Recently, a friend of mine had to have "the talk" with his son. You know what talk I'm talking about. The Talk. Like many kids, the realization of "the birds and the bees" was alarming and apparently he walked around in a state of shock for a while afterwards.

If you're a business coach, you have a similar awkward job with your clients as you help them understand their business and how it is changing. Things may be really cooking for them as a successful start-up with two or three employees full of hubris… and all of a sudden they realize that they can't handle things the way they are and they need to make changes. They contact you to help them. You talk them through the process of adding staff, creating systems, and all that kind of stuff. It's just like a business version of The Talk: You need to explain how things are really done now that they are growing up.

One of the primary ways that your client's business is going to change is in its culture. Once, a couple of people – probably co-owners – sat around a table 24/7 brainstorming and selling. It was crazy and messy and fueled by coffee and convenience store snacks. Those may have been fun times and the owners will look back on those as fondly as we all reflect on our carefree childhoods. But as the business grows, things change: They can't simply add another half dozen employees and expect business to still take place in that one room 24/7. Non-owners, for example, will have different motivations. They'll want to go home in the evenings. They'll care when they get paid. They won't feel the same sense of ownership.

That is exactly what happened to Method, a cleaning products company that grew. In their early days, they were that fresh-faced aggressive business that was able to combine fun and work in a way that only entrepreneurs can. But then things evolve and they soon found themselves with a group of employees that couldn't be sustained by that culture.

I read about them in an article at BNET called "Taming the Type-A Culture Gone Wild". In the article, author Melanie Warner describes how free spirited and collaborative things were and how they changed as the business grew. Suddenly, the entrepreneurs found themselves needing to formalize a culture where once they let the culture be defined by the few people who worked there. 

The article reports that they successfully created five rules – "Collaborate", "Care", "Innovate", "Keep Method weird", and the odd-yet-humorous "What would MacGyver do?" – to help define the corporate culture.

The article in BNET was just about culture but if you're a business consultant, there's a good chance that your clients will need guidance in far more than cultural shifts. They'll need to be coached in successful hiring (and eventually, successfully firing), administration, vision-casting, and more. They may do these well now but these skills need to be formalized and that is where you come in. You need to walk them through what they need to do and you need to help them formalize and systematize various aspects that were once carefree. But it often starts with culture.

Are you ready to have "The Talk" with your clients?

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How you go about earning more money is the challenge. Do you raise your rates? Do you increase the number of hours you work in a day? Do you create passive income?

There are lots of things you can do, but I have one starting point for you and, if you follow this, you will thank me. If you want to make more money, the first thing you need to do is know how much you made. The first number I'm talking about is annual revenue (which might still need to be estimated a bit if you're reading this before the end of the year).

But more importantly, in my opinion is your EFFECTIVE rate. Now, you probably charge by the hour (or, at least, can break down your rate into an hourly rate). But what is important to me is your effective rate: The amount of money you make in a day divided by the number of hours you work. This is what I call the "reality check" number.

Let's say you make $50/hour based on the amount that people pay you for an hour of coaching or a calculation you've derived from charging $150 for a 3 hour coaching call. And over the course of the day you make $250. So a simple calculation might suggest that you worked 5 hours ($50 x 5 hours = $250). But we both know that's not true.  Maybe you put in 8. Or 10. Or 12. So rather than figuring out what your hourly rate is and being proud that you charge that amount, get a reality check and figure out what your effective rate is: If you earned $250 from 5 hours of coaching but you worked 10 hours in a day, then your effective rate is $25/hour. ($250/10 hours). Not so thrilling, is it?

But it does give you a starting point: Now you know what you're really earning per hour of work you do in a day and before you think about raising your prices or working more hours, the first thing you should think about is reducing the amount of hours in which you are not billing and increasing the number of hours in that same period in which you are billing. In other words, don't yet commit to reducing your 10 hour days (if you don’t want to). Instead, find ways of increasing the coaching time from 5 hours to 7 hours in your day while decreasing your non-revenue-generating work by the same amount (from 5 to 3 hours). Doing that will add $100/day to your revenue without changing the amount of work you do!

You can do this by creating systems, by shifting your coaching call times so you can get 2 calls in the afternoon instead of 1, by hiring an assistant, and by automating some of the work you do now.

Want to make more money? It starts with a reality check.

Brought to by you by: Contemporary VA - Run your business instead of running in circles.

@ContemporaryVA on Twitter.  Follow the team to stay updated on business resources we deliver that cover strategies and tips, social media and more!

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• Newsmakers (like politicians) are less frequently in session
• People are on vacation or, at least in a vacation mindset, perhaps filling their evenings with activities and sports in a way that they don't when the kids are in school. So they're less interested in the news but the news organizations still need to sell advertising to make money.

As a result, less relevant news tends to happen and stories, therefore, become "silly". (Issues might be blown out of proportion, for example, in order to increase an audience).

In sports, the silly season is the period when there aren't any games so sports news is filled with stories of trades and the personal lives of athletes.

Professional coaches have their own silly season and we are just about to enter it. It's the period of time between Thanksgiving and New Year when people put off decision-making.

Christmas – and the preparations leading up to it – can be a taxing time for many people and often other things get put on the back burner "until Christmas is over". This is true even for people who do not celebrate Christmas at all, since the period leading up to Christmas can be filled with holiday-related events and the week between Christmas and New Year is rarely a time that a lot of work gets done because of vacation days.

So, between buying the kids' stocking stuffers and trying to figure out what to bring to grandma's house for the traditional family dinner, your clients may be tempted to either put your coaching on hold or, at least, put a lot of decision-making off until January.

You need to stop them from doing this, of course. This action effectively cuts out one-twelfth of their year, diminishing the results of any coaching that has been done so far. And, it does not put them in good shape to start the New Year strong. If they wait until the New Year to make their 2010 plans, they won't be able to implement them until the middle (or even the end!) of January, cutting out another 2-4 weeks of potential results achievement.

If this has been a problem with your clients in the past, or if you think that your clients might delay coaching until after the Christmas season, start communicating with them now about the importance of maintaining momentum ESPECIALLY during the hectic season. Yes, you'll probably be willing to move a coaching date from December 24 to another day, but don't cancel it all together.

It's silly season for your clients… but it doesn't have to be.

Brought to by you by: Contemporary VA - Run your business instead of running in circles.

@ContemporaryVA on Twitter.  Follow the team to stay updated on business resources we deliver that cover strategies and tips, social media and more!

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We’re not here to make a decision for you. Instead, this information is presented to help you make up your own mind. These pros and cons contain observations we’ve made in our years of coaching.

Virtual Coaching
This is where you meet a potential client through a communication channel (perhaps an online medium or simply over the phone).

Pros:
* You can meet with anyone, no matter where they are.
* The tools today are inexpensive (i.e. Webex) or even free (i.e. Skype).
* Many people coach virtually so it’s not an unusual proposition.
* We’ve found that people are generally on-time for virtual coaching more often than they are with face-to-face coaching.
* You can stack your meetings one after the other.

Cons:
* Some would say that you cannot make a true connection with someone without meeting them face to face.
* Potential technological malfunctions can disrupt the coaching time.

Face-to-Face Coaching
This is where you and your client meet in person.

Pros:
* You can build rapport a little more quickly and use visual cues (such as body language) to help you understand your client.
* You always choose to continue alternate your coaching between in-person and virtual.

Cons:
* You are limited to a market who can travel to see you (or whom you travel to see).
* You may be required to have your own office if that’s where people meet.
* Your marketing may need to include local channels (which can cost more).
* We’ve found that people are generally on-time for virtual coaching more often than they are with face-to-face coaching.
* There is sometimes travel time in between each meeting.

I’m sure we’ve missed some important points. So please feel free to add your own ideas in the comments section. And tell us, do you prefer one over the other?

Brought to by you by: Contemporary VA - Run your business instead of running in circles.

@ContemporaryVA on Twitter.  Follow the team to stay updated on business resources we deliver that cover strategies and tips, social media and more!

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But there is a tool that is extremely helpful, no matter kind of coaching you do. This tool can help any coach. It’s the SWOT analysis.

SWOT analysis stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats and it has been an integral part of the business world since the dawn of time. (Or, at least it seems that way).

To perform a SWOT analysis, simply take a regular sheet of paper and fold it into quarters. Then in each quarter right one of the words – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats – so you have all four on the page.

Now it’s time to analyze. To do this well, it’s best to first clearly define what you are analyzing. If you’re a business coach, you might be helping your client analyze an entire business or a market segment or the competition or a new product or a new joint venture. If you’re a relationship coach, you might be helping your client analyze a recent date they went on or how they view themselves. If you’re a productivity coach, you might be helping your client analyze their schedules or a recent project they started. You need to clearly define what you are analyzing or else the analysis can carry on too long and get out of hand.

Start with strengths. These are the internal strengths of the situation – perhaps of the person or the business, if that’s what you’re analyzing.

Then move on to weaknesses. These are the internal weaknesses of the situation.

Next, move on to opportunities. These are the external elements that can be used to improve the situation.

Last, work on threats. These are the external elements that risk the failure of the situation.

Often, for people new to the SWOT analysis, strengths and opportunities often get repeated, and weaknesses and threats often get repeated. However, they are different: Strengths and weaknesses are internal while opportunities and threats are external.

Take as much time as you need on this part for the more it’s filled in, the more useful it will be in the next step:

Next, start making connections and leverage what’s there. Use the following questions to help you:

1. Are there strengths that can be used to minimize weaknesses?
2. Are there strengths that can be used to leverage opportunities?
3. Are there strengths that can be used to mitigate threats?
4. What weaknesses are real problems and what weaknesses are minor?
5. How can these weaknesses be resolved, strengthened, or eliminated?
6. Which opportunities are worth pursuing?
7. Which opportunities are dependent on something else?
8. Which opportunities should be backburnered?
9. What threats are real problems and what threats are minor?
10. How can those threats be resolved or eliminated?

Lastly, you need to create an action plan from the SWOT analysis, drawing on actionable tasks that need to take place to turn those earlier theoretical connections into reality.

Brought to by you by: Contemporary VA - Run your business instead of running in circles.

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