Ana Melikian Business Development in the Online World for Executive Coaches

Hi, Anna, how are you?

I'm doing great. Great to see you.

Same here. I'm so excited to interview you for our new series, Miko TV. It is a television station we're creating on YouTube for, uh, focus in leadership. Both for executive coaches, consultants, human resources, talent management, all various areas. And we're going to have different channels, one for wonderful people like yourself, one for authors, a whole bunch of exciting things. So, Anna, you have now opened a new company and you're already successful. Tell us the name. Tell us about it. Tell us everything.

And the interesting thing, Amaze Coaching is my first company that I left it a little bit for the side when I was focusing on another project. And now I'm going back to my passion that is a lot to do about mindset, positivity, and strategy. So the company in itself is when I start to become a coach, I founded Amaze Coaching. And then I went in other venues and another company that I found was the More Clients More Fun that has a lot of focus on LinkedIn. And now I'm back in the work that I love to do, that is to do with helping people shift that mindset.

Great. So I know that's how I met you was through More Clients More Fun and you've helped us to really take a a foothold in LinkedIn, helping us getting really focused on marketing the conference that we have for leaders and stakeholders called the MECO Conference, and which is going to take place this year. Takes place every year. This year it's May 21st to May 23rd in Estes Park in Colorado at the Stanley Hotel. And so You helped us really focus on our LinkedIn communication, and which really made a big difference in people understanding that the conference was for these various talent management groups to come together and look at the future and decide what they were going to need to solve issues of the future. Now with your new platform, What is your offering? Tell us about it.

And it's still a lot about my target market, the people that I love to work with. One of the main groups is coaches and consultants, and I still am helping them in the business development. LinkedIn is just one of the tools. I used to tell my clients when I was working one-on-one, yes, I'm an expert on LinkedIn, but that is just one tool in my toolbox. Because for—

One area of expertise.

Yes, and because in the online world I really can help a coach and consultant to develop business development in the online world. That is my area of expertise. And if they are an executive, a leadership coach, a small business coach, their target market is on LinkedIn. And LinkedIn is an amazing platform to generate leads. If I was working with a nutrition coach or a health coach, possibly Facebook will be a better platform for them.

That's interesting.

So it's where your people that you want to attract are more active is really the place to be. So it's really— and you will have different strategies to interact and to engage them. And even with online marketing, it's a very powerful tool. What I see is that people often get a little bit distracted with all technology and they lose the strategies. I always like to help people visualize where do they want to go and then design the roadmap, design the plan to arrive there, and then go one little— eat the elephant one bite at a time, so to speak.

So I know that when you speak, you're going to be speaking at the conference and you're going to talk to us about different social media and being prepared. I had no idea that depending upon the social media platform, that depends, that should relate to your target market.

The target market and also the email. I always say that we, we should have the domains and the customized names in most of these big social media platforms, LinkedIn, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube. So it's good to get our brand name there. But mainly if we are speaking coaches and consultants that have a practice, that is one-person business, maybe with an assistant, but it's still a practice that is really nice to And the joys of working at home like me.

Yes, I just saw your husband walk by.

Yes. People like me that work from home mainly through the computer, we really— the more scarce resource that we have is probably our time. And doing online things is very, very powerful. And we have to focus. on the platform that can give us more return of investment. So, and that has a lot to do with where we feel more comfortable in being, where we enjoy more in being, and of course where our clients or potential clients are.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I know that in your new company you have, one of the areas that you coach us in is how to get more Money for Our Time. And you have this philosophy of thinking about the year in terms of 7 weeks.

12 weeks.

12 weeks.

12 weeks. So it's called—

There's your husband again.

We have 2, so this is a— we have a home office.

I think he just likes to be on camera.

And so And I do all my coaching from the house, most of them. I still have a couple of clients in person, but most of my coaching, I do it online through Zoom. That is the technology that we are using here to record this. And we have— my husband works in real estate. He has a real estate company and he has his office there. I have my office here. I have my assistant working over there. So it's one of the great things of working at Alma.

Yes, yes.

And, but going back to your question about the 12-week year, it's again how changing sometimes our mindset of how we see things can make a huge difference. Because what happens a lot, and again, in a big company is different, and many coaches and consultants, mainly the ones of the ACEC, the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches, they have a background in corporations and they were used to a structure that, yes, they do an annual plan and then they divide the plan by quarters and even they have monthly plans and sometimes they really, all the meetings to keep on track on a weekly basis. Then they go to set their own business, become their own bosses And they say often they bring still the annualized plan and they bring the annual planning, they break it down in quarters, but then they don't— most of them don't have the structures in place to keep on track. And then what happens, okay, in January they do the year plan, right? They are energized. It's like the New Year resolutions, energized. And then after The first quarter, oh, I didn't hit my goals, but okay, I still have a lot of time to do. And then second quarter comes, oh, I would like to be a little bit better, but there is still time until we arrive to the third, beginning of the fourth quarter and alarm bells ringing, bling, bling, bling. We are not near close to our goals that we had planned in the beginning. And then, oh, we reset in the end of the year and the cycle begins again. So if we, in some way, there is that magic of the deadline of the end of the year that make us many solopreneurs really get ourselves together and do stuff and make things happen, why not do a mindset shift of multiplying that by 4 and make that happen 4 times a year?

So it's taking that beginning year energy And repeating that energy 4 times.

4 times. And so, shortening the deadline, because the problem of the 12 months is that it's a long time. So it's very difficult to be precise in the planning in 12 months. That is the first thing. And then is that, oh, if we have— is not having the constraint of limitation of time, oh, I have time, we also relax a little bit. sometimes too much. And it's not that we relax too much, because I think most coaches and consultants with their own business are really hard, hardworking people. They are really putting hours there. But if there is not a structure of the implementation day to day, we can be busy with the wrong things. So thinking of the year, that is the mindset shift. Instead of 12 months, 12 weeks. Then every week becomes a month and every day from Monday to Friday becomes a week. So if we take one workday as a week, we have to do what we propose usually in a week. We only can do that if we are extremely focused and if we have a precise plan. And in some way is what you do a lot. I see, I'm—

I'm—

I know you now maybe for 1 year and a half, and when you set your mind on something, you make it happen because you focus all your energy there.

Yes.

And you also know that not everybody can make that. So what, in my work with people with the 12 Week Year, I create the conditions for creating that focus. So we have a long-term vision where we want to go to our vision, and then we say what is the goals for the next 12 weeks. And this allows us to plan in a more specific way and make it happen. And even sometimes people, oh, I'm in LinkedIn because LinkedIn works if we focus in a very specific target market and people can serve other people besides that very narrow target market. And if we are thinking in one year, oh, it's, I don't want just to be known for that. But when we shift that to 12 weeks, so in the next 12 weeks, what is the market that you are going to be focusing there and start conversation with? It's easy for people to say, okay, I will try, let's try in this specific industry and let's see the number of connections that we can make there and the conversations that can we develop from that. So becomes a, it's like that famous image of the elephant. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. So if you have a big vision, that many coaches have a really big vision of creating an extraordinary impact, and they know that they can do it, but if they don't have a plan to break that down in small bites, they keep with amazing ideas that are not implemented. And if amazing ideas are not implemented, they are not rewarded by the marketplace.

Right. I think there's also the big risk that when you have a giant plan, if you get derailed, then all of a sudden your energy is totally drained and it's really hard to get back. I know when I started in business, my mentor said to me, be sure to celebrate those small wins because the small wins equal a huge win. And you want to make sure that you're always reaching towards that huge win. win, right? And so what I see often with people is that they are derailed because they lose, instead of looking at the loss as a learning opportunity to make you stronger and to keep going.

And sometimes I would say I like— I learn a lot when I'm studying all these models and all these ways of helping people until I find this system that is the 12 Week Year that I got trained and certified to teach it. And I learned a lot about peak performance on this to help people. And one of the, I think, things that we can think, if we think about peak performance is also very popular concept in sports.

Yes.

And if you think about, for instance, the Olympians, people that want to go to the Olympic Games. They have to— they have a 4-year goal because Olympics is every 4 years.

Right.

So that, in terms of their training plan to be in peak performance in 4 years, is extremely interesting how they do it. And if we think about our business in that terms, not 1-year goal, but okay, what is the big vision? Where we want to be in 4 years? What we want to be celebrating? What medal we want to be getting a reward in four years, and then what we have to do to achieve that. And what we see in the peak performance in the sports is that you have to have a training plan. You have to have events to keep you to test you and to evaluate and to keep you in that competitive spirit. And in the training, they use a lot a concept that is called. periodization. So you create periods of specific timeframes of training that you focus in one specific skill or a set of skills. And then you focus intensively on that. You get that under your belt and you go to the next one. And that in business, I think if we have that big elephant, that big vision, and then we say, okay, what is the bite that I have to chew now? What I have to achieve in the next 12 weeks? In order to build this and keep building and building in order to, in 4 years, to be where I want to be.

Yes.

And it's very important because even if we think somebody like Michael Phelps, that is the one that got more Olympic medals and lives here in Arizona, by the way.

Shout out to Arizona.

Yes. He moved here to Arizona. And, but I bet that there were days when he was training to the several Olympics that he participated and won so many medals, that were days that he didn't feel like going to the pool. Like, there are days for us that we don't feel like doing the things that we know that we're supposed to be doing. But probably he had enough systems in place, events and tools and circumstances in place, that made it easier for him just to get in the pool and just to do the training than not doing the training. And that is what we have to create. We have to make our day-to-day fun and our marketing activities and selling activities can be fun. I know that in the beginning it's very difficult to believe this, but it's possible. We have to find the things that really we enjoy to do and let us to connect with people, develop relationships, and get the clients. And at the same time, the process control implies that if we start to get off track, we start to get uncomfortable, and it's more comfortable to be on track.

You know, I want to talk to that for a moment because, you know, as the CEO of the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches, one of the things that I see that makes me very concerned is our coaches are all very, very successful. They're all master-level coaches. But the danger that I see is complacency. And so it can become a huge derailer. There is a fear of failure that is very subtle that happens when you're successful. And people think that that fear only exists when you're not successful, but the fear is change.

I agree with that. And the other thing that we see a lot is that, okay, they are too used to the referrals in a good way. The business comes from referrals. Not in a good way. Yeah, no, it's a reward of work well done when you have a lot of experience in the market, you have that the phone is ringing. And almost the marketing that you have to do is answer the phone quickly. And it's what we call inbound leads. They are coming by referral. They are warm leads. It's much easier to close. It's wonderful to be in that space. And it's the dream of many coaches and consultants. And at the same time, we have to realize that if we're not keeping doing certain things, That phone can't stop ringing. The referrals can't stop coming.

I always remember the case study of the big guy being IBM and the nobody being Apple. And look what happened. IBM became so enthralled with itself, nobody could touch them. And the little guy came in and said, Huh, let's go to the garage and create something.

And now it's like that was in totally slow motion to the world today, because that process of disruption is being accelerated to a rhythm that is mind-blowing. It's really, really true. And coaches, I think, and I agree that the Some people, we can get too comfortable and don't realize that we need to keep innovating and keeping at the edge.

Yes.

And one of the things, so they say, being aware of the small crisis, of the small things that can be like the canary in the mine kind of things. Because when we start to see our referral sources Retiring in corporations.

Yes.

That should be not a canary, but a big alarm ringing. Because, and that is one of, I have clients that come to me exactly with that. They say, I'm very good in what I do. I have a great reputation in the target market. I used to just listen to the phone ringing. I want to keep working because I love the work we do. But the people that were sending me the referrals are not there anymore.

And these are the coaches, the master-level coaches, who said to me when I started ACEC 6 years ago, I don't need to know how to turn on a computer. I don't need to know Facebook. I don't need to know LinkedIn.

I—

what is Twitter? That's for my children. I'll be retired by then. And look what has happened.

Yeah, because, and many of them, they absolutely love what they are doing.

Yes.

And they know, how do you say, that their contribution, what they can help a company, and in terms of the leadership, in terms of the development, is really impactful. And they will—

They're amazing. They're amazing coaches.

And they want to keep going.

Yes.

And to keep going, they have to adapt to this new reality with this new reality that technology is one of the things that is coming with a lot of strength. And that doesn't take the years of years of experience that they have, but for that to shine and to have an impact, And to be used, they have to know how to use the technology that we have today too.

And you know what? I can appreciate how scary it is because when I started ACEC, what I did first is I took a year off and I focused not on building a business, I focused on learning technology. I learned how to build a website. I learned what Twitter was. But I'll tell you what. As fast as I've learned, as much as I've learned, the other day when I had a conversation with you about podcasts, I said, oh my God, I'm not paying attention. How did I miss that podcasts have taken over, you know, just the digital space? What is wrong with me? I'm so embarrassed.

And again, it's like the— we cannot— there are things that we don't know. And I think that is one of the problems of we are experts in our area of expertise and almost like we cannot admit that we don't know something.

Absolutely, absolutely. And I'll tell you what, if it hadn't been for the fact that we, on occasion, what happens with the association, it's for master-level coaches, but about every 4 years we let in 1 or 2 people that are not master level to groom them personally. And this year we let in a millennial. And if it wasn't for her talking to me, and then all of a sudden it started to hit me, I'm missing something. And that led to the dialogue with you and the information about podcasts. And now we're going to have a YouTube channel.

Yes.

But I almost missed it.

Yeah. And that is the other thing of the video, they say, because the podcasts, they are also video podcasts. And that is a lot, most of the more popular is the audio versions in iTunes and other platforms. But the video, each time, like we are doing a video interview here.

That's right.

That is going to be in the Nico TV. That is so— I have a colleague and good friend, Lou Burton, that he wrote a book last year that one of the things that he says in the book, the world is going video. And it's totally— I would say nowadays YouTube is one of the places that people search for things, that people find things. You, in LinkedIn, you can put videos to communicate with people. In Facebook, video is having an extremely important way of communicating. And it's amazing even for the one-on-one relationships and to build relationships with our connections. This technology like Zoom is amazing. It's much better than the phone. Yes, having a coffee in person is even better, but if by geographical distance we cannot do that, Zoom is wonderful.

And I'll tell you what, for introverts, it is nirvana. Yeah.

And also for our time use, because instead of driving half an hour, 1 hour, We just go in one minute, we are in one call, and then we can be in the other minute on another call.

Yes.

Because another thing that I see with coaches and consultants with loads of experience, mainly in the corporation world, mainly the ones that work at team levels and organization levels, they are starting, they love what they do, and at the same time they are, they don't want to be road warriors anymore. They are tired of traveling or being always in a plane. The time, the jet lag starting to be a little bit more difficult to get over it. They need more time to recover and they want to keep making a difference, but also enjoying their family, their grandkids in many occasions that they have, enjoying life in a different way. While keeping active and doing the things that they are so good about doing. And technology can be the way that makes it possible.

Absolutely. So Anna, give us a couple of more tips from your new company on how we can condense our concern about liability in terms of, you know, do we have enough time, how we're managing our time, How we can expand and still have time to breathe.

And that, I think, is one of the fascinating things about— is the time. And time use is one of the core of the system. If we are not in control of our time, we really— and if we are not aware of what we say yes to and no to, we really don't have time to do the things that that matter most to achieve our goals. And at the same time is another mindset shift, the importance of mindset. We have the tendency to see time almost like from a Newton, Isaac Newton perspective of the universe. Okay. Gravity. We have, okay, time is limited. We have only this amount of time. We have to manage the time. And we can learn a lot about managing the 24 hours of our day and the resting time and all of that. And at the same time, if we go from Newton to Einstein, and if we think of time as a much more open concept—

Fluid.

Much more fluid, then we start to open our minds to amazing possibilities. That maybe we can create time. And maybe the time— because we know about the subject time that can go very fast, can go very slow. And if we start to imagine the possibilities of seeing time from a totally different perspective, then we start to understand more what we see peak performance people do. That is, they— when they are in something, they are totally focused. In the zone of it, and they do a lot in that short amount of time. Then they also take time to rest and recover and enjoy other things. And then they are extremely intentional. So in our peak performance, we have to be extremely intense— intentional in the use of our time. And also rest, recover, to then be, again, extremely intentional in what we do. And that way, we really can achieve more with less time.

Interesting. Well, Anna, this has been amazing. I know that I want to come back to you and talk to you, because you made a comment the other day when we were on Zoom. And you said— we were talking about meeting again, and you said, No, I can't do it that week because I'm committed to business development. Now I want to know more about this commitment to business development. What is it you do? How do you do it? Because you've done it very successfully multiple times. And so I want to peek into the inside of Anna's mind in terms of business development.

One of the— I divide my goals into 12 weeks. I try to walk my talk. So I plan things in the 12 weeks and I like to have income goal because the income goal is not— how do you say? We want— for me, money is a means to an end, but I love the objectivity of a number. And if I say I'm going— my business is going to produce this income at the end of these 12 weeks, I achieve it or not achieve it, I'm close, it's very measurable. So I like that for a goal to be extremely specific and measurable. And then if I design my business development to achieve that goal, I have to take time for doing it. That is the reality. If we just say, oh, I'm supposed to do these activities, but they are not scheduled, I don't have time reserved during my days or weeks to do it, they are not going to happen. Again, it's the making a system and putting the process control in place for the things that we say that are important really happen in our day-to-day. So I, as a rule of thumb, in terms of time use, I try to have at least 3 hours a week that is strategy time. That is very like to to have the time to think, to see the big picture, and to decide what is the important things to do. And then schedule time to the execution of the ideas that come from that strategical time. And for instance, recently I was launching a group online for this type of this work. It's the Maze Zone 4X Your Success. And I had to create videos. I want to do a video launch with several videos. And I know that that is extremely time-consuming. So I had to put a little bit aside other things to focus on that. And so in other words, during this 12-week time or sprints, there will be weeks that I decide that I'm going to be focusing certain projects to make them happen, and also some routines or practice that I like to be there almost always. Things like always having between 3 to 5 conversations per week that can lead to clients. And this number can be different for different people, but if you don't have a number, a good starting point is aiming for 5 conversations a week. with potential leads that can become clients. Because it's that outreach, mainly I'm a little bit introvert, so I have to push myself to be outreaching. Otherwise, it's like you were saying before, we get comfortable. Oh, we have our totally booked solid. Great. So why do I have to push myself to stretch myself to outreach to new people? Because otherwise I know that my business will be like the the peaks and valleys in income. I'm very busy delivering, delivering, that project stops, oh my gosh, where is the next client? Then I go, and if I keep that marketing business development going, there is always somebody in the pipeline that will fill the space when they have more time free to serve more clients.

Interesting. Well, you know, as I look, listen to you, I realize now how I've been able to do the things that I've Woo! Because many people have said to me, CB, how did you go from not anyone knowing anything about the association to all of a sudden the big guys are watching you? And I could never answer that question. I've been teased for one of my methods, which is I jump first and then figure out on the way Where I'm going to land. And I realize now that I'm very protective of my mornings. Like, people are not supposed to call me before 12 noon, and I got teased for it. And I'm, I'm usually not up, but the reality is I'm up at 6 o'clock in the morning. It's just that's my processing time. It's my problem-solving time. And at noon I hit the ground and that's my action time.

Yes.

And I never thought about it in the way that you're expressing it.

Yeah, because most people are in the panic mode on doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, doing, doing without the strategy. And then is the thing of being very busy, working a lot, but not seeing the results of their work and can be very frustrating. and really drains our energy. It's almost like even a fire crew, when they go to a fire, they have to do some strategy. They have the methods, they know that, and they have to follow that because otherwise they are not so effective. But I think many coaches and consultants, everything is a fire. And they don't have a strategy to— effective strategy to stop that fire and to prevent other fires to come up all the time.

Sure, sure. Well, Anna, speaking of fires, we have another meeting.

Yes.

So this has been amazing. I would love permission to come back and continue the conversation with you. And I know that anyone listening to this is going to get a lot out of it. So thank you so much, uh, for being our interviewee for Miko TV.

Pleasure.

Bye now.