The Career Coaching Club for new career services entrepreneurs launches September 4.  The preview teleclass, “Discover 4 Key Proven Strategies That Will Get You Paying Clients FAST,” premiers Tuesday, August 28 at 8:00 PM ET.

If you are tired of struggling to get clients to grow your own business, then the Career Coaching Club was designed especially for you, the new career services entrepreneur. As a club member, you will learn how to attract more than enough clients to pay your bills, grow your business, and still enjoy the fun and freedom of working for yourself.

“Sneak Peak” inside the club member area: www.careercoachingclub.com/club.html.

Register for the preview class and club membership at: www.careercoachingclub.com.

Just wanted to let everyone know about a special careers professional event happening October 4-6 in Dallas, Texas:

“USA Global Forum presented by the Association of Career Professionals International-USA”

More information at: http://www.acpinternational-usa.org.

As President-elect of this nonprofit professional organization, I just had to share with you what a great opportunity this forum is for you to enhance your career services skills, meet others from various career services fields, and have some good ole’ fashion fun!

We have an impressive list of speakers lined up to deliver a cutting-edge program like you’ve never seen before!

Early registration only until August 31: Members, $289 / Non-members, $389.

Marriott Hotel registration is only $104 per night!

Please join us!

As coaches, we believe in the Golden Rule, and trust others to do the same. However, when it comes to money, people can get a little "funny."

Coaching contracts can take the guesswork out of the exchange of your client’s investment for your career coaching services. When you set up and follow a consistent payment policy, your clients will always know where they stand; they will be able to budget accordingly for their coaching investment with you.

Actually, a career coaching agreement is a good idea for more than just the exchange of money for services. In my career coaching agreement, I outline my expectations of my client. Here are some of the points I cover:

• Clients will call me for their coaching appointments.
• Clients will call on-time.
• If clients miss their scheduled session without notice, they will lose that session and be billed for it anyway.

I list other expectations, too, and ask that clients sign in agreement before we begin coaching. The contract approach may appear cold on the surface, but in reality, a contract helps cement the client’s commitment to the coaching process.

What do you include in your coaching agreement? I’m interested in your reply.

Happy International Coaching Week! What are you doing to celebrate this annual event? What special thing can you do to honor your clients?

ICF (International Coach Federation) is releasing its global survey results this week. Here a few facts to whet your appetite:

• The approximate annual worldwide revenue produced by coaching is $1.5 billion (USD).
• The average coach is 46-55 years old, has coached for 5-10 years, and 53 percent of coaches have acquired an advanced level of education (i.e., Master’s Degree or Ph.D).
• Coaches earn an average of $50,510 (USD) per year.
• Coaching clients tend to be 56 percent female/44 percent male, and between 38 and 45 years of age.

More to come about this survey once the whole document is released. For now, I’m interested in your reaction to the above information. Your comments are welcome here.

If you have an article or e-book to publish, you will want to convert it into a PDF file. The software that can do this is Adobe Acrobat, available for a few hundred dollars. Yes, you heard me right - hundreds. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could do it for less? You can!

Check out PDF 995, a free tool that will convert any document into a PDF. It doesn’t get any better than free!

A great way to build your database is to get involved with an online networking group. My group of choice is Linked In. Look under my photo on this blog and you’ll see my Linked In button. Check it out! Go to the website and see how this tool could help you build your business, too.

Whew! What a week! Besides coaching clients, teaching classes and doing general administrative work, I’ve been attending both the "ACCPOW Telesummit" and the Blog Squad’s "Blogging and Beyond" mentor training group to enhance my marketing skills. Every hour of every day has been packed full.

Just because I have a thriving career coaching practice, I don’t stop learning how to stay at the top of my marketing game. I wanted to share my biggest learning from each marketing program with you here.

ACCPOW: Adam Urbanski shared his model for building a coaching business fast. This is just a general summary of how to generate revenue around $100K in one year:

1. Create a coaching information product in 1-2 weeks and sell at low price. Put all your efforts behind it so you sell an average of one unit per day.
2. From all sales, convert 10% into a membership group to further your original idea. Sell memberships at average price per month per person.
3. From membership group, convert 20% of individuals into one-on-one coaching clients at a high-dollar monthly rate.

Blog Squad: Blogging is the quickest way to build your online presence so that prospects come pounding down your door. Do it right and you will build a coaching business that is truly successful.

What have you done to improve your marketing skills this week?

Wow! How fast time passes. Long time, no post on this weblog. Sorry, folks. It’s a new year and I’m turning a corner - time to get with the program again.

Anyway, as a career coach, are you finding your business exploding right now? January is prime time for career changes, job shopping, and recruiter sourcing. When it gets to the point when you have to schedule your prospects for preliminary screening interviews because you have so many you can’t possiblly talk to them as they contact you, you know you’re at the top of your game.

Sound like a fantasy practice? No, it isn’t - it is mine right now. There’s somethng satisfying about knowing that you have a steady stream of business, but at the same time, it becomes a new challenge to manage it all and continue the marketing. Can’t let that marketing lapse, or the stream will dry up - fast!

The huge growth question is how can you make more money serving fewer clients, or is there another way?

What comes to mind - group coaching, membership websites, hiring subcontractors - what do you think?

Congratulations! You’ve finally designed your website, written your text, and are ready to launch for the world to see. What’s next? Learn where to register your site and how the search engine system works to help you promote it.

Read the following article to get it all right the first time: http://www.wilsonweb.com/seo/kennedy-submissions.htm.

Not all that difficult, and really not all that costly to do, but doing it the "right" way the first time will make all the difference between being found on the web or not.

Apparently, the free ride is over. Many of us have enjoyed the benefits from submitting free press releases to www.prweb.com. By submitting a press release, you could count on the Internet search engines to boost your visibility on the Web. Now it looks like all PRWeb services will have a fee. Oh, well, no one ever promised us a free lunch.

This is still a cool site to use to learn how to write a press release and then how to use it. See http://www.prwebdirect.com/pressreleasetips.php.