eh?

Do you have any tips you’d like to add? Talk to me in the comments. I love comments – especially yours.

See you later dude(tte)!

JJ Jalopy.

Overcoming the fear of success – Background reading.

Hey there!

Mrs. Jalopy and I have been traveling all day and we’re finally back home.

We had a wonderful weekend  in Austria celebrating our friends Jon and Birgit’s wedding.

It was beautiful.

And the party was crazy!

Now I’m really tired and making all kinds to health and sobriety promises to myself which will get forgotten just as soon as I emerge from the other side of a good sleep.

And that’s where I’m going right now… 

I really wanted to post today because I’ve missed you. But as my mind is absent today, in my place I will leave you with some preparatory reading for our discussion tomorrow. (See what I did there?)

Here’s a great article on Overcoming the Fear of Success, from the fantastic Dumb Little Man blog.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about strategies you can use to build your confidence in your coaching or consulting business and grow your business at the ideal rate for you.

I’ll be back and well-rested tomorrow, posting, sending my V.I.P.s a shiny new newsletter and generally saving the world.

Party on.

JJ Jalopy.

How to create a kick-butt coaching brand!

Branding. Create a coherent and predictable emotional experience for your customer.

Hey there!

I’m on my way back from a gloriously sunny weekend by the seaside. We lay on the beach, we played Frisbee, we paddled in the sea, we surfed.

Everything I own is now full of sand. Including this laptop, which I haven’t touched all weekend.

Now… I’m sure you’ve been sat by your email box all day, eagerly awaiting the delivery of your weekly Jalopy Gang V.I.P. newsletter. Well… I’m afraid you’ll have to wait one more day to receive it this week, because I’ve been extremely busy all weekend doing nothing. And now I’m worn out!

It’ll be totally brilliant. Sign-up below to be sure not to miss out.

 
There’s some really great free stuff coming soon…

Earlier today, as the sun beamed down on my face and the cool sand squeezed between my toes, I got thinking about branding.

I’ve spoken before about the benefits of communicating a single, coherent message to your customers through your branding.

Equally important, I think, is to deliver a coherent and predictable emotional experience, and to anchor this to your brand.

What am I talking about?

Well…Why do you watch 24?

You watch 24 because you want excitement. You want 600 plot twists in 6 minutes. You want close-ups and explosions and stuff. You have an expectation that it will get your blood pumping. 

Why do you watch Oprah?

You watch Oprah because you want to connect. You want to hear people’s stories and relate to them. You want to feel understood. You want to feel inspired. You have an expectation that you will feel this way, and it is familiar and comforting.

Why do you watch films you’ve already seen before?

Because you know how they’re going to make you feel. You know what you’re going to get.

Whenever we enter into an interaction we have a certain expectation of what the emotional experience is going to be.

What is the emotional experience that your service / product / website / brand provides?

Is it predictable and consistent? 

If you switch on Oprah, hoping for some inspiration, then you’re going to be disappointed if you end up with a sweaty Rush Limbaugh blaming all his personal problems on anyone else who isn’t just like him.

If you switch on 24, hoping for some action packed excitement, then you’re going to be disappointed if you end up with a slow, tender love story.

So, be consistent. Make the emotional experience part of your brand, and keep it mind in all your communication.

See you tomorrow!
JJ Jalopy.

How to identify with your prospective customer.

Hi there,

How are you today? 

Hi again. This is JJ interrupting himself. He’s going to drone on for a couple of paragraphs about some of the mildly unfortunate things that happened to him today, using naively constructed metaphors involving the wet bits of fish. Skip to the bit marked AIMLESS SELF-INDULGENT RAMBLING STOPS HERE if you could care less. Thanks.

I woke up in a foul mood today. 

I think it might have been the rain that did it. 

It had been such a sunny weekend, and I woke up early this morning to rain.

Then… when I left the house I discovered I had a hole in my shoe.

Then… as I squelched my way up the escalator and out of the tube station, I realized I had left my umbrella on the seat.

By the time I arrived at my destination I was as wet as the very wettest bits of a wet fish.

Under other circumstances I may have found this funny. I may even have done a little dance in the rain – Dick Van Dyke style.

But not today… Today I was a big grumpy grumpyhead.

Why am I telling you all this?

To be honest, I’m not sure. You are not my therapist and I’m rapidly talking my way into a blogging black hole.

HOWEVER…

Do not be too quick to write off this post just yet, because I’m putting aside my petty grudges against the unfortunate practicalities of the day and pulling something TOTALLY AWESOME out of my box of tricks.

Sometimes I like to mention how brilliant my Jalopy Gang newsletter is. 

(Totally, is the answer, by the way. It’s totally brilliant.)

Well… I’m getting lots of few new subscribers these days. (Hi new subscribers! I love you!) And one of the things that makes me a little sad, is think that these awesome new folk have missed out on some of the really cool stuff I’ve downloaded into your head in my previous newsletter.

So today I’m going to share this with you. It’s an answer to a lovely reader’s question about how she can identify with her prospective customer. It’s not the best-written thing I’ve ever produced, but it’s jam-packed with useful information. Awesome.

Let’s go…

 

 

 

==> AIMLESS SELF-INDULGENT RAMBLING STOPS HERE

A question from a reader:

JJ. I’ve picked a niche market to target, and I’ve created a simple representation of my average customer as you suggested, but I’m having trouble identifying with my customer. Do you have any tips on how I can get inside my prospective customer’s head?

This is a great question!

I realise now that it’s something I glossed over somewhat when we discussed this in the context of my business.

It is relatively easy to identify with your niche if you are already involved in that niche. It is even easier if your prospective customer is essentially a past version of you, before you solved some of your own problems.

But what if you are new to the niche? How can you identify with something you have never experienced yourself?

Well, thankfully, there are some great tools you can use to help you understand your prospective customer, before you immerse yourself in that niche.

What are people searching for?

When someone has a problem, or they want information on a subject, they go to Google (or a similar search engine) and they search for information, advice, or people with similar stories or experiences.

And they don’t censor what they type in. It might be embarrassing to ask your Mom, but it’s not so embarrassing to ask Google!

Google knows everything.

And Google will happily tell you what people in your niche are searching for! You can find out what they’re worried about, what they’re looking for, what is on their mind.

This is amazing.

Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal and type in a search term describing your niche.

If your niche is women trying to come to terms with their husband’s infidelity  then type “cheating husband” into the keyword tool and see what comes up.

Google will tell you exactly what they’re looking for!

Spend some real quality time with this tool. All the information you need to use it effectively can be found on the Google website.

Do it. I can’t overemphasize how important this is!

What are people talking about on Internet groups?

One of the great things about the internet is that there is a community for everything. No matter how bizarre your area of interest, there will be an online community for it.

Lizard racing?

Underwater scrabble? 

Whatever your area of interest you will be able to find someone else who is also interested in that thing, and you will be able to chat to them online.

Your mission is to find the online communities related to your niche market and find out what people are talking about and the questions they are asking.

So where can you find these:

Popular group sites:

http://groups.google.com/

http://groups.yahoo.com/

http://groups.live.com/

Social Networking Sites:

http://www.facebook.com/

http://www.myspace.com/

http://www.linkedin.com/

Use directory sites (dmoz.org, yahoo directory etc) to find the most popular forums in your niche:

http://www.dmoz.org/

http://dir.yahoo.com/

http://specials.msn.com/

What questions are people asking on the Internet?

Question and Answer websites are an absolute goldmine for niche research.

Sites like Yahoo Answers, WikiAnswers etc. allow people to post questions, which are then answered by experts and Internet busybodies alike.

http://answers.yahoo.com/

http://wiki.answers.com/

Search these sites for questions relevant to your niche. It’ll tell you exactly the questions people are asking, and what they’re having trouble finding out by other means.

Find a popular question people are struggling to get answered anywhere else on the Internet, and you have just discovered yourself a potential goldmine!

NOTE: This is a massively awesome tip. You should do this. And then you can thank me by telling all your friends how brilliant I am. And why not suggest that they too subscribe to my newsletter so we can all play together in a giant bubble of love, and take over the world.

Ask people yourself!

My final suggestion is to do some good, old-fashioned market research. Find people who represent your niche and ask them what they’re worried about, elicit their values, find out what makes them feel good and what their dreams are.

You can create a survey online at www.surveymonkey.com.

If you’re a respected member of a popular forum then you could make a post on the forum, linking to your survey. This will be especially effective if you offer a small incentive for filling in the survey. A small downloadable report might be good.

If you’re not an already respected forum member then this will probably be regarded as spam. It is best to build up a reputation as a value-giver before you ask for anything in return.

Please let me know how you get on with your research. And please share any magic bullets of your own!

See? That rocked in the end, didn’t it? 

Well done me.

See you tomorrow for more fun and games!

JJ Jalopy.

P.S. I’m thinking about simplifying the look of the website. It’s a bit busy, I think. I want it to look cleaner and more fun. And I want bigger text, so it’s easier for you to read. Let me know if you think it’s a good idea. 

Which reminds me… I should really update my contacts page…

You can contact me on:

Twitter: www.twitter.com/jjjalopy 

Facebook: Just search for me. Not many people have my name. Except one guy who’s into cuckoldry. Mrs. Jalopy would probably appreciate me pointing out that this is not me.

Email… jj at jjjalopy dot com

Other stuff, but I can’t be bothered to type any more right now. G’night!

How to Market Test your Business Idea in Under Ten Minutes

Hi there!

I hope you had a lovely long weekend.

Sometimes on my blog I like to have imaginary conversations with imaginary people who appear to be very interested in what I have to say.

If one of these imaginary folk were to ask: 

Hey JJ. So what’s are the real steps involved in this setting-up-business / coaching / mentoring lark of which you speak?

Then I would be able to show them checklists, flow diagrams, lightning-bolt-strewn process maps. They would be impressed.

I like to call this my methodology, because I am fancy like that.

This methodology is the foundation of all my work with folks who want to set up their own little businesses. It’s the main reason that my mentoring service is so totally brilliant, and why this website is too. Even if you’re only here because you like my hat.

Earlier today I was doing some ad-hoc coaching with a friend of mine who is looking to start an online business. I ran him through a quick set of tests he could use to determine whether there would be a market for his business idea.

That’s cool, I thought to myself. I should share this on my blog and add it to the methodology.

And that’s what I’m doing here. 

I made a quick 7 minute video to explain the process. It’s a long way from being slick – and if you’re not interested in internet business then frankly it’ll bore you to tears – but the information in here is fantastic.

I think everyone would benefit from following along with this one. I should really sell this information for a gazillion dollars or something, and I probably will one day, so watch it now whilst I am still outrageously generous!

Enjoy! And if you feel like telling the rest of the internet how great you think this is then please go ahead and Digg, facebook, mixx me and generally shout messages of love from the rooftops. I won’t mind!

See ya’ tomorrow.

JJ Jalopy.

Get Paying Clients from Free Coaching Sessions in 7 Easy Steps

Hi there!

Just when you think you don’t have to listen to me anymore…

I have a REAL treat for you today.

If you’re struggling to fill your coaching practice with clients then you have to listen to this.

I run through a simple 7 step process that you can use in your free trial coaching sessions to get more people to sign-up for coaching with you on an ongoing basis.

It’s 100% content and value packed. I hit this one out of the park!

The 14 minute podcast is below. Click the Audio MP3 icon to make it play. Or select the link below.

Get Paying Clients from Free Coaching Sessions in 7 Easy Steps

Would you like more cliches? More hyperbole?

Good.

This 14 minute recording is an extreme injection of value packed information into your brain. I go into brain-hemorrhaging detail and define a clear cut strategy to turn your free trial coaching session into a gold mine of happy paying clients.

This time there’s no B.S., no cowboy hats, no larking around – just clear, applicable strategy. I’m really pleased with it, and I hope you will be too.

If you’re a visual person, you might like to look at this as you listen to me explain the process:

 

I hope you enjoy it and get as much value from the process as my clients do.

NOTE: In the latter part of this podcast I mention setting up coaching sessions 4 times a week. That’s an awful lot of coaching. I meant 4 times a month. Thanks Mrs. Jalopy!

See you tomorrow!

JJ Jalopy.

P.S. I’ll doubtless post some larking around for you again soon! My buddy Duane and I are planning to do a podcast together. And who knows what might happen…

Fill Your Coaching Practice in 7 Easy Steps.

How to become a coach. With Coaching Marketing Superstar JJ Jalopy.

Hey there!

Look! I’m on YouTube – spreading the word about my coaching marketing blueprint and other awesome stuff.

Obviously I cringe if I watch it and have no way of telling objectively whether it sucks or not.

So please tell me what you think…

Feel free to be totally honest with me.

Except if you think it sucks. You can keep that to yourself.

Actually, you can keep quiet unless you think it’s totally brilliant. Otherwise I’ll get all self-conscious and I’ll do the next one in the dark.

Thanks. Glad we’ve sorted that out.

See y’all tomorrow!

JJ Jalopy.

Operation CommentBomb and the CommentLuv plug-in.

Hey there!

Come on in. I’ve just made a pot of tea.

How are you?

Mrs. Jalopy was up early this morning to go off to a big coaching training and networking event. 

I stayed in and laid in bed ’till the early afternoon…

It was great!

(Yeah, that’s right. There are no kids in Family Jalopy just yet.)

Then this afternoon, before I got dressed, I did some networking of my own from the comfort of my man cave.

Earlier this week, inspired by an awesome book I’d been reading, I revealed the intimate details of an evil plan to get more readers to my website prior to my book launch.

One of the integral parts of the plan involved finding people with blogs that are relevant or semi-relevant  to what I do and are awesome enough to have a gang of enthusiastic followers interested in the kind of stuff I write about.

I’d then comment on their blog in a value-adding, amusing,controversial or plain obsequious manner to attract the attention of blogger and blogger cheerleaders alike.

Then, both blogger and blogger cheerleaders fall in love with the JJ style, come and hang out here in Jalopyland and tell all their friends. Global domination soon ensues.

Cool.

So today I did a few useful things as I sat at my computer, sans pants.

I found the very best writing on the internet in the coaching / consulting / personal development and internet marketing fields, and I commenced Operation CommentBomb.

This intimidated me a little. There’s a lot of fantastically awesome stuff out there. 

But my stuff is awesome too. I hope.

Another cool thing I did was install a thing called CommentLuv on my blog.

This is a really cool plug-in (the technical term is thing) which allows me to reward my JalopyGang cheerleaders by automatically leaving a headline link to their last blog post in their comment.

If you have a blog then add a comment below and see how it works. Be sure to put the URL of your website in the relevant box on the comment form. If you can’t think of anything to say, then feel free to tell me you think I’m brilliant. I won’t mind.

The plan is to get more people active on my blog by making the comments more useful to readers and commentees alike.

Why? Well…

• Post titles are more fun and eye-catching than your name or the name of your website. My awesome readers are more likely click on a link if it’s an intriguing sounding post title.
• I can keep up with my readers more easily.
• Commenters get an extra link to their website in their comments!
• Readers see a selection of posts from people who enjoy the same kind of thing as them.

So, yeah. This rocks, essentially.

And part of my networking operation will involve commenting on a number of blogs with CommentLuv installed. 

For an example, check out the embarrassingly sycophantic comment I left on the blog of Life Coach and supremely talented writer Tim Brownson. 

Why not suck up to me too?!

Get involved!

Speaking of which… thanks for all the praise and feedback about my awesome Jalopy Gang Newsletter. The next issue hits your emailbox tomorrow so sign up below if you don’t want to miss out!

One of my favorite comments came from my friend Jon, who claimed that my latest newsletter (which I thought was a bit rubbish) read the way I sound when I’ve had a few beers.

Probably won’t be including that testimonial anywhere other than this post here! Thanks mate.

Anyway… it’s been a hard day of lie-ins and playing on the internet – so I’m going to head to the sofa now with Mrs. Jalopy, watch TV and eat some Chinese takeout.

Mmmmm…

Have a wonderful weekend folks!

JJ Jalopy.

Coaching Business Startup 207 – Coaching Business Branding Basics

How to become a coach. With Coaching Marketing Rockstar JJ Jalopy.

Hey there!

Welcome back to Casa Jalopy.

Let me pour you a glass of wine. It’s a cheap Chilean Shiraz today – half price from the supermarket.

Yep, I’m living the V.I.P. lifestyle to the fullest. Diddy would be proud!

Unfortunately you missed dessert. We had a Gu chocolate souffle each. Have you tried them?

They’re the best thing in the world. (Well, apart from me!)

They’re delicious. Every taste is like a spiritual orgasm! They’re even better than the awesome chocolate brownie recipe that I shared with you in my last newsletter.

My newsletter sucked a bit last week, actually. Sorry about that. I was tired. I wrote way too much. And it was formatted like crap.

BUT… it’ll be waaaay better next week. So sign up here!

The Jalopy Gang Newsletter – A newsletter so awesome that it knows when it sucks…

Yeah, I know. And I call myself a marketing expert!!

Yesterday I had a busy, amazing, productive and love-filled day. When I blogged about it, my buddy Christian asked me to elaborate on what I’d been doing.

Well, like any self-respecting attention-seeker, I love talking about myself . What I’m about to talk about is almost entirely irrlevant to anyone wanting to learn about starting their coaching business, setting up their home business, productivity tips, marketing advice, or any of the cool coaching and mentoring stuff I talk about, so feel free to the section below entitled JJ stops rambling here to get to the content!

So what was I doing?

Well… I completed the arrangement of an asset securitization for an automotive vendor finance portfolio.

Ever wish you hadn’t asked something?

<<If you care, insert your own paragraph here about credit rating agencies, responsibility, asset-backed securities, credit crunch, capital adequacy, balance sheet restructuring, Megan Fox or Stephen Hawking, or Megan Fox and Stephen Hawking together with a big bowl of strawberries.>>

The details are unimportant, thank God. What is relevant is the sense of achievement that comes from doing a job really well. THAT rocks.

JJ stops rambling here!

Right. Let’s get out the blueprint.

You found your niche coaching market.

You personalized your prospective coaching client or customer and created a customer avatar, a representation of your average coaching client. You sat inside their head for a while and you understood their problems and their worries. You understood what scares them. You understood how they feel about their friends and their family. What obligations they feel they have. What their hopes are.

Then created an image of the kind of person they would like to talk to. How would they make them feel? What experience would that person have? How would they make them feel better about themselves? How would they help them solve their problems?

This was the first step to finding solutions to their problems.

So what’s next?

Well if you like, pretend for a moment that you are JJ Jalopy.

…

Now come away from the mirror and get back here. Concentrate!

That’s better…

Now your customer avatar (following mild-mannered ladies man Eben Pagan) is an awesome lady called Marjorie. Recap here…

Now, as a coach, the answer to your coaching clients’ problems is going to involve You. 

You are going to form an essential part of your brand. Your business communication is going to largely based in the way You communicate.

That’s a given. And it’s massively important, actually. Don’t go thinking you need to put on a serious business hat when you’re running your business and that you can relax and be yourself when you get home.

However it is that you are – that rocks. That’s why I love you. Be like that when you’re playing business.

HOWEVER…

You are a complex and multifaceted individual. You are a socially sophisticated person. You do not interact in the same way at the Vicar’s house as you do when you’re sharing a glass of wine with your best friend.

Unless the Vicar is your best friend.

You do not bring the same aspects of yourself to every situation.

Remember the image we constructed of the person your customer would most like to talk to? Let’s call this person your business avatar.

In constructing your brand and communication plan we want you to:

• be totally authentic
• emphasize the aspects of your personality and communication style which are consistent with that of your business avatar.

Make sense?

Cool. Write this down. Think about how this feels to you. 

And in the next post in this series I’ll discuss how I do this in my businesses.

Until then have a wonderful evening. I’ll see you next time!

JJ Jalopy.

R-RATED INTERNET MARKETING RANT!

Hey there!

How are you this fine Tuesday evening?

Let’s share a whiskey and light up some cigars. We’re going to get R-rated today.

Sometimes I just love a good rant. 

I’ll admit to being an enthusiastic cheerleader for the benefits of positive thinking, but sometimes it’s a whole lot of fun to unleash a big torrent of uninhibited vitriol into the world.

Sometimes it can even be productive and educational.

I’ll maintain the pretense that this will be the case today. (Really, we’re just here for entertainment…)

Please don’t follow the forthcoming link if you’re easily offended, you have a mother, you’ve ever seen a rainbow, eaten a cupcake, kept a puppy, kept a hamster or were even the slightest bit offended by Janet Jackson’s left nipple.

Otherwise…. here’s a glorious and luxurious rant about internet marketing on the weblog metafilter.com in response to the news that the makers of a popular online advert blocking plugin are considering permitting advertisers to unblock their adverts. 

Highlights below…

You want attention for your goods or services? Make them the best you can. We’ll f—ing find you, ok? Eliminate your marketing department and take all of that money and all of those resources and refocus on making a product that doesn’t suck ass, and we’ll find you.

It was true before the internet in the age of better mousetraps and beaten paths, and is especially true now that “word of mouth” is a global phenomenon. Make good shit. Put up a simple but useful page. Be good to your customers and clients and we’ll find you and bury you in business.

Although I’m not going to agree completely with my angry friend, this actually fits in with my coaching marketing blueprint pretty well.

• Create massive value
• Take advantage of word of mouth marketing and social media in favor of old-school marketing and advertising techniques
• Rule the world!

Hope you’ve enjoyed yourself tonight. Tomorrow we’ll drink tea and talk about puppies and rainbows and little fluffy clouds.

JJ Jalopy.

Two inconvenient truths about marketing

Hey there!

I’m going to be short and sweet today. I’ve been writing way too much recently and I feel like joining Mrs. Jalopy on the sofa and watching 90210.

Yep. That’s the kind of mood I’m in today!

I’m going to share with you two inconvenient truths about marketing and human nature which, if you’re smart, (and I know you are) you can use to your advantage in your own marketing…

1. Everyone THINKS they are too smart to respond to advertising or marketing messages. 

2. Everyone loves to feel superior.

Okay. Okay. They’re not truths. They’re generalizations. But I couldn’t say that. It would make for a shit title, wouldn’t it?

Have a think about this.

How are these two related? 

How might you take advantage of this in your marketing efforts?

How might you best assess the effectiveness of a marketing campaign?

Right… It’s time for Beverly Hills 90210. Oh, how I love great art!

See ya tomorrow!

JJ Jalopy.

Marketing your blog and getting people to fall in love with you!

How to become a coach. With Coaching Marketing Expert JJ Jalopy.

Hi there!

Happy Mothers’ Day!

Hope you had a fantastic weekend.

I’ve just returned back to the city from a wedding in the countryside.

I love a good wedding. Or as my friend Steve pointed out, what I really love is a good wedding reception. (We must have that Martini sometime soon, Steve.)

Now, as you know, I’m writing a book at the moment.

It’s obviously going to be brilliant, but that doesn’t really matter if no-one reads it.

So how do I get people to find me, take the time to find out about me, realize I’m a genius and fall in love with me for my modesty, good looks, charm and business expertise?

Well I guess the first thing I need is a bigger picture of my happy smiling face on my website! I’ve been meaning to get around to that for ages…

…But more importantly, I need a marketing plan much like the Coaching Marketing Blueprint I have been sharing with you over the last couple of weeks.

And of course, this here blog is all part of that evil plan! <<Insert evil laugh here>>

Now, if you’re new to the internet and you’ve been following along with my series on Marketing your Coaching Business then what I’m about to talk about may seem like a massive jump into the realm of the of the unknown.

But I’m going to talk about it anyway, because that’s what I feel like talking about today. And I’m tired. And you should always let a tired person do what they want, or they’ll get grumpy.

I can be good at grumpy!

Right… so this blog forms part of my evil plan to get the internet to fall in love with me and buy my book. You know this because I just told you. But how exactly does this work?

Well my blog is useful for a number of reasons:

• People searching for information on marketing their coaching business more successfully may find me and become interested in my writing.
• Other bloggers may dig my writing and link to me, making it easier for more people to find me
• It helps to build my reputation as an authority in the coaching marketing niche
• It’s an informal forum in which I can be myself, which means that…
• I can build my relationship with my readers
• I can build relationships with other bloggers and businesses
• I grow a large repository of useful and relevant written content
• I get valuable feedback on my writing and ideas and inspiration from comments, linkbacks etc.

I could go on and on and on. But a list of poorly elaborated bullet points does not a good post make.

Suffice to say, having this blog is a very good thing and an important part of the JJ Jalopy marketing plan.

If you follow the marketing plan I use with my coaching clients then it will soon be a part of yours too.

Now, on the train back from the countryside I was reading an awesome book by Naomi Dunford and Dave Navarro (no, not the guitarist dude) called How to Launch the **** out of Your Ebook. Yep, the name was what attracted me to it!

It’s a great book. Really awesome. You can find out more about it here. And if you buy it then I get half of the book price, thanks to another awesome concept called affiliate marketing, which we’ll be discussing when we get a little further in our Coaching Marketing Blueprint.

Well something in the book caught my eye, and it was this:

Blogging is not complex – it’s about 20% writing good content and 80% getting the word out (seriously.)

Hmmm, I thought.

And I scratched my chin, as that is the internationally-recognized symbol of a good ponder.

Do I spend 80% of my time networking, building traffic and getting the word out and 20% of my time writing content?

No, it’s more like 80% – 20% the other way round!

At least it has been, until I had my little ponder…

So how do I get the “word out” about my blog?

Well, inspired by my obnoxiously-titled favorite new book,  here are some of the strategies I’ll be using to pull readers from other people’s audiences.

Sneaky, eh?

I will contact competitors or bloggers on related subjects and ask to write guest posts.

The advantage to me here is massive. These bloggers have put in a lot of work building an audience that is receptive to the coaching market. If they fall in love with my writing and they follow a link back to my site and enjoy what they find there, then I have a new fan. Marvelous! (Note that all of these plans fall apart if my content sucks.)

So why would anyone let me do this? Surely they won’t welcome the competition?

Well, they might want to mix things up on their blog. They might just want someone else to write something for once so they don’t have to. If they’re a big time blogger then they’re probably not too bothered about the competition that lil’ ol’ me represents.

Little do they know… <<Evil Laugh>>

Another strategy is to do loads of useful and valuable commenting on the popular blogs in the coaching advice niche.

Up to now, I haven’t been doing enough of this because, quite frankly, it’s time consuming and a bit of a pain in the butt. But the networking and traffic-building payoffs can be massive. As long as I don’t insult too many people, it will help build my reputation in the eyes of readers and bloggers alike.

Posting on relevant discussion forums can make a massive difference too.

I don’t do this, but I should. If I set myself up as an authority on a couple of well-frequented relevant coaching forums, then this can only be a good thing. I’ll be testing this out in the next month or so and reporting back…

Social Media Networking is another thing really smart thing that I’m not doing that much of. Websites like facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and Twitter make it very easy for people with similar interests to find each other. It’s a great networking tool, and something I’ll be talking about as I get more experience with these tools.

That’s a lot to be getting on with! Like a good investigative scientist, I’ll be testing out these strategies and monitoring their effect on my visitor traffic and subscriptions. I’ll report back with data. Now, where’s my lab coat?

One final thing… if you’re observant you may have noticed that it is Sunday.

Sunday is the day that my awesome Jalopy Gang Newsletter hits your email box. This week we have a fantastic exclusive article about outsourcing, as well as all the usual value packed articles, fun and games and silly shenanigans. There’s also a super tasty treat at the end!

I have an incredibly discerning readership. So if you suck, please don’t bother signing up.

If you’re intelligent, creative, generous, sexy, and otherwise generally awesome then please join the gang by putting your name and email address in the boxes below.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!
JJ Jalopy.

The way you make me feel!

Hi there!

How are you?

We’ve been in the heart of the English countryside, at our friends Adam and Louise’s wedding. It’s been a great day. We’re in a beautiful part of the world. The bride looked beautiful. We drank too much wine. We danced to Journey, Bon Jovi and Bonnie Tyler…

It’s been awesome.

And now I’m going to urge you to think about a very simple but important concept.

Imagine that I am your prospective customer. I’ve had a hard day at work, my kids are being difficult and there’s nothing good on the TV. I’m feeling a little bored and a bit fed up. I open my mail or go to the computer and I come across one of your marketing messages.

Now, ask yourself the following question:

How does your communication make me feel?

Think about the amount of money people will spend on music, hobbies, the cinema, going out, drink, drugs, fairground rides, bungee jumps…

Why do they do it?

Because they want to be entertained. And they want to feel something different to how they feel right now.

So when your prospective customer or client comes into contact with you, what do you do?

Do you treat them like kings and make them feel appreciated?

Do you make them laugh?

Do you challenge them?

Do you excite them?

Do you let them in on a secret?

Do you make them feel accepted and part of a cool group?

Do you make them feel clever; superior even?

Something to think about…

Love you!

JJ Jalopy.

Coaching Business Startup 206 – Find the solution to your customers’ problems

How to Become a Coach. With Coaching Marketing Rockstar JJ Jalopy.

Hey there….

2003 Contino Rioja?

Yeah. It’s been a busy week. I’ll pour you a glass – you deserve it.

I have some cool news!

After submitting my coaching marketing podcast to iTunes a couple of days ago I am now available in the iTunes store!  Subscribe here!

If you think I’m totally brilliant then feel free to rate me five stars and tell iTunes I rock. I won’t mind. Really.

Recently, we’ve been talking a lot about marketing coaching. I’ve outlined a marketing blueprint for you to follow. It’s superhighway to coaching domination.

So you found your niche market.

You created a representation of your customer and you got inside their head. You got to know their worries, their concerns, their hopes, their dreams. 

You began to see a process that could lead them to find you, if you could be the solution to their problems.

And if you did the first two stages really well then the next stage should be easy.

Let’s go…

Put yourself in the shoes of your customer. Look through their eyes. Feel what they’re feeling. Feel their pain and their frustration.

Now ask yourself the following question:

What kind of person would your customer like to talk to right now?

Don’t think about what kind of business they might like to deal with.

Don’t think about what products they would like to buy.

Don’t think about what marketing messages would work well.

Not yet, anyway…

Picture in your mind a single person talking to your customer, making them feel better about themselves and making their pain go away.

How does this person talk to your customer? What experiences do they have? What knowledge do they have? How do they make your customer feel?

Have a really good think about what the relationship between these two people would be like. What would they talk about? What tone would they use with one another? 

I urge you to really think about this. Take your time. 

The next step will be to translate this insight into a full branding and communication plan. We’ll use my business communication plan as a case study. This is where it gets really exciting!

Mrs. Jalopy and I are hitting the road early tomorrow to go to a wedding in the countryside – so I’d better hit the hay!

See you tomorrow for more fun and games.

Love you!

JJ Jalopy.

More Readers’ Niche Questions – How do I identify with my niche?

Hey Dude(tte). High five!

I’m back on the train, returning from a wonderful weekend with my parents in the countryside. It always feels relaxing to get away from the city for a while.

We’re returning this afternoon for our friend Ellie’s karaoke birthday party. There’ll be party food, lots of wine, Abba and glittery cowboy hats.

Not quite so relaxing…

…but a lot of fun!

I love karaoke. My friends usually wind up wrestling the microphone away from me so they can have a go.

Mrs. Jalopy doesn’t seem to enjoy my singing quite so much…

Right… This week has been truly nichetastic! I’ve used the word niche more often than is recommended or considered normal in polite company.

But that’s because I believe it’s super important to define and identify with your niche market.

So today I’m going to tackle another reader’s niche question…

JJ. I’ve picked a niche market to target, and I’ve created a simple representation of my average customer as you suggested, but I’m having trouble identifying with my customer. Do you have any tips on how I can get inside my prospective customer’s head?

This is a great question!

I realise now that it’s something I glossed over somewhat when we discussed this in the context of my business.

It is relatively easy to identify with your niche if you are already involved in that niche. It is even easier if your prospective customer is essentially a past version of you, before you solved some of your own problems.

But what if you are new to the niche? How can you identify with something you have never experienced yourself?

Well… I’m going to be answering this one in the second edition of my Jalopy Gang newsletter, which will hit your email box around midnight tonight (if you live on the East Coast.)

I’m going to share with you my secret niche-finding magic bullet! This is a veritable magic dowsing rod for finding profitable and untapped niche markets!

To be sure not to miss out, why not pop your name and email address into the boxes below?

You’ll be glad you did! It has been described (by me) as the greatest e-zine ever written!

See you then,

JJ Jalopy.

Readers’ Niche Questions – Niches for Affiliate Websites

Hi there!

How nice of you to come visit me in the countryside.

It’s a beautiful spring day here. Let’s sit on the porch and have a cup of tea.

 

Hey JJ. I’ve set up a website selling affiliate products that I like, but I’m not really sure what my niche is. Can you help?

Okay. So you’ve found a product that you like and you want to sell it. 

Cool. That’s the other way round to the approach we’ve been discussing recently. And that’s fine. Variety is good. Sometimes it is good to do things upside down. Especially if you are a bat.

The first thing to say is that if you don’t know what your niche is you probably aren’t concentrating your efforts as effectively as possible. That’s okay. We can remedy that by deciding on a niche.

So how should we start?

Well, let’s have a think about the actions that might lead a person to purchase the product you’ve chosen.

Building on our conversation yesterday, let’s assume that our prospective customer is either:

• ready to buy from a preselected manufacturer, retailer or authority figure
• looking for more information on a product or service
• looking for information to help them solve a problem.

Let’s think about your prospective customer, as he sits in front of his computer, ready to search.

 

Scenario 1 – Dave has already decided on the product he’s going to buy.

Dave has heard great things about Kevin Hogan and his Secrets of Reading Body Language Home Study Course. He’s a subscriber to Kevin’s newsletter Coffee with Kevin Hogan, and he digs Kevin’s no-nonsense approach to life and work. He learns a ton from Kevin’s newsletter and he trusts and appreciates the Kevin Hogan brand.

Dave is likely to go directly to Kevin’s website, or take a link from Kevin’s newsletters, maybe with a discount coupon code. He’ll buy the Course directly from the source that he trusts.

Is there any way that you could persuade Dave to buy the course through your website, rather than directly from Kevin?

Well it’s not likely, because Dave isn’t looking for anyone else.

Your best chance in this scenario would be to buy prominent advertising on keywords similar to the one’s Kevin uses to promote the product, or to offer compelling extra bonuses or rebates to tempt Dave to buy through you – effectively reducing your margin on sale.

Neither of these options are likely to do very well because you are competing directly with Kevin, who is an established and trusted authority figure. And Dave isn’t looking for you anyway.

Oh well.

 

Scenario 2 – Marie is looking to buy a certain type of product, but doesn’t know which one.

Marie had a great conversation with her friends last night about body language. She becomes fascinated by the subject. Her friend John tells her that he took a great weekend course on body language and it helped him to improve his personal and business relationships enormously.

Marie goes online to search for body language courses in her local area of Wichita, Kansas.

Is there a possibility that Marie could buy the Kevin Hogan home study course through your website?

Well, yes. But you will need to be the answer to the question that she was searching for.

Marie was looking for body language courses in Wichita. If you know something about that subject then maybe you can create a website that Marie will visit?

Maybe you’ll have a website with reviews and listings of different courses around the U.S. or within Kansas. On that website you’ll could also have a review of Kevin’s Home Study course, or a relevant sales letter. Marie might decide that, although she was looking for local weekend courses, she quite likes the idea of being able to study at home. And if she buys the course you make a share of the profit.

In this scenario you have created a niche market – people looking for local weekend courses. 

If you concentrate your efforts in building a resource rich website in this area, or buy advertising in this niche area then we can attract visitors and sell some copies of the course.

It’s not a great niche, because there is little emotion associated with the common problems and passions of the group. But it’s a step forward from Scenario 2.

 

Scenario 3 – Susan is pissed that her husband cheated on her.

Susan’s husband cheated on her last year.

She’s hurt and she wants to be sure this doesn’t happen again.

She goes online and searches for information on how to be sure she is never lied to again. 

In this scenario, is there a possibility that Marie could wind up buying the Kevin Hogan home study course through your website?

Of course. But, just like before, you need to be the answer to the question that Susan is asking.

Maybe you have a website with articles and advice targeted at married women trying to deal with their husband’s infidelity. Maybe you have a specific page dedicated to reading body language to ensure that you are never lied to again. Maybe this page will contain a summary of your experiences with the Home Study Course and a link to purchase it.

It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that we have defined a niche. And in concentrating on that niche, you have been able to provide the answer to the question Susan is looking for. Once you have her attention you can then offer her the chance to buy the course from you.

This niche is probably going to be more profitable to you than the previous one because there is a large amount of emotion associated with the common problem the group experiences.

 

Do you see how this works?

Good. So, assuming you have already chosen an affiliate product to promote, how are you going to decide what niche to target?

I would start with thinking about your own personal experience. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Why did you buy the product?
• What in particular benefits did you get from the product?
• What kind of people do you most identify with?
• How could the product benefit your friends?

In many ways this approach is slightly more difficult than tailoring the product to the niche.

It can be a great approach if you have personally received a lot of value from the product and have a clear idea of an accessible group who could obtain similar value from it.

Good luck! And let me know how you get on.

See you tomorrow.

JJ Jalopy.

Reader’s Niche Question: Why do I need to pick a niche?

Hey there!

How on earth did you find me here on the train?!

How very resourceful of you. I’m impressed!

Mrs. Jalopy and I are leaving the city to spend the weekend in the countryside. It’s my Dad’s birthday and we’re going to see my parents.

Happy Birthday Jalopy Senior!

Recently we’ve spent a bit of time talking about niche markets.

I’ve received a few great questions via email. So over the next couple of days I’m going to take some time to address these and clarify a few things.

I’m going to talk generally today. What we discuss will be directly applicable to anyone who wants to sell something.

So, why do I need to pick a niche?

Okay. Let’s think about what a person thinks and does before they buy something.

Jane wants an iPod. She’s seen lots of adverts on TV and she thinks they look pretty cool. Lots of her friends have one too. She knows they’re made by Apple and she’s heard that the Apple Store is a fun place to hang out. 

She goes to the Apple Store and buys herself an iPod.

Duane also wants an MP3 player, but he’s not sure which one is best. He canvasses the opinion of his friends, reads some reviews in a Hi-Fi magazine and, based on his research, opts to buy an AussiePod. It’s slightly more expensive than the iPod but real flames come out of the top of it whenever Duane listens to AC/DC.

Unfortunately, three moths later, after rocking Highway to Hell on heavy rotation, Duane’s AussiePod case is burned to a cinder.

Duane goes online to look advice about burnt AussiePods.

He types “flame resistant AussiePod” into Google and he finds a website called Percy’s Pods.

Percy knows everything there is to know about fictitious iPod variants and he shares his incredible wealth of  knowledge on the internet. The same technology anecdotes which prompt rolled eyes from his wife at the dinner party go down a storm with the enthusiasts who visit his website!

Duane finds a great article on the site which helps him to construct a flame guard for his AussiePod using everyday household materials. Now he’s free to rock out in total confidence and safety!

Over the coming months Duane returns to Percy’s Pods because he loves the site so much.

He discovers that a new iPod variant has just been conceived in the fertile imagination of a man on a train.

It’s the ConservaPod. It’s been specifically designed to filter rock stars’ political ramblings out of their live performances.

That would make a perfect gift for my friend Rob, says Duane. Now he can listen to The Boss without cringing!

Everyone loves Bruce.

 

Duane takes a link from Percy’s Pods to the ConservaPod website, where he buys one for Rob. The ConservaPod vendors give Percy a percentage of the proceeds for referring Duane to their website. Duane doesn’t mind about this one bit, because he gets the same price regardless, and he enjoys Percy’s website.

Now, was there any point to that little story or was I simply amusing myself?

Well the first and most obvious point to make is that nobody buys anything by accident.

In these stories (and most other stories we could come up with) the customer is either:

• ready to buy from a preselected manufacturer, retailer or authority figure
• looking for more information on a product or service
• looking for information to help them solve a problem.

Let’s think about this from the point of view of your business. Are you or your business:

• an established brand or authority?
• providing specific information, advice or product or service reviews?
• providing solutions to common problems?

And if you’re not….

…then how do you think people are going to find you?!

In order to become an expert, authority or a solution in either of the ways outlined above, you will need to concentrate your efforts.

This is why it is important to clearly define your niche market.

If Percy hadn’t concentrated his efforts in one particular area, Duane would never have bought that ConservaPod through him.

Make sense?

Shout if not. And maybe I’ll tell you another story!

Tune in for another great question tomorrow. See you then.

JJ Jalopy.

Coaching Business Startup 205 – Identify with your niche!

Hi there!

You’re looking great. I love what you’ve done to your hair!

Come on in and sit down.

It’s curry night tonight: Chicken Tikka Masala. The English national dish!

Now, where were we?

Ah yes… Yesterday,  Holistic Health Heavyweight Bob Kaufer asked me a question which was so perfect that I couldn’t have possibly planted a better one myself!

He asked:

JJ, what is your niche?

Super fantastic question, Bob. I love questions about me! 

What a great case study this will be. And a perfect introduction to Step 2 of my Coaching Marketing Blueprint – Identifying with your niche.

Let’s do it!

My niche market is newly trained coaches who are struggling to get their business started and to attract paying clients.

Following Andy Wibbels’ definition, we described a useful niche market as:

a group of people with a common set of urgent problems or passions that are accessible, and who have money to spend.

We clarified, stating that, to be useful to you, your niche market should be:

• small enough that you can become an expert and build a good reputation within that niche
• large enough to support your business. 

With this in mind, let’s analyse my niche market…

Is the group large enough to support my business?

Yes. Coaching is very much a growth industry. More people are taking coaching qualifications than ever before, meaning that there are more qualified coaches than ever before. With a large number of coaches available, people are looking for an edge.

Is the group small enough that you can become an expert and build a good reputation within the niche?

Yes. I’ll cover basic market research in detail shortly. For now, trust me. Besides, I’m JJ Jalopy. I rock!

Is the group accessible?

Yes. There are a number of places where newly qualified coaches “hang out”:

• coaching training schools
• online forums
• online communities and websites like www.jjjalopy.com
• coaching industry magazines
• networking events
• any much more…

Finally, does the group have a common set of urgent and painful problems or passions that invoke a lot of emotion?

Hmmm… Now this is an interesting question.

Before we tackle this, let me take a few minutes to introduce you to this dude… 

His name is Eben Pagan. You might not believe it, but this nerd from California has made gazillions of dollars on the internet selling eBooks, subscription programs, and high-end DVD home study courses about picking up girls!

And it gets better… He does it all under the brilliant pseudonym of David DeAngelo!

To be fair, I don’t think Eben would like my description of his business too much. He would describe his niche as dating advice.Sounds a bit more conservative, you see.

(But between you and me – it really is about picking up girls. I know. I’ve read the emails. And you should too. If you want a perfect case study in how to use an email autoresponder system then subscribe to his opt-in, pay attention and learn. I’m about to buy his eBook too so I can see how his back-end follow up communication works. Mrs. Jalopy will be so pleased! )

I’ve got off track again!

Nowadays Eben also helps entrepreneurs with their own internet businesses.

Eben understands that value of being able to see the world through your customers eyes. To help you do that, he teaches the concept of a customer avatar.

A customer avatar is simply a representation of your typical customer. 

This is a great tool to help you empathize with your niche market.

Eben goes even further with this idea, suggesting that you also create an avatar for your business. All your communication can then be thought of in terms of a dialogue between these two people. It’s a really powerful way of thinking!

Let’s have a go at creating JJ Jalopy’s customer avatar. This should help us in understanding my niche market.

She’s called Marjorie. (She would have to be, really!)

Marjorie is 35 years old. She is recently married and she has a young daughter. Marjorie has always had a strong urge to help people fulfill their true potential. Egged on by her friends and attracted by the flexible working hours and the freedom of being able to work from home, Marjorie decides to train to become a coach.

She takes a life and business coaching certification and she gets a steady stream of non-paying clients to build her confidence as she qualifies.

She’s a great coach. She completes her qualification and she starts to get referrals from her friends. She picks up a couple of paying clients, but then things start to dry up a little. She knows she’s a great coach, but she’s finding it really hard to get more clients.

She’s scared the money will run out. She’s scared that she won’t be able to provide for her family.

She’s scared she’ll have to go back to work or get a part-time job.

She’s worried that she’s made a mistake. She’s worried about being a failure.

She’s worried others will see her as a failure. 

She feels lost because she doesn’t have a clear plan of what she needs to do to make money as a coach.

She feels overwhelmed with potential options and things to do.

Does this sound like an urgent and painful problem, involving a large amount of emotion?!

Of course!

So, Ladies and Gentlemen, it appears we have a good niche market here. Well done me!

I encourage you to go through this complete exercise with your own niche ideas. You’re going to learn a load simply from asking these questions. 

Right, so what’s the next step?

 

That’s right! We need to find solutions to Marjorie’s problems!

But not today – I’m pooped!

Ta-ra!

JJ Jalopy.

Coaching Business Startup 204 – Find your niche market

How to become  a coach. With Coaching Marketing Expert JJ Jalopy.

Bonjour!

How nice of you to come by again.

It’s been a lovely sunny day here in London. I spent the early evening relaxing in the sunshine in a beer garden.

A beer garden isn’t necessarily the picturesque and foliage-filled drinking paradise you might imagine. In fact, any part of “outside” that you can drink in gets called a beer garden in England.

A few paving slabs, some plastic chairs and a liquor license? Yup – that’s a beer garden.

And a jolly nice evening it was too.

Now, earlier this week I gave you a sneak peak of my Complete Blueprint for Coaching Marketing World Domination!

Here it is again in all it’s lightning bolt strewn glory.

Today we’re going to discuss the very first step.

Which is…

 

Find your niche market.

Now, it has been said that life coaching is a solution looking for a problem.

And, in a certain respect, I agree.

Very few people are looking for a “life coach”.

No. People generally have specific problems that they want solved. And they usually want an expert to help them solve these problems.

It is easier to become perceived as an expert if you pick a narrowly defined market in which to work. 

Deciding upon your niche market is the first step in becoming the superstar coach that you were born to be.

My favorite description of a niche is from blogging expert Andy Wibbels

A group of people with a common set of urgent problems or passions.

I’ll go slightly further.

To be useful to you, a niche must be a group of people with a common set of urgent problems or passions that are accessible, and who have money to spend.

So, JJ, where should I start with defining my niche?

Well actually, we already started with our earlier discussion on how you answer the question: What do you do?

You’ll want to pick an area that excites you, and ideally an area in which you already have some experience.

The next step is a sense check. Is your niche market:

• small enough that you can become an expert and build a good reputation within that niche?
• large enough to support your business. 

I once had a client tell me that her niche market was women.

That’s half of the world!

It’ll take some serious effort to reach expert status in the coaching women market. That’s not to say that it’s impossible – just look at what Tony Robbins has achieved – but it will be a lot of work.

Eventually she decided that her area of expertise would be housewives who want to get back into work.

Now, that’s a niche market!

They have a common painful problem. They are accessible – they belong to common organizations, or read common websites or magazines. And the market is well-defined enough that it is possible to become known as an expert in the area.

Now, a final sense check:

• does your niche market have a common painful problem or a passion that involves a large amount of emotion?
• is your niche market prepared to spend have money to spend on the resolution of their problem or the accomplishment of their dream?

So, whilst the unemployed may be an easily accessible group of people with a common urgent problem, they don’t necessarily have too much money to spend. So, unless you’re being paid by the government or you’re marketing a very low cost coaching solution, this probably isn’t going to work out for you in the long term.

Now, I hope you have at least an idea of a possible niche market for you.

Next time we talk we’re going to get inside the head of one of your prospective customers and find out what really makes them tick.

It’s going to be a lot of fun.

Oh. Look at the time! How did it get so late!

I’d better get myself ready for bed.

You can let yourself out. I’ll see you tomorrow!

JJ Jalopy.

Coaching Business Startup 203 – The Complete Coaching Marketing Blueprint

How to Become a Coach. With Coaching Marketing Superstar JJ Jalopy!

Hey there!

It’s a MASSIVE day today in Jalopyland!

Not only am I going to give you the patented and much-hyped Complete Coaching Marketing Blueprint for Coaching World Domination…

…BUT I’ll also be sending out the very first edition of the Jalopy Gang Newsletter tonight. It’s a weekly publication which will appear in your email box every Sunday, packed full of free resources and unique content that I won’t be sharing anywhere else.

Sign up below to be sure you don’t miss out!

Cool.

Now I’ve hyped quite this enough thank you… so without further ado, allow me to present The Complete Coaching Marketing Blueprint for Coaching World Domination!

Gotta love those lightning bolts!!

Many clients, when they first see this blueprint, can be a little confused as to how this relates to coaching marketing.

Well…. today I’m going to invite you to have a think about this yourself.

Be easy with it – just have a think about how this might apply to your business. What might it mean? What could I mean by a niche market? What could a marketing engine be? What does it mean to get leverage on your time?

Then next time we meet, I’ll take you through the entire model step-by-step. And you’ll begin to see that I truly am a coaching marketing genius!

In the meantime, I’m off to write my first ever Jalopy Gang newsletter! It’s obviously going to be totally brilliant, so make sure that you’re subscribed. I wouldn’t want you to miss out on the fun!

See you a bit later today!

JJ Jalopy.

P.S. Not sure if I mentioned this, but I have a newsletter. Why not sign-up?!

Coaching Business Startup 202 – Beliefs about Marketing

How to Become a Coach. Coaching Marketing Advice with Coach Marketing Expert JJ Jalopy.

Hey there!

Welcome back to Jalopyville!

We’ve had an awesome day today. Mrs. Jalopy and I have just come back from the gym.

To be honest, we spent more time in the hot tub than the gym.

I’m all about efficiency at the gym. The more efficient my workout, the more free time I can spend in the hot tub!

I think of most of my life like this. The more focused and efficient I can be in my work, the more time I have to lie in on Saturday morning and enjoy a cuddle with Mrs. Jalopy.

So as we reclined in the tub, with warm bubbles foaming around us, we began to talk about marketing coaching.

How do you feel about marketing your coaching?  I asked.

Well I know I have to do it, she explained, but I don’t want it to take over my work. I’d much rather spend my time coaching.

Most of the coaches I work with see marketing their services as a necessary evil.

This makes sense.

Coaches want to coach. Kind of obvious, right?

That’s where coaches perceive the most value. And that’s what they find most rewarding.

So that’s where their focus is. And some see the marketing piece is a necessary but unwelcome distraction from coaching itself.

Some coaches hold marketing in much worse regard. The mere mention of the word can be enough to cause disgust. They might see it as aggressive, as hostile, as an invasion.

My new series on this blog, which I hyped like crazy the other day, is all about marketing your coaching business.

It’s my premise that you will not achieve total coaching world domination without a marketing plan. My job here is to help you to do that.

It is my challenge today to get you to see marketing as an important, enjoyable and win-win extension of coaching itself.

Quite a claim, right?

Well… I’ll invite you to keep an open mind as you listen to what I have to say.

Let’s meet The Greatest Coach in the World.

The Greatest Coach in the World is the greatest listener in the world has seen. She listens to the very core of what the client is saying. She listens past the words and understands the key drivers of her client’s behavior. She understands their fears. She understands their core desires. She understands what motivates them.

The Greatest Coach in the World is also the greatest communicator the world has seen. She understands the best way to engage the client to get the very best from them. She knows the language to use to inspire them. She knows when to challenge them and the best way to do it. She is able to effortlessly guide them towards the result or understanding that is in their best interest. 

She’s a coaching dynamo! A superstar!

The greatest coach the world has seen!

But she doesn’t do much coaching. She doesn’t help many people.

Because she can’t stand the idea of marketing her services. She sees it as an act of aggression, an affront.

People hate being sold to, don’t they?

Besides, she’s the Greatest Coach in the World! The clients should find her.

But they don’t.

And hundreds of would-be clients walk past her in the street every day, failing to notice that lady they just walked past will help them to make their life a work of art!

Isn’t it sad?

It’s doubly sad when you realize that the Greatest Coach in the World would be the Greatest Marketer in the world, if it weren’t for one small limiting belief.

Wow, hang on there. That’s a bit of a leap JJ! What do you mean?

Well, let’s meet The Greatest Marketer in the World!

The Greatest Marketer in the World is the greatest listener in the world has seen. She listens to the very core of what the prospect really wants. She listens beyond what they say they want and she understands the key drivers of her prospect’s behavior. She understands their fears. She understands their core desires. She understands what motivates them.

The Greatest Marketer in the World is also the greatest communicator the world has seen. She understands the best way to engage the prospect so they listen to her message. She knows what language to use to inspire them. She knows when to challenge them and the best way to do it. She is able to effortlessly guide them towards the services or products that provide them with the most value. 

She’s a marketing dynamo! A superstar!

The greatest marketer the world has ever seen!

Hmmm… Does any of this sound familiar?

As an awesome coach, you are already an awesome marketer…

…as long as you believe you are and you believe in the value of your services.

The last point is important.

Often a “distaste for marketing” is used as a convenient excuse for not taking action because the coach is not confident of the value of their services.

The first stage to getting past this is to acknowledge that you are doing this.

The next stage is to acknowledge and appreciate your value as a coach, and the value you can bring to people’s lives.

I was talking to a client last week. She had run a trial session a week ago and hadn’t heard anything back from the client. She didn’t want to call him to follow up.

I asked her why? (And THAT is awesome example of coaching in action, right there. You can write that one down and use it yourself if you like. )

She told me that the guy was in a lot of debt and she didn’t want to make things worse for him by making him pay more money on coaching.

I asked her what she thought would probably happen if he didn’t take her up on her coaching offer.

He’s likely to carry on behaving the way he was, she said.

I asked her what benefits her coaching would give him that he hadn’t had access to before.

As she listed out all the things that benefits he would enjoy as a result of her coaching, she began to see that taking her up on her offer of coaching would provide him with the best possible chance of making positive change happen in his life. 

And she made the call easily. Her lack of belief in the value of her coaching had been the cause of her hesitation. Nothing else.

As it happens he declined her offer. And that’s okay. Many more people will benefit from my client’s coaching and they will be glad they said yes.

So how do I go about marketing my coaching practice, JJ?

Well that’s a good question. And one that we’re going to address in this awesome new series.

The approach that we’re going to take is one that I like to call win-win value-giving relationship-oriented marketing.

Or WWVGROM for short!

Every value-packed post I write on www.jjjalopy.com is a marketing message. Even yesterday, when all I did was show you that every motivational catchphrase can be improved with the addition of the word “Dude” – that’s a marketing message.

All of the communication I have with you serves to enhance the message of the JJ Jalopy brand. It is valuable to me because it enhances the JJ Jalopy brand essence and the relationship I have with you. It is valuable to you because it educates you, brings you hope and understanding, entertains you, encourages you, brings you specific and valuable advice, and much more.

This is true win-win value-giving relationship-oriented marketing.

And it is this kind of relationship-oriented marketing that I’ll be encouraging you to engage in during this series.

Great marketing is as entertaining as it is valuable. A great sales letter can be a riot to read! And it can be packed full of great free information.

Sometimes it can be full of hype. And that’s okay. Hype can be a lot of fun. And you’ll have the goods to back it up.

I hyped this series like crazy. But I know it’s going to be great!

The marketing model we’ll work with involves capturing attention, building relationships and then walking the talk. It’s based on giving value and exceeding expectations. It’s as far from the image of a pushy car salesman as you can image. (Although sometimes it pays to be pushy when it’s in the prospect’s best interest.) 

I hope you’re excited about the rest of the series. Next time I’m going to drop the blueprint on you. The complete blueprint to total coaching world domination!

That’s when it gets really wild!

But now I’m going to finish off some cheesecake. Yum.

See you tomorrow. It’s been grand!

JJ Jalopy.

P.S. I’m sorry. I know this was waaaay too long. I wanted to get this bit covered so we can get onto the exciting stuff tomorrow. Thanks for bearing with me!

The important thing you’re not doing.

How to Become a Coach. With Coaching Training Expert JJ Jalopy.

Oh, hello there!

How lovely to see you again.

Having you drop round like this is fast becoming my favorite part of the day!

Yesterday I got very excited!

I recapped everything we’ve spoken about so far about how to become a coach and how to start your coaching business.

And I introduced an exciting new series.

A new series in which I’ll lay out my secret roadmap to total coaching domination!

I’ll also take off my shirt, save babies from burning buildings, help old people across the road and generally act like the superhero coaching mentor you’d expect.

Yeah, so I spent most of yesterday hyping the %&$% out of my new series.

(Oh, and half of today now too!)

So I was ready to hit you with the post to end all posts. The blueprint. I was ready to throw so much value in your face that you wouldn’t know what hit you.

Well, lots of value obviously.

I digress.

I wanted to sit down for three and four hours and unleash the post from blogging nirvana.

But something was irking me. 

Back at the start of our relationship I explained that, to be productive and happy with a large list of tasks to do, you need to:

• be working on the single most important thing in terms of the profitability or growth of your business, and…
• feel okay about not doing the other 10,000 things you could be doing.

Well, the thing I most wanted to be doing was writing my post of glory. 

That’s what I’d find most fun. 

That’s what my ego would enjoy the most.

But something was telling me that wasn’t the best use of my time today.

You see, I explained yesterday that I would use my new online venture, this very website www.jjjalopy.com, as an example of the beginning stages of my business blueprint in action.

It was to be a case study. An example of this model in all its glory.

But I know there are certain very important little things that I hadn’t done with the website and the business which would make a very big difference. 

And spending my whole evening writing wasn’t one of them.

 

So I did some long overdue research. I made some small but very significant changes to the website. (There are more on the way.)

I did the little things I would have done a long time ago if I had been mentoring myself!

It feels great to have that stuff done. And it feels great to be up at 1:00AM talking to you about this, rather than what I’d planned.

So my question to you today is: What’s the important thing that you’re not doing right now?

Let me know if you thought of something useful. There’s a comment box below!

Right. It’s way past my bedtime now. I’ll see you tomorrow.

You can let yourself out!

JJ Jalopy.

P.S. Now go back to the top of the page and enter your name and email to join my Jalopy Gang. It’s great. We have parties with tea and loads of cake.

Coaching Business Startup 201 – Marketing your coaching practice

How to Become a Coach. Coaching Business Advice with Coaching Marketing Expert JJ Jalopy.

Hi there!

Great to see you. It’s a big day today!

We’ve done some great work together already in the last few weeks, but today I’m super excited because we’re about to start a new series on the blog about setting up and marketing your new coaching business.

In the first series, we talked mostly about mindset and time management, and we concentrated on increasing your confidence and coaching experience.

This was a very necessary first step. But now the really good stuff is about to begin.

Now, if you’re game, we’re about to talk business!

Using the lessons I’ve already learned we’re about to send your fledgling coaching business soaring into the stratosphere!

I’m going to show you the exact game plan and principles that I use to help my clients build their coaching businesses in my top-tier coach mentoring program.

Incidentally, you’ll notice that it’s the very same model I’m using right now to build the Jalopy brand! We’ll be using my new online business at www.jjjalopy.com as one of our case studies. So I’d better walk the talk!

(If I don’t have an opt-in box on my website in the next 24 hours then please kick my virtual butt!)

But first before we start all that fun… let’s recap where we’ve got to so far!

We started with a decision to commit to making our new coaching business really happen.

We talked about the need to take action and create good constructive habits. And then we made a commitment plan to allow us to take regular, scheduled action and to be sure that our friends and family are on board.

We spoke of the value we can get by modeling successful coaches and businesses and we came up with an inspiring, provocative way to answer the question “what do you do?”

I then urged you to start doing that thing you do as soon as possible to build confidence and experience. I urged you not to worry about business plans, websites, advertising, branding or any of that stuff and I urged you to get out there and start coaching right away!

I showed you an exercise that you could use to start doing trial coaching sessions with your friends and acquaintances and we addressed some of the blocks you may have about doing this in a confidence blasting podcast and guided visualization.

Next, superstar guest-blogger Coach Kalpna talked you through how she likes to run trial coaching sessions and I laid down a step by step roadmap of how you might want to do it

And now we’re here… Phew.

If you followed along with me and took action then you’re already a coaching megastar. Just like me!

You’ll have done a number of trial coaching sessions and you’ll likely have a few regular coaching clients by this point. You might not be making much money (if any) but you’ve taken a giant leap forward. Look back for a second and see how far you’ve come.

You should be proud.

Now, some coaches believe that becoming good at coaching is all that they need to do to grow a thriving coaching business.

I’ve heard coaching mentors say that the coach simply needs to build the business, assume the identity of coach and imagine a thriving business full of clients. Everything else will sort itself out.

“Be the coach and the clients will come.”

This is one approach.

But it’s not a very good one.

Actually, let’s not kid ourselves. It sucks.

Where are these clients going to come from? How will they find you? How many people have stopped you on the street and asked you if you’d coach them?

Whatever the, ahem, “quantum physicist” on Oprah might say, this is not going to work.

In Jalopyland we like to be a bit more deliberate and scientific with our approach. We’re going to take a proven relationship-driven business model used by successful companies all over the world, adapt it to the needs of the coach and follow it step by step.

In our discussions in this series I’m going to show you the whole model…

The Complete Blueprint for Coaching World Domination!

I’ll show you a big fancy flowchart and everything. With the patented JJ Jalopy process lightning bolts, of course!

If you’re worried about where your clients or money are going to come from then this is going to blow open a whole new world of possibilities for you. Be excited!

But JJ, I can’t stand the idea of selling myself or pushing my products. I’m not a salesperson and I don’t like the hard sell. I’m a coach, not a hard-nosed business person.

I understand how you feel. If you’re like most of the coaches I know then the idea of marketing your services or products doesn’t exactly fill you with enthusiasm. Most people go into coaching because they want to help people, not to do the hard sell.

So tomorrow, before I bring out the big guns, we’re going to do a bit of work on your beliefs. I have a cheeky reframe or two up my sleeve that might get you to see this area in a whole different light – as a healthy win-win situation.

But now, it’s time for another cup of herbal tea. And then it’s bedtime.

See you tomorrow!

JJ Jalopy.
Become a Life Coach