Next BlogTalkRadio Coaches’ Corner with guest Tracey Steinberg, Esq.

I had my first show last Sunday night  I’m continuing this weekend with my second Coaches’ Corner with my special guest, “Life Coach Tracey.” Tune in live at 11 p.m. at www.blogtalkradio.com/coachandrew, or play it back at your convenience.  I welcome calls live on the show, or come to the chat room during the show and post your questions for my guest or me.

Tracey Steinberg, Esq., a New York City attorney and dating coach/career coach/motivational speaker who helps young women excel professionally and marry “Mr. Right.”  After completing her coaching program, Tracey went on to complete advanced programs for both career coaching and coaching singles.  Tracey has had her own television show, radio show and advice column and her expertise on dating and career topics have been featured on Fox News, MNN, Tribeca Radio, and The Daily News.  You can learn more about Tracey on her site, www.LifeCoachTracey.com.

Tweet! Tweet! Fun with Twitter

I signed up for Twitter last year.  For the most part, I’ve found it a bit perplexing.  I’ve mostly followed a handful of people, and a handful of people have signed up to follow me.  Not all of these are the same people, and I learned just this week that if you are following someone but they are not following you, you cannot directly “tweet” them, which also means you cannot respond to one of their tweets other than by e-mail.  I read a couple of good posts, such as this one on Julia Stewart’s blog:  How to Get People to Follow you on Twitter (Julia is a fellow coach:  follow her at http://twitter.com/masterycoach).

I invite you to follow me on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/coachandrew — once you do I’ll follow you as well.  If you have great Twitter content and are compelling, I might even follow you via SMS text messaging.  At the moment, I follow via SMS only the chatty, but compelling, entrepreneur Peter Shankman of www.HelpAReporterOut.com (better known as “HARO”), and my friend Stephanie Grayson-Zane, the terrific corporate speech trainer of www.corporatespeechtrainer.com (follow her @ http://twitter.com/stephanieupdate — if she lets you!).

“Points of You – The Coaching Game”

I run a local coaching “Meetup” group called “Coaching – A Call to Action.” The group consists of many coaches and professionals in the area of transformation and personal growth, as well as people interested in coaching. Recently, I was approached via e-mail by Marc Bar-Or, a fellow in Israel, about having an event to introduce to New York coaches and therapists “Points of You – The Coaching Game,” a coaching game, or tool, created by an Israeli coaching couple, Yaron Golan and Efrat Shani. The game was recently introduced at the ICF event in Montreal, where it was received quite favorably. I was intrigued after looking at the website, and then Marc clinched it by sending me a courtesy copy of the game by international courier. The title is a bit of a play on the phrase “points of view.” The point of the game, as stated on their website, is:

The Coaching Game is a personal coach that we can pull out
whenever we find ourselves having to cope,
make a decision, or just at any point along the way.
It allows us to explore significant issues in our lives
from different perspectives, to achieve clarity, to
form insights and to decide what actions to take.

Ah, a personal coach in a box! I opened the package with anticipation. My first reaction was how much it looked like a beautiful gift. The game, which consists primarily of gorgeous photographs on “Points of You” cards with single words on them, along with a book of quotes and action cards, is contained within a simple, yet elegant, burlap-type

The game as it appears before opening

fabric that closes with a bow. The fabric has some colored dots in some spots, sort of like colored fairy dust, that is quite appealing. The effect is warm and inviting, and with a bow fastening it closed, it brought up the feeling of opening up a new present.

Once you open the bow, you’re presented with the contents:

My event, which was held at the Ripley-Grier Studios in Manhattan, a favorite rental space for many in the New York creative arts, as well as for people leading small seminars and workshops.

A creative Manhattan oasis

I welcomed the 19 guests and introduced Yaron Golan, stifling my urge to introduce him as the family who owns the Golan Heights. Yaron started by gave some of his personal history, how he came to the coaching profession, and how the game was created. Then he had us take a “timeout” — about 10 minutes of meditative silence with the lights out, and our eyes closed, optionally sitting or lying on the floor, while he had some Israeli music play out of his laptop. The timeout allowed us all to calm down, let the day’s stresses and tensions fall away, and clear our heads for what would come next.

With the lights back on, Yaron described the game more fully, then put the deck of cards into the center of the room. He requested that we each take a card at random, choose a partner whom we did not know very well, and had us speak about what was working in our lives, connecting that to the word and picture that was on the card. Each pair took turns speaking to the other. This was the start of a terrific process that allowed the people in the room to open up with each other and feel more connected. We did about three or four processes, each with different partners, and we’d trade cards with the new partners so that we could have more starting points for new points of view.

After these, Yaron spoke about some other aspects of the game. The burlap cover is actually a sort of game board when opened up and turned over.

This aspect of the game brings the coaching aspect in play, and reminds me a bit of using Tarot cards. Here, you can ask a question (to your partner or to yourself), and pick three cards at random. and place them in the three rectangles on the board. You can then look at different points of view based on the words and pictures on the cards, and your responses will create answers to your questions.

We finished the workshop with a standard paper and pen exercise to gain clarity on any insights we got, and what would be our next action steps into next month. Yaron offered the game for sale at a significant discount to the participants.

As I utilize this tool personally and with clients, I will be able to write further here about what kinds of results can be expected from this game.

Joining the “global economy” – outsourcing my site

At last, I’ve gotten around to hiring a professional web design company to create a website for me. After examining many, many options, I decided to go with Sean McPheat’s outfit, LifeCoachWebSolutions. Sean is in England. He is a coach and entrepreneur with all sorts of websites and businesses out there. This is probably the best overall value I’ve seen, and they’ve made a lot of sites specifically for coaches. I’ve looked at this company for a long time. Initially, I didn’t want to use them because they include the hosting and domain name, and it seemed that was a big part of how they make their money. I already have hosting and more domain names than I know what to do with. I learned from writing to Sean McPheat that I could use my existing hosting, “no problem.”

Once I paid up ($297 plus the “Value Added Tax” (“VAT”) that European countries charge, totaling about $318), I learned, to my surprise, that the sites are actually created by a company named WebArtIndia, based somewhere in India. I soon received an e-mail from a man with an unpronounceable name, letting me know he was leading my project, and requesting me to look at their websites or any other sites I liked, let him know what buttons, links, elements, colors or other layout considerations I had in mind, and informing me that a team would be assembled to put this website together.

It took several days for me to look at many sites and collect my thoughts. I sent my many requests to WebIndiaArt, and within three days they came up with a mock-up of my new site. I’ll post a link to it here, although at some point this will be taken down.  I saved the image to my computer for posterity and uploaded it here for any comments:

Coach Andrew’s new website mock-up

I’m submitting my changes this weekend. Once the design and layout is done, I have the fun part of writing all my copy for the various pages. This company gives you 90 days until they sign off on the site. After that, it’s $30 an hour, or I can finish it myself. The good news is $30 an hour is pretty cheap. The better news is that they give you Front Page extensions, so you can edit and maintain your own site if you are up for it.

I’m pretty excited about creating my new site. I like having a “team in India,” even if they are 10 1/2 hours away. When I looked at the developer’s own site, I saw they can do virtually anything I want, including SEO and logos, etc. I’m now part of the global economy.

I’m not just a graduate, I’m also an affiliate!

You might recall those old commercials for Hair Club For Men: “I’m just just the president; I’m also a client.” I’ve been clamoring for my coaching school, International Coach Academy (“ICA”) to have an affiliate program, and at last my clamors have been answered.

Have you ever considered coach training to improve your business, interpersonal relationships or leadership skills? You may not want to become a ‘Life Coach,’ but coaching techniques can be applied in many different personal and professional contexts.

One of the best decisions I have ever made was to enroll into ICA back in May of 2005. The program has trained me well in the fundamentals and advanced techniques of professional coaching, and has also profoundly and powerfully improved many areas of my life and has enhanced all my relationships. I also have received the training and support necessary to actually create and implement the structures for a profitable coaching practice.

I believe the ICA coach training program is one of the best in the world today. It has excellent trainers, and an amazingly diverse student body from all over the world. Imagine being in a wonderful, supportive learning environment with people calling in from the United States, England, China, Switzerland, Ireland, and many other countries. It really brings home that we are part of a true global economy.

I have joined the brand new ICA affiliate program, and get to help kick it off! We are offering a great incentive and a great way to get a feel for the training and the school. I urge you to take a look at this very professional program, where you will meet others from all over the world to study leading-edge interpersonal development.

Please note: as a reader of this blog, there is a 10% discount in your registration if you sign up for a program with ICA before June 29th. So if you are considering becoming a coach, or want to use coaching skills to enhance your professional or personal life, this might be the right time to act.

ICA currently runs 5 distinct communities of practice:

– life coaching

– business coaching

– executive coaching

– spiritual coaching

– career coaching

Each community of practice (or CoP as we call them) has a community leader, a dedicated online space, a forum and a

network of like-minded people. These communities are great places to build your networks and learn new skills while you

do it in a lively global thought-provoking environment.

If coaching has been something you have been considering, I really encourage you to take up this opportunity; it is a

unique way to “get inside” this fantastic community and see why I am so passionate about it.

I encourage you to go have a look at the website, and to give yourself the gift of finding out more about this leading-edge coaching training program.

Click this link for more information on this offer:  International Coach Academy.

If you do decide to take the training, please do me a favor and sign up via this affiliate link!

If you have any questions about the program, the certification, or the time requirements involved, please contact me and I will be happy to answer them!

Update on the web page

I figured out how to get a counter on my page, and a subscription box.  Of course it would be helpful if I had anything to subscribe to.  Therefore, I will have my first e-zine ready this summer.  I am now making it official — all contributions related to coaching, personal growth, the Law of Attraction, etc., are welcomed.  Feel free to e-mail me at coach@andrewporetz.com with your contributions, suggestions, or anything else on this subject.

My web page is now up!

I finally decided to get rid of the “under construction” page on my website, and spent hours fiddling with Microsoft Publisher, FTP settings, etc., until 4:30 in the morning, when my eyes finally glazed over completely and I called it a night. So please do take a look at my site. It’s not 100% finished, as I haven’t yet figured out how to add things like a counter, a subscribe box, and a signup sheet that does what I want. Ultimately, I will likely bring in a professional to either add these things or re-do the site. For the most part, the page will remain somewhat static, but it also links to this blog, which of course will change all the time. Hey, I’m excited!

My web page: www.andrewporetz.com (will open in a new window).

Linked-In

There’s an interesting networking site for professionals, called Linked-In. I found a “widget” that lets me add a little device on any web page to help people link to me on that site. It won’t display here, but you can see it on my MySpace page, at www.myspace.com/mentorcoach. Meanwhile, feel free to click the link below, and add yourself to my Linked-In listing.  I have fixed the link so that you don’t have to be logged into Linked-In to view my profile.

Linked-In Profile

Well whaddya know, I’m a business coach!

A Community of Practice is a wonderful community, indeed. It is an hour-long call, moderated by a certified coach/ICA instructor, that gives ICA students the opportunity to practice coaching in a safe environment, and get feedback from the teacher and other students. It’s a place to sharpen the saw, if you will.

I decided to participate in a different Community of Practice than usual in ICA. I’d just been doing the General/Life Community of Practice. I thought I’d start trying out new ones. Tonight, it was the Business Community of Practice. I had come on the call with the intention of “listening and learning.” There were only three participants, so I stepped up to be the official observer. As an observer, my job was to watch for the 11 “core competencies” of coaching as established by the International Coaching Federation.

Jerry from Australia coached Jenny from the United States, who had some challenges around starting her business. I took copious notes on Jerry’s excellent coaching of Jenny. The thing that was an “a-ha!” moment for me was noticing that Jerry’s coaching was very similar to how I coach my clients, and noticing that Jenny’s business issues were similar to my clients’ issues. I had never thought of myself as a “business coach” before. I think I had stopped myself from going there because of what I “thought” business coaching was and the reality of it. I thought business coaching was limited to coaching executives and going into corporate environments. I learned that 80% of business clients come from small businesses, entrepreneurs.

I’ve thought of myself as a life/strategy coach for creative people, entrepreneurs and people in the performing arts. I realize that I am in fact a strategy coach for entrepreneurs and small business owners. I could still coach people in the performing arts, with the latter possibly being more from the business end. (I’ve long been involved to some degree with the performing arts, and so I am seeking a niche that could incorporate people in show business.)

This will keep me up tonight! The wheels are already turning, and they’re LOUD!

Andrew

International coaching and technology

I took a class this morning about coaching internationally. One of the appealing ideas about the business of coaching is that you could potentially have clients anywhere in the world, thanks to modern telecommunications. After all, in my ICA classes, there are students from all over the globe on the calls. It’s not quite so simple, though. There are things to consider: differences in culture, language and understanding; regulatory or legal considerations; the process of collecting payment and the conversions of currency; and more. Still, the idea that I might someday have a global business is rather thrilling. For the younger generation, a lot of today’s technology and global business climate is simply how things have always been done. I may be “with it” enough to text message with the best of them, but I can also recall a much simpler time, when someone calling “long distance” was treated as royalty, and when other countries were places you might visit once in a lifetime but communications were only by handwritten letters that took weeks to arrive. When I was a child there were no pushbutton phones, there was but one telephone company, there was no such thing as an answering machine or voice mail, and computers were giant machines with no screens used only by some large data processing companies or the military. Technology has changed everything, hasn’t it?

Coaching by woods on a snowy evening

Of course, the title to this post was borrowed by the old Robert Frost poem, “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.”  The title popped into my head the other night, when it was snowing in New York, and I had a coaching client.  One of the things that attracted me to coaching was one of the same things that attracted me to network marketing.   “You can run your business in your underwear.”  Now, when you think about it, it’s probably not the most glamorous image you can think of, unless it involves a supermodel doing business in their underwear.   And really, the underwear is not the point.  It’s the feeling of freedom.  I love the fact that I can create a profound difference for people who don’t have to know how, or even if, I’m dressed; whether I’m having a bad hair day; or anything else that could never happen in a face-to-face session.  Still, there I was, in my long underwear, taking a coaching call.   Technically I wasn’t “by woods,” unless you want to consider Riverside Park, some three blocks away.   Well, maybe old Mr. Frost never experienced Manhattan (“… and blocks to go before I sleep…”).

Streams of coaching income

One thing I love about the coaching business is that it opens up so many possible streams of income. Most people think of coaching as a fee-based business. But that’s linear income: you trade your time for money. If you don’t show up for your call, you don’t get paid. Why not work harder, not smarter? Create multiple streams of income from things like speeches, information products, books, etc., and make them into passive streams of income by making them things that you can sell over and over again, through a website, at the back of the room at a seminar, and through sales on other people’s sites. You do the work once, get paid over and over again. Why not get paid while you sleep? Works for me!

Hello world!

Well here I am, blogging in the material world. Here I will post my musings on my classes at ICA as well as coaching-related experiences.

Tonight I have my own teleclass. Every Thursday, I lead a one-hour teleclass where I teach coaching fundamentals to a small group of men who are part of MDI – Men’s Divisons International in New York. This evening we will go over what we’ve learned so far in the past few months, and then set up a three-hour in-person event where we will create a coaching-based goal program designed to cause men to know and live their purpose and win in the game of life. Sounds like a mouthful, doesn’t it?