Are You in Love With Your Coaching Business?

The below post is by Jayne Warrilow, a 2011 ICF Annual International Conference speaker. Watch for posts from other 2011 conference speakers on the ICF blog over the next several months.

Many people have talked about the importance of loving what you do for a living. Yet for many of us, the reality is quite different. Yes, we love the coaching but what about our business? Somewhere between our dreams of achieving our ambitions and the practical realities of actually running a coaching business, we lose our passion. We lose touch with the very thing that could lead us to success and instead find ourselves chasing the money, or simply following the path of least resistance. If this is you, rest assured its never too late to fall back in love with your coaching business.

As a business owner you have a tremendous opportunity to embrace what you do with passion. You are truly without limits. If you are like most coaches you probably became self-employed because you liked the idea of more personal freedom. You wanted to be your own boss and had some great ideas you wanted to try. In the early days, I bet you were full of passion and excitement. All you could think about was your business - it was an exciting time. However since then, you will have been through a lot. You've worked hard and will have received some level of rewards. Your love of the business will have ebbed and flowed. Ask yourself now, are you still in love with your business? Is it time for you to rekindle the flame?

Passion is key. It acts as the rocket fuel to success and propels those who would otherwise slip into mediocrity to the top of their field. Here are some suggestions for you to reconnect with your original passion:

1. Get present: You are unlikely to achieve success if you lose yourself within your business. Too many coaches work so hard and such long hours that they forget to sit back and enjoy their success. Get present. Bring yourself into the now and realise everything you have accomplished since the day you first began.
2. Know your why: Remind yourself why you went into business in the first place, what were your original dreams? Get back in touch with your initial motivations to remind you of the bigger reasons behind what you are trying to achieve.
3. Discover the magic of flow: Think about the energy you bring to your business. You are giving off certain messages via your energy whether you realize this or not. Your personal energy is fuel for your business. Don't allow anyone or anything get in the way of you being who you know you can be. Find your flow!



Jayne Warrilow

Set your performance meter high. Great quality of service, impeccable integrity and a caring attitude towards your customers will always attract referrals and repeat business. If you follow these suggestions your clients will notice and they will begin to reflect your passion back to you. If you do this right you won't be the only one to fall in love with your business, your customers will too.

Jayne Warrilow is CEO of Resonant Coaching, specializing in advanced level training for coaches. Jayne’s powerful work which she has successfully implemented in the C-Suites of global organizations, integrates a holistic, energetic approach into coaching ultimately leading to resonance, to the next level of mastery and beyond. For more information: www.resonantcoaching.com.

How can you give back?

This time of year is often synonymous with feelings of gratitude and thankfulness. While you count your blessings this year, consider those ways in which you might be able to serve others this holiday season…and beyond.

Regardless of how crowded your schedule is, volunteer opportunities abound everywhere. Consider the organizations in your community that run on volunteer manpower…how can you help them? For you, it may be offering your services via pro bono coaching. For others, it could mean volunteering your time to serve (be it a soup kitchen, a nursing home, an orphanage, or animal shelter).

What is it for you…how can you give back? If you already regularly volunteer your services or your time (or both), what do you do? Do you have any advice for someone trying to find a way to get involved? Share your feedback in the comments section below or over on our Facebook page.

What Are You Thankful For?

The below post is by Ernest Mark, a 2011 ICF Annual International Conference speaker. Watch for posts from other 2011 conference speakers on the ICF blog over the next several months.

I love Thanksgiving Weekend. I love the spaciousness and the time to share and enjoy good food, to be with loved ones, to relax with leftovers, to unwind and be thankful. In the regular bustle of life, I often feel I’m just rushing through my days, i.e. getting the kids to school, rushing to work, bouncing between meetings and then rushing to pick up the kids and getting through the night routine. Phew, it’s exhausting thinking about it… and there is so little time to smell the roses.

This week I get to experience both the bustle of the preparation and the space to smell the roses, or in this case, the food, wine and good company. I love cooking and typically throw myself into Thanksgiving preparations, it’s my vehicle for expressing love for my family and friends. Our dinner is a potluck, so it’s a collective sharing of food, love and mutual appreciation for each other. When the meal begins, there’s usually a quiet moment as everyone settles into exploring the landscape of their plates. Then the conversation comes back and time seems to slow down to match our need to take it down a notch and enjoy each other. And in the spaciousness of this holiday, there is gratitude.

In the spirit of the holiday, I’ve been thinking about gratitude and spaciousness this week and noticing the possibilities of experiencing it. When I pause, I notice the bustle slows down, my breath gets a little deeper and my heart softens. I feel the possibility opens up for me to be more present, patient and loving with my family and others around me. And in the pause, I am taking a moment to be kind to myself which creates the possibility to be truly open and gracious with others.

As we wind up 2011 and head into the holiday season, what are you thankful for? What do you notice when you take a moment to pause and feel gratitude? Who would you like to share that with?

Ernest Mark is a coach and consultant working in the non-profit social justice sector. He works with a broad cross section of leaders and organizations across the sector and brings an approach that is fiercely culturally relevant and community led. Ernest lives in Oakland, California with his wife, Mimi, and daughters, Olive and Juniper. Ernest can be reached via email at ernest@ernestmark.com.

Create a better conversation…next week and beyond

Next week, November 21-27, is Better Conversation Week. This week is set aside to create better conversations with those in your life (from your significant other or your best friend to a client or acquaintance). Even those who converse constantly can use a simple reminder to consider their own conversations. [Non-meaningful conversing is an unfortunately simple thing to do…and we are all guilty of it in some form or another.]

If you add up how many different conversations you have in a given day, the number for many would be pretty significant. But how many of those conversations are “good?” I know what you are thinking... “What is a good conversation?” I think most people would agree that a good conversation is one in which both parties are genuinely interested, both parties listen, and both parties allow the other to speak.

Now consider your daily interactions. How many of those conversations would fall into that category? Probably less than you realize.

Not only that, but consider what your conversations are about. Is it small talk? Is it practical conversation (around whose turn it is to do the dishes, who let the dog out, etc.)? Is it substantial (where you walk away feeling fulfilled)? All of these forms of communication can be good…but your entire day’s worth of conversations should not fall under a single category. Like everything else in life, there needs to be balance. A really good article I came across on The New York Times website, though almost two years old, is a really interesting look at the correlation between the kinds of conversations you are having and how happy you are: Talk deeply, be happy?

So my thought for Better Conversation Week is to not only focus on creating better conversations…but really pay attention to the kinds of conversations that dominate my talk life. What about you? Share your thoughts below in the comments field, over on our Facebook page or via Twitter.

Striking a balance

A popular topic these days seems to be the often bewildering work-life balance. For some people, it is one and the same. Others draw a distinctive line when it comes to the boundaries between work life and home life. To see how coaches handle a work-life balance, we reached out to our Facebook fans with the following question in October: “coaches, what do you do to maintain a healthy work-life balance?”

Take a look below to see how our Facebook fans responded:

• “Gym every morn, bible/spiritual read for 20 mins each day, play with kids, do homework with kids, talk to wife in private after kids are in bed, read before sleep—something fictional.” Bret Snyder
• “Work and life? So when I work I’m not alive? I feel most alive when I’m working…and of course I do a lot of things: meditation, meeting friends, reading, cooking (that’s my latest happy discovery), gym, sleeping, etc. Life’s good! Including work.” Tatiana Saliba
• “I look at work as life. It’s a choice. While working, I work my ‘muscles’ for creating a deeper connection to things I want to master. There is no separation.” Carol House Jackson
• “Trabajar con pensamiento de Coach en todo momento, enriqueciendo asi el alma de cada persona que impactamos y sobre todo hacerlo y vivir con pasion!!!” Jose Tony Santiago
• “There’s no such thing as balance! Only resilience.” Lisa Austin
• “Reflect on my life wheel everyday.” Leona Wan
• “Work at it!” Sylvia Baumgartner
• “I start each day with a swim, after that I am ready for whatever the day brings. It’s all life, when you love what you do you know you have cracked it when you never get a Monday morning feeling.” Denise Chilton

What about you? How do you maintain a balance between your work life and your personal life? We’d love to know—leave a response below or join the conversation at Facebook.com/ICFHQ.