Just a reminder, today’s the release day for Mike Jay’s CPR For The SOUL, the book on Amazon. Actually it is much, much more than a book. It is a program for taking your business and life to a higher level, by going deeper into who you are.

The bonuses when you buy the book on Amazon today are incredible. He’s offering weekly interviews with experts in the human and business development fields, and for that all you need to do is register. Denise and I will be interviewed by Mike on April 27.

Dr. Don Beck, founder of Spiral Dynamics Integral, wrote the forward, as an example of the kind of support and credibility that surrounds Mike.

My colleague Mike Jay, a long time business coach, has been creating ebooks and audio programs for nearly 8 years, and has just completed an amazing book and series of programs called CPR For The SOUL.

If you invest in one personal growth program this year, this is it. There are many key products in CPR For the SOUL to assist you in understanding who you are at a deeper level. This contributes to building a successful business and marketing your practice, your products, and developing your ideas.

Here’s how you can participate:

You can purchase Mike’s new book tomorrow April 14, 2006, and pick up the free bonus package Mike has assembled to accompany the book for only 39.95, plus shipping.

Just click here for details on CPR For The SOUL.

For those of you who know the name, Mike Jay’s been training business coaches and is active in the Executive Coaching Summit held every year before the International Coach Federation conference. He founded B-Coach Systems from which I graduated in 2000.

He has an amazing grasp of both business and psychological systems which he synthesizes into programs for human and business growth.

So, forget Chicken Soup! This is CPR for the Soul!

This week’s Conversation with Experts (Wednesdays, 8:30 p.m. ET) was with Terri Levine, Master Coach. The Audio recording is posted on the Build a Better Blog site.

Terri gave a passionate interview about the profession of Life Coaching. She covered the 5 reasons why life coaching is a great business to get into and the 6 deadly mistakes people in the industry are making and how you can avoid them.

Conversations with Experts is hosted by Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff and sponsored by the Build a Better Blog System.

To listen to the Conversation, visit our Build a Better Blog here.

Yes, we did it. We moved from our lake-side paradise in Ajijic, Mexico back to the good ‘ol USA to San Diego and are still smiling… I won’t bore you with the gory details and hiccups- you know how icky moving is.

The worst was being offline and disconnected for what seemed like forever. Our computers were transported in a large van which broke down on the way. Then waiting for DSL to get connected was another challenge. Then getting the two computers networked and our Packet 8 phone system that runs through DSL was another mystery.

Anybody have a solution to cord and cable chaos?

It all works now, somehow! I guess my husband Rob Krakoff is a minor genius in some ways afterall. I often wonder what just average people do when it comes to moving and getting computers and all working again… it seems to me to be beyond normal IQ capacities.

But then so did blogging and ezine publishing before I realized that there are systems set up for techno-weenies like myself.

Being disconnected for over a week presented a void in my life. I realized how dependent I’ve become on the cyber world. I’m not saying I need a recovery program, just that it sure makes business easier.

My teleclasses on ezines continues into the 3rd week tonight. Stay tuned for January’s class on blogging where Denise Wakeman of NextLevel Partnership.com will take you through the actual steps to set up your own blog with Typepad.com.

Update on the Secrets to Successful Ezines e-book:

Good news, we are just about done correcting the formatting and Elge Premeau and I will be delivering your books this week!

In the meantime, keep writing, keep sharing, and let me know if I can review your articles and ezines: no cost or obligation involved. It’s what I do.

Patsi

Does Your Ezine Connect with Your Highest Purpose?

If you are just starting an ezine, or if you’re not
satisfied with the results you’ve been getting, you may need
to go back to the basics.

Examine why you are publishing

If you are writing and publishing an ezine to get more
clients, you may wish to reconsider your true reasons. It
may be true: you are in business and to get more clients,
you must reach more people and let them know who you are and
what you have to offer. Getting your ezine published and
growing your readership base is the means to do this.

(If your reasons for publishing an ezine go not much further
than, “Well, everyone else is doing it and I was told that
to be a successful coach I must write and publish a regular
ezine,” you are in trouble. But you know that.)

For coaches, there are really two purposes to writing and
publishing an ezine: a higher purpose reason, and a business
objective reason. A lot has been written already about how
important ezines are to growing your business and getting
more clients.

But that’s not enough.

What are the real reasons, those deep ones—the driving
motivations that put you here today, into the position of
being a coach, of wanting to coach people, of wanting to
tell people things that can make their lives better?

If you have been through coach training (please, if you
haven’t, do so NOW, or stop calling yourself a coach!), you
have already done a lot of course work on finding true
purpose, both for yourself and for your coaching clients.

Make no mistake, finding true purpose is one of the hardest
tasks humans can undertake. We are complex individuals
living with contradictions and competing commitments (see
Kegan for more discussion on this subject). We are at
different developmental stages (see Graves, Beck, Vaillant,
Hudson and others on adult life stages). Human beings have
differing behavior styles and thought processing preferences
(see Jung, Spranger, Marsten for example). We are a mix of
motivations and drives (see Maslow, McClelland, Reise, Herzberg,
Lawrence & Nohria and others).

What Drives YOU?

What driving force wakes you up with an idea for your ezine,
and causes you to get up with enthusiasm and energy that
cannot be satisfied until your article is written? What
contribution are you striving to make?

What do you feel you MUST do in your lifetime? How can you
further those desires through writing your ezine?

This is work you should be involved in now, everyday and
for the rest of your life. After some clarification on what
your true purpose and higher goal in life is, there is
continual checking back with alignment to your work.

Gotta Read This

One of the best books on this
essential process is Michael Ray’s The Highest Goal: the
Secret that Sustains You in Every Moment (2004) published by
Berrett-Koehler (ISBN 1-57675-286-0).

Michael Ray has been called “the most creative man in Silicon
Valley,” by Fast Company magazine. His Personal Creativity
in Business course has been one of the most popular at
Stanford University for 25 years.

To read this HIGHLY RECOMMENDED book, click on the graphic
link under my “Good Books” column on the right.

In summary

I believe that your writing and all that concerns your work
will take giant leaps whenever you connect to your higher
purpose, your highest goal. Until that time, you may be
good, but just going along.

Sailing to the heights involves digging deep into your real
reasons for doing this in the first place and continually
checking back for alignment.

Sure you can do this on your own. And, yes, this is work
best done with a trusted coach.

Here’s to your continued success with your ezines, with your
coaching, with your life.

Patsi

…And Some Solutions!

Top 10 Mistakes Coaches Make with Ezines

1. The ezine is full of fluffy, chatty stuff about
themselves, not enough meat.

2. The ezine is too promotional, asking for sales.

3. The ezine is too long to read.

4. The ezine is too short, gives top ten or five lists
without any serious discussion or backing up with studies or
authority.

5. The ezine is boring. Or too personal. (Thanks for
sharing, but save it for your best friend or therapist.)

6. Ezine takes up too much time and energy to put together,
so coach starts skipping issues and becomes inconsistent.

7. Coach doesn’t commit to sending out ezine for a long
enough time to build results.

8. Coach doesn’t connect ezine to links to products, and
services. And, or ezine doesn’t clearly reflect coach’s contact
information, requests for feedback, encouragement to forward
to friends an associates.

9. Coach doesn’t tie ezine in with an overall marketing
strategy or even a consistent branding look.

10. Coach doesn’t post articles on web, or drive traffic to
website through ezine.

Top 8 solutions to these problems:

1. Your ezine needs to be full of relevant useful
information.

2. Your ezine needs to be written in a clear genuine voice
that reflects what it is like to do business with you. It needs
to be fun to read!

3. Your ezine should bring results: it should grow your
business by focusing on and solidifying relationships over
the long term, yet letting people know you have something
(products or services) that could help them achieve or
obtain what they want.

4. Your ezine should be crafted regularly with a minimal
amount of time and energy. If you don’t enjoy doing it, you
probably won’t commit to doing it over time. Do the parts
you love, outsource the rest.

5. You need to commit to at least 12 months of ezine
publication before you can evaluate its effectiveness. It is
like exercise, the longer you engage in it, the easier it is
to do, the less time and energy it takes, and the more
results you see.

6. Your ezine should tie in with your website and overall
marketing strategies. There should be a branding consistency
in the look of your ezine, your printed materials such as
business cards, and your web design. Your products and
services should carry similar logos. Your ezine should
reflect not only the graphic look, but the professional
voice you create in all your marketing pieces.

7. You can get help, you don’t have to go it alone. We all
started from zero. Ask for help you will receive. Take
courses, sign up for ezines, get a coach!

8. Use a newsletter service. Outsource to professional
service providers those tasks you least enjoy and struggle
with. That’s what they are there for.

Here’s my Shameless Plug:

Customized Newsletter Services is in the business of
providing services for coaches to make their ezine tasks
easier and more efficient. We are here to help.

We have a
number of standardized options available as well as truly
customized services. If we don’t have an option that is
suitable for you, we may be able to create it. Just ask!

Patsi

patsi@customizednewsletters.com
011-52-376-766-4803
U.S.: 956-242-4254

The Challenge of Making it as a Coach or Consultant

© 2004 Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D.,
www.customizednewsletters.com

If you are like many coaches or consultants, you love your
work and love helping others to grow and develop. No matter
what your niche, or your experiences, you are special and
unique in your strengths for helping others.

But like many professionals, you probably feel the challenge
of keeping your practice full of clients who pay you well
for your services. The statistics on the numbers of coaches
or consultants who are thriving are not encouraging.

There are now many products and services available to help
you market your practice. Some marketing gurus make big
promises. Some cost a lot of money. Worse, some require huge
investments of your time and energy.

But wait a minute…you want to be coaching and working with
people! You didn’t go into business to spend your time on
learning to implement marketing strategies.

The Challenge of the Internet…

And now there’s the Internet, and you have to learn a new
system of marketing all over again: the Internet and email
newsletters or ezines.

Where will you find the time? Can you afford not to take
advantage of Internet marketing? Of course NOT! You are
probably already behind others in your field.

You Must Publish an Ezine

Everyone will tell you how important it is to publish an
ezine. Some will tell you how to do this, again for a large
fee. None of the Internet gurus or experts give you
everything you need in a clear concise manner and include
resources you can use to accomplish these important ezine
tasks…until now.

We believe that you have what it takes to publish your own
ezine but may not know all the tips, tricks and tools that
will actually make your tasks effortless. You have the keys,
you need to learn where to find the boxes and the locks!

Make no mistake, there is some hard work involved in
publishing an ezine. You probably can’t code HTML, or handle
distributing your ezine yourself.

You probably can write your own articles, but do you have
the time to read, research, and format them?

There are services available for every step of the ezine
publishing tasks.

Get Help

Did you know that there are systems and software out that
are now actually user-friendly even for non-techies?

There are article content services and formatting and
distribution systems.

There is even my own little service company: Customized
Newsletters where we will do most of the work for you!

None of us knew anything about email, ezines and Internet
marketing a few years ago, or very few of us did.

Start learning about ezines. Don’t wait until you have a
better web site, better photo, more subscribers. Start it
now so you can learn as you go and get better as you grow.

You don’t have to do it alone. There are many e-books you
can buy to teach you the basics, some are even free.

If you must wait, wait until my own e-book is released in
November:

Secrets of Successful Ezines, by Patsi Krakoff and Elge
Premeau.

We should have this finished by mid November an you
won’t want to miss the valuable resources, writing tips,
formatting and distribution systems information, and all
the valuable information we can give you to make your
ezine tasks easier.

Your ezine should work in the background like a well-oiled
machine without a lot of time and energy.

Get back to coaching and making the money you deserve!

Patsi

Survey of Two Biggest Fears to Writing and Publishing

According to a leading expert on ezines and blogs, Debbie
Weil from WordBiz.com, time is cited as the biggest obstacle
to writing and creating a business blog. The second obstacle
is fear of not knowing what to write.

I am not surprised at these survey results. My own
experiences with coaching others on their ezines validate
these two big fears about writing and publishing.

Not enough time
Not enough to say

Baloney!

Let me just say that a few years ago, I myself experienced
both these fears and many others. I was one of the original
techno-weanies. When it came to publishing anything on the
web or through email, I had sticky fingers and keyboard
paralysis.

Now you can go to Debbie’s seminar to overcome these fears
for $79. Or, you can let me take a cyber-slap at you: Get
over it!

It took me exactly 20 minutes to write and post this article
on my weblog.

Get Over It!

I don’t have any more time than you do, and I have only as
much to say as you do in your own chosen field and niche. I
am no genius. My husband will tell you that.

But I do have motivation and a drive to help others do what
I myself have learned.

Help is just a click away: email or comment here to give me
your opinion on what your biggest obstacle to writing and
publishing your own ezine REALLY is.

And while you’re on it, tell me again, why you wouldn’t just
start your own blog like this one? If I can, you can.

Coming soon: Denise Wakeman and I are starting a teleclass
series to help you get started with blogging.

Prediction: Blogging or publishing a weblog is the wave of
the future.

Secret: It is much easier than publishing your own web site
or ezine!

Here is Debbie Weil’s survey:

WordBiz Update: text-only Oct. 18, 2004
===========

* Lack of Time Is Top Obstacle to Blogging *

Over 70% of respondents to a WordBiz survey report lack of
time is their key concern to managing a business blog.

In addition:

– 45% of you are unsure what to write about

– 18% question whether the content needs to be edited
or pre-approved

– 15% wonder who would be responsible for the writing

Yet, when asked if you have considered starting a business
blog, more than 80% responded yes.

To register, go here:
http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/adtrack.asp?AdID=104812