I'm Speaking at the ICF Conference in November!

Good news! I've been selected, out of 240 proposals, to speak at the ICF Conference in November in St. Louis!

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the ICF, it’s the International Coach Federation, the largest professional organization for coaches in the world.

My topic will be on designing workshops and teleclass, using instructional design techniques. In my corporate life, I was an instructional designer of software and computer classes, for 25 years. I'm hoping to bring those tips and techniques to the coaching community in this presentation!

Internet Radio Audience Grows 50 Percent

According to the article in MarketingVox, "Internet Radio Audience Grows 50 Percent," over 12% of Americans have listened to Internet Radio in the past week. And for the "we love you because you buy stuff from us" category of 18-34 year olds, 16% have listened to Internet Radio in the past week.

Also in this article, they mention that these listeners are not necessarily simply listening to their favorite AM or FM radio station streamed over the internet. They're listening to "authentic" internet-based radio shows.

This is good news for small business owners who want to either be a guest on an internet radio show, or host their own show. As these audience numbers creep upwards, internet radio becomes a viable marketing tool for small business owners marketing on a shoe-string budget.

Some of my favorites are:

Jim Blasingame

Entrepreneur Magazine's Radio Show

The Coaching Show

While I sometimes listen "live," I prefer to download the radio show to my MP3 player and listen to it while I'm walking or gardening. I actually had to buy another hard drive to store all the MP3 audio files I've collected, because I also download MP3s of teleclasses and interviews! It's a great way to keep up with what's going on in the small business world.

Do you listen to internet radio? What channels (websites) do you listen to the most? I'd love to add more to my list!

Site for searching for audio and video on the Web

Ever wonder how to find podcasts and audios of teleclasses? Video clips of movies? I tried through Google, and it was hard to find. Luckily, I stumbled across a great site, which allows you to search for audio and video content on the internet:

http://www.singingfish.com

Creating Your Signature Presence

Colleen Bracken was the guest speaker in the May 2006 "Self Employed Success" teleclass, a series of free teleclasses that Passion For Business sponsors each month.

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Creating Your Signature Presence, with guest Colleen Bracken

Be it in the boardroom, at the podium, with a prospective client, at an interview, or in an employee team meeting: "Presence" counts!

Presence is the foundation for inspiring and influencing those around us, in all kinds of situations. Learn how to boost your natural style to the level of magnetic presence.
Some of the questions discussed include:

1. What IS presence?

2. What are your unique natural building blocks for constructing presence?

3. How does one boost those blocks to the level of a powerful magnetism?

Listen to the recording of Colleen Bracken's teleclass.

Free Business Templates from SCORE

SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) offers from business documents templates for small business owners. These include business plan templates, balance sheet templates, and many more:

http://www.score.org/template_gallery.html

Are You Going Where the Resources Are?

Each morning, as the sun begins to shine on the side of the house, the birds begin lining up on the lawn. They're very smart, entrepreneurial type birds: each morning, as the sun warms up the side of the house, tent caterpillars begin to climb up the house. It's like a buffet for birds.

They understand instinctively what we resist intellectually: to build your business (and fill your tummy), you must pick your target audience -- then you must go to where your target audience congregates.

Yet I speak with so many self-employed people who resist the idea of picking just one target audience. They think they'll lose business if they just focus on one narrow market. Hey, listen, birds eat more than caterpillars (there's a bird feeder not 20 feet from them full of seeds). But they choose which ONE thing to go after and go after it with gusto. When they've had success with that "market," they move on to the next one.

So, go ahead and choose just one target audience that you'll go after for the next 3-6 months, then figure out where they congregate: which newspapers and magazines they read, which websites they visit, what groups they belong to -- then go after them! Once you've had success with that one target audience, go ahead and do the same with a second, third and fourth market.

You don't have to limit the number of markets you go after. But you do need to focus on one at a time, if you want a higher level of success.

Inc Magazine's Article about Business Coaching

Inc. Magazine published an article in their April 2006 issue entitled, "Do You Need A Coach?" It's a great overview of whether a small business coach is right for you, and what type of coach you should be looking for. You can read the article here:

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20060401/coach.html

A 20-Day Vacation

Hi, Everyone!

Sorry I haven't written for a while, but I've been away on a 20-day vacation to Yosemite, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks!

It's impossible to describe the sheer terror of finally deciding to take more than a week's vacation. Would my business crumble? Would I miss logging on each morning to get my email? Would my clients miss me??

It all started rather simply: three different opportunities for speaking engagements came up in California, and so close to one another that it seemed silly NOT to go to California and do presentations. My husband casually suggested, "Why don't we both go, then take some time for a vacation while we're out there?" It seemed reasonable enough.

In the past, I'd take a week-long vacation a few times a year, and my business had survived. But 20 days away from my office? It took a bit of getting used to.

But let me tell you a secret: Starting the very first day, I never once had a interest in finding an internet café and checking my email. Never once did I feel like I had to pick up phone messages and return phone calls. It was shocking that I could so easily leave it all behind. It was heaven!

I think that vacations are mandatory for self-employed people. When you do your annual budgeting for your business, schedule in enough revenue so that you can afford the cost of the vacations as well as the cost of not earning money for the weeks you're away.

Why? Because we all need a break from our businesses, from the high-energy involvement, from the stress, from the stuck places. We all need time to pay attention to ourselves, to those we love, and to do the other things we like to do besides work for a living.

After 20 days away, I'm refreshed. While hiking in Yosemite, I made some major strategy decisions about the direction of my business for the next five years (which I'll share with you later – hint, hint), without even consciously thinking about my business. I allowed my sub-conscious to process all the questions and decisions I had to make about my business, then allowed the answers to slowly bubble to the surface while I walked, sat, talked, and took photos of lovely nature scenes.

Now that I’m back in my office, I feel a rush of energy, and a great clarity of thinking. I'm also keeping in touch with the slow, calm, peaceful feelings I felt each day I was away, and am bringing them back into my daily business life.

So, when is your next vacation??

(And yes, I took this photo. I owned a photography studio for 20 years and it's still one of my passions!)