Business Coach and Business Coaching Articles

Oh yeah, you read that correctly. I love imperfection. And while it hasn’t always been true for me in the past, it's an amazingly freeing and empowering development in my life. I used to feel like I had to hide my imperfections or work until I got things "just right." But no more. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for improvement and doing my best. I always have been. I just no longer hold it against myself that I'm not perfect.

Jim here. Have you ever walked into your house or apartment and smelled something that caught your attention—an odor that was striking but you couldn’t immediately identify it? Was it the remnant aromas from dinner the night before? Could it be the sweat drenched running shoes from that morning’s run you left in the entranceway? Could it be a gas leak? What were you smelling?

We’d all like to think that we are good at being rational and that we conduct our lives with deliberate awareness. And why wouldn’t we? That’s what the professional world rewards---conscious, well thought through, efficient, predictable results. If we can’t predict we can’t control. If we can’t control we can’t produce. If we can’t produce…well then it’s over, right? But I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “Trust Your Gut.” How rational is that? On what basis does anyone trust the gut? But gut-trusting is as normal a part of everyday business as is any logically calculated response.

After reviewing the five strategic plans (Basic, Issue (Goal)-Based, Alignment Model, Scenario Planning and Organic Planning) as outlined by McNamara (1999), it was decided that for this library the ideal Strategic planning process to use is Issue-based planning. This model was chosen as it best fits the needs of this library and is similar to the balanced score card approach as outlined by Clagett and Ecklund (2005). However, the issue-based plan as outlined by McNamara is m

Some things simple simply aren’t; at least at first. While chatting recently over cocktails I was reminded (thank god for cocktails) of a past life career that took me overseas on a number of occasions. While there were many experiences during that tenure which helped me grow in a number of different ways (inside and out) it was my very first trip to my very first site that was the source of the memory. It was (I say ‘was’ for in capitalism one should have capital) a little company with a great big mission that involved kids and their holistic well-being.

THE 10 POWERFUL MUSTS IN MARKETING By Kevin Thomas Whenever I meet a Business Owner or an Entrepreneur the first questio I ask is "how does your Marketing measure up"? Their usual response is that their Marketing Sucks! How about yours? If you are like most, Marketing is the last thing that you work on in your business. You are either doing the technical part of your business or you are putting out fires. You usually don't have a clear plan or strategy on how to set up a successful Marketing initiative in your organization.

Want to change your life? Focus more on who you want to be than what you want to do. You could visit every continent, tap dance at the Taj Mahal, dine with the Queen of England, run a million dollar business, and still be miserable. Or you could live in a small one-horse town, never leave, make a modest living, and spend your days in absolute joy and elation. It's not about what you do; it's about who you are when you're doing it. Don't get me wrong, to-dos are wonderful.

Do all employees present the same challenges, are they all equally motivated, do they respond to the same stimuli? Snow White had Seven Dwarfs that sang, “Hi-Ho it’s off to work we go” as they spend their days engaged in productive employment. As a child, we knew of seven happy dwarfs, but as ...

Have you ever known a person who is angry all of the time? These sort of loose cannons can be amusing for a bit, until you realize how draining their sideshows can be. I refer to these riled up angry people as Energy Vampires. Energy Vampires will take any chance they can to drain all of ...

When it comes to marketing your business, you will often hear you need to identify your prospects pain. As coaches, we are trained to see “pains” and “problems” as “challenges” and “opportunities.” The idea of pain seems very negative and we shy away from it. But, how does that relate to marketing? Marketing is about sharing your message. The formula for a core marketing message is: Your target audience + the pain / problem or solution they are currently seeking + the benefits you offer + your proof or unique selling proposition.

Anyone who knows me, knows I ask a lot of questions. Thankfully, my clients have said they appreciate it because I seek to understand and pose questions that help generate ideas.

Leadership development is crucial for individual and organizational success. Executives and managers are often called upon to find creative solutions to complex situations. It is during these critical moments when an understanding of the Seven Principles of Leadership are essential for success. ...

You're no stranger to the overwhelm associated with an ever-increasing to-do list; no entrepreneur is. But there's a simple reframe we can apply to move from overwhelm to 'over and done.' Take a look at your to-do list, and instead of viewing it as an exasperating army of tasks clamoring for your attention, look at it as a group of friends requesting your attention.

YOU know how special you are. YOU know that you outshine the competition. The question is: does your potential client?nnHelping clients understand the value you provide to them is essential in prospecting and keeping business. Let’s face it: consumers have plenty of YOU to choose from, and national research shows that they see very little difference among you. It is therefore up to you to be able to articulate and to demonstrate what it is that makes you their best choice;

In the past few months there has been a tremendous surge of activity in the iTunes marketplace with regard to podcasting. It’s become the hottest new trend for entrepreneurs and business owners to use as a marketing channel to reach an affluent marketplace, build a thriving tribe, create a solid sales funnel and establish tremendous relationships with their current customers and new prospects.

If you are a small business owner, then you have probably had to pass up a fantastic opportunity or two because you lacked a particular skill, or simply the capacity to undertake the project. The good news is that there is an alte ative – entering into a joint venture with another company. Let us look at how that can help your business.

“Prince Rabadash’s army lay close behind them, Anvard ahead. If they did not reach Anvard before Rabadash and his horde, their journey, their entire lives, would have been wasted. The horses, Bree and Hwin (both of whom could, of course, talk) galloped. Certainly both horses were doing, if not ...

Maybe you’re at the top of your team, and wondering why you aren’t getting promoted. Or maybe you’re a young manager who wants to win respect and gain trust. Or perhaps you’re a budding entrepreneur who wants to win attention for your hot new business. No matter where you are, you are probably reading this because you want to get exceptional results from your business presentations. Here are 6 powerful secrets to getting attention and winning a distinct competitive advantage for yourself and your business. 1. Research Like Crazyr

It may seem like an obvious question because we are ALWAYS learning. However upon closer inspection are you learning intentionally? This question became super relevant as I was doing some work on my business, identifying the ideal clients I want to work with. I feel grateful in that I already HAVE ideal clients; yet in the interests of growth and scaling, I wanted to be sure I was clear about who I wanted to serve and was qualified to best serve. I am attracted to working wi

As entrepreneurs and business owners, we want our efforts to have a lasting impact. We want our businesses to withstand the test of time and be successful. We want sustainability. So what's the secret to lasting success? How and why do some businesses survive the ups and downs, weather the storms of uncertainty, and make it in the long-run? It all begins with you. You are the captain of your ship, the CEO of your organization, the visionary, and the front-line manager.

So, here I am, feeling harried, feeling stressed, and rushing from one task to another. Ever feel that way? You know, the tyranny of our tasks. Gotta get 'em done so I can relax. Gotta get 'em done so I can get onto "the good stuff" in life. There's so much to be done. There are business tasks and personal tasks. There is email to be read, marketing to be launched, laundry waiting to be folded and put away, and receipts waiting to be entered into the computer. There's so much to do! And none of it feels like the joyful part of my day.

Too many times, we have encountered the difficulty of generating viable IT business leads in today’s increasingly competitive business market. But still, IT lead generation is a fact of life for many IT and technology-based firms. We all know that this is a business necessity. The more B2B leads that you are able to generate, the more customers will come in. And the more customers you have, the higher your sales and revenue figures. Who would not want that? That is why it i

If you suffer from low or no confidence, or whatever your self-confidence indicator may be, this can translate to something minor or major which leads to low sales. Just as cars have become more sophisticated with warning lights, a salesperson who is in tune with their own kind of indicator ...

Here we are, already into the new year, can you believe it? How's it going for you? The New Year is infused with a monumental surge of energy; you'd have to be stuck in a cave somewhere to miss it. People far and wide publicly declare their intentions, goals, and desires for the upcoming year. It can be exciting, or it can be overwhelming. Perhaps you haven't done your goal declaring; maybe you're just trying to get into the swing of this new year. Or perhaps you've planned out your calendar to the T and are moving forward like a freight train.

As business owners, we are always looking to be more successful - however you define success. The questio I have for you this month is, "are you ready for EXTREME success?" If you are ready to take your business to places you never dreamed of before, you will really need to challenge yourself ...

Internet millionaires don't acquire their wealth and success by luck of the draw. They know the secrets to success. These tacticsare so valuable that if you implement them, you will succeed in your own Internet business. There are two general types of secrets that highly successful entrepreneurs know which include exte al and internal secrets. We will discuss these secrets in detail in hopes that you will use them to your advantage and become an Internet millionaire yourself

When building your business, the fastest way to grow it is to focus your energy on activities that attract clients and bring in cash flow. Yet, you may often find yourself choosing a certain activity instead of the results-oriented activities you should be working on. Although you may have the desire to achieve a certain targets, what’s often missing is an underlying motivation to get some of those activities completed.

One of my favorite TV shows is So You Think You Can Dance. The young dancers who try out for the show have a very limited time to walk onto the stage and dance an audition that tells the panel of professional dancers who they are and what they do. Each aspiring top ten dancer has about a two minute audition that has to: * Inform the judges of their particular dance genre * Show the judges their technical skill as a dancer * Let the judges see their personality * Show the judges that they can pick up different styles of dance quickly and perform them well

Everyone needs some form of motivation to get them to do anything. This really means “sufficient reason” for doing it. It can take very little to motivate someone to do something pleasurable. It can take quite extreme circumstances to get that same person to do something objectionable. The key ...

What if sales presentations were easier, faster and better without slides? What if you could engage your clients, create meaningful conversations and collaborate together—from the start? Find out the 3 secrets to unlock unstoppable results. Selling at the whiteboard revolutionizes what you know about sales presenting. It’s not just that slides are boring. It’s that audiences are fed up with being passive while sales presenters ‘spit sand.’ There’s a lot of discussion about what makes sales presentations really work.

Each year at this time, I ask my clients to take a look back at the past year, acknowledge their accomplishments, and assess what worked and what didn’t. This year, I’d like to share my own results. When I wrote about my intentions last January, I declared that 2013 would be about doing it my way. I wanted to take actions in my business that reflected who I am. Here is my assessment of how that went.

A sermon recently expounded the value of failure not as failure itself, but as a means of growing one's sense of self worth and moving towards new experiences. Failure does not mean that one has failed in life's work, but is just a measure of how much more one has to do in life. If one task is not successfully completed, it does not mean that one is a failure. There are many reasons why a task fails. The analogy given was with Moses who successfully led the Israelites out of Egypt through the desert and established the ten commandments as a rule of life.

As an internet marketer, there are so many things that you need to accomplish in order to secure decent sales. One of them is generating enough traffic for your website. It’s very important that you attract hundreds of thousands of interested parties so you can increase your chances of getting more people to make a purchase. rnRight now, there are so many traffic-generating tools that you can use. Although most of them are really effective, I still highly recommend article

I’ve been the case manager and caregiver for my 91-year-old mother for a while now. If you’ve ever had the role of caring for an elderly parent, you know how exhausting it can be. This past summer, I hit my limit. I found myself getting to a place I didn’t want to be. I wasn’t looking forward to my visits and calls with Mom, and it all felt like a burden. I was the one who had volunteered for this role, I reminded myself. I had no right to ask for help. Not when I’d given my family my word I’d take care of everything.

What unspoken message are you sending your clients and customers? Is your personal energy field projecting positive, high vibrational energy or just the opposite? The latter will cost you business--and worse, you won't even realize it. The energy I'm talking about here has been called many ...

Most employees go to their jobs everyday with the intent of doing their best work within a culture that they feel comfortable being a part of. But for a variety of different reasons, that can range from the justified to the irrational, an employees’ dissatisfaction, frustration, or anger spills over into the workplace in ways that can negatively affect the morale and productivity of co-workers and management. What is the best approach to take when dealing with a problem emp

Many eastern sages and traditions tell us that all things are one thing. And if all things are one thing, then we must each be that one thing. We have the illusion of being an individual only because we are looking at the world through the eyes of that individual. It’s like Russian nesting dolls with the smallest doll fitting within the next largest and then those two dolls fitting inside an even larger doll. And so on.

To stay ahead in the business world these days, it is necessary to have a business website. It is also important to do everything you can to promote this website. After all, just having a website is not going to guarantee that you are going to get sales. To do this, you need to have people visiting your website. There are many ways that you can do this, and there are many tools available on the Internet that are free to use, which are excellent for all businesses, especially small businesses that are in the start-up stages.

Campbell’s Chicken Noodle soup, McDonald’s, the Hula Hoop, UPC codes, Diet Coke and Apple Computer; these companies and products are so ingrained in our minds that we fail to think of them as brand new ideas that could either make it or break it. At one time people and companies bet ...

The Question That Says It All: How? It's no secret that in this day and age keeping a small business open and thriving is not an easy task to tackle. You have to overload yourself with knowledge in order to be successful and remain fresh to your target market. What's the first step to staying successful? I'm glad you asked! Create a Profitable Business Model Your business model is the way that you as a business owner ensure that you're generating income. Very easy to say; not always so easy to do.

I first wrote about "Marketing Insensitives" a few years ago. At the time, I had received a call from a telemarketer offering me some "marketing insensitives" to purchase a product. Yes, she really said this. She was not being clever; she just couldn't pronounce "incentive." But, Marketing Insensitives do exist. They are the unfortunate, not-thought-through, ridiculous, dumb things that businesses do that drive customers away. Here are two new Marketing Insensitives-both from the same company. Read on: *** I've never had much interest in cooking.

In this article I identify three more Snatchers and Grabbers that must be stopped.

Rewilding is a concept in Conservation Biology whereby reintroducing keystone predatory species into a particular environment, resilience of the ecosystem is restored, and even maximized. This theory recognizes our ecosystems are delicately balanced and can easily get thrown into disarray. Rewilding has the potential of restoring balance, from the top down, enabling the greater ecosystem to flourish once again.

Writing and publishing SEO articles is very time-consuming, there’s no doubt about that. But if you want to really succeed in the online arena, this is one of the internet marketing tools that you can’t just remove from your plate. When done correctly, SEO article submission can be your ticket to impressive page ranking, enormous traffic, and increased profits.rnHere are the top SEO article submission tips to keep in mind to easily get the kind of results that you really

People love patterns, they like familiar things. We are creatures of habit and pattern. When it comes to business, over time, people have come to expect to buy value in particular forms. The two most common forms are a physical product, and a service. However, there are 10 other forms as well. Once you master the 12 forms, you will find many ways to package your value in different combinations to reach and serve different kinds of people, price points and budgets. Here are

I recently received a chain letter. You know the one -- send out to 7 friends right now and in 4 days your wishes will come true. The consequence of not forwarding is usually some terrible unforeseen event. They’re usually sent by some well-meaning hopeful person on your email list. Sometimes I ...

Regardless of your holistic specialty, I'm willing to bet that you have intellectual property that is protected by copyright or trademark law. Until recently I knew only a little about what's covered by such laws. I put off learning about Copyrights, Trademarks, and Registration because I ...

We all remember the dreaded question: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Teachers give aptitude tests, parents have plans for their kids and it seems everyone else has their futures figured out. For a few people, that whole thing works. But for many of us, discovering meaningful work takes patience, a willingness to question the paths we’re on and the courage to pursue our dreams after realizing them. Having meandered my way from confused student to entrepreneurial success, I know firsthand. From student to startupr

How can you share information and show ideas to your peers? Are you fed up with not getting recognized, and not getting the respect you deserve? If you’ve had it with feeling like ‘nobody gets it’…now you have a choice. Learn new ways to connect with your audience. Show your ideas clearly to linear and non-linear communicators.

This article is for those SEO article writers who want to get better on their craft. In here, I’ll share some tips to help you get to where you would like to be in as little time as possible. rn1. Learn from the pros. I am sure you would want to follow the footsteps of these people. The first thing that you need to do to make it happen is to know what they know. I recommend that you contact them through email to ask for tips and techniques. Although some may ignore your req