©2018 marcy nelson-garrison 1 · ©2018 marcy nelson-garrison 2 about marcy nelson-garrison as a...

©2018 Marcy Nelson-Garrison 1 www.coachingtoysstore.com

http://www.coachingtoysstore.com


About Marcy Nelson-Garrison

As a product review writer for choice magazine, owner of the Coaching Toys On-line Store and product mentor, Marcy has a keen sense for what sells and what doesn’t. Her past life in advertising and print production give her a solid base to guide you through the technical side of things and as a visual artist she will nur-ture your creative process. Marcy has been coaching for 18 years and has helped many coaches, counselors and consultants claim their wisdom and expertise and turn it into profitable products and programs. www.pinkparadigm.com

My StoryLike many of you, I have followed a circuitous path to becoming a product mentor. I am a visual artist and worked in advertising for many years before I transitioned into psychology and then coaching. My years in advertising gave me a thorough understanding of print products and design. As an artist I developed an intimate understanding of the creative process.

I became licensed as a psychologist in Minnesota in 1994 at the masters level and trained as a co-ac-tive coach in 1999. I fell in love with the coaching industry and it fueled my creativity. I started coming up with product ideas and wondered if other coaches were also creating products. I found that they were but they were hard to find. I had this crazy notion that it would be very cool to have one place where you could find all of these creative products. That thought put the wheels in motion for the Coaching Toys online store which opened in 2002.

Choice, the magazine of professional coaching launched in that same year and I was invited to write a feature article reviewing products for the coaching profession. I have continued to write that feature article now for 15 years. Coaches with product ideas naturally began to seek me out and my coaching focus gradually shifted.

Needless to say, I have been immersed in the product arena for a long time - I sell products, write about products, create my own products and coach others around product development. One of my products - Q?Basics Open-Ended Questions for Coaching Mastery has been the top seller in the store since the beginning. We printed the 3rd edition in 2015.

The number one thing I have learned over the years is that products are a powerful way to carry your message and have an impact.

Marcy

Marcy Nelson-Garrison MA LP CPCCCoach & Product Mentor



What are you dreaming about these days?If you could create your life and your business exactly the way you want it, what would it look like?

What would you like more of?

More money? More time off? More clients?

What would have you doing a happy dance this same time next year?

If your business isn’t measuring up to this dream and you find yourself operating in that small, stalled and under-earning space, this ebook is going to open up a whole new way to think about it with an invitation to try something new.

I’m going to walk you through 4 steps that will change your business. You will learn the really big mis-takes to avoid and you will learn what will actually move you towards those things you want.

I also know that when your business is stuck in a holding pattern and you are under-earning in spite of our best efforts, the last thing you want to hear is that you need to grow your business.

You are already working really hard! You are probably spinning so many plates already that it feels almost super human. So even though you are not getting the results you want, growing bigger….well….that just sounds like MORE plate spinning.

Which triggers…..the panic button.

There are real fears operating around resistance to growing your business bigger….



Fear of burnout.

Fear of losing the intimate connections you have with clients.

Perhaps the fear that you would have to be way more visible than you want to be or that you would have to do things that you don’t want to do.

Sometimes you are stuck because you just don’t know how to change the status quo and it stops you in your tracks.

I know….I’ve been there

I have had a lot of ups and downs in my business. I’ve been coaching since 1999 and I founded the Coaching Toys store in 200. I’ve had periods of overwhelm, feeling stuck and under earning. I’ve ex-perienced burnout. Burnout is a pretty empty feeling and it takes time and effort to resurface again. I definitely don’t wish that on any of you.

My first step back from burnout was to claim my wisdom and claim my expertise.

Really - I had been hiding behind EVERYONE else’s ideas and concepts and expertise and this needed to stop. As I reflected on my situation, I drew on my experience as an artist. I realized I was like the young artist copying all the masters. You don’t fully emerge as an artist in your own right until you believe in your own authority. From there you can find your own voice and your style.

And this is exactly what I did.

I now see this as an important developmental stage for coaches and counselors in business. It has become an integral part of any work I do with clients.

So….to avoid slipping back into the old pattern and burnout, I also needed to find ways to leverage my time and energy - running two businesses can be challenging. The next step for me was to begin to package my expertise into products and programs. This gave me new sources of income, more time and things started to shift.

I literally went from oh no - to OH YEAH!

This was the beginning of an important shift in my business that has been evolving ever since. I’m looking forward to sharing with you what I’ve discovered along the way.

Bottom line - there are ways to grow your business that won’t burn you out or make you cringe and it’s easier than you think.

There are basically 4 super-sized mistakes that you need to avoid. These mistakes cap your income and keep you spinning and totally mess with your desire for more money, ease, clients and freedom. If you want something new to happen in your business, you need to know about these. The flip side of those mistakes are the steps that will insure success.



Mistake 1You are Stuck in a constricting business model that limits growth, sucks all

your time and energy and limits the rewards.

A business model is the system you put in place to earn money.

If your business model is dependent on 1:1 service delivery only, you have just put a giant lid on yourself. There is so little room to grow. It’s all dependent on how many hours you can put in. You are not leveraging your time and energy at all.….

And what happens to those prospective clients when you are booked solid, or when they aren’t quite ready for your services yet?

Most likely they walk off into the sunset.

If you don’t have products and programs yet as a natural part of your service offerings you are miss-ing out.

• You miss out on a way to stay connected (and earn money) from someone not quite ready to buy your 1:1 services

• You miss out on having something cool to offer a new prospect when you are booked solid with 1:1 clients

• You miss out on having a free product generate easy leads for you

• You miss out on someone finding your product and buying it - while you are on vacation.

Do this instead

Step 1 Embrace a product-based business model.

Products have the power to transform lives and transform your business.

I define product broadly…..



It can include ebook, downloads, card decks, home study programs, keynotes, bootcamps, signature programs, even how you package your 1:1 service offerings - they are all “products.”

If you are a coach, counselor, trainer or healer you have at least one “product” right now - your 1:1 services. Creating other types of products will give you a way to break free of the time and earning cap and reach people without you being present.

It is really the only business model that will allow you to have greater reach, impact, money, time and ultimately freedom.

There are two primary ways products work for your business - profit & opportunity

3 WAYS TO PROFIT

1.Passive Income

This is selling on your website, at conferences or at the back of the room when you speak. You also can create a network of affiliates or ambassadors who refer people to your products for a percent-age of the sale. Don’t under-estimate the power of selling at a conference. Conferences provide opportunities to connect with big buyers. A colleague had a relationship focused product at a marriage and family conference and was approached by someone from the US military. They were interested in products to help their married service men and women. The divorce rate was so high and they were looking for solutions. Now imagine the purchasing power of that potential buyer - holy buckets.

2. Higher Fees.

Having a product increases your expert status and allows you to charge more. Products can have as much credibility-building power as a traditional book. You also have bundling options. If you are a service provider like a coach, counselor, trainer, healer, financial planner or lawyer, bundling offers you a way to increase the perceived value of your service offerings by packaging them with your products. For example, offer a retreat that comes with your book, an audio program and a work-book. I often bundle an online course I created with my private coaching package. There is a lot of room to be creative here.

3. Distribution Avenues

Getting your products in stores and catalogs is worth considering. One of the vendors for the Coach-ing Toys store created a line of inspirational products - magnets, note cards etc. We carried her products in the store but we were not her only distribution avenue. She had her products in over 600 specialty retail stores across the US and Canada. In fact she had a number of agents working for her to get those placements. Another vendor from the Coaching Toys store told me she listed her product in a catalog and it tripled her sales.



Not all of you will pursue this avenue but I want you to know that there are a variety of distribution options for certain types of products.

3 TYPES OF OPPORTUNITY

First of all, as I mentioned previously, products amp up your credibility, you get noticed and doors open.

1. Perception

If you look around at the super stars in your industry you will see that they all have products. When someone comes to you and sees that you have several products, you immediately look more credi-ble as an expert and their perception of you shifts.

No one gets this principle better than Hay House. Hay House publishes some incredibly well known authors. For every author you will see their content expanded into other products like; an online course, an app, a workbook, a journal and an audio download. The public perception is that the au-thor is prolific and that they are indeed THE expert. You can have that impact too and it’s not as hard as it appears. For those authors it was all about repackaging the content from the book in new ways.

2. List Building

Products are the perfect list builder. It is so easy to market a free gift in exchange for a new subscrib-er. So if you do nothing else - you should have at least one hot free gift.

3. Joint Venture Opportunities

One of the easiest types of joint venture opportunities comes from invitations to speak to someone else’s audience or subscriber base. You get to be exposed to more people and make an offer- your free gift works well here.

And then there are those big visibility opportunities like participating in a tele-summit, a live event or getting promoted by well-connected names in your industry. Most of these opportunities require that you have a product that offers a healthy affiliate commission. Having this in place gives others much more incentive to promote you and in fact many people won’t promote you without it. Gener-ally these products are priced in the mid range - to high mid range.

With all of these good reasons to be creating products I’m always surprised that more of you aren’t doing it and I’m always on the alert for what gets in the way.

And that leads me to big mistake #2...



Mistake 2Not claiming your own wisdom and expertise. Not taking a stand.

I had a client say to me at the beginning of our work together, “I don’t believe I have anything new to contribute to the conversation”. That’s not an isolated comment, I hear variations of that all the time. I think women in particular tend to defer to the experts rather than trust their own wisdom. I’ve done it myself. We hide our hard won wisdom and shy away from claiming expertise and taking a stand.

This isn’t serving you or your clients. Your precious clients don’t need you to regurgitate someone else’s expertise - they want you.

The truth is - you do have something to say. You have opinions, beliefs, wisdom. You know about what works for your clients and what doesn’t. Your expertise, your experiences and your life lessons color how you put things together, how you interpret the world. It’s like handwriting and everyone’s is unique.

Beyond that - beyond recognizing and claiming your wisdom, which is huge, the other thing I hear that stops people is the belief that what they want to create isn’t original enough. They worry that they are just cluttering the environment with the same old stuff.

That assumption is false and unfortunately very sticky.

There is one bit of cool information that will help you shake that sticky assumption off….

Here’s what New York publishing consultant Janet Goldstein says about originality “it only needs to be 10% original to be perceived as fresh and new.” I can’t tell you how many times I remind my clients of that fact.

10% is so doable - simply by showing up authentically to the topic at hand you are pretty much guar-anteed to be 10% original.

Do this instead

Step 2Claim your wisdom and expertise. Take a stand.

There are 3 steps to claiming your wisdom and expertise



1. The first step is being willing to know what you know.

It’s essential to stop and begin to listen to your own internal wisdom and voice.

When I’m in creating mode, I always start by sitting with the topic I’m working with and ask myself one simple question.

What do I know?

What do I know in my heart and in my body, about this topic?

What do I know from my experience?

And a variation on that - what do I believe?

Asking these questions opens the gateway to finding your voice and your wisdom. It’s important to do this with each product or program or module or presentation etc. Because our default is lean on other experts and dismiss our own authority

2. Bring your unique energy, style, preferences and authentic flair to it.

Infuse your knowing, your expertise, with who you are. If you are known for your sense of humor, you get to bring that to it. If you are soft and gentle, you get to bring that to it.

If you have specific interests, lean into those for perfect examples, analogies and met-aphors. For me, since I’m trained as a psychologist and have been a visual artist for ever, I bring those perspectives and experiences into the work I do.

3. Find your inner rebel

Not only have many of us been conditioned to defer to other’s expertise, we have also been conditioned to not rock the boat or offend anyone. Right?

I believe we all have an inner rebel within. Your inner rebel might show up as resistance, stubbornness or righteous indignation. It’s important to harness that feisty, passionate energy in service of your clients!

Start by exploring where your “client” gets complacent or experiences a blind spot. Then begin to identifying what you know in your bones about that blind spot. What you know will make a difference for them.

Your inner rebel takes a stand for your clients. Your inner rebel has an opinion.

What do I

know?



Your inner rebel can show up as a champion, a truth holder and even a fierce protective mama or papa bear.

Sometimes we need to fiercely love our clients so they can begin to love themselves and sometimes we need to get angry for them so they can wake up and say yes to their own magnificence.

EVERYTHING will change for you when you claim your wisdom and expertise.

Once you have clarity about what you know and your stand for clients - it becomes so much easier to create for them. This clarity gives you a foundation for your intellectual property.

The next mistake is definitely where the rubber meets the road. Creating products is a blast but if you are creating the WRONG products you are going to be spinning your wheels and frustrated. Your products are not going to give you more money, clients or freedom in the way they could.



Mistake 3Chasing The Wild Tangent - Aka - NO product strategy

There are two ways this plays out…

1. Chasing wild tangents or shiny objects

Oh my gosh, who among us has not been taken in by the shiny object syndrome.

Those shiny objects and wild tangents can be so appealing, especially for cre-atives. We can crank out product ideas all day. Which you would think is a good thing - and it is - but not if you think you have to produce them all.

THOSE products are generally outliers. They fall outside the scope of your day to day business. Once you have this outlier product, the question becomes - now what?

If the product isn’t a relevant part of your day to day business, it’s kind of like having a side gig. Do you have the energy to take on a part time job? I don’t, and that’s what marketing an outlier re-quires. It takes so much more energy to sell an outlier than it does to sell a product that is aligned with the natural flow of your business. You aren’t likely to get any traction on it and it will end up draining resources, time and energy that could be better used elsewhere.

I tell my clients often, just because you have an idea, doesn’t mean you have to pursue it.

Marketing 101 says that it is much easier to sell to an existing customer than to go out and find a brand new one. This basic premise is really important to the next way wild tangents and no product strategy play out.

2. Creating one-off products.

Let’s say you are a relationship coach and you have an ebook on communication skills, a workshop for parenting teens and a class on coping as a caregiver. These all are related to relationships and they each address a need your ideal client may have at some time in their life but the topics are so diverse and not really connected to each other. They don’t really give you a clear pathway to lever-age that first purchase. Which means you are in the position of having to find brand new customers for each of those products.

One-off products also require a LOT of extra marketing energy for them to be a viable source for revenue.



You could make this work but I’ll tell you, there is an easier way.

Do this instead

Step 3Create with a product strategy in mind.

A well conceived product, created from love, passion, wisdom and good business sense can have the power to transform the lives of your clients and transform the perception and bottom line of your business - but you need a product strategy.

There are three parts to a good product strategy

1. You want to create specifically for your ideal clients

As you do the work I talked about earlier related to claiming your wisdom and finding your inner reb-el, you will get crystal clear about who your ideal client is, what they need and what they want. That will inform your choices about what to create

2. You want to create products that establish your expertise

First, know what it is you want to be known for and create around that.

Here’s an example of how a for a former client of mine used products to establish expertise.

I worked with Jennifer Lee a number of years ago and her very first product was a 6 page e-book. It was very creative. You could print out the pages, fill them out and pin them on your wall, poster style. The important thing is that it had a clear message and she had a clear audience - right-brainers in business. This one product was sufficient to give her a platform.

On the foundation of that work she started speaking on the topic. This further established her exper-tise and she was approached by a publisher to expand her message into a book, which she did; The Right Brain Business Plan book. Two more products followed, a Right-Brain Business Plan Kit and a facilitators license.

This is a great example of knowing what you want to be known for and creating from that.



3. You want your products to flow from one to the next - you want them to fit together like pieces of a puzzle.

A product strategy is about flow and movement. It’s about creating offers based on what your client needs first, second, third, etc. Think about your target audience for a moment — whats the first logi-cal step for them? And then what?

A Product-based business model rocks! Period.

And there is another secret that will bring you even more profit, ease and freedom. I call it The Power of 3.

When you create using The Power of 3, you will create 3 products that fit together so beautifully that your clients will naturally and easily flow from one to the next. This is so much better than creating a random assortment of products that don’t invite a next purchase. This will generate more profit for you and give you more ease and freedom.

Using this strategy will help you avoid creating the wrong products or such a diverse array that you are constantly marketing and spinning your wheels when it comes to growing your business.



Mistake 4Failure to set yourself up for success

No matter what you are trying to create, if you have tried to birth creative ideas before, you know there are a multitude of ways to get distracted and off track from creating the things you are meant to create.

Things like: overwhelm, procrastination, not knowing how, technical glitches, lack of grounding, lack of resources and feeling disconnected from your own deep wisdom and value.

Too many people fail to create what they are being called to create - Don’t let this be you!

I know the ups and downs of the creative process, the false starts, the uncertainty when you don’t know how to do something and the occasional procrastination.

I also know the JOY and EXCITEMENT of holding a new product in your hands for the first time or fill-ing a new program for the first time and seeing your creative offers grow a following and grow your bottom line.

Do this instead

Step 4Nurture Your Ideas

Like anything worth doing it requires a commitment of time and energy and resources.

I’ve seen too many great ideas that haven’t been given the creative time to evolve sufficiently because they were rushed to market. I’ve seen great ideas fall flat because the creator didn’t invest sufficiently in design and production.

An idea is a powerful seed but you have to plant it with intention and you need to feed it and prune it and tend to the weeds that crop up. Maybe even put a fence around it to keep out the brain rats - they lie you know. And remember to not stomp on the baby shoots just be-cause they aren’t fully formed plants yet - aka products.



There are 4 practices that will help you bring more joy and authentic energy to whatever creative initiative you are working on.

FLOW

Flow is a “state” of being. You are in flow or in the zone when you are 100% present and concentrat-ing on your project. Time seems to stand still, it’s you, the creative process and nothing else matters. It’s a state that actually feels really good.

Neuroscience tells us that creativity jumps 500%-700% when you are in the flow state. And the brain chemicals that are a part of that flow state stay for 3-5 days so the effects linger. It has also been found that a 3 hour work cycle is optimal for “Flow” to be experienced.

Make a commitment to a 3 hour work session every 3-5 days to allow the flow state to happen.

STAY

Stay is about not abandoning your ideas, your wisdom and your self in the busy rush to comple-tion or in response to feedback or judgement from others. It’s also helpful to know that sometimes creative tension is uncomfortable and we misinterpret it. We begin thinking we are on the wrong path. Most likely you are not - it’s just a normal part of the creative process. Trust yourself, trust your knowing, trust your process - and don’t give in to the inner critic - it lies.

Continue to check in with your self; What do I know now? What am I learning?

LOVE

When I get super busy, pressured and rushed I can forget that I chose to create my project and somehow it gets relegated to just another “thing” on the to do list. If that happens to you too, blow the whistle and stop that train! This is NOT just another “thing”, this is a SUPER COOL THING you are creating. It is so important to continually re-connect to what you love about what you are creating.

Check in daily - What do I love about my project today?

PACE

Pacing is critical. Sometimes we move too slowly and lose the connection to the project and some-times we move too fast and it doesn’t evolve properly or even throws us over the “cliff”. You want to set a pace (and a deadline) that feels do-able even if it might be a stretch.

Remember that you are in charge of the pace you set. Create a pace that has self compassion built in, that honors the requirement of the project and builds in permission to change a deadline when absolutely needed.



If you avoid the 4 big mistakes and follow the 4 steps outlined here, your

business will change.

And if you leverage The Power of 3, you will have more clients, more money, more ease and more freedom.

I want to leave you with a great true story about the power of 3.

I was talking to a marketing coach friend of mine and she said her client got tons of traction on a brand new free e-course. (product #1)

They then offered a program expanding on the same topic priced at $197. (product #2) Again they got an amazing response, the people who signed up for the free e-course wanted more and signed up for this new program.

But the really cool part of this story is that when they offered their next program, which happened to be priced at $5000 to all the people in the $197 class, 10 people said yes immediately. WOW! They made $50,000 before they even started to market the program to their broader base. It totally shifted the energy behind their marketing. Now they were on fire to find more participants for their first 10.

What a great example of more PROFIT and more EASE!

Once you see how this works > The Power of 3 system, you will want to repeat it!

Just in case you might be thinking - OMG, create 3 products! Thats a lot.

It’s easier than you think! When you create products using The Power of 3 it will feel different than creating 3 totally separate un-related products. This is because the 3 you choose will all be

THE 4 STEPS

STEP 1 Embrace a

product-based

business model.

STEP 2 Claim your

wisdom and

expertise. Take a stand.

STEP 3 Create with a

product strategy

in mind.

STEP 4 Nurture

Your Ideas



so integrated you will be in the same creative brain space. Believe me this is so much easier than creating a bunch of random products, and so much easier to sell. Which is good, because I’m guessing you hate selling? I thought so.

You can do this! Creating products is the only way to grow that won’t burn you out!

And you don’t have to do it alone!

See you soon!

MarcyMarcy Nelson-Garrison [email protected] 612-822-8720

Sign up for a complimentary Product Possibilities SessionTogether we will explore where you are, where you want to be and identify the next steps that are right for you.

Schedule your session here: Product Possibilities Session

©2018 marcy nelson-garrison 1 · ©2018 marcy nelson-garrison 2 about marcy nelson-garrison as a...

Documents