Week 20 Marketing - A Different Perspective
Focus Question: What’s another way to approach marketing to get unstuck or breathe new life into your efforts?

Description
The Evil Twin - Marketing
Marketing is often seen as a “necessary evil” or To-Do in any business. To make it a little more fun, it can be useful to consider an alternative perspective,  twin or personality to take on. Perhaps you have always wanted to be a diva. What would it be like to step into that personality as you approach marketing?
One of the most important activities which coaches can undertake is that of the Sweet Spot Exercise. While I did not publish this in the Coaching Business Builder, you will find it in the digital chapter on marketing in the From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching book (do check it out at https:/www.from12many.com/downloads.html - use code 4411 to access the Marketing Chapter on Group and Team Coaching).

The sweet spot gets you to consider three questions:

1. What are you good at?
2. What are you passionate about?
3. What do your clients want, need and prefer?

If you have done this before, take a look at the opposite or negative space. Reverse it by asking:

• What’s the flipside of the Sweetspot?
• What are you NOT good at?
• What are you not interested in?
• What do your CLIENTS NOT want, need and prefer?

Reviewing these questions regularly can provide some interesting insights into where you potentially might want to focus more of your marketing efforts.
Some other questions to provoke new perspectives around marketing are:
If you were to look at this activity rather than a time sucker, what could it look like as an enabler?

If you see it as a community builder, what else might it offer?
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Thinking about things from an alternative perspective can be useful in terms of focus and application and breathing new life into areas you might have gotten stuck around.
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Over the new few weeks we’ll be exploring several of the different vehicles and approaches. Much of this will return back to these strategic questions of what are you good at, and what do your clients want.

Activity
Work through the questions posed around marketing – what do you notice about your 5 Ps?

Connection to the Workbook and Planner
Section 3 of both books covers nine different promotional strategies you might want to employ.
Always remember that your clients will dictate what approaches are going to be most relevant and impactful.
Take some time this week working through the 5 Ps of your business, and activities you can undertake to further clarify the 5 Ps.

Download a one-page copy of this week's 52 Weeks of Plan, Do and Track here.

Best wishes, 
Jennifer

Read and download the initial weeks of the 52 weeks of Plan, Do and Track

We operate as part of a larger web. As Buddha wrote:
“As a net is made up of a series of ties, so everything in this world is connected by a series of ties. If anyone thinks that the mesh of the net is an independent isolated thing he is mistaken. It is called a net because it is made up of a series of interconnected meshes, and each mesh has its place and responsibility in relation to other meshes.”
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• What are the relationship webs or meshes you are part of?
• What are the ties you have made in your business?
• Who do you rely on to make things happen?

Even as solopreneurs or someone working remote we are a bigger part of a web. Being clear on how we connect and interrelate can help us be more focused and intentional in our messaging, marketing and communication.

This week take some time to draw out your web of relationships.

• Who are the people you connect with internally? Externally?
• Who are the people in your web that are influencers? Connectors?
• Which relationships need attention? Which new relationships do you want to develop?

Have a great Wednesday!
​Jennifer

Questions form the backbone to any great coaching conversation. What is the state of questions being asked in your team?

While asking informational questions can be of great value, in the virtual team context, we may be in multiple conversations where we are using questions to:

• Help people clarify what they know themselves
• Create shared experiences and new shared knowledge
• Support people in coming up with a solution for their context

When we operate in the virtual and remote context it usually means that we aren’t having to advise, but rather coach. This can necessitate a different set of questions or a different way to ask questions rather than a Yes/No approach.

In creating more powerful questions for the virtual space we want to focus on a few things:

1. Make sure our questions are clear- Shorter is usually better. Are you asking one question at a time or more than one?
2. Consider when it’s more appropriate to ask an open-ended question rather than a question that will lead to a yes/no
3. Ensure that we are using language and terms that are more resonant to the person we are speaking with. The diversity on virtual teams can span language, technical skills, professional background, and geography to name a few. What is going to be understood best?

In coaching we usually encourage questions to be:

• Short and concise
• One at a time
• Starting with WHAT, rather than WHY (which may put people on the defense if trust levels are not high)
• Noting when HOW questions may put people into problem solving or how to, early
• Focused on both expanding awareness around issues AND supporting action

Take a look at this short video I created on 20 powerful coaching questions. You may find it useful to incorporate into your own work as well.
 
Best,
Jennifer

Week 18 Focus – Projects – Partnerships (RACSI)
Focus Question: We usually don’t operate in isolation. Who do you want to/need to liaise with to ensure successful projects and activities?

​Description
Partnerships are essential for coaches, virtual professionals and others. For most of us, we interface regularly with external partners and stakeholders, who are often located in some distance away from us.

As virtual and service-based businesses, we may create a wide variety of partnerships in our work. We don’t always do it alone. As soon as we expand our work to others, it can be useful to think about what partnerships look like.

From co-coaching, to Joint Ventures, bringing on sub-contractors to co-designing programs. What can partnerships look like for you?

Given that we are interfacing with different stakeholders around projects at any given time, it can be useful to think about how different stakeholders need to be updated and “kept in the loop”. 

Research/Story/Six Questions
Who are the partners you want to keep in the loop? What are the key tasks and responsibilities?

One of the more common frameworks for stakeholder engagement is the RACSI. RACSI stands for:
R – Responsible
A – Accountable
C – Consulted
S - Support
I – Informed.
Let’s look at each one in turn.
Responsible = person or role responsible for actually doing or completing the item. Who needs to do the work? This might be the team leader who has to gather the expense information in the new format and submit it.
Accountable = The person who is accountable is usually the person responsible for undertaking the task. Who has ownership of this? Typically, the "responsible one" is accountable to this person.   The accountable person might be the General Manager, the Team Leader's boss.
Consult = the person or role whose subject matter expertise is required in order to complete the item. Consulted - Who needs to be involved and asked for input? Those consulted may involve other team leaders who have gone through the change, and team members.
Support = Who needs to support the work? What type of support is required?
Inform = the person or role that needs to be kept informed of the status of item completion Who needs to be told about the change or informed along the way? Individuals who are not part of teams may need to be informed so they know what changes are happening.

The value of reflecting on a RACSI for each project is that it helps you consider who you want to involve and keep in the loop. Projects sometimes are not successful when they have not engaged different players or stakeholders appropriately.

Activity
Consider one of your upcoming initiatives/ programs/projects. Who are the key stakeholders? Who is responsible? Who needs to support? Who needs to be consulted? Who needs to be informed?

Connection to the Workbook and Planner
Any time we bring shareholders on or work closely with a community, or membership site, it can be important to be focusing on the RACSI, as we consider how to communicate our messages.

Great partnerships are usually co-designed with intentionality. To help guide you through these conversations, I share a variety of questions to consider at different times of the partnership journey – pre-design, during design, during implementation and after the project.

Be sure to also download the Co-Facilitation Chapter. This link is found on page 93 of PlanDoTrack and page 89 of the Coaching Business Builder.
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Leverage the tools including the Partnership Questions on Pages 93 and 94 of the PlanDoTrack or pages 89 and 90 of the Coaching Business Builder.
 
Download a one-page copy of this week's 52 Weeks of Plan, Do and Track here.

Best wishes, 
Jennifer

Read and download the initial weeks of the 52 weeks of Plan, Do and Track

In a virtual team it is critical to build capacity given that people are working more autonomously. Time spent equipping team members with the tools to influence, be proactive and also communicate is key.
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This week I wanted to zoom into three skills related to coaching that may be valuable to your virtual or remote team. These skills are:

1. Goals
2. Listening
3. Questioning

I often am amazed at how many organizations have not invested time, or resources, into helping team members work around goals. While there are many frameworks including:

• SMART Goals
• CLEAR Goals – see John Whitmore’s Coaching for Performance writing
• WOOP Goals

I usually encourage organizations to consider what’s going to work best for you. A majority of clients I work with are aware of SMART Goals, which we morph into SMART – E Goals, E meaning Exciting. If our goals are not exciting or motivating, it’s unlikely that we will get them done.

As a quick refresher – SMART goals are goals that are:

The PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner is geared to virtual and remote team members. As I wrote in last week’s post, this month’s focus is going to be in the overlooked area of virtual and remote teams.

Spending time more intentionally on on-boarding virtual team members can go a far way. Today’s post reaches back to a post from the Teams365 blog in 2018 – Questions New Virtual Team Members May Have.

Here’s what I wrote,
“While this list is no means comprehensive, some questions new virtual team members may have, and areas you will want to cover (in an orientation or on-boarding program) are:

Team Issues:

• What is the culture of the team? Remember, how are things done around here.
• What are the team priorities?
• Who is on the team? What are their strengths?
• What could you reach out to them for?
• What else should the new team member know about the team and its focus?

 
The new team members’ role

• What are the roles and responsibilities of the new team member’s role?
• What key priorities and deadlines are there?
• Who will they need to reach out to?
• What feedback loops are there?
• What is expected in terms of performance?

 
Relationship between the team leader and new team member:

• What are your expectations of me as a team member? Team leader?
• How do you like to be communicated with?
• What are the issues I should surface directly to you? When?
• What are the things I should keep in mind in terms of reporting? Connecting with others on the team?
• What issues should I call about? Email about? Use the web about?

 
Who should I reach out to around:

• How to do things?
• Technical IT issues

What other issues are important to note?

Best,
Jennifer

Week 13 Focus – Quarterly Check In: Skills
Focus Question: What have you accomplished in this last quarter? What are the tasks you want to undertake in the next quarter?


Description
In addition to building in time for weekly and monthly planning, it’s also important that we build in time for quarterly planning. For some, it may be easier to break down annual goals into quarterly milestones and micro-projects. For others, you might work upwards from monthly themes and projects to quarterly plans.
A quarterly check in can look different for each virtual professional or business owner. From dedicating an hour for review to ear-marking a full day with the team to review and plan for the time ahead. Be sure to use the weekly, monthly and annual resources available to you in the workbook planner.

Research/Story
Create a quarterly review day. Put a date on the calendar every quarter can help to update certain tasks. Set a date in your calendar to look at the following quarterly items:
A. Review financials – sales, expenses, revenue. What needs to be changed? Where is revenue going? What is cash flow like? What about the accumulation of debt?
What is the financial data saying? What is that status around invoicing and accounts payable.
B. Update your metrics. Complete your statistics.
What are the things you are tracking in the Monthly Daily Trackers?
Over the course of the last 3 months ask yourself:

• What are the patterns you are noticing?      
• What has shifted?
• What has stayed the same?
• What are you surprised about?
  

C. Note programming/services delivered:

• What have you been doing?
• What has been selling?
• What engagements did you get – speaking, coaching, training?
• How much volume of work have you been involved in creating and/or delivering? What’s working? What’s not?

Ensure that you have a footprint or record of your work - What was the focus of your work, major achievements, contact details. Have you put a copy of material in your portfolio (digital or hard-copy)?
D. Focus on project related work:

• What are the projects you are STARTING?
• What are the projects IN PROCESS?
• What are the projects you are COMPLETING?

E. Examine resourcing:
What resourcing is helping you? Consider:

• Materials
• People
• IT

What are the contingency resources available to you and you ok?
F. Content Creation and Visibility:

• What is on your content calendar for the next series of time?
• What content have you created that you can scale or replicate?

Client/Customer log and statistics. How much coaching are you doing? What skills have you been leveraging?
G. Organizational Learning Check Point

• What’s working and what’s not?
• What key learning has been undertaken?
• What learning needs are there going forward?

H. What are the other things you want to review?
I. Looking ahead – What are the main priorities for the next 3 months?
What are the creative projects which are going to pull you forward?

Activity
Schedule in 15-30 minutes to undertake your quarterly review. It might include a selection of these questions listed above.

As part of the review you might also undertake or revisit any self-assessments such as Wheels you have completed.

In both the Coaching Business Builder and PlanDoTrack, I have included a Wheel of Small Business Mastery (page 8 in Coaching Business Builder, or page 27/28 in PlanDoTrack) and/or Virtual and Remote Work page 14 in PlanDoTrack).

Take a few minutes to score yourself and revisit where you are at. What has shifted? What new skills have you learned or started to master due to use? What new skills are required on the horizon?

Connection to the Workbook and Planner
In addition to the wheels there are four sets of quarterly tools throughout the two planners. Be sure to take some time to explore these tools in Section 5 of the Workbook/Planner:
Quarterly To Dos – Use this to capture key to-dos in each of the 4 quarters of the year. Some professionals will use this as a warehouse over the course of the year.
Quarterly reflections: Use the chart to capture:

• Projects
• Achievements
• Learning
• Opportunities

Quarterly Planner Sheet: Use the one page to identify your top 5 goals for that period, identifying projects, also highlight key task on each month (5 weeks outline per month)
Finally, join Jennifer for a live or on-demand quarterly planning session where she provides you with a step-by-step series of questions to think about for your quarterly plan.

Download a one-page copy of this week's 52 Weeks of Plan, Do and Track here.

Best wishes, 
Jennifer

Read and download the initial weeks of the 52 weeks of Plan, Do and Track

​Jennifer Britton - Potentials Realized
Author of PlanDoTrack (2019),  Coaching Business Builder (2018), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) and From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (2013). Pick up a copy of any of her books at Amazon
Book Jennifer for a coaching session to explore productivity, teamwork and business issues.
Contact her by phone at (416)996-8326
Check out the new 19 Productivity Tips on-demand program. Explore this video based program at  your own pace, and join Jennifer for bi-weekly calls as part of your course.
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​Has spring sprung in your part of the world? We are just around the corner from Q2 and I thought it would be useful to focus this week’s blog post on 10 Questions to ask in setting your Q2 goals.

1. How am I on target with my 2019 goals?
2. What were my major accomplishments during Q1? (Think about yourself and your team?)
3. What systems helped? What systems need attention?
4. Where is revenue/sales/impact coming from?
5. What activities are giving me/us results?
6. What can I do to magnify these?
7. Where do I need to become more efficient in my work? More effective?
8. What needs attention?
9. What am I doing to build relationships?
10. What are the items and conversations which are important to note and carry forward?

When did I last revisit my SWOT?  (A key strategic planning tool is the SWOT – if you are not familiar with this, be sure to check out the exercise in description of Section 4 of the PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner)

What is going to provide you with efficiency and effectiveness for Spring?
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Best wishes,
Jennifer

Week 9 Focus – Partnerships
Focus Question: Who can help you in making your vision a reality?

Description
As a solopreneur, or virtual worker, we cannot go it alone all the time. Leaning into different types of partnerships – long term and short term, helps us get things done, expand our base, and possibly move into new areas.
Partnerships can take several different forms. From Joint Ventures, to Co-Facilitation, to Collaboration, to Co-Coaching. What are the different partnerships you engage in?

Research/Story
Key ingredients which make partnerships include skills in the areas of:

• Trust
• Candor
• Connection
• Self-awareness
• Working Across Differences
• Relationship Development
• Other

Taking time to be in dialogue about relationships and partnerships is critical for success. These conversations need to start well in advance as you start to design and develop your common ground and shared agreements.

Activity
As you think about your year and the most important goals you have, make a list of the people who can help you. If you have not yet completed the Top 20 List in the workbook, do that now.
Synergies with others –
There are many times when we want to synergize with others in terms of a focus. As coaches, this might include co-facilitation, joint ventures or others.
What are the key elements to help you as a business synergize?
Questions to ask yourself:

• What do you want to get out of the collaboration?
• What would be useful to focus on?
• What are you bringing to the collaboration?
• What is the line in the sand in terms of where it is your materials?
• Where are other opportunities to collaborate?
• How will you offer feedback to each other?

Connection to the Workbook and Planner
There are many touchpoints with the Planner and Workbook including:
Collaboration (pages 49 – 53 – CBB or pages 53- 56 – PDT)
Top 20 List in the workbook (page 83 – CBB or page 87 – PDT)
Phases of Partnering and Co-Facilitation Journey – pages 90 – 92 (CBB) and 92 – 94 (PDT)

Download a one-page copy of this week's 52 Weeks of Planning, Doing and Tracking here.

Best wishes, 
Jennifer

Read and download the initial weeks of the 52 weeks of Planning, Doing and Tracking

​Jennifer Britton, MES, PCC, CPT
Author of several books including: PlanDoTrack (2019), Effective Virtual Conversations (2017), Effective Group Coaching (2010)
Potentials Realized  - Specializing in support to virtual and remote teams, leaders and entrepreneurs
Award-winning Coaching Skills Training
Join us for one of our 2019 Annual Coaching Groups - Teams365 Leadership Lab for Virtual Leaders and Team Members or
Coaching Biz Growth Lab - for coaches and other virtual entrepreneurs
(416)996-8326

Stay Connected

It’s the last day of 2018 and time to turn the page (metaphorically) to a new chapter. Before we do, try to grab a few minutes today to wrap things up and wind things down.
Here are some of the questions I like to include at the end of the year. I’ve taken them from Teams365 Blog – post # 1091, at the end of 2016.
Here are ten questions to support you in taking a look back at the last year:
1. What's been your biggest success this year?
2. What are you most proud of accomplishing? OR What were your greatest results?
3. What habits have most supported you this year?
4. What three adjectives sum up the year for you?
5. What were key relationships instrumental to your success and experience this year?
6. What has been your biggest, and most important, learning this year?
7. If you were to give this year a book title, what would it be?
8. What do you want to make sure you keep doing in the new year? What do you want to stop doing?
9. What do you want to acknowledge yourself for?
10. What and how will you celebrate the successes of 2018? With whom?
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Have a wonderful last year of 2019 and I look forward to stepping through 2019 with you, with regular blog posts and ongoing calls to support you in becoming more focused and intentional in your work.

Best wishes,
Jennifer

​Jennifer Britton – Potentials Realized 
Follow along with the #90DaysPlanDoTrack series over at Instagram @CoachingBizBuilder 
Now Available – PlanDoTrack Workbook and Planner – Pick up a copy today on Amazon
 
Is 2019 your year to move things forward through group learning and accountability? Join me for one of our annual groups -
The Teams365 Leadership Lab (focusing on team leadership, virtual teams)
The Learning Lab and Design Studio (focusing on program design)
or the Coaching Biz Growth Lab (focusing on  business development)