by Dr. Caron Goode | Oct 25, 2018 | Branding to Define Your Business
My ideal client is between 35 and 65. She may be married or divorced with one or two children. She is middle class, educated, and lives in a middle-to-upper class neighborhood.
She has always been financially independent. She owns her own business or would like to have a part-time business of her own. She is discerning with money, though will rarely spend it on herself unless it’s for a practical reason.
She makes lists and likes to be able to cross everything off her list, even though there is often more there than she can achieve. She compares her achievements to others as a way of gauging her worth. She often is overcritical of herself and lacks compassion for herself, though finds it for others.
She grew up in an environment where she had to take on responsibilities too early, which forced her to put aside her creative, spontaneous side and lose touch with her own needs and intuition. As a result, she is an over-responsible, independent, strong adult. She is dependable and tries to be there for others, whether it is in her best interest or not. She is overly loyal and often takes care of others because she feels like she should because nice people do that.
She follows the rules. She lives a lot in her own head and is afraid of making the wrong decision. She is a thinker and analyzer. As a result, she has lost touch with her own feelings and needs.
She has difficulty setting boundaries with others until circumstances become extreme. When she does set a boundary, she feels guilty and often softens the boundary or changes it to suit the other person. She says “yes” when she doesn’t want to, then feels resentful. She doesn’t have a good sense of self-worth and therefore has difficulty honoring herself.
She’s unaware of her own values and using them as a way of navigating life or making decisions. She makes decisions out of fear or guilt. Only when she feels she’s been pushed too far will she get angry and lash out or finally give herself what she wants.
She is a busy person who experiences free-floating anxiety during quiet moments. She tries to get out of these feelings by staying busy, eating, or distracting herself with Internet activities. She is afraid to feel “negative” feelings for fear they will lead to something bad or shut her down completely. She is knowledgeable about positive thinking and feels guilty or fearful if she isn't thinking constructively.
She has a spiritual reference (God, the Universe, Spirit, Higher Self) and may engage in a spiritual practice. She has trouble with meditation because her mind is constantly busy. She loves self-help books, psychology, and spirituality (especially relationship books, Law of Attraction, and codependency). She loves to read or learn about these things so she can fix her problems. When an issue arises, a book or self-help source soothes her. She feels in control of the problem.
She is afraid to let go of control. She has difficulty relaxing and will often need to eat, drink, or distract herself with Internet use to relax.
She is constantly thinking about the future and the next moment. She’d like to have more fun or nurturing activities, but can’t give herself permission or justify them. She often feels overwhelmed and drained. Her feelings seem to vacillate between anxious and depressed.
She can be found working on her computer either from home or at coffee shops, running errands, and taking care of the people in her life. She enjoys bookstores and self-growth classes. She has a creative side, though it is undeveloped and not given priority. She has a worldly cause she believes in that she may or may not be aware of yet. She enjoys people and has friends, but doesn’t make relationships a priority – this can be because of lack of time or lack of energy.
She has difficulty trusting or being intimate with men. She often attracts untrustworthy or needy men. (Or this could describe her relationship to a husband.)
Her greatest desire is to learn to love herself. She realizes she doesn’t treat herself well and wants to change. Yet she feels caught in shame or guilt when taking steps toward this.
She is tired of feeling anxious and depressed. She wants to feel better about herself and her relationships but does not know how, despite the self-help books.
She is attracted to my sense of self-acceptance, non-judgment, safety, optimism, and trust in myself and a Higher Power for my safety and future.
She is ready to work with me because she sees my story and wants the balance and security I’ve achieved within myself. She feels seen and safe.
I offer her a place to begin to get to know her own feelings and emotions without fear. I show her how to feel her feelings in a way that will allow, heal them, and lead her to hear her own Inner Voice. She feels encouraged to listen to and take action toward her own needs and self-care. She experiences more self-love, self-compassion, and self-trust.
She feels more settled in her body and is able to feel good about herself and her decisions. When she makes a mistake, she sees the growth and good without shame. Though life may present her challenges, she feels more confident in herself and in life to take care of her. She is able to be with others in a way that allows her to be real and unafraid. She is able to lovingly set boundaries. Her relationship with herself and others are healthier because she is different inside. She now honors herself and is able to present with others in a way that honors them.
New ideas and desires arise in her as a result. She is more in touch with her body, needs, and emotions. She knows more of what she needs and where her limits are. She knows herself and how to take care of herself under stress. She has the resources, tools, and knowledge to handle her life. She can hear own Inner Voice and feels empowered to take risks towards what she desires.
by Dr. Caron Goode | Sep 17, 2018 | Understanding Your Child
Good communication is a key to understanding your child better. Togther, parenting coaches and parents review the steps to maintaining a harmonious relationship that keeps the parent-child relationship healthier and flourishing.
TIPS
Firstly, be genuinely familiar with your child's language especially during times of conflicts and confrontations.
Familiarize yourself with your child's words, the tone of voice, and emotional responsivity. Does the chid's speech tone suggest a specific emotion like anxiety, shyness, fear, or the need to dominate or be shy?
Secondly, learn how to accept the full range of your child's emotionality.
- How do you take the chid's overall behavior?
- Can you receive the emotions and feelings of your child?
- As you succeed in understanding his feelings, you are better able to guide him to express his unpleasant and unlikely feelings appropriately.
- Encourage a child's real feelings in conversation. Suppression of emotions and feelings are not healthy.
Thirdly, I have observed that not each parent shows a speaking child the courtesy of attention. Interrupting, bombarding the child with questions, or flinging anger and accusation signals that the child maintains her distance. Explain and make him realize that interrupting any speaker is considered rude by some adults.. This is also a way of instilling him some part of good values.
Fourthly, always be approachable. As much as possible, help your child know that she can approach you and not to hesitate to discuss any problem or requests. If the child realizes that open communication between him and you is always possible, imagine how much respect your child has for you!
Fifthly, ask questions so you gather further information, but not in an interrogating manner. Try to ask questions that solicit honest and direct answers from your child. How do you act and speak to your child, so that she feels confident with you.
Lastly, provide useful, helpful and assuring responses to your child's questions. Apply the principles of reflective listening. This way, you could have a clear and actual grasp of what it is your child is trying to tell you. Reflect on his words and the manner by which he talks. Understanding your child entails setting a good pattern of open communication between you both.
by Dr. Caron Goode | Jun 22, 2018 | Learn about Coaching
As a parenting coach or a family coach, you could help clients gain confidence in areas of life where they feel shy or untrained.
Empowering Confidence
1. To boost your success in life, focusing on your confidence will have the most significant impact on your personality. There is a strong correlation between self-confidence and success, so expanding how you think about yourself is an important goal. Every day, remember your strengths by repeating affirmations that highlight your gifts and talents.
2. Going along with the crowd is a more natural choice than standing alone. However, taking a stand is an essential part of building confidence. The next time you disagree with something, or your gut is telling you not to be swayed, speak up. Think for yourself and experience more confidence in your own beliefs and ideas, will help you expand as a person.
3. If you want to boost your confidence, learn from other fields. Think outside the box and consider starting a blog, taking a language course, or joining a theater group. You will learn new skills and meet interesting people that can help you achieve whatever goals you set for yourself.
4. Trust your gut. You have an intuition that is aligned with your specific values and beliefs. Trust that intuition, mainly when it is speaking loudly. It is likely right.
5. Look to others for inspiration. If you are working on empowering confidence (or any other personal development goal), get inspired by others who have strength in this area. Inspiring books, podcasts, and seminars can provide you with new ideas and keep you motivated to continue working toward your dreams.
2|Page
6. Remember that each experience teaches you a lesson. When you are building confidence, focus on what you have learned and how you can use that to grow. This will avoid negative energy dedicated to thoughts of failure or mistakes.
7. Embrace fear. By recognizing when you are afraid, you can start to manage your reaction to fear. Once you decide fear no longer has control over you, you can live confidently in pursuing your goals.
8. Focus on your body language. When your body language says you are confident and assertive, others will treat you differently. Manage your non-verbal cues to portray inner confidence, even if you are not entirely feeling so on the inside.
9. Practice resilience. When you focus on how you overcome adversity, you grow in empowering confidence. Try something you’ve never done before to see how well you handle new situations or learning experiences. What did you learn from your success or failure? If it didn’t go so well, work toward bouncing back quickly and shrugging it off. Practicing resilience will definitely help you gain more confidence in all aspects of your life.
10. Focus on your decisions. Making better decisions in your life will result in better outcomes and more confidence for you. Your choices should be based on what is important to you, your values, and your goals. Making decisions based on these things, versus others’ needs or beliefs, will shape your life in ways that make you happy and healthy.
11. Believe. A consistent belief in yourself and your choices is vital to growing and empowering confidence. Let go of your doubt and insecurity and focus on how you are working to achieve your goals. Optimistic thoughts are a strong predictor of success.
by Dr. Caron Goode | Jun 2, 2018 | Mindset and Money
Can you see the one attribute critical for personal and professional success? What makes coaches so credible with clients and successful in business? Charisma, experience, and expertise are at the top of the list.
It's true. In every action your take in business or life, your mindset is the determining factor which influences your success. Your coaching mindset and plans require the same foundation, a fresh viewpoint about people, money, and solutions.
Here are examples of how a stressed or unconscious mindset could influence your decisions.
1. You think that helping everybody would be great for business. The solution would be to define your audience by temperament, income level, and initial problems you could solve. By defining a narrow path for your ideal client, you earn more and have more.
2. You set a sliding scale in good-hearted effort to turn away no one that you could help. While deserving and lovely, these clients are less than your ideal when it comes to their ability to pay. Can you meet your budget with a lower-end scale? Yes, possibly with a group program or class. Then, would this client enter into private coaching? Did they value your work and you?
Before you can realize your dreams of four-or-five-figure clients, you have internal work to upgrade. Perhaps these changes in the coaching mindset help you be open minded, focused, compassionate, playful or personal?
If you are a caring, heart-oriented supporter, your coaching strengths are:
- Being able to re-frame other's doubts,
Listening to one's story,
Modeling the best conversation for the positive parenting with your client's kids.
If you are a charismatic influencer, you inspire those who admire you because
- Your nature is gregarious
You enjoy people, and they appreciate your friendliness
You are an excellent example of creativity in action and brainstorming.
If you are an achiever-type coach, your coaching could challenge others
- To tackle the project they've ignored
To commit to the exercise routine they need
To manage finances better
To plan the product launch sooner than later
If you are the kind of coach who strategizes, your primary strength is solving people's problems This makes you an excellent consultant. In coaching, you can ask the right questions to help a client strategize:
- What is the result you want?
What is the first step you would take to get there?
Can you outline the process?
What resources will you need?
In coaching, you are often the cheerleader for your clients, and gratitude will be a quality that you want your clients to have.
In coaching, you expend energy being with your client. If you find yourself complaining or fatigued, what will you do to better care for you?
Growing Your Coaching Mindset Confidence
Here's something else top-end coaches have in common: confidence. They believe in what they do. They believe in their ability to help others achieve the same thing. They walk on stage or join a webinar filled with the knowledge that what they are about to say will change the lives of those who are listening. That is confidence!!
When you feel confident, you radiate confidence.
Just like how the person you're talking to on the phone can hear a smile in your voice, your potential clients can sense your mindset. If your mindset is not up to par with those you admire and mimic, you'll struggle to make the sale. Work on your attitude and confidence levels, and watch your income soar.
by Dr. Caron Goode | Apr 11, 2018 | Business Blogging
Each of us, who works online, knows that you build your list of e-mail addresses for successful marketing on the Internet. Your compilation of email addresses is your single, most powerful tool.
Email Addresses
You already have the e-mail addresses of the people who may be interested in what you have to offer. Why not sell items that are related to topics in your email messages. The person, who trusted you enough to provide their email automatically, gave you the consent to communicate. The informative tips in this blog discuss how to build your list in successful ways.
Tip Number 1: Blogging is king.
More precisely, regular blog posting is king. Starting a blog can be easy or difficult, depending on how you approach the task. The easy way is to automate your blog as you establish it. WordPress (WP) is one such tool of choice. It works on plug-ins and templates. You create a customized look without the problems using coding.
If you can post a blog entry once a day, then you are doing well. I chose to post a new article every 3rd day. The timing allowed me to market each piece for several days on my social media accounts with the idea of generating leads to build your list.
Tip Number 2: Stay relevant.
Whether you are posting blog entries or sending e-mails to the addresses on your list, you need to stay on topic. If a client sees your facebook post, and then receives an email with useful information on another aspect of the same issue, they can connect the dots between you, the topic, and the varied streams of information.. You then maintain focus on the very subject that got people interested in the first place.
When you move away from the topic of interest, people will start skipping over what you send them. If they lose interest, then next step is marking your messages as spam. To make a transition to a new or ancillary topic, state the reason to move from topic one to topic two Use proper paragraphing can achieve this effect of movement.
Tip Number 3: Make a proper squeeze page.
A squeeze page (no, I don't know why it is called that!) is a straightforward webpage built with an offer for visitors in exchange for their e-mail addresses. Sometimes the email is a way to access an online course, download a free ebook, or gain access to a membership site.
Examples of squeeze page software are Clickfunnels and Leadpages”
Don't confuse the squeeze page with a sales page. A squeeze page asks for an email in exchange for information or a gift of sorts. A sales page does sell your services and products that are displayed on the pages along with price points. What you put on a squeeze page is the premise of your service and sales content and headlines.
Tip Number 4: Skip the video on squeeze pages, or people will skip it.
Video works for generating leads, verifying your expertise, and convincing visitors to buy. People who visit your squeeze page and opt-in are the impulsive personality type. They come to the squeeze page to download what you offer. Mostly, they aren't the patient type, even with high-speed broadband, to watch a video.
By keeping your squeeze pages free of videos, you allow it to load quickly and cleanly. Your visitors get to read the salient points right away, and they will opt-in during that magic moment when they decide they like what you do and represent.
Tip Number 5: No heavyweight effects on your squeeze page
In addition to not putting videos on your squeeze page, also avoid media that consume high bandwidths. I have seen audio files, sparkling glitter, and falling raindrops on websites. The site was pretty, but...
Sounds and music slow down the loading time of the website. Ensure that images are compressed too. Smarter Internet users block media from untrusted sources, so your special effects are just left out, and you do not lose your intended impact.
Tip Number 6: Use video in your posts!
YouTube has made publishing videos a breeze, and it is free, which means you can get a stronger emotional connection with your audience. Facebook Live offers a shorter video opportunity if you have a tribe or group with whom you teach and converse.
For awesome impact, add videos to blog posts. While some people prefer to read, higher numbers of people like to watch and listen. By including a video in your well-written blog posts, you can generate leads from the readers as well as the listeners.
Tip Number 7: Video responses are cool
Use videos in marketing blogs to respond to your clients' essential questions. Your followers will know that you do care about what they think and ask because you take the time to create and post videos for them. Picking out the questions that matter most is the tricky part. Another tricky part is staying on topic as you discuss questions and answers. You can answer off-topic questions through email. Another way that videos work for you is that answers generate traffic and boost your popularity.
Tip Number 8: RSS is your friend
RSS refers to “Really Simple Syndication.” The idea of using RSS to publish your blog posts is that it can publish your media to any RSS reader who is tuned in and signed up for your feed. When you post a blog entry, video, or an audio podcast, then those who chose to receive RSS data from you will get an update on their RSS readers. It’s like they get a personal notification every time you put something up online.
Tip Number 9: You can substitute audio for video
If you are not confident about your appearance on video or want to keep your online footprint as small as you can, then using audio instead of a video is a perfect solution. The most important advantage of audio over a video is that it consumes less space and is downloaded quickly.
Tip Number 10: SEO
Search Engine Optimization, also called SEO, is a set of procedures that guide you to fix your web pages and their content, so search engines (like Google and Bing) feature it higher among results for relevant searches.
In practice, SEO is complicated because the rules change over time. Is it worth your time to learn and complete SEO for your site? Or, are you the type of business person who hires a support person to create SEO for your website? Unless you have a fast learning curve, hiring this task out might better serve your goals. At least, once I learned all about SEO, I did hire another person to complete my sites and I learned best practices also.
