What Keeps Your (& Your Business) Going?

Read more about: Work Life Balance

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If you’re running a business you’ve undoubtedly faced difficult times. Your plans fall through, launches go less than expected, and clients take more of your time then you’d like. The list goes on, right?

It’s just the nature of creating something – specifically creating something that involves other people. And if you’re selling anything – ad space, products, services, etc – you’re creating something for other people.

So when you find out you’re marketing isn’t working like you thought or that your great idea isn’t seen as such a great idea by the people in your market – what do you do?

When the sales slow down and the bills aren’t getting paid – what do you do?

And on those days that you have no motivation, no real desire to grind away at making your business work – what do you?

In other words, what keeps you going?

[ read the rest of this article on dmiracle.com ]

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Get a Fresh Look for Your Website!

5 Essential Steps to Being a Successful Coach

Read more about: Coaching, Solopreneur Coach

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(previously published at dmiracle.com)

Being a successful life coach or business coach is within your grasp. Read on!

So what is it exactly that separates you from the life coaches or business coaches you see being more successful than you?

While you may think that successful coaches are such because they have some advantage over you – think again. Sure, it happens sometimes that a business coach has the right connections and almost falls into success. Or that a life coach just finds the perfect niche market that’s been waiting to be lead.

But most of the time their success came because of a few simple principles that they practice in their business every day. None of these are difficult to learn. None of them are difficult to do. Yet each of the five steps I list below are essential to having success as a coach. Follow them and you’ll find that you’ll accomplish more than you probably thought was possible!

Step One: Successful coaches keep their eye on the goal

You know how it goes. Let’s say you develop and market a new coaching program for your clients. When you start, you’re filled with enthusiasm. But time passes and while you’re still happy about the project, but you start noticing the difficult things. More time passes and you’re no longer enthusiastic at all. However, you keep going because you know it has potential. Finally, you start to question why the heck you are doing this in the first place. Then it happens. A new coaching project pops up. You feel excitement start to build again, but for this new project instead of your current one. You decide this one will be MUCH better, and jump ship to pursue this new, exciting opportunity. Sound familiar?

Fortunately, there is an easy remedy for this. Commitment!

I know, that seems too simple, but it’s true. Setting clear, realistic goals is essential to your coaching success. As is being committed to completing the journey whatever it takes. If you continually bail out on your goals, you are training yourself to believe that your goals are not important. And as your goals seem less important, you will be tempted to quit before you even start. Instead, set daily reminders about your goals so they stay fresh in your mind and you will stay encouraged to achieve them. Make the resolve to finish what you start – no matter what – and you will be shocked at how much you can accomplish!

Step Two: Successful coaches manage their work efficiently and rarely procrastinate

If I could only tell you one thing about how to manage your coaching workload, it would be to make a plan and stick to it as much as possible! Proper planning is the key to saving time and getting things done. Without a plan you’ll find that days and weeks go by without you accomplishing much of your goals. Usually your work will suffer. And I guarantee you without good planning your coaching practice will suffer. So prepare ahead of time, ideally the night before. Make a prioritized list of things that need to be done on a day to day basis and resolve to finish those tasks no matter what!

For some people, completing all the tasks on their prioritized list will be easy. However, others may run into procrastination issues. Why do people procrastinate? Often times, they are trying to avoid a difficult task. It’s no secret that tasks that take longer are less desirable than those that can be completed quickly.

Many people decide to do desirable tasks first, regardless of how important these tasks are. The problem with this is that people sometimes fall into the trap of unconsciously allowing themselves to be consumed by enjoyable “busywork” instead of more important tasks.

Making a resolve to finish the biggest, most important tasks first (enjoyable or not!) will give you a sense of accomplishment that will make the other tasks on your list seem like a breeze. Do this, and you will keep procrastination at bay!

However, others procrastinate for deeper reasons. Sometimes procrastination is due to fear of failure. No one wants to be embarrassed by a lack of knowledge or skills, so it’s easy to try to avoid doing those tasks that make you afraid or uncomfortable. However, it’s important to realize that motivation comes from within. Coming to grips with personal issues is the first step in realizing why you procrastinate. Once you do so, you can start taking steps to chance.

Step Three: Successful coaches learn from criticism

Let’s face it, it can be hard to hear someone tells us our faults as a coach. But criticism can be much more useful than you may think. If you take the time to listen and evaluate various criticisms, you’ll often find the keys to reaching your full potential as a life coach.

It really is in your best interest to accept the criticism, apply the suggestions, and grow throughout the process instead of allowing yourself to become defensive or upset. I’m not suggesting it’s always easy to do. I struggle with certain types of criticism myself. And none of us like to hear what’s ‘wrong’ with us or our coaching practices. But if you can wade through the difficulty and adapt to the feedback, you will find jewels hidden in the mix.

By learning to accept criticism, you will see yourself grow in ways you never thought possible.

Step Four: Successful Coaches keep a positive outlook

In order to achieve success as a coach, a holistic practitioner or any other sort of service provider, you need to think positively about yourself and your chances for success. Many coaches mistakenly believe that being positive and thinking optimistically is just part of someone’s personality – either you’re born an optimist or you’re not! But this isn’t true at all. Optimism is an acquired habit. It’s a skill that can be learned and developed – and then used to motivate your and your coaching practice forward.

In order to become optimistic and motivated, you need to become conscious of ’that little voice inside.’ I’m not being smug here. You know the voice. You even could tell me what it says to you sometimes. And I know you’ve pushed it away whenever it made you feel weak or small.

But now it’s time to listen to what it says in situations. Catch yourself saying something about what’s going on. If it’s negative, immediately stop and put a positive spin on it. So a negative thought like “I don’t know how to market my coaching practice” could be changed into “I can learn how to market my coaching practice.” Try doing this for a month, and I think you will be absolutely amazed at how energized you are about not only your work, but your life in general!

Step Five: Successful Coaches leave time each day for reflection

This is way more important than it sounds. Self evaluation and self reflection is something every coach, every healer and every business owner should be doing on a daily basis. How else can you know whether your day was efficient and successful?

And since it’s so easy to get caught up in the motions of ‘go to work, see clients, come home,’ you want to do something to breakdown the monotony on it. You need to break the patterns of ineffectiveness to create more effectiveness – lack of success to create more success. Truly successful life coaches and business coaches know that reflection is one of the best ways to keep yourself on the fast track to success.

Try this exercise:

At the end of the day, try to reflect back on the hardest part of the day, then ask yourself the following questions:

  • What did I learn from that experience that will help me in the future?
  • How can I that experience to help improve myself or my future?
  • How can I do better next time around?

And really be honest with yourself. If you’ve been screwing off, then admit it to yourself. Then go back through each step and take something you can do from each. Just remember that there is always room to learn and to grow into greater and greater levels of success. Your self reflection time will pay huge dividends in your coaching and your personal life. Not bad when one thing can reach many aspects of your life. Just remember to do it daily – even if only 5 minutes.

To sum up, being a success coach is really not a mystery – not at all. These 5 steps are a beginning. And, they’re a powerful beginning. There’s enough in these 5 steps to double your business in the next 12 months. I’m not kidding about that. You just have to do the steps, use them – apply them to the best of your ability. If you miss a day, then miss the day and start again the next. But don’t leave them behind.

Here’s to all the success you could ever want.

I’d love to hear what you’re doing now as a coach to create the success you want. Something? Nothing? You have no idea?

Get My Free Coaches Guidebook…

Client Producing Websites: 10 Elements Your Website Must Have In Order to Get Your More Clients, Sell More Products, and Make More Money.

See exactly how successful coaches, healers & others service providers are successfully using their websites to create a following of people who buy their products and services.

CLICK HERE TO GET IT NOW!!

(link takes you to page on dmiracle.com, so don’t be alarmed by going to a different website.)

Read more about Coaching, Solopreneur Coach

What’s Your Number One Tip for Working At Home Effectively?

Read more about: Home Business Tips

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number-oneDo you work from home?

If you do, we’d love to hear your favorite piece of advice for others who work at home or are looking to start working from home on the topic of how to work effectively.

Simply leave a comment at the end of this article and share your tip! That way we can all benefit as we read each other’s advice. I’ll try to compile everyone’s comments into a follow-up article for next week.

If you can’t think of your absolute number one tip, feel free to just share one or more tips that can help other Sparkplugging readers learn how to get things done as a work at home entrepreneur.

Once again, today’s question is:

What’s your number one tip for working at home effectively?

Okay, I’ll go first. :) I’ve worked exclusively from home for over five years.

My number one work at home tip:

Separate. Create a special space and time in which to focus on professional work, and try to keep it separate from your home life. I’m not saying you should lock yourself in your home office from 9 to 5 every day – just that you should carefully decide when is “work time” and when is “home time,” and where you want your home office to be.

Every time I’ve followed that bit of advice, I’ve found myself enjoying the work from home life much, much more.

Okay, your turn! What’s your number one tip for working at home effectively?

Read more about Home Business Tips

Want to Write for Sparkplugging?

Read more about: Press & Media

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We’ll keep this quick.

Sparkplugging has been quiet for a few months. No more.

We’re back and we’re looking for excellent writers to join our growing team.

If you’re interested, click here.

That is all.

Read more about Press & Media

How to Make WordPress Unfairly Awesome: Get the Headway 1.5 Theme

Read more about: Business Blogging

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Hey Sparkpluggers – have you seen this?

WordPress + Headway 1.5 = eternal website owner bliss.

Let me explain.

WordPress is a fantastic platform upon which you can build any website – even a professional website. You probably already know this – Sparkplugging itself runs on WordPress, after all. :)

And Headway 1.5 is a new theme for WordPress that makes updating the design of your website easier than anything you’ve ever seen before.

Hence the line about everlasting bliss.

An Offer You Almost Can’t Refuse

If you’ve been thinking about getting WordPress and/or buying Headway (which sells now for $87) to use on your business website, here’s an offer you might find practically un-refuse-able.

Website Habitat is offering to create a complete, business-ready WordPress website running the Headway 1.5 theme, plus a ton of expert support, starting at just $375. Since Headway 1.5 is currently only available for $164 (the developer license is the only way to get it at the moment), this deal is really smokin’.

Website Habitat is run by Easton Ellsworth (that’s me – hey) and Dawud Miracle, who is also a co-owner here at Sparkplugging.

In addition – the next 20 people to order this package from Website Habitat by Monday, November 9 will also get a $495-value SEO consulting package from me for free as part of their purchase.

Click here to learn more about all this stuff.

And even if you don’t get this offer now, at least try Headway – you will seriously love it.

Have you used Headway? Did you pee your pants (metaphorically speaking – or perhaps literally?) the first time you saw what it can do, as I did?

Read more about Business Blogging

21 Home Business Resources You Can’t Miss

Read more about: Home Business Tips

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dog-jumping

Could your home based business use some help? A little jolt to make you jump for joy?

We thought so. :)

Here it is, all free and all organized. Start clicking!

How to Start a Home Based Business

10 Signs that You are Ready to Start a Home Based Business – How to know if it’s truly time to hang up those shiny work shoes and trade them for your favorite flip flops.

Top 10 Internet Home Business Ideas You Can Start and Run in Your Underwear – Our all-time most popular article here at Sparkplugging, and with good reason. It’s a starter list of ideas anyone can use to get up and running in a home biz.

10 More Work at Home Internet Business Ideas You Can Do in Your Fuzzy Bunny Slippers – In case you prefer the mental imagery of cute rabbit feet over scratchy long johns (or whatever usually snuggles your undercarriage).

The Truth about Starting a Home Based Business – And the truth shall set you free!

Find the Right Home-Based Business to Start – With so many ideas floating around in your noggin, how will you know which one is the best? This guide will get you started on the right track.

How to Quit Your Job to Run a Home Based Business

10 Signs that You Should Quit Your Job to Work at Home – Wondering whether you should stick it to your boss? This article will help you decide.

How to Leave Your Job & Take the Freelance Plunge in 6 Months – A great mid- to long-term strategy to get you out of the cubicle and onto your living room couch.

How to Achieve Home Based Business Success

Top Ten Key Success Ingredients for Home Based Businesses – What really goes into making up a successful business for work at home folks.

10 Free Resources to Start or Grow a Home Based Business – Because this list can’t possibly hold them all. Hop on over to that post for even more helpful links.

A Productive and Organized Home Office – How to create a work space that actually helps you work.

Why do Entrepreneurs Need Inspiration? – Thoughts on the power of inspiration in determining your level of professional success.

The Virtual Assistant A Team: The Helpers to Business Success – How and where to assemble an awe-inspiring team of VAs to help you automate as much of your own business processes as possible.

Marketing Your Home Based Business

Free Market Research for Your Home Based Business – How to conduct research and find out what people truly want that matches what you can offer.

Free Market Research, Part II: Demographics – How to discover more about your prospective customers.

How to Save Money in Your Home Based Business

Energy Efficiency Saves Home Business Owners Valuable Dollars – How to take advantage of special rules that reward energy-efficient home businesses.

5 Strategic Ways to Lower Your Business Taxes – And keep more cash in your wallet.

How to Overcome Stress and Failure in Home Based Business

10 Questions to Ask Yourself When You Feel Your Home Based Business is Failing – We all struggle with feelings of failure at some point. Here are 10 great questions to ask yourself to help you respond to and overcome those feelings.

Work From Home? Don’t Sweat It – How to not go crazy while working from home.

Top Ten Working from Home Mistakes – Do you make any of these errors in your work at home business?

More Tips for Home Based Businesses

18 Amazing Articles to Help You Work at Home – Yes, even more articles to help you out! We’re pulling out all the stops with this article. :)

How to Show Up in the Google Local Business Directory – This can be a great way to strengthen your brand, increase traffic to your business website, and grow your business.

Read more about Home Business Tips

5 Ways Calendars Can Help Market Your Business

Read more about: Business Growth, Entrepreneurship, Home Business Tips, Online Marketing, Start Up Resources + Ideas, Website Traffic

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When we think Calendars, we often think our personal calendars, using it to manage our promotional calendar or share with our virtual assistants or project partners. But it doesn’t always have to be that ‘dry’. Many marketers online use PDF’s, videos and audios to get their message out, hope they turn viral which eventually brings traffic back to their web sites and their name in front of others. This method works and works well. Guess what? Content can be in other formats too like calendars.Calendar

Here are a few example ideas I came up with that you can use a shared Google Calendar to help promote your web site or business.

  • If you are a speaker, publish a speaking schedule. You are probably already doing that through Google Calendar already. Maybe you are publishing the calendar to your website. If you are, people can also subscribe to the calendar via Google Calendars or iCal. Promote and publish those links too.
  • Is your site or blog all about soccer? Create a calendar around the different soccer matches either around the world or the locality that your readers are most interested in. Let them know how they can subscribe to that calendar.
  • Maybe your visitors are mostly business people or marketers. How about creating a calendar that shows when quarterly taxes are due, a reminder when to start their holiday marketing planning and when to start promoting? Enter the dates and weeks of holidays and observances they can use for promotions.
  • Similarly, if your visitors are moms, how about a calendar with suggestions of places to visit, things to do, seasonal reminders or shopping and menu plans.
  • If you are a coach. Create a calendar around a program let’s say, a 60 day organizing program that users can subscribe to and they be reminded or things they need to do each day or each week to help them move along.

Use your imagination. Think of the calendar as a free reminder tool for your visitors. Remember that you can enter a link in Google Calendar entries. This can encourage subscribed users to click through to visit your site, an offer or simply lead people to read old but timely posts.

Don’t think it would work? This is the third year I am creating a calendar for bloggers of the many blogging opportunities throughout the year. It is very popular and I get people asking when it will be updated each year. Great tool to keep you in front of your audience at all times through the year as well. You can get a PDF copy of this calendar as an example for your own project. This year, I will be creating both PDF and a online ‘live’ version using Google Calendar.

Image courtesy of yalcin Eren

Lynette enjoys discovering new ways to use technology or new technologies to use in a business and in turn help her clients apply them. You can find also Lynette at her blog, Twitter and Facebook

Read more about Business Growth, Entrepreneurship, Home Business Tips, Online Marketing, Start Up Resources + Ideas, Website Traffic

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