How to Start a Coaching Business Q&A with Terry Rice | 4/8/2021

Hey, so welcome to Q and A. We have some questions that came in in advance. I'm going to answer those first and then we have some people live who may have some questions. So I'll grab those afterwards. Let's go ahead and get started with it. And the first question. Oh, I love this one. Basically, how many times do you follow up after you've sent a proposal? Right? Which I know can be challenging because you're like, you have this great conversation with someone, they sound like they're on board and you send a proposal and there's crickets. So there is a section in the course where we talk about this. I believe it's module 6, but I give you the exact templates that you can use as well as the cadence when to send, send these emails. But basically what you want to understand is first of all, if someone says, hey, give me a few weeks, a few, maybe a month or something, respect those boundaries. I mean, you want to keep tabs on them, see what they're doing, follow them on social media and stuff. But there's no need really to check in if they already said I need this amount of time. But if things sound good on the phone and they ask for a proposal, one thing you can do to kind of reduce some of the uncertainty is I use a tool called Mixmax M I X M A X And that way I can track my opens on my emails. If I send them an email with the proposal, I'll see if they even bothered to open it. And what you might realize is, oh, they open it on their cell phone and you can actually see where they are. So you can say, okay, well they live in New York City, they open it on their cell phone in Montana. Maybe they're on vacation or something, right? And if they're on their cell phone, they're probably not going to reach out to you and say, oh yeah, it sounds good. So that's one thing. The tool that I often use for my proposals is called honeybook. And same thing with that, you can see when someone actually opens up your proposal and views it as well as the contract. So that will release reduce some anxiety in regards to wondering what the heck's going on. But when it is time to actually follow up, I normally give it a week. I give it a week. And again on my end I'm thinking it's probably not something I did wrong. There might be something completely out of my control that's causing this delay. And that way you don't have this, like this, this, this self sabotaging mindset. Oh, what did I do wrong? Because you'll drive yourself crazy. Maybe nothing went wrong. Maybe they lost their cell phone. Right? Or something, something like that. But you can follow up in a week. And normally I would just do something basic like, hey, do you have any questions about what I said? I know there's a lot of information there. Does anyone else need to talk to me in regards to this proposal? You know, is that a good way for me to help out? So you can start by doing that. And another approach is if you see something relevant to share with them that would lend some reason why you're reaching out. Hey, you know, we talked about this new law, by the way. I found this great article that goes through step by step by step what it means for a business like yours. Just wanted to share that with you. And by the way, let me know if you have any questions about the proposal. Right. So you can do that too, if you still don't hear back instead of, I know it's natural to feel like you should vomit out all these reasons why they should work with you. Still, like, I was really looking forward to this because this will be great, so on, so forth. One of my buddies, this guy, Jake Savage, he gave me a really good tactic where you just ask them one question because that's so much easier to respond to one question and harder to ignore than it is if you ask, know, like paragraphs and paragraphs of information. So you can just say, hey, is this something you're still interested in doing? That's it. That's it. Not like, you know, again, like going on and on and on about, you know, how you're the right choice for them, so on so forth. It's hard to ignore that because the answer is yes or no. The answer might be, yeah, you know, we're trying to work on some budget things right now, or, you know what, this came up as another priority and we need to focus on this first. So try that approach as opposed to just going on and on and on with all these reasons why they should choose you. But one thing you can also do, taking a step back to help solve for that is when you do get that. Yes. Or when you're on the phone, you can say, you know, how big of a priority is this for your company right now? Because that way, if there is some kind of gap, you'll know why. It's like, look, they're putting out fires. You know, this is something I want to do eventually, but right now, this is big fire. They need to put out. So if I don't hear back, it's because of that. Right. So again, these are ways to kind of reduce some of the anxiety, the uncertainty, but also make sure you're following up, because there are so many times when that term, the fortunes and the follow up comes true. So that's what I would recommend. Another question here, grab some water. Question is, how do you find a good videographer? I'm recording from my apartment, but it's not really working out too well. What do you think would be the best approach in regards to finding a professional? I don't know if you need necessarily a videographer. You might need an editor. So you can still create great videos just from your home, even with your cell phone, but maybe you need someone to edit them and maybe put captions on or some kind of thumbnails. So before you, like, spend a lot of money on a videographer, that might be your first step, if you're not already deeply into the content creation process in general. Right. And then outside of that, the best way to find one often is through your network. So we could say is. And this is a way to, like, thinly veil an advertisement for your company too. You could say, hey, by the way, you know, as you might know, I'm offering digital marketing services and. And looking for a good videographer to help me create some content. Does anyone know anyone? So maybe your network, and you're doing this on, like, Instagram or LinkedIn or whatever, maybe they don't know a good videographer, but they'll see that and say, I don't know anybody. But wait, what do you do again? Tell me more about that. So that's one approach you can take as well, just literally by asking your network. And I see we have some more people joining here. Let me make sure I welcome everybody. Oh, we got Marion in here twice. Cool. All right. Well, welcome back. So that's one approach. And then just asking around your network directly. So, like, not just on social media directly. There are platforms you can go to as well. And if it's a local person, you'd have to look locally, but maybe just like, look for a job board for videographers. I know there's a few in New York City I've used before. The names escape me right now. But just find one where you can get reviews on people, especially, because that's super important to make sure that they're vetted. So I would start there. If you know anyone locally. That's what I was getting to. If you know anyone Locally you can go directly to them and say, who do you use? But circling back on what I was saying, you might just need an editor and in that case you can cast an even wider net. Maybe you do go on upwork platform like that to find an editor and ask for examples of what they've done before in the past to, to see what kind of work they can reduce what. What I've also done is I found people on upwork, but I've given more than one person a very simple task like, hey, can you please edit this 15 second video? You know, it shouldn't cost more than 50 bucks or whatever, probably less. And then just see who does a better job. Right? So yes, you are double paying for completion of that task, but at least you're saying, okay, well, I'm vetting out a few people to see who does the best job in regards to turnaround time, so on and so forth. But that's what I would recommend and being extremely clear about the deliverables you're looking for. Right. So if you can give them examples. Oh, I want it to look like this, you know, this style. It has to be for this platform because that's the problem I had with my videographer or sorry, my editor recently. I wasn't giving him the right direction. So he's giving me videos that didn't fit for igtv. But I never said it has to be for igtv. I gave him aspect ratios, which were wrong by the way, because that's not my thing. And as soon as I said it's for igtv, he's like, oh, you need this. So the more details you can give someone, the better off they'll be. And you won't be like me messing them up and forcing them to do work twice, which is, it's got to be annoying. I never done that kind of work before. But often editors will offer sometimes unlimited revisions or they'll say two or three, but if they had to do one or two because you don't know what ratios to tell them, that's kind of on you and you want to respect everyone's time, right? So yeah, that's what I would suggest. The more information give them, the better. And I normally use a tool called Loom L O O m to do a recording of what I need and even like have a video playing in the recording of what I'm looking for so they know exactly what my goal is. All right, next question. I've been contacted to do an in person event, but I'm a bit concerned due to Covid. What are your thoughts on this? Would you do it? I'm fully vaccinated, but I still have some concerns. That's. That's like a. That's an interesting question, because I don't want to pretend like I know the science behind it, but even to my understanding, even if you are vaccinated, you can still potentially spread it to people. Check me on that if I'm wrong. But if you don't feel comfortable, you just shouldn't do it. You know, it's not worth the money. There's way too many. There's way too many opportunities to do stuff remotely these days to feel like you have to be forced to do something in person, even if you're not getting a lot of gigs right now. I don't think it's a reason to. And I'm not saying it's a panicky move. I don't feel like it's a reason to step outside of your comfort zone, literally, and do something like that. So, I mean, in the right situation, you know, if it was, like, outdoors and people knew not to come talk to you or whatever, I'm sure that would be great. But you can't expect everyone to have the same, you know, boundaries that you do. And if you're preparing for this talk, even the anxiety going into it could be very challenging and impact your personal and professional life. Even just, like, thinking about going there. And then obviously in the moment when you're delivering that talk, you're like, okay, I'm going to talk, but please no one touch me afterwards. Like, you know, how are you going to give the best presentation when you have that going through your head? So if you're feeling that way, then it's a good indication to me that you probably don't want to do it. Everything you do should be a hell yes or a no. So if you're not hell yes, and it sounds like you're not, I would just settle on no and keep it moving. But the most important thing is this. Whenever you say no to an opportunity, do your best just to kind of move on and forget about it. Because there's been so many times when I've said no to one thing or another, and I used to think back, oh, what if I said yes? What if I said yes? And first of all, I've never landed on, oh, I wish I did say yes. But second one is a waste of time anyways. So the quicker you can kind of just clear that from your memory and focus on Something else, the more efficiently you'll be using your energy going forward. So I would just say no and be on your merry way. So hopefully that helps. So I have one more question that came in in advance. So if any of you in attendance right now have questions, go ahead and pop them into the Q window. If you want to come on and ask me in real time, verbally or with your camera on as well, feel free to do so, just let me know in the chat window. But this is our last question. So if you don't have any, then this might be a short Q and A session. So the question is, I have a client I've been working with for a while, but lately my duties have been expanding quite a bit. I believe this is called scope creep. It is called scope creep. What do I do? Do I raise my rates? Do I push back? What's the best approach? So scope creep's challenging because sometimes it's a function of you not defining and not blaming it on you. I'm saying it's not as. It's a function of you not defining what, like the scope is initially. Right? So did you say you do this or you don't do that? And if it's on you where you didn't say it initially, then you have to have a tough conversation and double back and say, look, I didn't think this was going to be this. This involved, and I need to make some adjustments either to the scope of what I can do or how much I can, you know, pay. Get. Get paid for this. Right? I did that before. I was doing this, this audit for this company. I used to love doing digital marketing audits because they're pretty. They're pretty easy. You know, you make a lot of money. They're easy. But the scope expanded because I couldn't get the login details from the company that I was auditing. It was on behalf of another company they were going to buy. I could get the login details. So I'm going back and forth trying to teach this other company how to log into their account. And then just a bunch of stuff happened. Much of, like, geeky digital marketing stuff. And I was like, I'm spending hours on this stuff. I'm like, I had to actually train them on how to use a tool to run data, run reports. That took me three hours. So I went back to the client and I was like, look, I want to see this to completion, but there's no way in heck I would know it was going to take this long for them. Just to compile their data for me to analyze. And they're like, you know what, don't worry about it. Like, whatever you need to get paid, you know, let us know. We want to make sure that you feel rewarded. So I've actually never had a problem with scope creep. I'm lucky in that regard. But it's really on you to first of all say, you know, did I define this properly? And if not, have a tough conversation and then just address it and say, look, there's two options. One is I'm going to do it. The other is you have to pay me more. But only do it if, first of all, it's work. You would. You don't have to, like, enjoy it, but like, you wouldn't mind doing it because, like, maybe it's a one time thing and it won't take you away from other stuff, meaning other jobs that you're working on currently or, I don't know, like your health, you know, your workout routine, Whatever it is, you shouldn't have to sacrifice because the scope has increased. So before you say yes, you want to make sure that what you're saying yes to will not take away from everything else that you'd like to do. So that's my approach. It's never pleasant, but it's something you have to bring up as soon as possible. Because this one client, she was doing, again, this is digital marketing, and they started asking her to make all these website updates that were not within her scope. And she's like, well, how do I tell them I don't want to do this anymore? I'm like, well, tell them, you know, be blunt. But next time catch it as soon as possible. Because then they'll say, well, you've been doing it for two months. Like, how come you can't do anymore? So the sooner you can do it, the better. All right, cool. So, okay, cool. You have a question and an update. Do you want to just ask me in real verbally or visually? Or do you want to ask me here? How can I be of assistance here? I'm looking forward to this update, but I can bring you on as a panelist if you want to talk instead of typing. Whichever one's easier. Cool. All right, so let me do this and I will bring you as a panelist. Cool. All right.

Hi, can you hear me? Hi.

Hey, how are you?

Hi. Good. So I have an update on the recommendation you made, I think, two weeks ago, about asking those that are RFP evaluators what they think makes a good RFP versus asking the architects to respond. And I went ahead and I. Part of, you know, people in my network, I think like 20 of them. It takes a lot of following up to get answers, but I have like five or six right now and people have promised me some, so I think I'll get to 10. But it's really interesting that it certainly validated my course material, but also given me more unique points of views that I don't have. So I thought that was a really good suggestion. So. So thanks. I also think I can use some of it for, like, because I asked a question like, what's your biggest pet peeve when it comes to, like, how people respond? So I'm guessing I can like, link into LinkedIn blogs, like, top 10 things not to do, or some things like that that I feel like I now have more content than I did previously. So. Yeah, what would you do after you do the survey? Like, what's your next step with all that great insight that comes across from them?

Well, you kind of stole my idea turning into content, so I think making it this blog, like, top 10 things not to say is great. You can also make it like micro content. Like, you can say, hey, if you're submitting an rfp, here's one mistake not to make. And like, that would just be like a LinkedIn post or an Instagram post. And then at the end you can say, to read my full blog, like, click on this link. But I think that's what it is. You could also turn it into a presentation that you can deliver to your audience saying, hey, I have this presentation, top 10 mistakes to avoid when you're making an RFP. And you can say, look, this is not just my opinion. I've done this work for you. Like, you know when you're always wondering why you're getting rejected? I have access to these people and they told me, you know, what their reasons are. So I'm going to remove all the confusion around this to help you increase your conversion rate from these RFPs and feel more confident when you do submit them. So I'm going to demystify the whole process because I have access you don't have, and I'm going to share that with you right now.

I'm going to copy that language when I go back to the recording because. Yeah, no, that's. That's a really good way to say that. Yeah, go ahead.

I was going to say real quick. There's this woman who's a journalist, but that's why she teaches people how to get PR from media companies. She's like, I'm the expert. I'm a journalist. I get pitched all the time. I'll tell you what works and what doesn't work. So that's the way you can position yourself as well. It's pretty cool.

Yeah, that's really interesting. Awesome. So then the other question I had was I was noticing you were posting about the one page business plan, seminar or workshop that you're going to do. How is that integrated into this course? Or like, is it helpful for us to join as well? I haven't.

You can definitely join. Yeah, I mean, you can definitely join. I think this is gonna be a much more intimate atmosphere with, with us on these Q and A's. First of all, those. That's only a one time thing. This is every week. But you're welcome to join. The majority of that'll be me walking through. Actually the beginning will be me walking through how to fill out the plan. But really the goal is to answer questions. It's not for me to talk too much. So on your end, I think you get more intimate access here than you would through that. But let's take a step back and make it more about you. I would love to see you do some kind of event where it's like, hey, I'm going to talk through the top 10 mistakes people make when they're filling out RFPs. You can attend live and ask me questions about your challenges. Based on this like set of rules I've made. You can do that every month. And then people get a chance to listen to you live and like, wow, she's brilliant. You know, I got to talk to this person. And that will get you even more questions from your audience. And like I said, questions create content. So then the next day you can say, oh, I led this talk about, you know, top 10 RFP questions. Here's some of the questions that came up as well as the answers. Want to join next time? Click here to sign up so you can turn your talk into content. And that content gets you more people to your talk and then just keeps on going.

That's a really good idea. When you say click here to sign up, like technically, like what software do you use for that? For like the platform to sign up? Because it's a one time webinar versus a sign up for a course. Like teachable.

Yeah, it's real basic. It's just, it's, it's zoom.

You just have a zoom link. Okay, that's.

Yeah. But the only difference that you might not be Accustomed to is if you require registration, it'll make a landing page for you. And on that landing page you can put like your logo, you can put a picture, you can put like more information so it looks better. But what I would also do is make a bitly link so you have a shorter URL. So it's not like zoom dot, blah, blah, blah, blah. Um, it's something shorter that you can create. Like I created a graphic in Canva. You promoted on Instagram as well. So I always do that. I try to have a truncated link, especially with the zoom link. It's so long. But that's, that's really it.

And you can, and I could like come out of the. I say come out of the woodworks because I haven't really been publicizing this on LinkedIn. But if I started this way, do you think it's a good, like first step perhaps to get an interested audience talking about the research I've done?

I do. And here's the thing, here's the thing that might happen. Maybe two people show up and that's totally fine because I did like a free workshop, I think, I don't know, like three or four months ago, I can't remember how long ago it was, but three people literally showed up. But the connections I made with them were so deep that we're more like business partners now. We're supporting each other in various ways because a billion people didn't show up. So I'm bringing this up because maybe you won't get a lot of signups, you know, but it's still just so nice to have that in depth conversation with someone and provide value, get their questions and then have a better understanding of your target audience. So I think you'll do well either way.

That makes a lot of sense. And I can reach out to different mailing lists that I have access to, like either those that signed up for my free course or others that have attended webinars in the past. So. Okay, great.

Let me give you another tip while we're on this. This is going to sound kind of interesting at first, but one way you can promote your webinar is to show the process of you creating the content. And I'll explain what I mean by that. You can have like your a picture of your computer and it's like, you know, five in the morning or whatever. You take a screenshot and you say like, hey, you know what? Being a working mom is challenging, but you know, if you want to accomplish stuff, you'll find a way. And you know, have like the timestamp, like 5:30 in the morning and say, want to know what I'm working on? Click the link below to sign up for this webinar, so on, so forth.

That's interesting.

So you can literally turn the content creation process into content, but it shows how authentic you are another side of yourself. And just saying, like, hey, you know, it's not easy. It's not easy whatsoever. But I believe in this content. This is what I have to say. And I can help people. And I want to do this and be a working mom, not, not do this or be a working mom. So I strongly recommend doing that as well.

Okay, I like that. Thank you. Awesome. Sorry, I want. So the business plan question I had, so that's integrated into like a module in the course where you encourage us to fill it out. Sorry, I haven't gotten to the whole course yet. Or is that a whole separate thing?

No, the, the outcome of the course is that you should be able to fill out that one page.

Okay. One page. Okay. Got it.

Correct.

Okay, thanks.

Yeah, and it's, it's concise by design because otherwise it's hard to. I've written business plans before. Like I went to business school. Like, it's, it's, it's not easy, but it's like you want to get that, that sense of completion. And there are detailed next steps. You know, what are you going to do a week from now, 90 days from now, a year from now, to continue moving forward. But if you follow that plan, you'll be in a really good spot. And then obviously expand on it in certain sections, like we're saying, like, you know, post more on LinkedIn. Okay, we'll plan out your content. Right. That's part of it too, but that's. The goal is to make sure that you have a very solid plan to move forward.

That's good. Well, thank you for bringing me on. I'm going to mute myself now. I think my little one's about to act up.

Yeah, yeah. Catch it early.

Thanks.

Good talking to you. Let me not demote you. I'm just going to let you do your thing. I'll do this right now. There we go. All right, cool. If we don't have any more questions, we can go ahead and take off for the day. But most important thing here is to realize that as you're going through this content, things might get confusing sometimes. That's how it is because I'm giving you information with the course, but I want to give you customization. Through these talks. So just take notes as you're going through it. Like, if you. If you ever feel kind of stuck or you're confused, whatever it is, take notes, show up here. And I'm here to happy to answer the questions. So thanks for showing up tonight, and I will see you next week. But until then, have a good one. Take care.