Let’s Start With Defining Your Success

by | Jul 14, 2018 | You are an Entrepreneur

How do you define SUCCESS?  One defnition is success is achieving your financial goals through your online coachinfg or consulting business.

Not a Destination

The problem is, success isn’t a destination. Success is a journey with stops along the way.  Being successful is moving toward your goals, this the way to achieve it is to be constantly moving forward with the goals in the distance.  Your happiness isn’t dependent upon actually reaching that goal, however.  Your success is based on the sense of accomplishment you derived from having closed the distance and achieved that goal.

The bottom line is that your definition of success is on the path to get the things that you want, one at a time, and to continue to improve yourself and to inspire yourself to reach the next level.

That brings us to the framework for those goals that you want to achieve – your habits for success. The practices that you cultivate will result in the success you desire. Habits for success are clearly defined, well thought out and designed to take you to the goals that you have set for yourself. To understand what a pattern for success is, set some goals first. But for demonstration purposes, here are three different examples because it can be difficult to know how to identify the successful habit.

The reason that people have problems becoming successful is that they have not figured out exactly what it means to be a success!  Defining it for yourself is the first step in achieving it. AT ACPI, we have varied goals for reaching our audience as well as monthly financial goals to tell us we are on target.

Defining Success

The problem is...success isn’t really a destination. Success is a journey with stops along the way. Those stops are the destinations where you want to arrive, but there is no final destination.  Being successful and happy is moving toward your goals, and the only way to achieve it is to be constantly moving forward.

You are going to want more, and that’s okay. You set another goal – a higher purpose – of being able to attend charity dinners where the price of a plate is over $1000 for example. Your happiness isn’t dependent upon the actual goal achievement. It is based upon your hard work and your sense of accomplishment derived from having achieved that goal

The bottom line is that your definition of success is never a specific destination. Preferably, your destiny is being on the path to get the things that you want and continue to improve yourself and inspire yourself to reach more and more goals.

That brings us to the framework for those goals that you want to achieve – your habits for success. The practices that you will be teaching yourself result in the success you desire. Habits for success are clearly defined, well thought out and designed to take you to the goals that you have set for yourself. To understand what a pattern for success is complete, you set some goals first.

Five Lessons from Warren Buffet

You might be wondering what super-investor Warren Buffett can teach you about life. You might be thinking that he knows a lot about money, but that has little to do with being an expert on life. You might be surprised. Warren is famous for his simple lifestyle and love of his work. Let these lessons in life be a guide for contentment in your own life:

1. Focus on what you love. Warren has a beautiful, modest home, and drives a $40,000 car. He could own the most expensive house and vehicles in the world, but he doesn’t. He drinks Coke, buys what he likes, and enjoys a relatively simple life.

Enjoy your life and the things you have. Avoid being concerned about what everyone else has or about what you could have. It’s more satisfying to own one perfect painting than to own ten that don’t thrill you. Seek out the things you love and avoid wasting your time on the rest.

2. Quality is more important than quantity. You only need to make a few right decisions to be incredibly successful. Warren Buffett has hundreds of billions of dollars to invest for himself and others, yet he frequently only owns 20 or so stocks. Be picky. Be happy with a smaller quantity.

Warren has a very famous line that states, “Your financial wealth would be much greater if you could only make 20 investments in your lifetime. You would make sure they were great if you had only 20 chances.”

3. Do what you love.  Warren has said that the essential part of success and contentment is doing what you love every day. That’s why he’s never stopped investing and making money. If you’re spending your time doing what you love, you continue doing the same thing regardless of how much money you have.

You might not enjoy the career you have right now. But are you doing anything to change that? Do you have a plan? Imagine how much more content you would be if you enjoyed going into work each day.

4. Mind your own business. You needn’t be concerned with what the competition is doing. Avoid being influenced by everyone else. If you do what everyone else is doing, you’ll simply be average. Avoid comparing yourself to everyone else. Follow your intuition. Most of us are overly concerned with others. We’re worried about how we compare. We’re concerned about their opinions of us. They’re probably thinking the same things. Get yourself out of that loop and do your job.

5. Stick to your talents. Warren is famous for shunning high-tech investments, even when they were practically a sure thing. He has stated that he doesn’t understand them well enough to invest in them. Stay in your areas of strength. You don’t need to do everything. Focus on what you know well.

We usually enjoy doing the things that showcase our strengths. That’s human nature. It also makes life easier. Work on your weaknesses, but leverage your strengths.

You might be thinking, “Yeah, anyone could be content with $50 billion.” But that’s not true. Studies have shown that happiness and income correlate to $75,000. Above that income level, happiness does not increase.

Super wealthy people became wealthy mainly because they were comfortable living a particular way and kept moving forward to those goals or achievements they had scheduled into life. You can be just as content, even if you never amass a mega-fortune. Aim to increase the amount of contentment in your life. It might not be an issue of money, possessions, or the other things that most people think to lead to happiness.

 

 

1. Parent Coaching

by | Sep 9, 2017 | Learn about Coaching

Does Parent Coaching interest you as a profession or an extra source of income? This series about coaching parents provides all you need to know about what is involved in the real profession of coaching. You have a story to tell which defines your interest and happiness in helping people.

People pay coaches to help them reach their goals by encouraging, celebrating, and listening to them on a regularly scheduled basis.  Sessions might be for individuals or for groups.. A coach is an empowerment expert who challenges, stimulates, questions, and holds the client in positive regard. A coach takes the side of the clients and helps them set long and short-term goals, and holds them accountable to take necessary steps to achieve the goals from week to week. The coaching process enables people to lead more effective lives,  and to achieve what they want more quickly. Here is what two top coaches say about their field:

   "You have to have a plan and it has to be a plan that works.  You should not settle for the mediocre in life.  Coaching helps you set goals.  I collaborate with my clients.  I am on their side.  As a coach, I help and strategize with my clients so they can achieve their goals. [bctt tweet="Coaching is about personal evolution, vision, what’s next, what’s now, and moving forward. It’s about having standards, not settling for the mediocre in life, but looking and feeling your best." …Annemarie Brown" username="parent_coach"]

"Coaching is about listening, empathizing, asking questions and sharing love. It is very personal, very individual and case-by-case. People can turn their problems around.  They can be whatever they want.  They can have whatever they want. Coaching is about that process.  You help them and it is an incredible job."    …Peggy Alvarado

Coaching Started In Business

Coaching as a profession started in corporate businesses, but also takes its models from counseling and psychotherapy. Business managers have always been “coaches” in that they helped people clarify their goals and choose roles in the corporation that best suited their talents and strengths.  Many life coaches, if they do not come from a background in psychotherapy or counseling, originally worked in business.

   I worked in management for thirteen years in a Fortune 500 company. Human resource management is very similar to coaching.  I didn’t know I was coaching back then, but I was!  … Peggy Alvarado

Businesses paid the first coaches to guide new hires as they climbed the corporate ladder.  A coach could be internal, someone who works for the same business as the client; or external like someone who is hired by the business as an outside consultant.  These first coaches were called business mentors. A coach or mentor is an older person with a lot of experience in the same field of the beginner.  The coach guides the new hire to set career goals, interact with other people, and choose the right projects to advance themselves. In the 1980s, businesses started routinely to hire and pay for more outside coaches.

Today, a business coach at the top of his field can earn as much as $700 tp $1000 per hour, or well into six figures per year.  Some large corporations keep coaches on retainer, paying them so much a month to mentor a constant stream of new hires.  A new trend is to hire a coach for a specific job, such as “Improve morale in the accounting department within a three- month-time period.”

Because business coaches work with each person on a one-to-one basis and take into consideration each individual’s personality and style, they are very successful in helping people achieve goals and move up in their careers quickly. A coach expert listens within, has only the best interest of that particular client in mind. The relationship is confidential and trustworthy.

The coaching model was so successful on a business level that a demand arose for personal “life coaches” as well.  A life coach or personal coach is a person who helps a client set goals for his or her future, determine steps to reach each goal, and cheer the person as he or she moved toward his or her definition of success. The goals do not have to be about money or career, but can be goals like “To become closer to my husband,” “To make time for painting,” or simply “To have more fun.”

Unlike business coaches, a life coach for parents could work over the telephone instead of face-to-face in an office setting.

The average personal coach charges above $100 per hour, but the range of fees is from a low of $25 to a high of $300 or more. A personal coach at the top of the field can make in the range of six to seven figures per year range, but the vast majority of coaches earn about $40,000 to $80,000 annually, depending on their part-time or full-time focus in the coaching field.

Coaching Moved away From The Medical Model

In 1992, Thomas Leonard started the first training institute for coaches.  His “Coach University” trained people through teleconferences.  In the same year, Laura Whitworth founded The Coaches Training Institute in San Francisco, which provided training through weekend universities.  Whitworth’s association, the Personal and Professional Coaches Association, merged with Leonard’s International Coach Federation (ICF) in 1997. The ICF organization developed standards of ethics and practices for the profession.

Yet from the beginning of the coaching profession, there was a lot of overlap between psychotherapy and coaching.  For one thing, many people entering the new field of coaching had backgrounds as therapists or business. Yet in time, coaching has moved away from the medical model.

Isn’t it great that you don’t have to be a psychologist or a medical professional to be a parent coach? Let’s take a look at our parent coaching certifications and get going on the way to success:

Parent-Family Coaching Programs

Dr. Caron Goode

Dr. Caron Goode

Founder of the Academy for Coaching Parents

NEXT

CHECK OUT THIS NEW ONLINE COACHING PROGRAM

FOR PARENTING AND FAMILIES

Course: Sales Funnels for Coaches 2

by | Jun 24, 2017 | Sales Funnels for Marketing Business

Several applications or tools help you build your sales funnel. Are you ready? Here are some of the most popular options when it comes to putting together both free and paid funnels.

Top Tools for Building Sales Funnels

Lead Pages—when it comes to building opt-in pages, LeadPages.net is one of the most powerful tools you have at your disposal. They’ve tracked and tested a variety of page styles to determine which ones convert best, and they make it easy for you to build similar pages for your funnel. It does come with a monthly fee, though, so before investing, you’ll want to be sure you can recoup your investment.

 Instabuilder--Similar to LeadPages, but without the monthly investment. Instabuilder is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to create your funnels. It includes several pipeline templates and a drag-and-drop page builder for the look you want and making it easy.

AWeber—Probably the most friendly email manager on the market today, AWeber is the choice for many small business owners, not only because it's simple to use, but because it's also economical. Starting at less than $20 per month for up to 500 subscribers, AWeber offers both autoresponders and broadcast emails, list automation, and segmenting emails, so you can send emails exactly when—and to whom—you want.

 AW Pro Tools—an add-on to AWeber, AW Pro Tools gives you added control over your list management by automatically removing unsubscribes, moving subscribers from one list to another based on the link they click, and other useful automation tools.

 PayPal—The simplest of all payment processors, PayPal allows you to take payments online for a very reasonable fee. It will also act as a simple shopping cart.

 Ontraport--Another email manager, Ontraport offers shopping cart functionality as well, so you can create powerful, fully-integrated funnels for your sales process. The benefit here is that you have a complete email system to sync with your shopping cart.

 Infusionsoft—Probably the top tool for any business model, Infusionsoft is an all-in-one solution for customer management, funnel setup, mailing list, and even membership sites. It's high-priced, but if you can (and will) use all its power, then Infusionsoft is well worth the investment.

You  have options when it comes to building out your sales funnels, but what are the must-have items? At the most basic level, you must have:

  1. A way to create web pages. A simple WordPress website will fill this need, with a little bit of work. LeadPages or Instabuilder are nice to have, but not essential, especially if you’re just getting started.

2. A shopping cart. PayPal is as easy as it gets when it comes to shopping carts, but other options include 1- Shopping Cart, Woo Commerce, and aMember.

I recommend you start small. Build the funnel framework using tools that don't cost a fortune. Once you have a few funnels up and running, you will be able to see where they can use improvement, and how the tools available to you can help make your funnels convert better and work more efficiently.

 

 

 

1. Storytelling for Business

by | May 16, 2017 | Storytelling in Your Business

Stories work in marketing, and especially in coaching. Each parent you coach has their personal story and their parent story. You will find the different story themes in commercials and in the way brands present themselves. Storytelling is especially helpful in parent coaching and family coaching. Each person has their story, their version of how they happened.

Sharing and telling stories work well for online marketers.

The hardest part of telling a story is figuring out what to say. It's not easy to come up with a good storyline when you're staring at a blank screen. The solution is to stick with one of the tried and true basic story plots and tweak from there. Here are three of the most popular ones.

1. Good Vs. Evil

1. Let's start with the big good vs. evil theme. Most fairy tales use this storyline as do fiction books like Harry Potter series. You'll also see in television programs that the story line follows a pattern.

You accept a challenge
You face adversity In coaching, the adversary may be a quality in a client to name and tame, or perhaps you have had a personal problem with procrastination that you want to reprogram for better business success.

2. A second pattern is a transformation. Similar to the previous, this plot features an inner change, instead of changing the outer form. You may find this theme often in your clients. You may have your personal transformation story.

Here is an example of my conversion story:

I had waited too long to seek treatment for a growing, painful condition with my right ovary. I thought I could handle it, but I had no clear understanding of the problem. My new, young, inexperienced gynecologist explained to me that the ovary had turned in on itself and was necrotic, in short, dead. She scheduled my surgery immediately with her professor, also a surgeon.

After surgery, I died in the clinical sense. I had closed my eyes and instantly opened my eyes in brilliant white light in which I floated. I was delighted to be there, experiencing the transition with consciousness. The experience made evident that I was to "take on a new task," explained the voice. The result was my formulation of the Academy for Coaching Parents International which took about three years to get off the ground.

2. The Reluctant Hero Returns

This storyline should sound familiar too. The boy leaves home, builds his fortune while he's away, or learns something important. Then the hero comes back to share the discovered wealth or knowledge. Along the way, he might just save the day. Does that sound like a Western or romantic comedy you've seen lately?

With this storyline, you can share your personal story of how you discovered your chosen niche. Maybe you're the gluten-free expert because your child was diagnosed with Celiac Disease, and you and your family had to find a way to live with it.

3. Rags To Riches

This storyline also shouldn't come as a surprise. You've seen it in a million forms from Cinderella to Shark Tank. The idea is to share how you went from nothing to where you're at today. It's the quintessential American story.

This storyline works well when you're sharing how you've made your money online. If you're marketing to marketers or business to business, this is the storyline you'll use more than any other. The story line is not limited to the "making money'" market. Tweak the same storyline and share:
1. how you found more time in your day,
2. how you organize your office or your writing,
3. how you found your faith, your courage, or your self-esteem.

Any journey of growth could become a "rags to riches storyline.

What is your story? Which category for storytelling best suits you? Please answer in the comments below so I can learn what stories you would like to read.