Coaching for Your Home Business

What is Coaching and how can it help you?

You'll find it is an important resource for you as you develop your business strategy. It can help speed you on your way to building a home business or a network marketing team.

In a nutshell…coaching works.

The International Coach Federation commissioned Price WaterhouseCooper and The Association Resource Centre to conduct a global survey of clients. The results of this study were published in 2009. An astounding 96% of survey participants reported that they would repeat their experience. Most of these clients had tried other support services, both free and paid first, and came to coaching when they were unable to make the progress they wanted via other avenues.

So what is Coaching, anyway?

I get this question a lot. It’s quickly followed by what is the difference between coaching, counseling, consulting and mentoring? Let me very briefly outline the difference between these important services.

Counseling

In general, a counselor is trained to help you deal with those things that are preventing you from being the fully developed person you were meant to be today. This often means revisiting those things in your past that may be hindering you in some way. Some counselors use coaching methods as a part of their practice.

There is a misconception that there has to be something “wrong” with you in order to seek out a therapist. While counselors and therapists are trained to help with various forms of mental illness, the main idea is to overcome the past in order to have a fully realized present.

Coaching

Coaching is more future and action focused. A coach helps you define what you want your future to look like and to create an action plan to get there. This may involve your business plans, your relationships with others, leadership abilities, communication skills and even health and wellness issues.

Coaching clients tend to appreciate this “action oriented” approach. The client is in control. With the help of a trained coach, they are able to take a more direct path to achieve their goals. You are the expert of your life, and your coach will help you discover how to use that expertise to create the outcomes you desire. You leave your session with a plan of exactly what steps to take next.

Consulting

A consultant is an expert in a particular area. The consultant’s job is to tell you how to get something done. You would hire a consultant for advice on something you do not have time to study and learn yourself.

I like to describe the difference between coaching and consulting this way – a consultant puts information into you and the coach draws information out of you.

If you need something done once, consider getting the help of a consultant. This is especially true if there is one basic way to achieve the goal – there are limited ways to drive a car, for example.

The more choices there are, the more likely you will benefit from coaching. How to drive a car is one thing. Where to drive the car opens up a zillion possibilities. The answers to that are within you, not the consultant. Now you are in coaching territory.

Mentoring

A mentor is someone who has already done what it is you wish to do. Perhaps it’s someone who has built a business very much like the one you are planning to build. Or perhaps they have dealt with an obstacle you are now facing. The mentor shares with you their own experience – how they did it, what steps they took, what mistakes they made, and what they learned. It is then up to you to take these lessons and apply them to your unique situation.

How do I know if Coaching is for Me?

Have you ever driven yourself crazy looking for your glasses?

You just had them and now you can’t find them anywhere. Then your friend announces that they are sitting on top of your head!

Sometimes we are so close to a situation, even though the answer is right in front of us, we can’t seem to find it.

A coach is trained to help you find your glasses. Not only that, but the coach is trained to spot other things you might not have been aware you were looking for. If you misplace your glasses frequently, perhaps you might consider contact lenses – then you only have to find them once a day! Can’t stand the thought of contacts? Then you and your coach will create a plan for locating your glasses that works for you.

Add up the time you’ve lost hunting for glasses (or other things) – what more could you accomplish if you had that time back? Meanwhile, what are we going to do about those disappearing car keys? The TV remote?

When you are starting a business, there are a great many more things to keep track of than just your glasses! You can be paralyzed by all the possible directions to choose from, tools and resources coming your way, resources to be spent (or not!) – and in the midst of so much to do…you find yourself doing nothing.

Being accountable to your coach on a weekly basis is a great way to keep you on track and to avoid being overwhelmed by the rush of materials coming your way.

Working out the business strategy best for you, identifying areas for skill development, uncovering issues which may be holding you back in your progress, outlining your implementation steps and creating a laser focus for what you need to achieve each week can save you months of time.

You probably don't need coaching if you are completely self reliant, always meet your deadlines, and know exactly where you are going and how you are going to get there.

If, however, you feel something is holding you back, you tend to get off track, are trying to grow your business in too many directions at once, or have trouble formulating your long term goals, not to mention the short term ones, coaching may be the answer.

A good coach will see in you more potential than you see in yourself and will help you bring that potential out where everyone else can see it as well. Along the way your confidence increases, and you can develop a greater work/life balance – two of the important benefits clients reported gaining from all forms of coaching whether business coaching or life and vision coaching.

Coaching is for those wishing to make a personal commitment to their business and/or life goals and feel they would benefit by having the personal guidance and motivation needed to move them forward.

Coaching is focused around you - during your sessions, you will discover that you are the Only Person in the World in the eyes of your coach.

Here is something to get excited about...

I want to get people excited, because with Barbara there is something to be excited about.

Barbara has the gift of empowering me, even as a beginner to know I can do whatever I want and need to do. More than that, by showing me what I am capable of, I now have a hunger to go on to the next step.

After one session, I came away armed with my “next step” and had accomplished and learned more than I expected within twenty-four hours.

Before I came to Barbara, I had ideas about things I wanted to do but figured I didn’t have the skills or the ability to do anything with them. Now there has been a shift in my mindset and I am more aware of the opportunities coming my way to help me develop those ideas. What’s more, Barbara has given me the tools to evaluate and use those opportunities that will take me where I want to go.

Peggy Oldham

I got instant measurable results!

I was so thrilled to have my very first coaching session with Barbara. I badly needed help with getting traffic to my blogs and website and wanted to know the best way to go about doing this. My first session, we visited my blog together and Barbara explained to me the benefits of keywords and how to use them to their best advantage. She also went through social bookmarking and how to make that work for my blogs and personal website as well. I have been so thrilled to visit the statistics page on the one blog that I have been devoting my attention to for the past week and a half. After the first day that I published my blog I had 2 unique visitors. (A unique visitor is someone that makes at least one hit on one page of the web site during a certain period of time.) I also had 54 page views. (This tells you how many pages are being viewed by your visitors.) After 10 days of being published, I now have had 140 unique visitors and 1,062 page views, 30 new subscribers and one sale!! This is just incredible to me and gives me great motivation to get cracking on my other blog and website. My hats off to Barbara for giving me the right tools to get the ball rolling. I look forward to each new coaching session with her wondering what's next!! LeeAnn McVey TNT Consulting, Inc. lovelesscards@gmail.com

Excellent Experience

Barbara was very professional and really helpful in my "free" coaching call. She gave me several helpful tips and while she explained her paid services, I never felt any sales pressure to purchase anything. I would highly recommend the free consultation and may come back for more of her coaching after I implement her current ideas. 5 Star Rating Howard Rosenberg

Barbara is MORE than just Awesome!

5 Stars! She is not only real, she is genuine and very caring and informative and helpful. She has given me enough info to chew on. God bless her and hers. -- Maureen Cartwright

So glad I found Barbara

I was referred to Barbara by Mike Klingler and am so glad I was able to talk to her about my business venture. To describe her in a few words, she was honest, helpful, knowledgeable, friendly and more than generous with her time. I look forward to continuing a business relationship and friendship with her. 5 Stars -- Yvette Hampton

I never felt so much at ease sharing my struggles

I have known Barbara for almost a year now and what has impressed me about her is that she is an amazing communicator. I think her teaching career has had a lot to do with this. Another strength that Barbara has, and this is really what attracted me the most to her, is that she is great at connecting with people.

My goal is to improve in the way I communicate and connect with my prospects and customersand that's why I chose Barbara as my coach.

The session we had was an amazing experience and I was immediately able to apply some of the things I learned from Barbara.

One thing that I found really helpful is Barbara's advice on how to "validate" and to make sure that I show to my clients that I understandtheir pain. Then they will be more relaxed and open to listen to everything I have to tell them and all the feedback I want to give them.

And yes this worked I tested it on a prospect who had a very negative perspective of how things were going with her business. But as soon as I validated her feelings and showed her that I understand where she is coming from, she was able to listen to all of my other feedback that would help her move forward.

I never felt in so much ease sharing my struggles with another person. Barbara just made me feel so comfortable. I love talking to Barbara but mostly I love learning from her.

I will definitely be coming back to her over and over again. I have paid $1500 for three hour workshops and didn't receive the value I got with Barbara for thirty minutes.

I certainly recommend her as your life and business coach.Diyana Alcheva http://NetworkMarketingSmart.com