Here is how you should REALLY close a complimentary coaching session! (99% of coaches are not even close)

Category: Strong Opinion

My excitement grew stronger as the call with Michel Fortin (see previous post below) was coming to a close. I was pumped up to the max...or so I thought.

All of a sudden, Michel started naming specific things he'll teach at his event, and specific results we can expect by following his advice. I was ready to buy! In fact, if it weren't a $2,000 event plus plane tickets and almost a week away from my kids, I'd be taking my credit card out right now!

The point is, most coaches are taught to ask, "When would you like to start our first session?" or "What did you think of today's call?" or "How would you like to experience this every week?"

But these statements don't excite me, not even a bit! They bore me to say the least. If the coach didn't manage to excite me with possibilities of what I might get as a result of coaching with him or her, asking me these questions now won't matter. You'll feel like you're "hustling for business", as one of my subscribers shared with me, and the client feels being sold to.

Instead, give examples, illustrations, ask questions, and let the prospect ask YOU if you can coach her. You can't give any guarantees, of course, but your prospect already know that (it all goes back to putting the responsibility on the client). But if she sees that with your guidance others have - and she might - achieve incredible results, she'll hire you.

A phone call, which made my heart beat faster today

Category: Practice Building

Is it envy? Desire to be better? Regret about not yet being at that level?

Whatever it is, I felt a tremendous rush today when listening to Michel Fortin's call about doubling, tripling, or quadrupling sales with a tiny change in a sales letter.

I've experienced this myself, when years ago a copywriter approached me about improving my sales letter. After he re-wrote it, my product sales went from 1 a week, to 3-5 a day! I couldn't believe what a difference a sales letter could make.

Today, listening to Michel, I decided to improve my copywriting skills...Of course, i could hire people to do that, but I think it's so much more powerful if I could do this myself.

Michel's call's highlights:

• 90% of the web sites have a problem with headline. Just one tiny change in the headline can result in 200%-500% increase in sales.
• 24 different elements can be tested in a sales letter.
• Hand holding by adding "Click here" increases clicking. One message - one market - one outcome. One "Click" button per sales page, no distractions!
• The issue of importance is long sales copy vrs. long-winded, NOT short copy vrs. long copy.
• Copy should prevent procrastination, not make your product sell - if they already want your product, your copy should help them buy it.
• Scarcity element is more crucial than I ever knew.
• Headline "Save Your Marriage" worked much better than "Stop Your Divorce" as tested on Google AdWords. Most likely because it's positive vrs. negative headline.
• Placing a picture right below the headline - author's photo, represenation of the benefit of the product, image of the product itself - increases sales with an "umph!"

I decided to take an advanced copywriting course. Went on Google, did a search, and found a completely free "copywriting course" by...who else...? Michel Fortin himself!

http://successdoctor.com/free/archive.htm - my leisure reading for the next few months!

Roger Parker "tears" my AssessmentGenerator.com apart!

Category: Strategizing and Development

Roger Parker, the sweetest man in the marketing industry, spent an hour with me today on the telephone asking questions about Assessment Generator. (In case you're not familiar with it, it's a tool coaches can use to create forms, quizzes and assessments for their prospects and clients.)

Roger, who is the author of the best-selling One Page Newsletters, gave me an enormous amount of useful tips for improving my assessment tool, and I took it like a soldier - yes, sir!

This is an unedited version of our conversation, so please forgive the chit-chat, but it's a great example of how talking to your ideal customer can improve your product or program. Expect some great changes if you use AG!

Click Here for RealAudio Link (47 minutes)

Blog Name Cornucopia

Category: Strategizing and Development

No, I don't have a cat...Although I do feel like this helpless kitten, thrown
back into the water of blog name choices! "Milana on Tap" is growing on me, but I wonder if people subconsciously chose it because it was already on the web site, and not because they truly prefer it...

Some of the other names have really blown me away, so I am still thinking:

• 21st century coach
  
• A day in the life of Milana
  
• Ace in the Hole
  
• ACES (Authentic Coaching, Extravagant Success)
  
• Breaking Free - 3
  
• Class Act
  
• Coach Milana
  
• Coach Power
  
• Coach Talk
  
• Coaches Corner
  
• Coaches on Break
  
• Coaches Take A Break
  
• Coaching +
  
• Coaching in Motion
  
• Coaching Is A Business
  
• From the desk of Milana Leshinsky
  
• Go Milana
  
• Just Milana
  
• Mana ala Milana
  
• Milana Magic
  
• Milana Millennium
  
• Milana Moments
  
• Milana on Tap - 24
  
• Milana on Target
  
• Milana Undiluted
  
• Milana Unplugged
  
• Milana Writes
  
• Milana's Chronicles
  
• Milana's Coaching Diary
  
• Milana's Coaching Insider
  
• Milana's FastTrack
  
• Milana's Mainspring
  
• Milana's Mentorings
  
• Milana's Mind
  
• Milana's Momentum - 7
  
• Milana's Muse
  
• Milana's Musings - 4
  
• Milana's Rants and Raves
  
• Milana's Straight Goods
  
• myMilana
  
• Milana's Vibes
  
• News Clues by Milana
  
• No More Net Crap
  
• Playing by Ear
  
• The Gatorade Dunk
  
• The Milana Express
  
• The Milana Report
  
• Views ala Milana
  
• What's what ala Milana
  

There you go. Now, do you see where I am having trouble? :-)

Stretching beyond comfort zone

Category: Strategizing and Development

Every time I need to learn something new, I resist tremendously, and find all kinds of excuses to procrastinate. But once I have the new skill or new technology in place, I am always glad I did! It just makes my business grow and my skills a lot more diverse.

Webcam, blog, live webcam, which I set up at milana2.ww.com - it's quite slow, but it's working - yipee! I'll have it point to my office window, which I always look at when my eyes get tired.

Created shipping labels for all coaching tele-summit participants last night:

1. First, I ran a search for everyone who ordered CDs under "Manage Clients" in my shopping cart.

2. Then I exported their addresses from my shopping cart as an Excel file (CSV - comma separated values)

3. And finally, I created a mail merge using MS Word, and printed out all shipping labels.

Also, ordered more CD sleeves from Polyline - my favorite source of vinyl CD albums and accessories.

7 pm: Guerilla Marketing call with Roger Parker and Jay Conrad Levinson, picked up some tips on direct mail. For example, it's better to send multiple mailings to the same 1,000 people, than one mailing to 5,000 different people. Repetition works, I knew that, but since I've never done direct mail, it helped me shape my first direct mail campaign.

9 pm: Checked out my shopping cart - haven't realized I had created over 100 products over time. Cleaned up my mailing list, went down from 7,449 to 6,753 - all valid e-mails. Not bad, although could be better. Darn, I miss my other mailing list of 10,000 (from HelpingFoot.com, which I sold a year ago), but that was not as targeted as my current one.

If there isn't an "Idea Coach" - there should be!

Category: Practice Building

Jeff Fuson commented on my Momentum post:

"... I tend to make great progress when I catch the wind and fly with new ideas and inspiration. However, as many entreprenuerial types my achille's heel is what Mike Litman calls the 'Idea Avalanche' where my brain cranks out so many possibilities that I may never really make headway on any one thing that is really viable/profitable.

How do you capture the momentum of the moment without relegating yourself to being 'snowed under' by the Idea Avalanche?"

Let me just say that, if there isn't an Idea Coach out there, I think there should be! There are plenty of coaches who help you stay focused and organize your business, but very few coaches actually work with highly entrepreneurial people, whose minds go into different directions, ready to explode any minute with the number of ideas they get every waking moment of the their lives!

When I was enrolled into Chris Barrow's "Get Your Year in Gear" program, he specifically stated: "I don't know how you, the entrepreneurial types, stay focused. I personally don't work with people like that." Or something along those lines...

Anyway, here are my two tricks that I picked up from my own experience and from my coach:

1. When I get an idea, I give it 3 days. If I am as excited about it and see just as much potential in it as I did 3 days ago, I start working on it. Many times I went to sleeping all excited about something I thought of, planning to start working on it immediately, only to wake up realizing it wasn't as good as I thought. Or it may be a lot more complicated than it appeared. If I wait a few days and it's still as appealing to me as when I thought of it, I go for it!

I dropped many projects this way, and moved on to something bigger. Something that was, perhaps, easier to implement or had a bigger payoff. Here are some of my projects that I put on hold for different reasons:

- Mastercoachingclass.com (couldn't see a long-term profit potential, but still plan to return to it)

- Coachingsyndicator.com (already paid the programmer, but realized it's bigger than I thought, decided to postpone until later)

- Makeyourcoachingsell.com (wanted to write a book, but then decided to postpone such a major project)

2. Ideas are dime a dozen, and I can't put them all into life. This is just not realistic. So what I decided to do this year is to focus on improving what I've got. After all, I put an enormous amount of time and efforts into creating ACCPOW for coaches. I might as well spend a little more time on improving it, adding personal touch, negotiating discounts for members, etc.

I've also spent months developing AssessmentGenerator, and it only makes sense to keep improving it, adding new features, providing better customer service, finding new joint venture possibilities, collecting success stories and testimonials etc.

The truth is, I've got more products than I could ever imagine I'd create! When I wrote my first e-book, I was soooooo protective of it! I kept worrying that I put my entire arsenal of knowledge into this e-book, and that I could never write another one! Now I don't know what to do with new product ideas!

So I decided to concentrate on what I've got and stop looking for new product ideas. Really focus on fine-tuning what I already built. That's my 2005 strategy.

My dark and shady past...

Category: Lifestyle

In the summer of 2000, I got kicked out from my internship and was told that I shouldn't be in the computer science field. "You could probably do well in computer information systems, management systems, or something else business related," my boss informed me.

I can't thank him enough! Thank you, Gerry, for letting me know I don't belong in computer science.

Eight hours of programming a day just didn't sound like something I want to do for the rest of my life, or even for a couple of years of my life. Military and high-security government programming projects didn't excite me either.

"I could trust you with my home, my money, my life...but I can't keep you working here, sorry. You're just not cut out for this."

Ok, so I wasn't. I would've loved to prove him wrong, but luckily I got distracted by a new class I took that year, called... Web Design and Internet Technology. Well, you know the rest of the story.

Have you been watching The Apprentice? This season, Trump divided the teams into book-smarts (college graduates) and street-smarts (no college education). So far, the street-smart team has won quite a few times.

Back in 1993, I was at crossroads - to go to a prestigious private school, like Syracuse University and end up with $60,000 in debt, but proud...Or...go to a state college, and do my best to get a career. I chose the latter.

Every once in a while, though, I wonder what would've happened if I went to a private school. Would I have a better life? Better career? Better money? My guess is that I would've ended up at a high-salary but high-stress job, counting days to my vacation. And that's my best case scenario.

I don't think I had any particularly special professors or mentors while going to college. I do remember working very hard and staying committed to every class I took.

In fact, I would get so fascinated about each subject, I considered majoring IN it! My astronomy professor looked up at me in great surprise when I asked her, "What do you have to major in to become an astronomer?" My interest quickly subsided when she said "Physics."

So I ended up in SUNY Institute of Technology, in Utica, New York. The beautiful campus bridge, across which I marched a thousand times to get from one building to another. The stunning student hall, where I learned to play ping-pong and had my very first cheeseburger.

Things always work out for the best, don't they? At least, I like to thing I ended up with the better way.

Webcam in place...now what?

Category: Lifestyle

I have finally joined the rest of the tech world, and set up a webcam.

Actually, my 10-year old took the task of installing and setting it up upon himself, after which I took a deep sign of relief...I'll get my free computer support guy after all...in a few years, of course, so that I could finally stop fiddling with all of this, and have my offspring take care of it. Boys will be boys - he is a natural.

I take it back - I did do one thing! I mounted the webcam to my flat panel monitor, which took me three screwdrivers, two pairs of pliers, and my teeth (I think there was an error in the manual LOL!)

Not ready to show it to the world yet, still trying to improve the speed and quality of the video...not to mention tidying up my office in the background.


Busy Tuesday...

- Switched from ACCPOW Insider to blog, including the sign-up forms

- Set up and tested my new webcam, recorded a birthday message for my mother

- Got a dose of Lia Allen, my best friend, by telephone, couldn't do without her

- 12 orders online - can do better...

- Had a conversation with a potential JV partner, trying to come up with ways to collaborate, have some ideas

- Need to get back to my laminated 90-day actions list! Blogging is fun, but incredibly addictive, need to stay focused.

- Had a conversation with Sharon Williams, the owner of 24hoursecretary.com, who will be offering a member benefit to ACCPOW members

- Inspired someone to start a blog: "Milana, I had been thinking of creating a newsletter for Zyberspace for some time. After receiving your notice today, I decided to do a blog instead. So, I did. It's called Zylights. If I can inspire one person a day, mission accomplished!


On a personal note...

Visited my son's middle school today, what a transition! I never went to an American school (except for college), so I always wonder what it's like...He is going into 6th grade next year, and can't wait to gain independance in choices...especially when it comes to "ala carte" lunches.

Imagine this: "Dr.Phil's teenage son failed school and ran away from home"

Category: Strong Opinion

I made a comment in All Coaches are NOT Created Equal a few days ago, to which I received a response:

• Me: "If you're a relationship coach without a relationship, please send your clients away to another coach. It's hypocritical and goes against being authentic."
  
• Anonymous: "Isn't this like saying, if your a doctor without any sickness you shouldn't be practicing medicine? Coaching is being curious about what is going on for the client, not about what is going on for you. "

I'd like to respond to this by asking you, how did it make you feel when you read the title of this post? Deceived? Puzzled? Dissappointed? The #1 expert on parenting and relationship has his own child fail school and run away from home...Doesn't that undermine his authority? Doesn't it cancel out everything he ever said on his show?

Maybe it shouldn't...but it does. Why would I trust someone's advice, who doesn't get successful results from it himself?

I really do feel it's not the same when it comes to doctors. You can get sick by getting infected, by staying in the rain for too long, by working too hard at the office, etc. Some uncontrollable circumstances here...

But if someone can not find and stay in a good relationship, I just don't see how I would be comfortable taking relationship advice from that person, be it a coach or not.

My 2 cents...

By the way, Dr.Phil's son is fine - this was just an illustration.

You Never Know Until You Ask...But I Already Knew!

Category: Lifestyle

I appreciate the dozens of e-mails I received today as a result of announcing Milana on Tap. Thank you so much, it warms my heart to know that people care and read, and watch my business grow! I hope you're growing with me, because where I am going, you DEFINITELY want to be along for the ride!

One name from the above list is winning over the rest, hands down! I'll announce the winner shortly, but it's interesting that I already knew the answer before I asked.

Will keep you posted!

Hint: it took me 24 hours to come up with the 8 different names on the list, and only 30 seconds for my friend to suggest the name that's coming out on top!

Help Me Pick a Name for This Blog!

Spent an extremely unproductive day today, trying to research the best possible name for my blog, looked up idioms, slang, sayings, called a couple of friends....And...Still haven't decided on the final name! Do you have any bright ideas? Is there an obvious name for this blog, that I am simply missing? I would love to hear from you! Thanks so much for your input!

Milana on Tap

Coaches on Break

Ace in the Hole

Playing by Ear

Tongue in Cheek

Breaking Free

Milana Incorporated

Milana's Momentum

Suggest Your Own:

(Optional) Your Name: Your Email:

1-900-Coach....

Category: Practice Building

Why give away half hour of coaching, when you can give away 3 minutes?

Life coaching by the minute? You betcha!

Maybe it's just enough time to say "I need help!", but these two coaches created ElectricKites.com - a live interactive coaching service, which charges clients by the minute, with first 3 minutes free!

This web site lists advisors, in the order of immediate availability, which makes me feel like it's a "Coach-on-Call" service. So what kind of questions could be answered in 3 minutes?

Let me take a shot at it:

• "My boyfriend wants to break up with me, what should I do?"
• "I overheard my boss saying that he was planning to let me go. What can I do to keep my job?"
• "I gained another 3 pounds this week, what can I do to stop eating???"
• "My teenager won't listen, can you help?"
• "My husband doesn't think I need breast implants. How can I convince him that I do?"
  
  ....

The last two could probably take a while, but the point is, the concept of getting help in 3 minutes is intriguing and exciting, and with enough publicity, may drive some general public to coaching - I am all for it!

"Sheherazade of Coaching"

The challenge is...how do you convert someone to long-term client in 3 minutes? Or how can you keep them on the phone after 3 minutes? Ooh, I know! Be the "Sheherazade of Coaching!"

"...The only thing that will bring your boyfriend back is... Oh, I am sorry, your 3 minutes are up."

Check this service out at http://electrickites.com/coaching/getcoachednow.html

Executive Coaching Statistics and Facts

Category: In the Press

Executive Coaching, Biz New Orleans:

"International Coach Federation has almost quadrupled its membership in the past four years. About 8,000 life and business coaches belong to the organization, which is the largest of its kind. Annual spending on executive coaching in the United States is estimated at roughly $1 billion."

"Nearly half of the 247 senior executives surveyed by the Hay Group reported they didn't feel adequately prepared for their new leadership roles. Also, the need for soft skills, such as the ability to build informal relationships, is intensified in today's leaner organizations, according to the report.

This is where coaching comes in. Coaching focuses on the psychological aspects of a transition or of a problem a business is facing. Coaches look beyond the surface and probe what is going on inside leaders’ heads."

"Because it can be expensive -- sometimes in the realm of $1,500 a day for CEO-level service -- it tends to be off limits to tiny companies. But some local coaches who offer both personal and business coaching will work with individuals or small business owners on an hourly basis. Their rates range from $80 to $150 an hour. "


Sometimes, Even the Boss Needs a Coach, Concord Monitor

"People at the top are lonely. They don't get to where they are by making a lot of friends. The truly smart executives realize that the things that made them great will destroy them. They realize that things change and new methods (of management) are needed.

In the past, a CEO's word was absolute. Employees either did it the boss's way, or they found work elsewhere. Now, largely because the economy is becoming more global, management is evolving into something more like the Asian model - inclusive and team-oriented...

Some CEOs have insecurities and may be corrupted by the need to be told they're right. A good coach can be a counterforce to those insecurities and work as a check against power corrupting."