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If you're a solo entrepreneur and you're not using Google voice you are doing something wrong.
Yes, I know that's a powerful statement. But I want to shake you, get your attention and excite you to action.
In this series of blog posts I will talk about why a solo entrepreneur needs Google voice as well as how to use Google voice and exploit little-known features while saving you and your business lots of money.
Before continuing, I want to define who I refer to when I say "solo entrepreneur”. Simply stated a solo entrepreneur is a business person who is in business by themselves. Other terms used to describe a solo entrepreneur include freelancer self-employed sole proprietor and home-based business owner. Consultants, business coaches, career coaches and life coaches are typically solo entrepreneurs. So if this describes you and you're not using Google voice read on. (If you are already using Google voice and eager for tips and tricks, you'll have to wait for the second blog post in this series).
So why do I think Google Voice is so critical for the solo entrepreneur? Because Google voice allows you to convey a professional image to current and prospective clients, gives you an arsenal for managing your voicemail communications, allows you flexibility to do what you want to do when you want to do it and does it all for free.
Let’s examine each of these variables using a fictitious character, Hank Smith, a life coach.
Your Professional Image
Nothing says UNPROFESSIONAL more than calling up Hank, being forwarded to his answering machine and hearing “Hi, Hank, Francis, Tommy and Gonzo the dog are out right now, leave a message and what you want and we’ll call you back.” Google Voice gives you the ability to have your own phone number and own voicemail. Imagine if you gave out your Google Voice number to clients and they called and heard a professional message from their prospective life coach. What would they think of you?The Google Voice Arsenal
We will be delving into the Google voice arsenal of tools in subsequent blog posts. But I would like to give you this preview:Imagine you are trying to reach a new prospective client, John, and you are playing phone tag. John doesn't have email; just a mobile phone. John calls and gets your voicemail because you are out hiking and hears, “Hi John. I set up free consults for people interested in getting more balance in their life while making their dreams come to life. Please leave me three times on Wednesday where we can talk on the phone for a ½ hour.”
You check your email messages on a peak and read John’s voicemail because has been converted to text and sent to your email automatically. You send John an email to his mobile phone confirming his choice of time and it looks like a text message that came from your phone.
On Wednesday, 10 minutes before the call, you accidentally drop your phone and it breaks. You log onto Google Voice and when John calls your business number, your friend’s cell phone rings. You answer and John knows nothing about the obstacles you just navigated through.
Flexibility
I have already illustrated this concept with the example above. Here’s the specifics:Because Google Voice is web-based, your incoming calls can be forwarded ANYWHERE. You can answer “your phone” on your mobile, home or office lines. You can answer “your phone” on the line coming into your hotel room. You can answer “your phone” on any computer. And, with a handy-dandy gizmo I will tell you about in part 4 of this series, you can even answer “your phone” on your home or office telephone handset when you don’t even have any phone service.Coming in part 2 of this series: how to set up Google Voice, migrate your existing phone number to Google Voice and (a SECRET TIP) how to get a second Google Voice number in another target market for a couple of sawbucks.
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The coaching-focused Mastermind Group in the Upper Valley of Vermont / New Hampshire will begin a new text on September 7th, 2010 that will help you expand your network, gain support and reach your goals.
The group, in collaboration with Borders Books, meets each Tuesday at 10:00 am in West Lebanon, NH. The new text, "Who's Got Your Back", by Keith Ferrazzi, provides an executable strategy for your most important plans without costing your sanity.
Many of us are caught up in the day-to-day struggle between work and family and fun and wellness. How do you do keeping yourself balanced? How do you keep yourself grounded? How do you keep yourself focused? How do you insure you reach your goals in a focused but mindful way? Ferrazzi's book explains a nine-step approach to building what he calls lifeline relationships.
With "Who's Got Your Back" you will learn to create meaningful and trusting relationships well beyond your success. You will benefit from reading this book regardless of whether you engage the Mastermind Process.
If you are like most people, however, just read books and don't engage them fully. Coaching brings the book to life. Through masterminding this book won't be another piece of information but will become an actionable strategy you can depend on being accountable to.
If you live near the West Lebanon, NH / White River Junction, VT area -- you owe it to yourself to check out the power of Masterminding.
"Who's Got Your Back" shows us that relationships are the key to our success in business. You will learn the kinds of relationships that really make a difference. Ferrazzi also shows us how to get further in setting your goals and staying more powerful in your career.
The Mastermind Group works through each book slowly - one text about every three months - so participants can easily keep up with the reading.
Have you read this book? Do you think it is as impactful as Ferrazzi's last book, "Never Eat Alone" (which we also covered in the Mastermind Group).
For more information about the Mastermind Group, call me at 802-380-1026 or go to http://Mastermind.TrueAzimuth.biz.
Facebook is heating up the competition to penetrate websites outside of the Facebook platform by adding a number of gadgets / widgets / tools that can be added to a website, they have created pages from the interest section of your profile and they have replaced
“Become a Fan” with “Like” for business pages on Facebook.
What does this mean for the business owner or organization with a “page” presence on Facebook already? Confusion. What does this mean to your consumer / client / target audience?
Confusion.
What should you do about all of this? Wait patiently for the dust to settle.
To illustrate the potential mess, consider my coaching business, True Azimuth, LLC. I have a website, a
coaching blog and a Facebook Page. All are integrated nicely. When someone goes to my website
or blog I encourage them to become a fan on Facebook. When someone goes to True Azimuth’s Facebook page, they can see a feed from my blog integrated on the page.
Now I have a new Facebook Page for True Azimuth, LLC (which I can’t control – at least at the moment) that was
created from the employer listing on my profile. True, I could have chosen not to create the page – I am currently the only employee of my coaching business. But what happens to BIG companies with thousands of employees on Facebook? You guessed it – it only takes one employee to create the company page! What a mess – more on this later.
Now “Like” comes along. Facebook developers have changed “Become a Fan” with “Like” – a move which I thought I liked. But then they added these website gizmos to the mix – more things to “Like.” And guess what?
None of these are connected!
So, say I add the inline code to both my blog and my website to allow people to “Like” them. A person comes to my blog and clicks “Like” – that does not mean they are now a Fan of my business on Facebook – they just “Like” my blog. Same thing with my website. If a person “Likes” my website, that doesn’t mean the “Like” my blog or my Facebook page.
The result: complete marketing mayhem and utter chaos!
Thrown in with this mix is the ability to feed news from your website into the Facebook News stream of people who “Like” you. If you have a website, blog and Facebook page, it could easily mean your target market gets up to three duplicate messages if you have a consolidated / integrated web presence like I do.
Add to this these new pages created from Facebook profiles and you have a cluster of a mess to sort out.
My solution? I am waiting for this dust to settle before I jump into Facebook’s newest gadgets. BTW – you should be doing that anyway – meaning your social media strategy and your web presence strategy should be built on a solid marketing plan that you review and update annually – keeping you and your business from making impulsive, jump-on-the-bandwagon decision.
(That is what I coach my business clients to do)
What is your solution? Do you like Facebook’s new “Like”?
The weekly teleclass component of the Reality Coach credential is now recorded and available online at http://podcast.RealityCoaching.info or http://teleclass.RealityCoaching.info. It is also streamed in directly at the main Reality Coaching site (in the feeds area). So you now never have to worry about missing a call.
Reality Coaching -- an approach to business coaching / life coaching using an established model -- has an entire learning website avaiable for coaches who want to move beyond a constellation of disperate techniques or gut feelings to a model for growth and change used by thousands of "change agents" -- counselors, social workers, personal coaches, marriage and family therapists -- world wide.
You can participate in any number of ways -- from online blogging as you read texts to publishing papers that show the power of Reality Coaching -- to the weekly teleclass -- to live role plays via conference calls. You keep track of your own progress and success via your own personal website / e-portfolio that is assigned and created for you at http://RealityCoaching.info (registered participants only).
One final note, listening to a recording of a Reality Coaching teleclass does not count as meeting one of the requirements toward the Reality Coach Credential (which is participating in the teleclass).
Coaching is controversial because coaching as a service is not standardized and no universal coaching regulatory standard exists.
As a result, anyone -- and I mean anyone -- can call themselves a coach and take on clients.
According to Rey Carr, of the Canadian group Peer Resources, there are more than 65 distinct coaching credentials. The systems used to grant these credentials vary. Some are competency-based, some require hours of training, others require supervision by someone who already has the credential, some rely on self-assessment, some can be obtained without ever coaching a client; and some are blatantly based on simply proclaiming oneself a coach. The self-reported largest of these credentialing systems: the International Coach Federation, the International Association of Coaching and the European Coaching Institute all have different requirements for accreditation.
These self-appointed accreditation bodies and the liberal use of the terms 'certification' and 'credentialing' throughout the coaching industry only confuse the public.
While in theory certification protects the public, the current group of arbitrary designations create a profession with no integrity.
It’s little more than a marketing tool.
So what’s the coach to do? What‘s the consumer to do?
Prospective coaches: The best certification you can get is a college diploma. You need degrees in business or psychology. Ignore credential and certification programs, no matter how deceptive they may be with powerful words like universal registered coaching certification. If you attend a coach training program do so because of the content and skills offered and not because of the letters you get afterward.
©2007 True Azimuth, LLC
Business Coaching, Relationship Coaching, Life Coaching
Watch coach Scott Graham provide an overview of his coaching style using a personal coaching client.
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If you work with a coach, ask them what their model of human behavior and change is.
Do they respond by offering you some complicated graphic about the coaching dynamic, talking about techniques, skills or procedures or handing you some other mumbo-jumbo?
If you are a coach – you may be reading this and may have taken offense -- take a moment to articulate your model. Post it under comments. I want to read about it.
Coaching without a model is like driving a car without a road map.
You might be an expert at how to parallel park. You might be an expert on how to change a tire. But if you don’t have a road map, you will be lost the moment you drive outside the area you maintain in your head – your mental road map. Most coaches who don’t have a model end up giving advice – based on what they know – directions, if you will, from their mental road map.
Most coaches operate without a road map -- they have no model. Just an amalgamation of skills and "gut" instinct.
Working with a coach without a model is like getting into the passenger seat of that car and trusting that the person without the road map is going to get you to where you want to go! Ever been a passenger with a driver who doesn't have a road map? What was that like?
Gestalt Coaching, Adlerian Coaching, Coaching based on NLP and Reality Coaching® are methods of coaching based on an established model of human behavior. They are they road maps to get you where you want to go.
©2007 True Azimuth, LLC
Business Coaching, Relationship Coaching, Life Coaching