Being On a Diet verses Eating a Balanced Diet
August 29, 2010
Often times when people see me that haven’t seen me in a while, they say, “hey, Chuck, you look great! What have you been doing?” Not wanting to bore people who have know interest, I simply say, “I’ve been on a diet.”
Frequently, the response is something like, “diets don’t work for me, I find that if I just eat a balanced diet, that is the best thing.” My judgment of their statement, for them, honestly, is based upon my unspoken value judgment of how it seems to be work for them. One guy in my neighborhood has not only lost weight and kept it off with the, “just eat a balanced diet and walk a lot,” diet. That is great for him, and frankly, he is a power of example for me. But, he is not an example of what I can do. Because, what I know to be true is that for 25 years I tried the eat balanced and walk a lot diet and failed miserably on all counts. So, it has been necessary for me to eat an imbalanced diet that has as its primary goal, the loss of fat. That is just what I’ve had to do.
This is something I blog about, because one of the judgmental voices in my head is – “oh come on Chuck, what’s the big deal, why don’t you just man up, eat balanced and walk a lot,” and I’m writing this to remind me that I tried that for a very long time and it was something I personally was not able to be successful at doing.
Interestingly enough, now that I have been successful at knocking off some pounds, I’m becoming more successful at walking a lot and have thrown swimming in there of late as well. In fact, my increased activity may be accounting for some of the slowdown in my weight loss as muscle starts to form.
The answer for me, once the diet ends, is going to be another lifetime program – such as the Zone diet or something that the nutritionist creates for me because left to my own devices, I must admit, I really don’t make great food choices!!
Chuck
chuck@businesscoachchuck.com
Networking is Different than Your Business
August 2, 2010
At a networking event, a real estate lawyer and another person were talking.
“I was thinking about investing in homes in foreclosure or underwater with their mortgage … you know; try to figure out a way to make some money out of this tough economic environment.”
The attorney responded, “The problem is …” and proceeded to put the person to whom he was talking to asleep with an astute legal description of all the associated legal issues.
I inserted myself into the conversation and asked the real estate lawyer if he knew of a realtor who would know how to help a client navigate these difficult waters.
“Oh, sure,” he said.
“Who is it?”
He told me.
Being as that we were in a networking situation and they know me as a coach, I asked them if they minded if I rewound their conversation and demonstrated what a good networking conversation would look like. They agreed.
So, the first guy repeated what he was looking for.
I pretended to be the lawyer and said, “I know a great real estate agent that can help you with that, would you like to talk with him/her?”
That is a conversation that might actually result in business which is the business of networking. Networking and whatever you do for a living are two different skills. When entering a networking environment, remember, this is not the place to demonstrate everything you know, but rather, the place to connect and help other do the same.
Coach Chuck
Network: One More time, With Feeling this Time
July 30, 2010
Networking, for the most part, needs to be fun. The stiff lipped amongst may ask, “Why does it need to be fun?”
Simply put, networking is about making personal connection and we are the most ready, willing and able to make that personal connection when we are having fun.
So, if there is something you love or enjoy very much (such as antiquing, motorcycling, quilting, private aviation, art, fine wines, religious and philanthropic activities) and if the demographics of the other people that enjoy those activities fit the profile of your prospective client, get more involved and have more fun. Obviously, this is a group where your networking will consist more of simply showing up, being an active high profile participant and finding some way of letting it be known what you do. This is not an area where others would appreciate being marketed to in a direct way, because, like you, this is where they come to relax. But, over the long term, being a valued member of this social group and letting them know what you do and that you are always open to referrals, is often a great way to build a high quality network.
When you meet others in your social groups that are interested in building their network, be helpful to them in their endeavors. This creates a networking friendly atmosphere with the primary focus on Fun. And when we are having fun, personal connections are easy to make.
Coach Chuck
Networking And the Personal Connection
July 26, 2010
Networking is how we develop a sales team through the process of personal connections, by building purposeful relationships. To be an effective networker, we are just as committed to being on other peoples’ sales teams as we are in building our own. That means. That means we listen to, pay attention to and focus on what other people need. That is how the personal connection is made.
If we actually listen to some one, we may be the only person that day, or for some people, much longer, who have actually paid attention to what they are saying. Further, in this age of e-mail, junk mail, pay per click, twitter, digital billboard, we all have the experience of a never ending supply of people trying to extract something from us. What a breath of fresh air it is when some one actually wants to help. If they do the same for you, then there is a possibility that a real relationship can be formed.
Coach Chuck
973-670-7215
Improve Networking Results
July 24, 2010
In networking, you goal is to:
- Meet prospective referral sources and develop a contact sphere
- To meet prospective clients.*
In a networking environment where people meet on a regular basis you might walk up to Mary and say, “Mary, when you were talking, you mentioned that you are a business attorney. As you know I am a business coach. When you said that you like to approach issues in (and then you paraphrase something she said) that resonated with me. I think you and I think about business in the same way. Maybe we could help each other get business, what do you think?” If the networking environment is one where you don’t know the people you are sharing the room with, it becomes very key to you develop questions that help you to quickly establish whether the person you are speaking with is a prospective client, referral source or neither.
If you get a positive response, set up a time to either meet or talk on the phone to follow-up further.
If you are a business attorney, for example, and you heard some one say something about their business partner, you might say: “I heard you mention something about your partner. I’ve worked extensively with partnerships … I’d like to meet with you to see if there are ways I could be helpful to you. Would you like that?”
If the response is positive, make arrangements and move on.
This type of approach works well because it sets the table for when you do meet, as to what the meeting is about.
Meet in a way that is comfortable, where both feel free to talk. This is information gathering. Whether this is a meeting with a prospective client or a referral source, this meeting is all about listening to their issues to see if you can help. While the meeting has a high level of comfort, there should also be a structure. After listening to their situation, this is when you have an opportunity to say something to the effect of, “this is how I see it….” and then let them know that you have heard, digested and interpreted what they had to say. And follow up with, “this is how I think I could be of help,” and then describe in broad strokes, without giving away the store, what you would do. If this is a prospective referral source, you might give an example of how you would refer them and then say, “Likewise, with me, you might say …” and then give an example of how you can be referred. If this is a prospective client, after you have said how you might be able to help them, you simply ask, “How does that sound to you?” This is one of many times when shutting your mouth and letting the other person speak first is key. If they say they like the idea, say something to close the deal, such as, “my retainer for this would be X and you would be billed at Y per hour. Are you ready to get started?” Another approach is to ask if they have questions about your services and how they work. This is where they will often ask about pricing. In either case, this is another moment when silence is important. Let them work it out for themselves. This is not a hard sell. This is one in which the prospective client has articulated their issue, you have offered a solution and it is up to the prospective client to think it through and say what they want
.
Whatever the outcome of this discussion, you will want to decide what kind of follow-up, if any, you want to have with this individual. If it is a referral source, my suggestion would be to suggest that two of you touch base in no more than two weeks. At that time, you will discuss any opportunities that have arisen to refer the other person, how it went and how it might be improved. Continue this process and a great power team will be created. If it is with the prospective client, the follow up will be about getting started working together or whatever your business proposition happens to be.
You should always know your conversion rates. How many prospective clients come out of how many hours of networking? This will help you evaluate the value of a given networking venue and/or the value of your networking abilities. What is your conversion rate of prospective clients into clients? This will help you understand your effectiveness when you meet prospective clients. Likewise with referral sources, it is very important to track where your clients come from to know which of your referral sources are the most valuable. Certainly it is important to cultivate new referral sources, but it is more important to maintain and improve current good ones. Just like it is much cheaper to keep a current client happy than it is to get a new client, the same thing applies to referral sources.
In summary, early in the networking process you quickly determine if there is a connection and what the nature of that connection is. If there is, you let the other person know what the possible connection is you see and that you’d like to meet them and explore it further. When you meet, you listen until the person has really had a chance to fully express themselves and then let them know that you were listening by saying back to them what you heard and what you think the most important issues are. You offer a solution and see if they want to continue. Decide if there is going to be a follow up. If so, schedule the follow up and describe what you hope to accomplish in that follow up meeting.
This is a manner of networking that has the potential of yielding great results.
*See previous blog, “What is the Purpose of Networking?”
Coach Chuck
Why Do We Network?
July 22, 2010
The purpose of networking can be broken down into two categories:
- Meet and arranging follow-up with prospective clients.
- Meet and arranging to follow-up with prospective referral sources.
A great referral relationship is created when people meet the same clients in a noncompetitive way and feel comfortable referring them to each other. Ex: A CPA meets with business owners on a regular basis. I am a business coach. I don’t do accounting work. The CPA doesn’t do Coaching. This has the potential of being a great referral relationship.
The success or lack thereof of each networking event is measured in the quality and quantity of prospective clients and prospective referral sources that are obtained in the event.
Coach Chuck
973-670-7215
It’s a Family Busiess
July 18, 2010
The challenges of running a business are huge. They inspire us in ways that we didn’t know they could. Imagine, if you will, these challenges, and then add family to the stew!! Sometimes it is a wonderful stew and some times it is a witches brew.
When I asked a prospective client why she called me, she said, “It’s my employees” she said, “they act like children.”
Two of the employees, I discovered, were her chilvdren. They were key managers. They were acting like children because they were her children. The ones that weren’t her children were working for her children. They patterned themselves after their boss, her children. Later, I observed that not only did they act like her children in the workplace, but, indeed, she acted like their mother. Statements among the three of them were like, “I feel betrayed.” “That is just childish.” This is not exactly the kind of language you’d expect to hear between a boss and an employee. Boss employee language might be something like, “you did not give the support in this situation we had agreed upon,” or, “you did not perform this task correctly.” The language was personal rather than professional.
The approach that has the potential of solving the business problem while supporting the family involves attention to both the business and personal. It involves recognizing that while business and personal in the family should be different, that is not always the case.
Acknowledging this reality results in the potential for a more profitable business and a happier Family.
How this is done is as different as families and businesses are different, but it is what Business Coach Chuck does.
Family, Business and Family Business
July 16, 2010
A happy family is 80% support and 20% accountability.
A successful business is 80% accountability and 20% support.
In other words, in a happy family, if a family member has a bad day, home is a place to retreat, renew, refresh and be loved regardless. In a successful business, if a member has a bad day, week, quarter or year – we want to know why and how is that going to be different next time. In a healthy family, a reasonable dose of accountability keeps us from enabling self-defeating behavior. In a successful business – there is enough support to let the individual know that they have a team behind them. It’s the proportion of one to the other that distinguishes the personal from the professional.
When these proportions get altered significantly, dysfunction erupts. If one feels like home is too demanding, then joy leaves one’s life while if the work place gets “too understanding” of failure then, well, failure results.
No wonder then that family businesses are often such treacherous places. Without clear distinctions between work and home, families and or their business can fall into disarray.
The same thing is often true of small businesses, where relationships within the business may begin more personal than business.
Working with families and small businesses to create healthier relationships for happier personal lives and more successful businesses is a very high priority with Coach Chuck.
Business Coach Chuck @ 973-670-7215
What is a Business Coach
July 12, 2010
What is a business coach? What is the process and what could you expect were you to hire a business coach? Frankly, that is a question that you are going to need to ask the individual coach. There are many different backgrounds and educations for coaches. Some have coaching accreditation. As for myself, my educational background is in psychology and counseling. This combined with my extensive business experience informs and has helped me to create an effective and individualized coaching strategy.
I have a masters in clinical psychology/counseling where I was educated in both the theory and the practice of assessing human behavior as well as how to aide people to achieve desired results. My experience in mental health is very broad and is combined with 19 years business experience in the financial markets. The specific experience in mental health that informs my methods more than any others is experience is working with families. The family is the basic social unit. The dynamics that occur in families form the basic components of in the rest of our social life, especially in our work life. Additionally, small businesses are often family owned. Even if they are not family owned, the personal lives of the owners and the work life of these owners are inescapably entwined.
My coaching method would begin with an understanding of where you see yourself right now. This sounds simple enough and sometimes it is. Most of the time, however, it is not. Were it simple you would not be seeking a business coach. Your business life does not stand in isolation from the rest of your life, so when we are assessing the starting point, we get a thorough understanding of the rich context of your current situation.
Next, we’d like to look at where you would like to end up. This is broken down into a few areas. First of all, we look at how you think things should be right now, but aren’t. This is not long term at all. In fact, you might be gasping for air right now and before any planning can be done, we need to address the current situation. Dealing with current situation may or may not be a significant issue. It almost always takes longer than the business owner originally anticipates. But, laying the foundation is key to moving forward.
From this foundation, a vision for the business has the where-with-all to emerge. And, emerge it must. A vision is more than just figuring out what the business should do. We dig deep. Business is hard. Things happen. Economy happens. Employees happen. All kinds of things happen. Imagine coming home from the beach on a summer Sunday evening. The traffic is insane. Imagine it comes to a stop. There has been a disaster. No one is going anywhere. What do you want to do then? Most people at that point just want to get home. I’ve never heard of any one in a situation like this simply saying, “Ah screw it! Traffic is really bad. I’m not going home. That would be too hard?” Can you imagine?
We attempt to tap into and encourage your organic and natural vision. In order to get through the traffic jams of business life, your vision must be as certain to you as your home is.
And then, we look at the obstacles between now and your vision. And then we devise strategies to succeed.
In actual practice, this is certainly not a straight line. Each of the areas described above influences each of the other areas. You are never completely in one stage or the other.
Something we are doing concurrently to the above process is graphically depicting your business pipeline. How do customers find out about you? How do you (Your business) and your client connect? How is the client treated? What services or products do you provide the client? How, exactly, is that done? How do you get paid? What happens to the money?
If you are providing a product, the same process is done with the product.
We come to understand the ratio requirements of each part of the pipeline to the other parts of the pipeline. How do you generate revenues while at the same time meet new prospective clients? This pipeline is a living, dynamic organism. If you get twice the number of clients, it is not jus a matter of multiplying the rest of the pipeline by two. Different methods of providing service need to be developed for differing volume numbers. We don’t just manage the pipeline. We inspire the pipeline. That is a matter of assessment and transformation all the time.
So, if you were to ask this coach, Coach Chuck, “what is a business coach and what might I expect form the business coaching process?” You would get an answer similar to what I outlined above.
Coach Chuck
973-670-7215
Networking For the Results We Want
June 26, 2010
In order for business networking to be successful, it must be put to the same tests as any other business activity. Before engaging in business networking, ask:
a) What are my objectives in business networking?
b) What strategies will I employ?
The answers given to these questions should be relatively simple to understand and easy to measure.
For instance, a business person’s objectives in networking might be to:
- Get clients.
- Build referral source relationships.
Or, for the job seeker, the goals of networking might be:
- To get in front of a person who can hire me for a job that I want.
- Build referral relationships with people who can get me in front of people who can hire me for a job that I want.
One Strategy for achieving this goal is to look at the process of getting:
From the point where we are now (certain number of clients) (unemployed) (in a job that we do not like)
To where we want to be (more clients) (employed in a job we want)
… as a process. This process is something I call a pipeline.
To visualize this pipeline, think of a big open funnel. At the top of the pipeline we have a) prospective clients and b) prospective referral sources. At the end of the pipeline we have clients. In between, we have qualified prospective clients, qualified referral sources, referral sources and, finally, clients.
Open networking is the process of meeting lots of people from which we can feed the front of the pipeline. How we qualify them and move them forward is how we are going to reach our goal. This requires that we network with purpose. Therefore, as people are met, we must make decisions along the way: how are we going to define a qualified referral source. This is going to be important, because if we spend all of our time talking to people that are not qualified prospective clients or qualified referral sources then we will not have time to talk to people that are qualified. The net result will be that our net result is random rather than what we want it to be.
Networking results, to be effective, need to be measured: Measured means with numbers. How many qualified referral sources and qualified prospects do I have? How many prospective client meetings or interviews have resulted? Is that ratio improving or declining? If it is improving, keep doing what we are doing, if it is declining … step back and evaluate. Going by feel is not good. It may have felt good to have three meetings with people at Starbucks today, but if it did not move the pipeline forward, that feeling will evaporate along with the caffeine buzz.
The front end of the pipeline, finding people to network with in order to find prospective clients and prospective referral sources in much easier today than it once was. Go to meetup.com or Linkedin and find out where groups are meeting that meet the general criteria of people that “could” meet your criteria. Go there. Meet them.
When you get home and you find that you have a stack of business cards, divide them into people that are prospective referral sources, prospective clients or neither. Enter them into your data base. I use Yahoo, but I’m not pushing them. Use any data base that allows you to create categories for your contacts. Have categories for each phase of your pipeline. This pipeline should be dynamic. No one should stay a prospective referral source forever. Most of us are much too eager to have people like us. What we want to find out from these people is: are they in a position to refer or hire us or not? “Maybe” is NOT the answer we want. “No” is infinitely better than “Maybe.” “Maybe” keeps us spinning our wheels. Come up with your strategy on how to touch base and qualify your prospective referral sources and prospective clients. Then follow through with your strategy. The pipeline keeps moving. Your data base changes. It is moving all the time. New people coming in. Old people going out. Interviews and new prospects, new clients and job offers. It is alive! This is when networking is working.
Networking, then, is like any other business process. It requires purpose, planning, strict definition, implementation, measurement of results and continual adjustments based upon outcome. This is a process I’ve designed for the purpose of achieving personalized business results.
Coach Chuck
chuck@businesscoachchuck.com – email
https://coachchuck.wordpress.com/ – Blogs on different topics
http://www.squidoo.com/business-coach-chuck a fun site with some testimonials, book recommendations and stuff like that.
www.businesscoachchuck.com – my basic website – about us, packages etc….
Oh No! Not this Aagain
June 24, 2010
Yes, that is where we often find ourselves – back in the same place again after having said again and again, “never again!”
And then the committees form in the head:
“We told you so.”
“Back again, huh.”
“Loser.”
And then there is the thought that if people really knew the real you they wouldn’t like, do business with, hire, love or whatever it is you’d like them to do with and for you.
How do we get in these positions? Sometimes that is an important question and sometimes it is not. Sometimes trying to figure it all out is just our ego trying to rationalize something that we know is wrong. One day in New York, I got out of the Subway on 57TH Street. I needed to go to some street in the Mid-sixties. It was a stop I’d been in before so I really wasn’t paying attention, with my mind more on some project. So as I’m walking along in my own world, at some point I looked up to see what street I was on and I was on 49TH. Obviously, you say, I’d gone the wrong way. I found myself standing, looking at that sign, mentally telling myself I knew I’d gone the right way and giving myself reasons for why I came out of the subway the way that I did. Then I Just cracked up laughing at myself. “Hey brainiac – the sign says 49. You are going the wrong way. Turn around.” I became very amused at myself for the way that I tried to rationalize something that was so obviously wrong. Why I went the wrong way is not important.
On the other hand, if I find myself, for instance, always scrambling to get my bills paid regardless of whether I make a lot of money or a little – that is something that is a bigger problem, over and above simply not having enough money. Were it a simple problem, more money would solve the problem. In order to have a better life with more money requires a change in life-long ways of doing things.
How great would it be to say – “never again!” And be confident that that were true.
Cw Markham
Coach Chuck
973-670-7215
Take the Next Step to Your Picture of Success
Go To – www.businesscoachchuck.com. – for details of Coach Chuck’s business coaching services and fees.
Take a Test Drive – Call now for your FREE 30-minute exploratory consultation – Call 973-670-7215 and set up an appointment. There is never any pressure.
Or e-mail me – chuck@businesscoachchuck.com. Please provide three dates and times that would be a good time to call you. I will return the e-mail with a confirmed appointment time.
©2007 Charles W. Markham MA. You may not copy, reproduce, post or forward this document in any format. For permission or joint venture opportunities contact Chuck Markham at chuck@businesscoachchuck.com.
The GPS of Your Success
June 24, 2010
The GPS goes to the very heart of the coaching experience. Like the any Global Positioning System, it establishes where we are. Like the GPS in your car, it is also where we set our destination. Where do we want to go? Like the GPS, when we set it, it is set without judgment. We don’t care. As an Author of the Law of Attraction says, the GPS does not make fun of you for having tried to get there before, or remind you what you mother thinks of you wanting to go there or that your neighbors would or would not approve. We are simply setting the GPS for a particular destination.
When we know where we want to go, most of us know generally what we need to do to get there. By the time we’ve sought help, we’ve tried to get there already and for one reason or another have not been successful. As a coach our goal is to help you to stay the course, make adjustments to the planned route where needed and to keep moving. Along the way, we may run into obstacles that are very old which may require counseling. That is a great opportunity. Our Challenges are our greatest opportunity. If counseling is needed we will recommend that it happen parallel, but different than coaching. When all of this works together, we learn that our challenges, our difficulties are, in fact, our greatest assets, because once they are overcome, the experience of that success can be leveraged in ways that are incalculable from the position before the experience. RD Lang referred to experience as something that changes us. Coaching is an experience. Coaching attempts to move us to places we have sensed but been unable to reach. The GPS is set, regardless of obstacles, we keep moving in that direction
Coach Chuck
Coach Chuck
973-670-7215
Take the Next Step to Your Picture of Success
Go To – www.businesscoachchuck.com. – for details of Coach Chuck’s business coaching services and fees.
Take a Test Drive – Call now for your FREE 30-minute exploratory consultation – Call 973-670-7215 and set up an appointment. There is never any pressure.
Or e-mail me – chuck@businesscoachchuck.com. Please provide three dates and times that would be a good time to call you. I will return the e-mail with a confirmed appointment time.
©2007 Charles W. Markham MA. You may not copy, reproduce, post or forward this document in any format. For permission or joint venture opportunities contact Chuck Markham at chuck@businesscoachchuck.com.
The Difference Between Coaching and Counseling
June 22, 2010
Coaching is about keeping your eye on the prize. Counseling and Therapy is about untangling the mess. They are very important. Each are has inherent strength and inherent weakness. If you tell a coach that you just found out you have to go in for heart surgery they are likely to begin developing a plan to keep progress toward the goal in motion, or at least on the tracks while this procedure and the ensuing recovery takes place. A therapist may explore the feelings that arise because you are going in for heart surgery at the same age that your father died from a heart attack.
The strength in the coaching approach is that regardless of your heart condition, assuming the experience does not change your goals, you are going to want that process to be as far along as possible so that you can just get back on for the ride when you recover. The strength of the counseling approach is that our feelings produce results in the real world. The power of our belief is probably one of the most important distinguishing characteristics that separate us from other life forms. We are able to believe that which is not in our present experience and act on it. By acting on that believed reality we make it true. So, it is very important sometimes to come to terms with what it is we believe and why we believe it and decide if that is something we want to believe. As with anything else, the line between coaching and counseling is not set in stone. But, in general terms, what was just described falls into the area of counseling.
The weakness of the coaching model is that one can be so focused on a future goal that one neglects health, relationships and other aspects of the moment. When we achieve our dreams and ambitions, they are empty without those with whom we love. Counseling and Therapy, on the other hand can get so enmeshed in the past and with feelings that it becomes a tangle with no outcome. We can get lost in there.
It’s easy to see how these two areas can work together. While most excellent counselors and therapists have a little bit of the coach in them it is not their primary job. Coaching is not therapy. When coaches and counselors can work together, the therapist can help untangle the obstacles that prevent us from being the best we can be while the coach helps you devise a road map, vision a goal and achieve it.
From a practical application, this approach can end up being very economical. This is because issues that come out in counseling are often worked through quicker. Coaching is often done over the phone. The phone call might be a fifteen-minute call. When its all working together, it can be faster, better and more effective. That is the goal. And achieving that goal makes us feel good!
Cw Markham
Coach Chuck: chuck@businesscoachchuck.com
Business Coach Chuck's Blog 